24. Welcome back?
Welcome back?
Falon
I’ve been fighting the strap on this sandal for five minutes.
I told Bo I’d be ready by eleven. It is now eleven thirty I still haven’t had these strappy things on.
There was a reason I liked my boots and jeans.
The jeans fit just fine and can handle just about anything, even my accident-prone self, and my boots don’t have straps, Velcro, or zippers, so they are pretty much Falon-proof, but thin strappy sandals are bound to be the death of me.
“Are you coming or not?” Bo yells up the stairs, where I am currently hopping on one foot, wedging the buckle with my thumbnail, and it pops loose.
Again. I grab the doorframe with one hand, jam my foot back into the sandal, and try again, slower this time, which is extremely hard to do when someone downstairs is laughing loud enough for the whole house to hear.
"I can hear you," I call out.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're laughing. That’s doing something."
"Nope, laughing is not against the rules."
“What rules?” I mumble to myself.
I get the buckle on the third try and straighten up, smoothing my dress down with both hands.
It's just a white cotton dress with small blue flowers. It is nothing fancy, but it is comfortable, and I don’t even want to think about how long it took me to decide what to wear.
Am I too dressed up for a town barbecue?
Then I remember that half of Everwood wears rhinestones to the feed store.
Letting out a small breath, I check myself one more time in the mirror, then grab my little handbag.
My hair is down, and I’d worn Grandma Em’s small earrings she gave me for my birthday before she passed a few years ago.
I didn’t normally wear mascara, but I was starting to like it.
With everything in order and the strappy devils on my feet, I head downstairs.
It is strange to be this nervous and worried about a, and I quote, date.
Bo’s words. He’d actually gotten me flowers and asked me to be his Fourth of July date.
I blushed and nodded like a fool. I’d gone to the Fourth of July dance with other men, but none were Bo Gates.
This was new, not only that, Bo and I had been close out in public, but today, Bo said all bets were off.
He was going to date me the right way tonight.
I blushed just thinking about the way he’d kissed my forehead.
“Thinking about me?” Bo asks as I came down the stairs.
“You’re blushing.” Bo is standing at the bottom with his arms crossed and his hat tipped back on his head, and he looks amazing as only Bo could.
He's in dark jeans and a grey t-shirt with a sport coat over it, boots, a hat, and perfect. I almost miss the last step.
Way to play it cool, Falon.
"You look nice," he says with a cheek-splitting grin.
"You're still laughing."
"I stopped. Kind of." He holds out his hand when I reach the bottom step. "You ready?"
"I've been ready."
He raises one eyebrow.
"I've been mostly ready," I correct.
He takes my hand, and we head for the door.
Rowdy is waiting beside it, tail going, ready to go.
Bo had debated over this for a few days until he finally called Sam, as I’d suggested several times.
Bo was worried about the loud noises for Rowdy and for himself.
He’d been home for three months, and things were still hard for him.
He still woke up at night hearing loud whistles and explosions that weren’t there, and he’d be fine at the ranch until the horses kicked a bucket or a tractor backfired.
Bo kneels and scratches behind his ears.
“Are you ready, buddy?” he asks, before clipping his leash to his collar.
"He's going to be fine. Sam said he’d already desensitized him. Rowdy will probably do better than we will," I say, trying to console Rowdy’s overly sensitive owner.
"Absolutely," Bo agrees, and pulls the door shut behind us.
The drive into town only takes a few minutes, but before we reach the main streets of Everwood, flags are already flying, and red, white, and blue streamers are strung between anything over three feet high. Lamp posts, stop signs, and the town gazebo.
Everwood does the Fourth the way it does everything, overly enthusiastic and perfect.
The street was closed off for the festivities, and the park is three blocks of organized chaos.
Craft booths line the east side under white canopies, selling quilts, wood carvings, and jars of honey with handwritten labels and little fabric tags tied with twine.
The smell of fry bread hits us before we even find a parking spot.
The air is warm and sweet and impossible to ignore.
Ethel's niece is running the fryer from a booth near the center with focus. She smiles with satisfaction when we walk by. She’s been working the fryer since she was twelve and knows her craft.
Cassie and her kids, AP biology students, are selling freeze-dried candy.
She told me they were fundraising for their trip to Glacier National Park.
There are nachos and kettle corn, and a lemonade stand run by what appears to be every child under the age of ten in Everwood.
Someone has a hand-crank ice cream churn going near the gazebo, and there's already a line that wraps past the quilt display. American flags are everywhere. They’re on booths, on hats, on a golden retriever near the park entrance with a small flag bandana around its neck.
It smells like summer, and it sounds like summer, and standing at the edge of all of it with Bo's hand in mine was my fourteen-year-old dream come true.
Bo stops walking the second he sees the dunk tank.
“Is that Deputy Dale?” I ask, pointing to the far corner of the park, where a line of young kids is waiting to take a shot at the deputy.
Deputy Dale has his arms crossed and looks unconvinced that the kid in front of him could actually hit the broad side of a barn, let alone the target to the left of him.
The dunk tank was always a big hit, especially when it was Everwood's finest. The fire chief was next, then the mayor.
Bo looks over at the dunk tank, and a wicked smile spreads across his face.
"Don't," I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
He looks at me. "I've got a pretty good arm."
"Bo."
"One throw."
For a moment, I thought about telling him no, but his puppy dog eyes have me.
“Okay,” I say, “just one throw.” I know one throw is all it will take. Bo and Tyler had been on the high school baseball team. They were good. Anthony never missed a game.
He pulls me into his arms and kisses me. I smile against his lips.
“You’re so easy to please.” He pulls me toward the dunk tank just as the fire chief gets up on the platform. A few little kids throw the ball but miss. Chief Briggs laughs until Bo stepped up.
“No, it’s not fair,” Briggs says, eyeing Bo.
“I mean, what is fair, really?” Bo asks.
“I’ll tell you what. First, you have to step back a bit, those lines for the little ones.”
Bo moves back and raises his eyebrows. “Any other handicaps?” Bo calls, and the chief nods.
“Yes, if you’d like to be blindfolded.” The kids all start laughing. “I’m just kidding.” Briggs laughs. “All right, here are the rules. If you miss, then, well, you miss, but if you hit the target, then you come by the station tomorrow, and we’ll talk about the ARFF’s.”
Bo thinks about it for a moment, then agrees. With a smirk, Bo throws the ball like a pitcher, pitching the winning game. The ball flies from his fingers and hits the target faster than I can see. One minute, Chief Briggs is on the platform, and the next, he is sputtering in the water tank.
“Tomorrow, Gates,” he says through a mouth of water. The kids in line laugh, and to his credit, so does Chief Briggs. Just as Chief Briggs gets out of the water, the Mayor steps up, and Bo looks at me with his pleading eyes again.
“Maybe later,” I say, pulling him from the mud and splash zone of the dunk tank just as Mason steps up. We are ten steps away when the platform gives, and for a second, Bo freezes, and Rowdy is right there next to Bo. We turn around to see the new Mayor, Mayor Don Heartly, coming up from the water.
Mason is looking deeply satisfied, much to the mayor's dismay. He gives Bo a thumbs up.
I keep walking, pretending I don't know them, then take Bo's arm again and pull him to the crafts.
Mrs. Winslow finds us near the silent auction tables, an ambush waiting with bells on her shoes. Seriously, who let her watch the Tinkerbell movies again? She's wearing a red-and-white-striped blouse and blue jeans, a walking American flag.
"Falon, you look so pretty." She squeezes my hand, both of hers wrapped around mine, warm and papery. "Bo, that jacket is very dashing. Good choice."
"Thank you, Mrs. Winslow," Bo says, straight-faced.
"There's a ring toss near the north end. Janet's running it." A pause. "She's been asking about a demonstration. Are you two up for it?"
I look at Bo. He looks at me.
"Can you ring toss?" I ask.
Bo looks at me in disbelief. "Can I ring toss? Of course, I can ring toss," he scoffs.
Janet has set up the ring toss right next to the bow-and-arrow game, which, knowing Janet, is not a coincidence, and waves us over.
“Oh, wonderful. Mrs. Winslow found you two. Can you watch the booth for a second? I need to find Cassie and Millie. They were supposed to relieve me half an hour ago." She shoves the rings in Bo’s hands. “Here, show her how it's done," she says, leaving the table to us.
The prizes are stuffed animals on a rack behind the bottles, bears and rabbits, and an enormous moose that must be three feet tall and has no practical purpose whatsoever, unless you want to curl up with it and a good book while the rain hammers outside the window.
Bo looks at the bottles, then looks at the rings.