Chapter Two Griffin #3
“Even better.” Denise pointed toward the main lawn, where the team had begun gathering around the giant Lake Briar Cup scoreboard. “Opening night activities start in twenty minutes. Give me one official Bad Idea Bet challenge by then.”
Griffin stared at her. “Twenty minutes?”
“You’re both creative.”
“I am not creative.”
Maren looked him up and down. “We know.”
His eyes cut to hers.
There it was again.
The wire.
Bright, thin, dangerous.
Denise walked away with the calm of a woman who had just lit a fuse and called it delegation.
For a moment, Griffin and Maren stood in the warm evening noise, facing each other while the weekend moved around them.
Music from the lawn.
Lake water beneath the dock.
Team laughter.
Maren’s phone buzzing every few seconds with comments and shares.
Griffin’s own pulse doing something unhelpful every time she looked directly at him.
She tilted her head. “So.”
“No.”
“You do not even know what I was going to say.”
“You were going to suggest something bad.”
“That is literally the title.”
“It is not a title. It is a mistake with branding.”
“That’s most successful things.”
He looked at her for a long second.
“You want this,” he said.
The teasing drained from her face so quickly he almost regretted saying it.
Almost.
Maren looked away toward the scoreboard, where Tyler was now trying to climb onto Miles’s back to hang a sign Beckett had made out of poster board and poor impulse control.
When she spoke again, her voice was lighter, but not light enough to hide the truth.
“I want the weekend to work.”
“That is not what I said.”
Her eyes came back to him.
Defensive now.
Sharp.
Good. He could work with sharp. Sharp meant honest was nearby.
“What do you want me to say, Griffin? That yes, I want people to notice? Yes, I want the post to do well? Yes, I want this weekend to be the thing I point to when people ask whether I can handle more than making a restaurant’s soup of the day look emotionally available?”
He did not answer.
Because that, finally, was real.
Maren’s smile returned, but it was smaller this time. Meaner to herself than to him.
“Relax,” she said. “I know ambition makes people uncomfortable when it comes with lip gloss.”
Griffin’s jaw tightened.
“Who made you think that?”
The question slipped out before he could stop it.
Maren went still.
For half a second, he saw it.
The hit.
Not big. Not dramatic. Just a flash of surprise, like he had reached past the glitter and touched a bruise.
Then she laughed.
Too bright.
“Wow,” she said. “Careful, Hayes. That almost sounded like depth.”
He should have let her deflect.
He knew that.
Instead, he said, “That was not an answer.”
“No, it was a boundary.”
Fair.
He could respect that.
He could also hate it.
Maren lifted her phone between them like a shield. “We need a challenge.”
“We need a controlled concept.”
“Those words should never be together.”
“Challenge one should be simple.”
“Wrong.”
“Safe.”
“Fine.”
“Team-focused.”
“Boring.”
“Not involving kissing.”
Her eyes flashed.
The reaction was fast.
There and gone.
But he saw it.
And because he saw it, he suddenly became aware that he had said the word kissing while standing too close to Maren Brooks under string lights at the edge of a lake, with her mouth two feet from his and the entire premise of the bet still hanging between them like an invitation neither of them had approved.
Bad idea.
Actual bad idea.
She recovered first.
Probably because she had more practice pretending things did not land.
“Afraid?” she asked.
“No.”
“You answer that one fast too.”
“Because it is easy.”
“Mmm.”
“Maren.”
“Griffin.”
His name in her voice was a problem.
Not because she said it softly. She did not. She said it like a challenge with lip gloss.
Which, apparently, was worse.
He looked toward the lawn because self-preservation mattered. “Opening night activity is the team intro relay.”
“The one where the players introduce each other while doing lake tasks?”
“Yes.”
“What if we make you and me the judges?”
“No.”
“You are very attached to that word.”
“It has served me well.”
“What if the team votes on small bad-idea prompts, and you have to approve or reject them live?”
“No.”
“What if you have to approve one?”
His eyes narrowed.
Maren’s smile grew.
“There,” she said. “That is the face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you realize my idea has structural integrity.”
“It does not.”
“It does. Opening challenge: the team submits bad ideas. You reject most of them because that is your love language. But you have to approve one for us to do before the night ends.”
“Us?”
“This is called the Bad Idea Bet, not Griffin Stands Alone and Frowns at Recreation.”
“I am not doing a bad idea with you.”
“Then the poll wins.”
“I do not care about the poll.”
Her gaze dropped to his phone in his hand. “You have checked it twice.”
“I am monitoring an active situation.”
“You are losing to joy in real time.”
He exhaled.
She was impossible.
Worse, she was good.
The concept was clean. Contained. Interactive. It used the team, fed the public narrative, gave Maren content, and allowed Griffin to screen for actual risk.
He hated it.
Because it worked.
“Nothing physical,” he said.
Maren’s eyebrows rose.
He realized the wording one second too late.
Tyler, who had wandered back within hearing range, made a strangled noise.
Beckett whispered from somewhere behind him, “Put that on a shirt.”
Griffin did not turn around. “I meant dangerous.”
Maren pressed her lips together. “Of course.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I do.”
“Then stop looking like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you are making it worse on purpose.”
Her smile softened into something that should have been less dangerous and somehow was not.
“Hayes,” she said, “making things worse on purpose is how half of civilization got interesting.”
“Absolutely untrue.”
“And yet here we are.”
They stared at each other.
The sounds around them blurred for one suspended second, and Griffin had the distinct, alarming thought that if Maren took one more step closer, he might not move away.
That was it.
That was the warning.
He stepped back.
Her eyes flicked down, noticing.
Something unreadable crossed her face.
Then she smiled.
Bright. Easy. Gone.
“Great,” she said. “Challenge one. You approve one bad idea before the end of opening night.”
“Within boundaries.”
“Within spiritual khakis.”
“I am not wearing khakis.”
“Spiritually, you are always wearing khakis.”
Tyler clapped his hands. “I love this book.”
“This is not a book,” Griffin said.
“It is becoming content with chapters.”
Maren was already typing.
Griffin leaned closer before he could think better of it. “Show me before you post.”
She froze at his nearness.
Only for a moment.
But he felt it.
Good.
Not good.
Terrible.
She angled the phone toward him.
Her caption read:
BAD IDEA BET, CHALLENGE ONE.
The Ridgeview boys submit their worst ideas.
Griffin Hayes rejects joy professionally.
But before opening night ends, he has to approve ONE bad idea for himself and Maren to complete.
Drop your predictions.
Griffin stared at the screen.
Then at her.
“Professionally?”
“You do reject joy with impressive technique.”
“Change it.”
“To what?”
He took the phone from her hand.
He should not have.
The second his fingers brushed hers, awareness snapped up his arm like a live wire.
Maren’s breath caught.
Softly.
Barely.
He heard it anyway.
For one second, neither of them moved.
Then he looked down and edited the caption because control was safer than whatever that had been.
He changed one line.
Griffin Hayes rejects joy professionally.
To:
Griffin Hayes protects joy from poor planning.
He handed the phone back.
Maren read it.
Then looked at him.
Her expression had shifted again. Less teasing. More curious.
“That is almost charming,” she said.
“Post it before I change my mind.”
She did.
The notification sound seemed louder this time.
Across the lawn, Tyler screamed, “CHALLENGE ONE IS LIVE!”
The team erupted again.
Griffin looked toward the sky.
There was no help there.
Only sunset.
Maren’s phone buzzed.
She read the first comment aloud.
“Someone says, ‘Griffin Hayes protecting joy from poor planning is the hottest responsible-man sentence I have ever read.’”
Beckett yelled, “I agree with the public!”
Nate laughed so hard he had to sit down on a cooler.
Griffin turned to Maren.
She was trying not to smile.
Failing.
Completely.
And for reasons that suggested he had suffered a quiet brain injury sometime between Tyler’s pool noodle and now, Griffin wanted to make her smile again.
Not for content.
Not for the team.
Not because the weekend needed it.
Because the real one, the smile she tried to hide when it surprised her, looked like winning something he had not meant to play for.
Maren lowered her phone.
“Ready, Hayes?”
No.
“Fine,” he said.
Her smile sharpened. “Careful. That almost sounded like yes.”
Before he could answer, Tyler sprinted across the lawn with a stack of neon note cards in his hand.
“Submissions are open!” Tyler shouted. “Bad ideas only!”
Griffin watched the team swarm.
He felt the weekend tilt again.
Out of his control.
Into motion.
Into Maren’s hands.
And as she brushed past him toward the lawn, shoulder grazing his arm for the quickest second, Griffin realized something worse than the poll, worse than Doyle’s message, worse than Tyler being given neon paper.
He was not afraid the Bad Idea Bet would fail.
He was afraid it would work.