The Visual

Chapter 1

So, how was it going to happen? Because it definitely had to. Either I could do this, or I would need to win big in the Michigan lottery. Or, maybe I could get hit by a truck and collect a large settlement? But the idea of going down with an injury right now—

“Did you sign for the delivery last Friday?” My mom stood at the office door, frowning at a crinkled yellow paper in her hand. She turned it so that I could see a scrawl of ink at the bottom that resembled my signature.

“Why?” I asked warily.

“We’re missing two jugs of vegetable oil.”

“It was all there,” I told her. “I’m sure.

” In reality, I hadn’t been paying great attention to things at the restaurant last Friday.

That delivery was supposed to have shown up on Wednesday, but on Wednesday, our area of northern Michigan had been shut down by more snow than we’d seen yet this winter.

Instead, the guy had appeared with his truck on Friday when we were really busy.

I had also been trying to submit an assignment for one of my classes and failing at that, because the Wi-Fi here always sucked.

Always. There was a scramble about the money because they weren’t advancing credit for us anymore and then I had signed, but had I counted everything and compared that number to what the invoice showed?

No.

“I counted the boxes,” I told my mom but then also told the whole truth. “I counted a lot of them.”

“Molly,” she sighed, and she walked off, still frowning at the paper manifest. Ever since I discovered the problems she’d had with the books, she was being extra, supremely careful with anything to do with numbers.

I could have gone to help because we weren’t busy now, although I was supposed to be doing some homework.

There were always things to accomplish here, of course, because running a restaurant wasn’t like the normal jobs that people had where they left at a specific time and were done.

We were never done. We weren’t even really running this place, because it actually ran us.

We were tied here, chained by it, stuck forever…

No.

My parents were and so were my brother and sister.

But I had the chance to get away! I would graduate from college this spring, in only a few short months, and that diploma was my ticket to freedom.

I could wave and disappear into one of the beautiful sunsets that we had over Lake Michigan, except that I wasn’t great at swimming so I would have to go on land.

There were issues that I needed to deal with first, though, which led me back to my question: how was it going to happen?

How was I going to meet one of the Woodsmen football players and somehow enchant him into falling in love with me?

Maybe he would run into my parked car—no, he would run over my car, smashing it under his.

Or maybe, we would be in a bar downtown and he would spill a drink on me, or we could meet at a family wedding.

But that scenario would depend on one of my siblings finding a partner and somehow convincing that person to get married.

So, no.

Ok, what if I happened to be working out in a gym, alone, and then I happened to get trapped in some of the equipment?

He could walk in and find me, and then he would rescue me and fall in love.

I would just need to join a gym and also, I’d need to get some nicer clothes to wear when I went there.

The last time I’d done any exercise, I’d looked down and seen a hole in the crotch of my leggings.

That had exposed a pair of underwear that had faded a lot and were now more of a sad tan color, no longer a pretty pink but a bedraggled beige. So I’d also have to get new under—

“Come up and take the counter for a minute,” my mom called, and that was the problem.

I couldn’t sit down for five freaking minutes without someone wanting something!

I wasn’t even supposed to be working today, but then my brother had some kind of emergency and of course, Max’s problems had to be our number-one concern.

“I’m not wearing it,” I told her when I took the four steps from our little back office into the front of the house area, where customers could see me.

My mom shook her head, frowning again. All of us were supposed to be dressed the same but I truly hated the uniform that my great-grandpa had picked out when he’d opened the place he’d called his “hamburger stand.” He had just come back from World War II where he’d served in the Pacific as a Navy seaman, and that outfit had been his inspiration.

“Molly,” my mom sighed. That was how she generally said my name now, like it was a disappointment to even let that set of letters leave her lips.

And I understood, I really did. I had a bad attitude and I hadn’t done much to solve the issues facing our family.

I had tried but I was failing, so I was also disappointed in myself.

But the sad, dejected Molly-sighs seemed to make me regress to an earlier version of myself, circa age thirteen.

Black eyeliner, a fake septum piercing, and pervasive hostility had been my entire personality at that point in my life.

I didn’t want to be that girl again, but here I was, pouty and mad.

The restaurant was mostly empty at the moment, but I knew that it wouldn’t stay that way because this was football season—hold the excitement, because I didn’t mean real football.

It was a little confusing. First of all, yes, our area was lucky enough to have an actual, professional team: the Woodsmen.

They were hugely important in our lives.

Some schools would delay their start times if there was a late game the night before and Fan Day, a team event where we could meet the players, was a bigger deal than Christmas in a lot of households.

During their summer preseason, the Woodsmen team practiced at a facility not too far away from our restaurant.

Those were our busiest few weeks and basically kept us going for the rest of the year.

The players would often stop by to grab a burger or a milkshake, and loads of fans also showed up in order to see them.

No one was allowed to sit at a table or clog up the parking lot unless they were also eating and drinking, so we were crazy with customers.

But when the season started, the team moved to practice and play at Woodsmen Stadium instead.

Our business dried up immediately, like turning off a light switch. Instantaneous darkness.

Now it was January, so there were no Woodsmen and no fans.

But there was another team that used the same nearby facility, and they were in-season right now: the Junior Woodsmen.

It was a kind of minor league thing—so it was football, but it wasn’t the actual team that we all loved.

They played games and they practiced there, and they didn’t get catered meals like the real Woodsmen received.

That lack of food and the absence of other convenient options meant that they frequently came into our restaurant, which was good for our bottom line.

Unfortunately, they didn’t attract a large fanbase, so they didn’t create the crowd of hanger-on customers that we got during the summer.

I checked the clock on the wall next to the register and saw that the Junior Woodsmen morning practice was just ending, so they would start arriving here soon.

It meant that the girl who was taking up a table and sipping a cup of water would have to go.

Frankly, I was a little tired of people mooching, just in general.

Why didn’t everyone understand that they had to pull their weight?

Now I sighed, too. Pulling my weight meant keeping track of deliveries. It meant counting the boxes and bottles so that we didn’t get shorted.

“Mom?” I called. I wasn’t supposed to leave the register, ever, so she had to come to me.

She did. “What’s wrong, Molly?” Once again, my name was laden with disappointment.

“Nothing’s wrong. I wanted to say that I’m sorry that I messed up with the oil jugs.”

“That’s all right. I already spoke to them and they’ll make it up on the next one.”

“Ok, good. And, um,” I said, stalling. I was trying not to do my thirteen-year-old eye roll, since I was now twenty-three and too old for that. “Um, I’ll wear it.”

“Thanks, hun,” she said, and she plopped the round dixie cup hat on my head.

The clock ticked away the minutes and I returned to my previous line of thinking: a plan for how to meet one of the Woodsmen football players.

Not just meet, but entice and entrance, so that he would fall for me.

Yes, a lot of them were involved with famous, gorgeous women, like actresses, singers, influencers, and models.

But some of them had normal girlfriends, women they’d known since high school or college, and some of them had married locals, locals like me.

It meant that I had a chance, if I could figure out a way to meet one of them—not just meet, but hook.

The obvious thing was to make a move when they came into our restaurant during their preseason, but it meant waiting until next summer and I needed to move faster than that.

Anyway, I had never managed to catch their eyes before, not in any of the years I’d rung up their orders or slapped down their trays of food.

There were always so many other people around, taking pictures and trying to edge in for autographs, and my interactions with the players were short.