Chapter 15 #2
When Connor shifts his focus from Riley to Andrew and Toby, his brow furrows and he gives them a curt nod. Toby says hi to him, but Andrew’s eyes dart away from Connor so sharply it feels like a whip cracking in the air between them.
“Sorry, er, we’ve gotta go,” Andrew mumbles. “Forgot they need us at the thing.” He abruptly turns to leave, bumping into Toby in his haste. Then he basically pushes his friend to get him to walk away with him.
Connor frowns and stares after them for a few seconds before turning back to me and Riley.
The three of us make small talk for a couple more minutes, Riley telling him how we visited the farm the other day.
But it’s clear that most of Connor’s focus is on his son, who is still across the street enthralled by a squirrel that’s destroying the flowerbox.
“I better grab Mason before he runs off chasing another one,” Connor says. “I need to try to get him to eat something that’s made of more than just sugar.”
Left alone, Riley and I wander back toward the main area of the festival. As we wait in a short line so I can grab food, I ask her, “So what the heck was that with your brother?”
She frowns. “No idea. I mean, he sort of has this issue with me having a crush on Connor, I guess.”
“You what?” I say, a lump rising in my throat. She told me how she had a thing for Connor when she was younger, but the sentence she just said was not in past tense.
“No, I’m sorry.” She shakes her head, a faint pink blush rising on her cheeks. “I meant in high school, like I told you about. It was a silly obsession, and he barely knew I existed.”
And now I feel stupid, because it should have been obvious that’s what she was talking about. “Right,” I say, darting my eyes away.
“I think it made Andrew uneasy,” she continues, “because Connor was older than me. Nothing ever happened though.”
“Then I don’t understand why that would make him run away from the guy.”
Riley shrugs and juts her head forward as the people in front of us move up in line. “Yeah, I don’t know. He’s gotten a little snippy with me the couple times Connor’s name has come up since I’ve been here. It’s weird.”
Feeling like I’m choking on the words, I say, “Well, you guys aren’t in high school anymore. If you wanted to date him now, there would be nothing wrong with it. Right?”
She looks at me like what I said was strange. And yeah, I don’t know why I said it. Why I can’t let this go.
There would be nothing wrong with her dating Connor.
But I sure as hell hope she doesn’t want to.
I know it shouldn’t matter to me who she’s interested in, because it’s not like we’re dating.
Still, though, that lump in my throat grows bigger at the thought of her losing interest in me so quickly and moving on to someone else.
“Addison,” she says, taking my hand and waiting for me to meet her eyes. “I don’t want to be with Connor. I’m exactly where I want to be right now.”
I clear my throat and nod, thankful when we’re suddenly at the front of the line and she releases my hand so I can step up to order.
We walk around as I eat. Riley doesn’t make any effort to find her brother, so we check out the booths and people watch.
Mitch is walking around with his chicken on a leash. He struggles a few times to stop her from eating food that people have dropped on the ground, but other than that, the damn bird seems strangely well-behaved. I swear she preens whenever someone bends down and pets her.
At one point, Riley and I find an open spot in the grass in front of the gazebo and join a handful of other people who are simply sitting and listening to the band.
When they start playing one of her songs that even I recognize, I turn to her to see if she wants to leave, but she just tugs her cap down a bit as she sways her body to the beat.
I notice a handful of people glancing sneakily in our direction, but thankfully everyone is respectful enough not to say anything.
Which is yet another example of how truly strange Mayweather is.
Because these people love gossip and butting into their neighbors’ business, while at the same time, they seem to understand when someone has an actual need for privacy.
Riley looks so sweet and carefree right now, simply enjoying the music. I’d like to put my arm around her. Even though she’s sitting right beside me, I’d like to have her closer.
I always want her closer.
It’s becoming a problem.
But I’m enjoying this festival a lot more than I expected to—not that I’ll ever admit it to Brenden—and I know I can thank my present company for that. It would have been far less fun without her. Although without her, I suppose I wouldn’t have come at all.
“We should get back over to watch the contest,” she says, after her song transitions into “Summer of ’69.”
I stand, then offer my hand to help her up. She smiles at me, her hand lingering in mine for a few moments longer than necessary once she’s on her feet. If we weren’t in public, I wouldn’t be able to resist kissing her right now. But I settle for giving her hand a squeeze before letting it go.
“Thanks for coming here with me,” she says as we walk. “I know it’s not your thing, but I hope you’re having a good time.”
“Listen, Strawberry.” I stop, waiting for her to stop too. “I’ll let you in on a secret.” When she tilts her head as if eager to hear it, I lean in close and whisper, “I’m pretty sure I’d have a good time doing anything with you.”
Her mouth falls partway open, but she doesn’t say anything. The surprised delight twinkling in her eyes is enough, though.
We reach the area in the street where everything is now set up for the contest. Andrew and Toby are talking to a couple people about ten feet away, but before we go over to them, I fix Riley with a calculated grin.
“You know, if you really wanted to thank me for coming here and make sure I have a good time, you’d enter this thing and show me those pie-eating skills.”
She huffs and rolls her eyes. “Do you really wanna watch me make a fool of myself?”
I shake my head. “I want to watch you let go and enjoy yourself. But don’t worry, I’m only teasing you. I don’t expect you to do it.”
Her eyes narrow at that, and she sets one hand on her hip. “Well, why not?”
The question throws me off. I don’t entirely have an answer for her, so I go with, “Uh. Because it would be messy?”
She grasps my wrist, tugging me closer. Then, tilting her head up, she says directly in my ear, “I’m not afraid to get messy.”
The sexy look she gives me when she steps back suggests she’s not only talking about eating a pie. But before I can come up with a flirty retort, she starts marching defiantly away from me.
What the heck?
Did I actually offend her?
I follow after her as she heads for one of the tables in the street. And then I watch her grab a clipboard that’s sitting there and add her name to the signup sheet.
When she turns back to face me, I tell her, “Hey, you really don’t have to prove anything to me.”
“I know,” she says with a shrug and a grin. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to.”
The contest is about to start, and there are a lot more people gathered around to watch than I expected.
It’s a good thing I was standing here early enough to get a prime viewing spot, right by where Riley is now seated in a metal folding chair at one end of the long row of tables.
She’s given me her hat to hold and tied her hair back into a ponytail.
Her brother is beside me, while Toby is moving around the area, jotting things down on a small notepad and talking to an older man with a camera who Andrew told me also works for the newspaper.
The fact that this town even has a newspaper is insane. But then again, these people make a big deal out of everything—from these festivals, to the school plays, to someone’s dog having puppies—so I suppose it does make a sort of weird sense.
It looks like there’s almost twenty people of varying ages who have entered this thing.
As I watch one group of volunteers placing two pies in front of each participant and another group tying the participants’ hands behind their backs with long strips of cloth, my first thought is that I’m glad no one asked me to bake all those pies.
And my second, while someone ties Riley’s hands, is that I wonder if I could snag that cloth to do a little tying of my own later.
Andrew shifts beside me, reminding me that he’s right there, and that this is probably an inappropriate time to be imagining all the dirty things I want to do to his sister.
“I can’t believe she actually signed up,” he says. “There’s no way she can eat like she used to.”
Nope. Absolutely not, brain. Do not go there.
Clearing my throat and the new wave of inappropriate thoughts, I tell him, “I don’t think she expects to win.”
“No, probably not. I think she’s just having fun.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Andrew turns to give me a searching look. “There isn’t. And you know, something about her seems different today. She seems lighter somehow.”
“Oh yeah?” I say, unsure if he’s trying to imply that I’ve had something to do with that.
“She’s been in such a funk since she got here, but now it feels like she’s herself again.
I’m happy to see it. She’s always known how to have fun, never taken herself too seriously.
Except when it comes to music.” He glances at his sister, then fixes his keen, dark eyes back on me.
“She takes her career very seriously. People act like she got lucky and magically fell into fame because she’s pretty and writes catchy breakup songs.
But she worked extremely hard to get where she is now.
And that’s why it makes me so mad that all this bullshit has happened to her. ”