Chapter 36
Ethan
A few days later, a binder hit the counter with a thud loud enough to wake the dead. Lily stood there, wild-eyed, flipping through color-tabbed pages like the answers were hiding somewhere in her own handwriting.
“Problem?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Food-vendor permits,” she said, stabbing a neon sticky note with her pen. “Without them, there’s no fried dough, no funnel cake, no lemonade stand. Basically, no Summerfest. And apparently, the county office is ‘backlogged.’” She threw up air quotes so sharp I thought they’d cut the ceiling tiles.
I bit back a smile, catching myself in the middle of actually enjoying this chaos.
Her playlist blasting through speakers. The rainbow explosion of sticky notes marking every surface.
The way she'd start a sentence about vendor placement, and I'd finish it without thinking.
Yesterday, we spent twenty minutes debating serif versus sans-serif while splitting the last maple bar, and I realized I couldn't remember the last time the bookstore had felt like anything but a museum.
My defenses were crumbling, brick by stubborn brick, every time she breezed through the door with another impossible idea I somehow wanted to make possible.
I leaned on the counter, arms folded. “So… I guess we wait.”
Her head snapped up like I’d suggested canceling Christmas. “No. We drive down there. In person. Binder, pens, junk food, everything. We’re not leaving until they stamp it.”
Twenty minutes later, I found myself driving down Main with Lily Harper riding shotgun.
She balanced a pink pastry box on her knees while battling with an uncooperative paper map.
A plastic bag from Five Corner Drive-Thru slid across my dashboard with every turn full of Combos and a pack of Twizzlers.
I'd surprised myself by asking Ben to watch the store.
But there was something about today, about Lily's determination, that made me want to follow this detour wherever it led.
“You sure you’ve got the route?” I asked as we hit the county line.
“Yes,” she said, rotating the map ninety degrees. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Don’t distract me, Calloway. I’m in the zone.”
Five minutes later, I was at a payphone outside a gas station, listening to a county clerk drone directions while Lily leaned against the truck, grinning at me like I was living in the Stone Age.
“You know,” she called, waving her little Nokia, “these things exist now.”
“Yeah, and they cut out every three miles,” I muttered, shoving the receiver back into its cradle.
She laughed, scrambled back into the cab, tore open the Twizzlers, and waved one at me.
The county office was exactly what I expected: beige walls, flickering fluorescents, and a clerk with thinning hair who didn't look up from his crossword puzzle when the door chimed. Lily marched right up with her binder, voice bright enough to cut through the hum of the copier.
“Good morning! We’re here to check on our food-vendor permits for the Willowbrook Summerfest.”
The man barely blinked. “Backlogged.”
“That’s funny,” she said, sliding the donut box across the counter like she was negotiating a hostage release. “Because I brought powdered sugar and a highlighted list of exactly why you should push us through.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
She was relentless—arguing, coaxing, charming.
Her binder bristled with sticky notes, and she tapped each one like it was gospel.
The clerk tried to protest, but she kept leaning in with that unstoppable grin, the kind that made people forget how to say no.
He gave her a flat look, then sighed and waved at the corner. “Fine. But I’ll need three copies of every vendor form for the inspector’s file. Machine’s down the hall.”
Five minutes later, we were standing shoulder-to-shoulder in an office that smelled like toner and floor wax, feeding forms into a copier that sounded older than I was. Lily slapped the side when it beeped, muttering something sharp under her breath that made me choke back a laugh.
When the paper jammed, she dropped to a crouch, yanking the tray open like she was about to perform surgery.
I knelt beside her, tugging a crumpled sheet free while she cursed softly, hair falling in her face.
Toner streaked her fingers, and when she tried to brush the strand back with her wrist, it left a smudge on her temple. She didn’t notice, but I did.
I had no idea how, but she looked radiant, office dust and all.
By the time we wrestled the machine back to life and fed the last form through, we were both laughing, sticky with sweat and toner, and the clerk had given up pretending he wasn’t watching her every move. Ten minutes later, we walked out with stamped permits and an inspector’s courtesy slot.
Outside, she pumped both fists in the air and spun toward me, eyes bright with triumph, palm raised and waiting until I reluctantly slapped it with my own. “See? Told you sugar bribes work.”
I shook my head, but something in me warmed at the brief press of her palm against mine. “Don’t get cocky. That guy was just tired of hearing you talk.”
She grinned wider. “Exactly. Which means it worked.”
We leaned against the truck, the late afternoon sun slanting across the asphalt, cicadas buzzing in the trees.
Something had shifted between us—the tension that had been coiled tight since prom night now unwound, leaving behind a comfortable silence that felt like coming home after a long trip.
I hadn't even realized how much I'd missed this version of us until I felt it again.
“You know,” she said, softer now, tilting her head toward me, “we make a pretty good team.”
I looked at her, really looked, and for a second the world shrank to just the two of us, sticky fingers and stamped papers, and something twisted in my chest, half-wanting to lean closer, half-desperate to step back before I couldn't anymore.
The spark between us scared me as much as it pulled me in.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice rougher than I meant. “We do.”
On the drive back, she hummed along to the radio, binder hugged to her chest like it was a trophy. Sunlight flickered through the window, catching her hair in waves, and I gripped the wheel a little tighter.
She could bulldoze through red tape like it was nothing, laugh off copier jams, talk a clerk into doing the impossible. She made everyone believe in her, even me.
I kept my eyes on the road, but the thought pressed in anyway: We make a good team.
And God help me, I didn’t mind.