Chapter 14
Ethan
Matt slapped the easel pad. Game on.
Markers went around, Rachel calling, “Girls first! We’re the brains of this operation.”
Ben was practically vibrating in his seat, grinning. “Let’s be real. We all know how this is gonna go. Guys dominate, girls get humbled, and the natural order of Willowbrook is restored.”
“Natural order, my ass,” Maggie shot back. “You couldn’t even draw a simple toaster last year.”
“That was a toaster,” Ben argued, gesturing with his beer.
Rachel laughed so hard she nearly spilled her drink. “It looked like a robot with chicken legs.”
Sarah covered her mouth, shoulders shaking. “I still remember you yelling, ‘How do you not see it? It’s obviously a toaster!”
The laughter rolled through the group, easy and loud.
Rachel slung an arm around Lily. “We’ve got a secret weapon this year. Big-city artist.”
Lily didn’t fumble; she flashed a grin and twirled the marker. “Relax, I only draw masterpieces when necessary.”
Lily’s laugh slid in—low, confident—and people tilted toward it without meaning to.
It was a good act. She clocked the room, hit her marks, the perfect joke tossed just when the lull hit.
It worked, and that’s what bugged me. I kept tracking the performance, even though I knew it was just that—a performance.
“Alright, Maggie’s up,” Rachel clapped.
Maggie drew a lopsided triangle, cross-hatched it, then stuck a crooked line out the top.
Sarah squinted. “Waffle?”
“Not food!” Maggie hissed, tongue out in concentration.
“Fishing pole,” Ben guessed.
I tilted my head. “Pretty sure that’s just a ladder having an identity crisis.”
Lily pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh, then suddenly pointed. “Wait—wait—I think it’s the Eiffel Tower?”
Maggie whirled around, triumphant. “Yes! Thank you! Finally, someone with vision!”
Rachel whooped and slapped Lily’s hand in a victorious high-five. “Told you she was our ringer. Big-city culture for the win.”
Ben threw himself back in his chair with an exaggerated groan. “That does not look like the Eiffel Tower. It looks like… like a teepee that got struck by lightning.”
Ben jabbed the marker toward me like he was handing off a torch. “Alright, Calloway. Show us how it’s done. Don’t choke.”
“I’m not doing it,” I said flatly.
“Yes, you are,” Rachel sing-songed. “Natural order, remember? Time to prove it.”
Matt leaned back in his chair, smirking. “Yeah, captain. Lead us into battle.”
I shot him a glare but dragged myself up anyway, plucking a card from the stack. The word stared back at me, smug as hell. Hula hoop.
Great. Because nothing says “dignified small-town bookseller” like drawing playground toys.
I uncapped the marker and dragged a shaky oval across the page.
Too lopsided. I tried again, darker this time, which only made it look worse—like two fried eggs got into a fight and lost. Then I drew a stick figure in the middle of the shape, arms sticking straight out like it was being electrocuted.
Nate tilted his head. “Is that… a UFO abducting a guy?”
I shook my head.
Ben leaned forward, grinning. “No, no—clearly it’s a pancake with arms. Or maybe the world’s saddest snowman.”
Maggie gasped. “Oh my God, is he burning alive in a giant donut?”
The porch exploded in laughter. My ears went hot. I added a couple more circles around the stick figure, hoping it would help. It didn’t.
Lily squinted, biting her lip in concentration, then suddenly sat up straighter. “Wait… is that a hula hoop?”
I dropped the marker and gave her a bow. “And once again, our imported art critic saves the day.”
Rachel whooped, smacking her hands together. “That’s my girl! We’re unstoppable.”
Ben groaned. “That did not look like a hula hoop. It looked like he was drowning in onion rings.”
Lily was still laughing, her eyes bright, cheeks flushed.
She shot me a look over her shoulder that made something in my chest tighten in ways I didn’t want to think about.
I didn’t want to notice how her shoulders shook when she laughed, or how the neckline of that flashy halter top kept drawing my attention like it had its own gravitational pull. But I did.
The longer the night stretched, the looser everyone got.
Beers emptied, the snack bowls dwindled to crumbs, and the game devolved into more yelling than drawing.
At one point, Matt tried to illustrate “wedding cake” but ended up with something that looked like a stack of hay bales on fire.
Sarah guessed “barn explosion” and, judging by the way Maggie nearly fell out of her chair laughing, that was apparently the funnier option anyway.
I sat back and let the chaos unfold, half-watching the mess of lines on the page and half-watching Lily, her hair slipping loose from its clip, her cheeks pink from laughter and maybe the wine. Still, I watched her, wondering if she ever let the act drop—or if anyone but me even noticed.
By the time the porch lanterns flickered low and the crickets had fully taken over the night, the score was neck and neck.
The girls had guessed every one of Lily’s perfect sketches in seconds, but we’d managed to claw back some dignity thanks to Matt’s surprisingly decent drawing of a tractor and my accidental masterpiece of a bowling pin that everyone mistook for a wine bottle.
Now it all came down to this.
Rachel shoved the marker into Lily’s hands with a triumphant grin. “Alright, Picasso. Finish them.”
Lily peeked at the card. Eyebrows up. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Rules are rules,” Nate sang.
She shot him a look, then turned back to the easel, tapping the marker against her lip like she was already calculating her attack plan.
With a resigned sigh, Lily crouched by the easel and glanced at her card again. The halter top dipped a little as she leaned forward, the soft curve of her back catching the porch light, and I had to drag my eyes away before anyone noticed where they’d landed.
She set the marker to the page with steady, confident strokes, sketching not the clumsy shapes the others had done, but the clear outline of a person on a stage. A tall figure stood with arms flung wide, mouth open in an exaggerated oval.
“Okay, okay, that’s a guy yelling,” Ben said. “Is it me yelling at the TV during the Browns game?”
“Or Principal Clark giving detention,” Sarah guessed, her shoulders already shaking.
“Looks more like Pastor Morris trying to hit that high note last Christmas Eve,” Matt said, smirking.
Lily laughed and added to her drawing—an elegant arch with cascading curtains that actually looked like curtains. She sketched a stage with a small figure in the center, arms raised dramatically, tiny musical notes floating above.
Rachel leaned in, eyes bright. “Okay… stage. Concert?”
“Wedding,” Sarah guessed, tapping her chin. “No, no—funeral! That looks like a coffin. You drew curtains around a coffin, didn’t you?”
“A funeral? Really? Somebody take Sarah’s wine away.” Lily said, laughing despite herself. She added ornate balcony boxes on either side, complete with little faces peeking over the railings.
Matt pointed at the arch. “It’s a church. Definitely a church. That’s the priest yelling about sin.”
Ben snapped his fingers. “No, no, I’ve got it. It’s karaoke night at Flappers.”
“Are you kidding me?” Maggie barked a laugh. “When have you ever seen curtains and balconies at Flappers?”
Lily shook her head, blonde hair slipping loose around her face. She sketched a huge, swooping chandelier above the stage, then drew even more little figures in the audience, some with tiny tuxedos.
Rachel suddenly gasped, shooting to her feet. “Opera! It’s the opera! She’s drawing an opera house!”
“Yes!” Lily said, slapping the marker down with a victorious grin.
The girls shrieked, high-fived, and broke into a ridiculous conga line around the porch.
I tried to focus on anything else—my beer, the half-empty chip bowl—but Lily was at the front, hips swaying, laughter spilling behind her.
I told myself not to watch, but it was useless. God help me, I watched anyway.
“Girl Power!” Rachel chanted, while Sarah and Maggie pumped their fists.
Ben groaned, dragging his hands down his face. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Opera? Who even puts that in Pictionary?”
Rachel pointed at him, eyes glittering. “Doesn’t matter. We won. And you know what that means.”
Matt groaned. “No. Don’t you dare—”
“Oh, I dare,” she cut in, already bouncing with glee. “Guys versus girls. You lost. Which means next Friday night, you four are performing the Jackets’ fight song. On the square. In full view of everyone.”
The porch dissolved into laughter again, and I leaned back in my chair, shaking my head.
Somehow, between the shouting, the beer, and Lily’s ridiculous, but kind of incredible, sketch of an opera stage, the weight I’d been carrying all day slipped just far enough away that I almost felt normal again.
“That was the most fun I’ve had in ages,” Sarah said, fanning her flushed face with one of the used cards.
“Same,” Maggie agreed, dropping dramatically into a chair.
As the crowd began gathering up empty bottles and folding blankets, I wandered over to where Lily was stacking markers back into their box. I reached for one just as she did, our fingers brushing—warm, electric—before she pulled away. I swallowed, hoping she hadn’t noticed the way my pulse jumped.
“Congrats,” I muttered, trying to sound casual. “Though honestly, you had an unfair advantage. I don’t think ‘fine art’ was supposed to be in the deck.”
Her head snapped up, eyes narrowing even as the corner of her mouth twitched. “So you’re saying my drawing was too good?”
“Exactly,” I said. “If it had been a little worse, we might’ve stood a chance.”
Before she could fire back, headlights swept across the yard, catching the edges of the porch in a pale glow. Jason’s old Caprice Classic rolled up the drive, its engine rumbling low before settling quiet.