Chapter 20
LIZZY
It was Halloween and the booth had a long line. They’d transported a fryer onto location, and Victor was frying up funnel cakes while Lizzy took orders. She greeted familiar faces from around town.
Gertrude came up to the front of the line. “I’ll take a caramel apple,” she said.
Lizzy plucked one of the juicy apples from the table where they were lined up in rows.
It’d been one of her favorite offerings as a kid, and she was ecstatic to see it on the menu when she’d arrived for her first shift.
Victor had been handling all the details of their fair booth behind the scenes, and Lizzy merely had to show up, smile, and greet their customers.
It was refreshing and made being with Victor the easiest thing in the world.
She’d been a fool for doubting they were perfect together.
As she passed by Victor at the fryer in the small space, he gave her rear a firm squeeze. She giggled and playfully slapped his arm before returning to Gertrude at the window of their booth.
“Glad to see the two of you are getting along again.” Gertrude smirked.
“Happier than ever,” Lizzy said and handed the old woman the caramel apple.
“Good to see it. Your dad would have been happy to see you two together. I think he secretly wanted Victor as his son-in-law.”
Before, that might have made her angry or sad, but now it filled her with a quiet sort of melancholy.
She couldn’t go back in time and relive the days and years she’d missed with her dad.
But being here in Pumpkin Hollow, she felt closer to him, and carrying on the family legacy filled her with pride and fulfillment she’d never known before.
“Thank you,” Lizzy said. “I think he would have too.”
After that, Lizzy and Victor worked the first half of the event until Vivianne and Clyde came in to relieve them.
“Go, enjoy the festival. Make your disgusting lovey-dovey eyes at one another,” Vivianne said, shooing them away with a wave of her hand.
The line cook grunted as he took the bottle of batter from Victor and took his place behind the fryer.
Lizzy smiled and threaded her hand with Victor’s as they stepped out into the festival.
There were pumpkins strewn all along the street, their grinning jack-o’-lantern faces flickering in the twilight. A large band was playing on the gazebo stage in the center of town. And people were lining up for the broomstick race.
They saw Brayden in a circle of teens, and when they walked past, he waved to them with a smile.
Hand in hand, they wandered through the stalls of the festival, checking out the local businesses.
She stopped to chat with Rowen at the bakery’s display, while Victor drifted over to play one of the carnival games with a stuffed animal raven dangling from it.
“That looks just like Igor,” she said as she joined him in line.
“You want it? I’ll win it for you.” He puffed out his chest in a way that on anyone else would have been annoying, but on Victor was adorable.
“Don’t. Those games are always rigged.”
It was one of those milk jug games where you tossed balls into a tower of milk jugs and the objective was to knock them all down.
They watched the couple in line before them take their turn.
Tourists, from the looks of them. The guy was tall and broad, and he paid for three balls.
He wound up to pitch, like a pro-baseball player—not that Lizzy knew anything about sports.
The first ball sailed through the air before perfectly striking the top milk jug.
Then the second ball took out the middle row, but his third ball failed to knock down the remaining three milk jugs, leaving one lonely jug left standing.
The man shook his head. “It’s rigged,” he said to his partner in a sulking tone before his partner ushered him away.
“See,” Lizzy said. “The raven is cute, but you don’t need to waste your money.”
“I can win it,” he said with such confidence that she couldn’t deny him. She stepped back, sweeping out her arm to signal him to try.
Victor walked up to the man in charge of the booth. He was wearing a pinstripe suit and a straw hat, like someone out of an old-timey cartoon.
“Want to win a prize for your girl?” the vendor asked.
“I do.” Victor grinned back at Lizzy, who felt her stomach flutter at the sight.
“Well, step right up.” The man gestured at the milk bottles. “Ten dollars for three balls, or twelve for five.”
“Three is enough,” Victor said, slapping a ten-dollar bill down on the table.
The guy rolled his eyes as if he’d heard that a few times before.
Victor picked up a ball and weighed it in his hand before aiming it like a hunting rifle.
“That’s a new technique,” the vendor heckled.
“What do I get if I do it in one shot?” Victor asked him.
“Stalling won’t knock the balls down.” The man chuckled and looked at Lizzy as if she should be in on the joke.
“But if I do it in one?” Victor repeated.
“Look, the game is to knock them down. One or three or ten, don’t matter to me. Knock them all down and you get a prize of your choice,” the vendor said, with a tinge of annoyance coloring his emotions.
Lizzy grabbed Victor’s shoulder and squeezed it. “You don’t have to do it in one shot,” she assured him.
“Blow on it for good luck,” Victor said and offered the ball up to her.
She played along and blew.
“Perfect,” he said and wound up his arm. It sailed through the air. The vendor had his back turned—that’s how confident he was Victor would not strike the milk jugs. She could feel it radiating off him. No one knocked down these bottles.
It hit the jugs with a thundering crack, and all six milk jugs tumbled to the ground, and embedded itself into the plywood wall at the back of the stand.
The street vendor turned, mouth agape, as he looked at the ball, the fallen jugs, and then back at Victor.
Lizzy clapped with delight, and Victor beamed.
“Well, there’s a first for everything,” the vendor said sourly.
He removed a raven plush from its hook and handed it to Lizzy. She could hardly wrap her arms around it, that was how big it was. It was super soft and squishy. She could imagine curling up with it at night.
“Congrats,” the vendor said, and Victor, seeing her struggling to carry her plush, plucked it from her arms and slung it over his shoulder. They made their way back to the main stage, where musicians were playing in the gazebo.
Victor set the stuffed Raven down by the stage before turning to offer her his hand. “Dance with me.”
“I don’t know how to dance.”
“You don’t need to know. It’s mostly just swaying in place.”
He wrapped his arm around her, and they swayed together to the music. Other couples drifted by, but the rest of the world seemed to fade until it was just him and her. And the floating, glimmering lights of the Pumpkin Festival.
When the song ended, Victor slid a hand around her waist, and they went back to meet up with Brayden again.
After hours of walking, her feet were killing her and the giant raven was becoming more burden than fun trinket. They found Brayden with his friends, and the three of them walked back home.
“And then Jordan was like ‘No way.’ But then Aiden doubled down and he ate it, bro.” Brayden laughed after recounting a story of one of his friends eating some hair-covered caramel apple that someone had dropped on the ground.
Lizzy laughed and Victor beamed. This was exactly the sort of night she dreamed of having forever.
The three of them, a pseudo family. Perfectly in love.
Perfectly content. This was what she’d been looking for all along.
And maybe things would change along the way, maybe they would fight but they’d laugh and talk too.
Whatever came their way, she knew that they’d face it together.
She felt full. After a lifetime of hunger, she’d found what she was looking for and she was satisfied.