Chapter Nine
The rest of the Rosewood Summer Festival went by much more smoothly than the morning had.
The rush of customers slowed considerably, and Liam and I got on each other’s nerves significantly less. It wasn’t perfect. A spilled coffee here and an argument over how much whipped cream we should be topping the lattes with there, but we survived.
Finally, the time neared five o’clock, when the festival would come to an end, and the best shop partnership would be announced.
Liam and I cleaned up for the day in silence.
He folded up the chairs and boxed up our remaining supplies.
I wiped down all the equipment and tables.
It was still hot, but as the sun slowly crept its way toward the horizon and a gentle evening breeze swept through the park, I found the temperature to be a little more bearable.
“Maybe next year they’ll host a winter festival,” I joked, wiping a sheen of sweat off my forehead as we made our way toward the park’s center.
Liam breathed out a soft laugh, “Right, so we can do all this in four inches of snow instead? No thanks.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You are such a baby.”
“Sorry, not everyone can be as cold-blooded as you and adapt to whatever unbearable weather conditions the planet decides to force upon us.”
I playfully smacked him. “Cold-blooded? Rude. At least I’m not cold-hearted. I still can’t believe you were the only shop on the entire street to turn down the event at first.”
“It’s a hundred degrees out!” Liam argued.
“It’s a few uncomfortable hours of your life doing good for the community.”
I could tell he wanted to argue with me more, but we had reached the center of the park where a large group was gathered.
A few members of the town council stood on a small stage. Bree, the woman I recognized from a few weeks prior, stood toward the front of the group. She held a wired microphone in her hands.
Bree cleared her throat before lifting the microphone closer to her lips. “Hello,” she said. “We wanted to begin by thanking each and every one of you for coming out today and supporting our mission to breathe a little life back into Rosewood Avenue.”
The woman went on to give a long and overly detailed history of the street and its significance to the town. I only paid attention for half a minute or so before Liam tapped me on the shoulder to grab my attention.
“What?” I whispered to him, my gaze still fixed on the stage, even though I was only half-listening.
“I brought these if you wanted to…” With that vague proposition, I had no choice but to look at Liam.
In his hands were our remaining business cards. We had each started the morning with five hundred exactly, and it looked like the majority of them were gone. The stacks were about the same thickness, which meant that to determine the winner, we would have to count them.
I should have ignored him. It seemed a little disrespectful to do such a thing when we were supposed to be listening to Bree’s speech, but curiosity got the best of me.
“Fine, hand them over,” I whispered to him.
Liam handed my remaining business cards back to me, and I quickly started counting them.
My eyes flickered up to meet his once I finished counting. He was already waiting.
“How’d you do?” Liam asked.
“You first,” I said.
I was so nervous that I thought I would be sick. The results of our last competition were replaying on a loop in my mind. I couldn’t lose again—couldn’t let myself feel the way that I did that night ever again.
“I have thirty-four left,” he said.
In an instant, all the anxious feelings bubbling up inside me vanished. I was filled with pure, unbridled excitement and pride.
“Twenty-seven,” I said a bit too loudly. A few people glanced our way, but I still couldn’t help the wide smile that stretched across my lips. “I only have twenty-seven left. I won.”
Liam smiled. “Nice work, Jessa. You definitely deserve it with how hard you worked today.”
He even handled losing better than I did. It made my victory feel a little less sweet, but I refused to dwell on it.
“I know,” I replied. No more than a second passed before applause erupted all around us. The gaze of every person in Rosewood Park landed on Liam and me.
“What just happened?” I whispered to Liam.
“Um—” Liam started to say, looking as confused as I felt.
“Congratulations to The Prologue and The Galaxy Gamers Cafe! Please come up and redeem your reward!” Liam and I looked at each other with wide eyes as the councilwoman’s voice rang out through the microphone.
“You’re kidding,” I said with a gasp as the crowd parted to let us through.
While Liam had been so adamant about us winning when I first presented the idea to him, I quickly gave up on that dream. With his attitude and our constant bickering, I figured there was no way we would get even a single vote, let alone win.
“There’s no way,” Liam exclaimed, cackling like a maniac as he gently pushed me through the crowd. “How? All we did was serve coffee. Did you rig this?”
“No, I didn’t rig it!” I giggled as we stepped up to the stage, where the councilwoman was standing with the most comically large check I had ever seen. “Oh my god, no way.”
The applause continued, nearly as loud as the thundering of my racing heart. “Well, go up and claim your prize, winner,” Liam snickered.
“Last I checked, we won this together,” I said through a tight smile. I wrapped my hand around Liam’s wrist and tugged him along beside me as we made our way to the center of the stage. Cameras flickered, blinding us as we took turns shaking Bree’s hand.
My cheeks stung from the impossibly wide grin that tugged at my lips as Liam and I posed for a photo, each of us holding onto one end of the oversized check.
My gaze drifted over the crowd, catching on Val and Clara. Val’s words from earlier flooded my brain once more.
Liam and I—she had truly assumed that he and I were a couple.
I glanced over at him, at the mile-wide grin on his face as he clutched his end of the massive check. I tried to ignore the way my heart seemed to skip a beat.
Impossible. There could never be an us— it would be simply impossible.
* * *
Our third competition took place about a month after the Rosewood Summer Festival.
It was mid-August, and the heat was still unbearably hot most days. The sun had still been high in the sky, and a warm breeze blew in through the shop when he opened the doors.
My eyes landed on Liam in an instant. A sun-kissed face, a bright smile, and an air of confidence in his strides.
I was already close to the front door, busy setting up a table to display books written by local authors. “What do you want?” I asked as he approached.
“Whatever happened to hello? Or how are you doing?” Liam teased.
“I save those sorts of formalities for friends.”
Liam chuckled from where he lingered behind me. “I guess it’s good to know where I stand with you.”
I ignored him, shifting my attention to an older gentleman who had just come in. “Good morning, sir, welcome in!”
“Is that smile another formality you save for friends?”
“Yes. Now, what do you want?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“What?” I asked, finally standing up to face him.
“Third competition. It’s my turn to pick.”
My expression fell into a half-frown. “If you try to cheat your way to victory—”
“I won’t,” Liam said, throwing up his hands. “I personally don’t think that I cheated, but either way, there’s no way for either of us to cheat this one.”
I sighed. “Fine. What is it?”
“A battle of reviews. Over the next month, we’ll keep track of the online reviews our shops receive. We each get one point for every star they leave. Whoever has the most points by the end of the month wins.”
My frown deepened. “How do I know that you won’t cheat and make secret accounts to give your shop good reviews?”
Liam looked taken aback. “I won’t. The idea hadn’t even crossed my mind until you mentioned it.”
I looked deeply into his eyes, searching for the truth. He kept his gaze fixed on mine just as fiercely. “Tell me you’re not lying.”
I still didn’t trust him entirely, but when Liam said, “I’m not lying,” without breaking eye contact, I decided to trust him just that once.
“Okay,” I said, sticking my hand out toward him. “You’re on Ashford.”
“Good luck,” he replied, grasping onto my hand and shaking it. His hands were as warm as the summer heat outside.
The moment Liam left, I got to work. I should have still been riding the high from my win at the festival, but I wasn’t. My mind had already shifted gears. I was determined to win again and take the lead.
Within an hour, I had worked out a multi-step plan.
Step one was to guarantee that every customer who set foot into The Prologue had the best experience possible.
That step was easy, competition or not; that was always the goal.
Still, it didn’t hurt to pull out all the stops.
Free bookmarks by the registers, free stickers for any children that came into the shop, and I would make more of an effort to greet everyone that came in.
Step two was getting our customers’ good experiences to actually translate into good reviews.
In the few months that The Prologue had been open, we had garnered a little over twenty positive reviews, but if I was going to crush Liam, I needed significantly more.
I spent that evening creating several posters that I could hang up throughout the shop, kindly requesting that the customers leave reviews to support The Prologue.
The final step was essentially begging. I gave each of my employees a script that they could recite to the customers, asking them to leave reviews. They didn’t seem particularly thrilled about that, but I insisted that after the month was over, they wouldn’t have to bother with it anymore.