5. Sophie
SOPHIE
Idragged my feet to my door, wincing at my newly formed blisters the size of golf balls because no one told me to wear proper footwear since I’d be chasing livestock for hours nonstop.
Event-planning brochures really failed to mention that part.
They showed smiling women with clipboards and headsets, not exhausted idiots sprinting after animals while trying not to cry in public.
I might have cried in the car.
Twice.
Fine. Every time I hit a stop sign.
Now, every step felt like I was walking on hot marbles. Or Legos. Possibly flaming Legos. At this point I would’ve happily traded my dignity for a pair of sensible orthopedic shoes.
Putting the key into the lock, I twisted, pushed open the door, and wobbled inside.
I was too exhausted to eat or stop by to chat with Sarah and Dottie in the dining room.
Which was saying something because Dottie was probably making something incredible right now.
Normally the smell alone would’ve dragged me over like a cartoon character floating toward a pie cooling on a windowsill.
I just wanted peace and quiet. And maybe a medically unnecessary amount of sleep.
I heard the familiar sounds of dishes clinking through the wall. Home. Well, it was just a room and a separate bathroom. Still, it was better than sleeping outside on a park bench.
For the first time all day, my shoulders loosened slightly. Not much. Just enough that I stopped feeling like a human stress ball wrapped in animal fur.
I wrinkled my nose. “What’s that smell?” I sniffed around the room, thinking housecleaning had skipped me. Maybe something had gotten stuck under the bed or behind the dresser. Maybe a small animal had crawled into the walls and died. Given my luck lately, anything felt entirely possible.
But when the smell seemed to follow me around, it hit me.
“It’s me. I smell.” Damn. I smelled like a farm on a hot summer day. “Wonderful.” Not just a little farm smell either. Full commitment farm smell. The kind of smell that suggested I’d spent the day wrestling livestock. Which, horrifyingly, wasn’t entirely inaccurate.
I was covered in sweat, animal fur, and drool along with other slimy things that I didn’t want to think about just now.
My shirt had mysterious brown stains that were “unidentifiable.” Somewhere during the afternoon, I’d also acquired a piece of hay stuck to my bra.
I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to know how.
Some questions were better left unanswered.
And then. That’s when I spotted it.
A glorious bottle of red wine sat on my dresser. A card rested next to it.
It was a gift from god.
“Hello, gorgeous.” I dropped my bag on the floor next to the bed and made for the dresser before snatching up the card, flipping it open, and reading.
Congratulations on your new job!
Love, Sarah, Dottie, and Lola.
Four wine glasses were also neatly placed behind the bottle. Yes, I knew that was because the wine was to be shared with them. Was it rude that I was about to drink it by myself? Maybe. Did I care at this point? Absolutely not.
Seeing the corkscrew next to the glasses, I grabbed it, uncorked the bottle, and poured myself a generous glass. I filled it to the rim like a champ.
As soon as I took my first sip, my taste buds did the tango.
“Whoa.” I took another mouthful, letting the explosion of fruit rest on my tongue before swallowing.
“Doesn’t even burn my throat.” This was the best wine I’d ever had.
Which made me realize this was most probably from Lola.
Only she could afford wine that tasted like it was sent from the gods.
I took another gulp and sighed, looking around my room. The silence felt nice. No volunteers or angry vendors or delivery drivers casually dropping off livestock like it was no big deal.
Most importantly, no Sheriff Walker standing there with those annoyingly observant brown eyes, looking at me like he’d already figured out I was building this entire job out of confidence, panic, and whatever information I could find on Google.
Unfortunately, the second that thought entered my head, his face appeared in my brain.
Captain Competent.
Wonderful. Exactly what I needed. Captain Competent and his competent ass.
I took another mouthful of that glorious wine, trying very hard not to think about what those jeans did for said competent ass.
I groaned and let myself fall on the edge of the bed.
Why did he have to be so calm all the time?
That was what bothered me.
Not how good he looked in that sheriff’s uniform.
It was the calm.
The man could stand in the middle of a livestock-related disaster and somehow look like he was waiting in line at the bank.
Meanwhile, I spent most of the day operating one minor inconvenience away from a nervous breakdown.
And why did he have to look like that? Like he’d stepped out of some small-town calendar called Men Who Fix Things and Make Responsible Decisions.
He seemed like the kind of man who probably remembered to change the batteries in his smoke detectors, definitely owned matching toolboxes, and probably read instruction manuals before assembling furniture.
I found that disturbingly attractive.
Because I had recently been dumped. Lost my job. Lost my apartment as well as my dignity. And accidentally lied my way into becoming the event planner for a festival that started in less than a day and a half.
And somehow my brain had decided now was the perfect time to develop a crush on a sheriff.
Excellent priorities, Sophie. Truly outstanding work.
I tipped the wine glass to my lips, but all I got was a whole lot of nothing.
“How did that happen?” I said, staring at my empty glass.
Determined, I pushed myself up and filled my glass again all the way to the rim. Some sloshed onto the dresser.
“Oops.”
I stared at the tiny puddle for a second before bending over and licking it up.
“Too good to waste,” I informed absolutely nobody.
I straightened, feeling oddly pleased with myself. “Nailed it.”
Grinning like a fool, because my face had decided smiling was our default setting now, I sat back down on the bed and kicked off my shoes. My blisters protested, but I hardly felt them now.
My brain was too involved by presenting a crystal-clear image of Captain Competent rolling up his sleeves while helping repair the temporary fencing. Those golden forearms with muscles bulging when he flexed… and me imagining touching them, smelling them, maybe a little lick.
I dropped my face into my left hand. My palm still smelled faintly like alpaca. Or goat. Possibly donkey. At this point the scents had merged into one horrifying farm-themed perfume that I was fairly certain could never be fully removed from human skin.
Yeah. I was definitely losing my mind.
I took another gulp of wine.
Why was I thinking about the sheriff? I’d spent the entire day dealing with permits, deliveries, vendor complaints, electrical issues, and traffic backups. Yet somehow the thing my brain wanted to replay was Sheriff Walker.
The man had questioned my competence for approximately three minutes and somehow managed to become the most memorable part of my day.
And that said deeply troubling things about both my priorities and my mental stability.
I should’ve been angry, embarrassed, mortified.
Instead, my brain kept replaying every conversation we’d had like some sort of humiliating highlight reel.
I sighed loudly, reached out, and grabbed the binder from my bag. The thing nearly pulled my shoulder out of its socket. If I threw it at someone, it would qualify as a weapon.
I dropped on the bed. And then I glared at it like a crazy person.
I hated this damn thing. Right now, it reminded me I had less than thirty-six hours before the festival started and hundreds of people arrived expecting a well-organized community event instead of whatever chaotic experiment I was currently conducting.
I took another sip of wine.
Thirty-six hours wasn’t enough time to become an event planner. It barely felt like enough time to become a functional adult. Some days I wasn’t entirely convinced I’d mastered adulthood at all. Paying bills and owning matching socks seemed suspiciously advanced.
Was I in over my head?
Yes. Yes, I was. Neck-deep in the crapper without a life jacket.
Did I care? Not really. Or maybe I cared a lot and had simply moved beyond caring into a strange new emotional territory fueled entirely by the effects of wine and denial.
Should I tell Helen I’d lied and try to cover up my inexperience today?
Hell no. The woman would probably have a stroke. Or worse, take the binder back and assign me something even more terrifying, like accounting.
I needed that job. I needed a job, preferably one that paid actual money and didn’t involve moving back in with my parents. Not that they would let me. My mother loved me. She just preferred loving me from a healthy distance.
I couldn’t face Helen now, or Lola, or Sarah, or even my sister Margo. Not after today. Especially Margo. My sister had spent most of our lives being responsible while I specialized in creative disaster management.
Every family member needed a role.
I raised my glass to that and took another mouthful of wine.
Margot thought I was a mess, that I couldn’t hold a job for more than a month. To be fair, historical evidence wasn’t entirely on my side. Still, family was supposed to ignore facts and support your delusions.
Well, I would prove her wrong. Even if proving her wrong killed me. Which, given the current trajectory of this festival, felt slightly more possible than it should have.
My thighs ached, even while sitting down, and that was saying something.
Apparently chasing livestock counted as extreme cardio, the kind that should come with a waiver.
Who knew?
If I’d lost two pounds, I’d count that as a win.
Still, if someone had told me twenty-four hours ago that I would spend today sprinting after livestock while arguing with an alpaca and embarrassing myself in front of a sheriff who looked like he’d been handcrafted by extremely ambitious women, I would’ve suggested they seek professional help. And maybe a hobby.
I flipped the binder shut. Every time I opened it, I discovered a brand-new problem. It was less a binder and more a magical portal to fresh anxiety.
Who planned festivals voluntarily? Who woke up one day and thought, You know what sounds fun? Managing hundreds of moving parts while strangers complain about parking.
Psychopaths.
That was my current working theory. And honestly, I felt pretty good about it.
Do you know who else was a psychopath?
Henry.
And what did single women do when they’d been dumped and were emotionally compromised by wine?
They drunk-texted their exes, that’s what.
I laughed. And when I realized that my wine glass was empty—again—I leaped to my feet and hobbled over to the two dressers—I mean, the one dresser. I stared at the wine bottle for a good three seconds before setting down my empty glass. Then I picked up the bottle instead. Seemed more efficient.
Moving over to my bag, I reached inside, pulled out my phone, and sat on the edge of the bed. Then I slipped and crashed onto the hardwood floor on my butt with a thud.
I held the wine bottle up in triumph. “Didn’t break.”
Another win.
After my vision stopped spinning and I could focus on the screen, I tapped Henry’s last text message, and my fingers fired away.
Deearr Hjenry.
You’r a jerk.
Jerkk.
I let out a laugh as I dropped my phone. That felt good.
For one glorious second, I considered staying in my room forever and becoming part of the furniture. I could let history remember me as the woman who disappeared into a guest room and never came out.
However, if Helen discovered I’d abandoned the festival to hide in my room, she’d drag me back herself. The woman looked like she could wrestle a bear if properly motivated.
The rain had started now, a steady rhythm against the glass. It was soft at first but quickly got heavier, drops tapping against the windows and then drumming.
The sound should’ve been relaxing. People paid money for rain sounds. Instead it reminded me of tomorrow, and tomorrow was the enemy.
Tomorrow meant more questions I probably couldn’t answer combined with more problems I definitely couldn’t solve.
I’d have more opportunities to expose myself as the least qualified event planner in the history of organized events, which felt like a surprisingly competitive category.
I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep. Or that I was dreaming of giant sheriff badges chasing me through the streets while I ran naked through Maplewood Falls with an alpaca bouncing happily beside me like we were participating in some deeply disturbing parade.
And, compared to my actual day, it wasn’t even that unrealistic.