Chapter 17 #2
I go back to my notes, adding a new finale to my speech. “And speaking of ending feuds and choosing love over grudges, please direct your attention to Cedar Ridge’s newest couple...”
Rita bleats and knocks over my water glass, soaking everything. My notes blur, what’s left of my index cards turn to mush, and my carefully highlighted evidence becomes a watercolor painting of disappointment.
“Perfect. Just perfect.”
But somehow it is perfect. The mess, the turmoil, the complete destruction of careful plans is exactly what this needs to be. Not polished or practiced. Just true.
My phone rings while I’m trying to salvage my notes with a hair dryer. It’s Wyatt, which is weird because Wyatt texts. He doesn’t call. Wyatt calling means something serious is happening or someone’s dead.
“Please tell me nobody’s dead.”
“What? No. Why would someone be—never mind. Jesse says you’re going nuclear at the festival.”
“Going nuclear is harsh. I prefer ‘assertively truthful’ or ‘therapeutically honest.’”
“Callie.”
“Wyatt.”
“We want to be there. With you. Not behind you or near you. With you.”
“That’s a bad idea. Actually, that’s several bad ideas stacked in a trench coat pretending to be one really bad idea,” I say.
“All our best ideas are bad. Remember the barn? The creek? That thing with the—”
“I remember.” Boy, do I remember. My thighs remember. Parts of me I didn’t know existed remember.
“Then you remember we’re good at bad ideas.”
“This is different. This is public. This is permanent. This is your family and mine and thirty years of exploding history.”
“Exactly why we should be there.”
There’s noise in the background. Jesse’s voice. “Tell her about the pact.”
“What pact?” I ask, suspicious. “Please tell me you didn’t do something involving blood or tattoos.”
“We made a pact,” Wyatt says, sounding embarrassed. “If you make any move toward us, publicly, we stand with you. No more hiding. No more sneaking. No more pretending we don’t want this.”
“Want what, exactly?”
“You. Us. Whatever this thing is.”
“You don’t even know what this is.”
“Neither do you.”
He’s got me there. I don’t know what you call three cowboys and a Thompson girl other than a bad joke walking into a bar.
“Your father will disown you.”
“Maybe. Probably. Definitely if we’re being realistic. That’s our problem,” he says.
“The town will talk.”
“They’re already talking. Did you know there’s a betting pool?”
“On what?”
“Everything. Who you’ll choose, when the next fight will be, what Rita will eat next.”
“Madison will make your lives hell.”
“She’s already trying. Did you see her latest post? She photoshopped herself into Jesse’s rodeo photos. It’s disturbing. She gave herself his trophy.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. So really, public acknowledgment can’t be worse than that.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
There’s a pause. I hear muffled discussion, possibly an argument, definitely Boone saying something about goats.
Then Jesse’s on the phone. “Because the feud is fake but what we had was real.”
“Was it though? Or were we all just horny and rebellious?”
“You tell me. Was it fake when you came four times in one night? Was it fake when you fixed my coffee without asking because you noticed I was tired? Was it fake when you sang to Rita and didn’t know I was listening?”
“Jesse—”
“Was it fake when Boone made you laugh so hard you peed? When Wyatt held you during that storm and didn’t try anything even though you were basically naked? When you said our names in your sleep?”
“I didn’t—”
“You did. All three. Like a roll call of bad decisions. It was adorable and concerning.”
“This is foolish.”
“Yeah. So? This whole town is foolish. Our families have been trying to murder each other over condiments for three decades. Sanity is relative.”
Festival morning arrives too fast and not fast enough. I’ve been awake since 4 a.m., alternating between practicing my speech and considering fleeing to Mexico. Rita ate my passport last year however, so Mexico’s out.
I’m standing in front of my closet, having a crisis about clothing. The blue dress? Too obvious. Jeans? Too casual. Full body armor? Tempting, but I don’t have any. A nun’s habit? Too dramatic but points for comedy.
“What does one wear to destroy thirty years of foolishness?” I ask Rita, who’s lying on my bed.
She bleats and kicks my pillow off the bed.
“Business casual it is.”
I settle on jeans that make my ass look good, a white shirt that says “I’m approachable but will still ruin your life,” and boots that I can run in if necessary. Or kick in if I have to. And the red lipstick I wore that first night with the McCoys, because symbolism matters.
Dad appears in my doorway, looking he might vomit. He’s already dressed in his good jeans and the shirt I bought him for Christmas that he claimed was “too fancy for Cedar Ridge.”
“You sure about this?” he asks.
“Are you sure about Mrs. Delaney?”
“That’s different.”
“Stop saying that. Nothing’s different. We’re all just idiots trying to be happy in a town that feeds on drama and breathes gossip.”
“The McCoy boys—”
“Are going to stand with me. Publicly. Deal with it,” I say.
“All three?”
“All three.”
“At the same time?”
“That’s typically what ‘all three’ means.”
“Callie—”
“Dad, Mom would want this. You know she would. She literally wrote ‘choose love’ on a recipe card and hid evidence that the feud was bullshit. She was Team End This Nonsense before there was a team.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then, “She’d be proud of you.”
“She’d be laughing her ass off at the whole thing.”
“That too. She always said we men were idiots. I thought she meant men in general. Turns out, she meant specifically McCoy and me.
The festival is already crowded when we arrive. I can see the McCoy trucks, the brothers standing by the main stage in actual suits. They look good. Dangerously good. Make you forget your speech about expired mayo good.
“Don’t get distracted by the suits,” I tell myself. “You’re here to end a war, not start another one.”
I walk toward the stage, Rita trotting beside me, and I can feel the crowd noticing. Whispers starting. Phones appearing. The Thompson girl’s about to do something.
They have no idea.