The real tourist attraction in this town is Dylan.
Okay, probably not, but he’s still my number one choice formost likely to lure in visitors by making Tickled Pink look awesome.
Even if that little incident with him in the high school’s locker room a few weeks ago means that I would rather disintegrate and get washed down some plumbing myself than talk to him.
I mentioned my grandmother is as evil as mornings, right?
Ironic that she made us all come here to supposedly save our souls when she seems to be getting worse and worse every day.
You haven’t done enough good since we got here, Octavia. Not like your sister. Look at all that Phoebe’s done, and she’s the least likely of all of us to have wanted to settle in to small-town surroundings. Get busy, Octavia. Give a town a little publicity, and they’ll have tourists for a week. Teach a town to make its own publicity, and they’ll have tourists for the rest of their lives.
The egg-and-cheese smell gets stronger while the microwave whirs.
“Not making you sick, is it?” Dylan asks.
I shake my head as I try to push myself up, and immediately regret it.
Okay, maybe thisisa little bit of the vodka too.
Or possibly I didn’t eat enough yesterday.
Or maybe it’s just my life.
“Whoa there, go slow.”
A warm, rough hand grips me by the arm, another providing support at my back, as I push to sitting.
While I smell like I spent the night frolicking in a sewer, Dylan smells like fresh straw and line-dried cotton. His kind brown eyes are smiling at me without mocking me, and a single lock of his brown hair has fallen across his forehead as if to say,This is just how I feel today.
Am I staring?
Oh crap.
I am.
I’m staring at him again.
And this is why I avoid looking at him at all costs.
When I look at Dylan Wright, small-town plumber in a run-down, backwoods slice of the world once known for a movie with questionable mass appeal, I am no longer an heiress to a worldwide consumer goods conglomerate, internationally known social media influencer, and massive secret keeper.
I’m a teenager with a crush.
I’ve dated rock stars and movie stars and hedge fund managers and professional athletes. My personal assistant regularly fields calls from men wanting to know if we can have a single date so that they’ll get a little notoriety in the tabloids.
And I’m no fool. I know it’s not that I’m the prettiest or smartest or even most interesting woman in the world. I don’t have the best personality. After expenses, my social media business doesn’t make me nearly as much as people assume it does. Loyalty and silence are expensive enough even before my conscience reminds me I’d be nothing without the people who make me look good. Half of what I feature on my socials are my mother’s purses and shoes, which I’ve always done for free since her business hasn’t been in the black for at least a decade, and if you tell a soul that, I’ll tell the worldyoursecrets too.
Also, because I can’t list my faults without my brain goingthere, I can’t eat carbs without gaining an inch on my hips, as my mother loves to remind me. And no matter how many times Naomi tells me that my weight doesn’t define me as a person, I can’tunhearthe first lessons I got on self-worth.
But the thing is, I didn’t expect a small-town plumber to be the one to turn down an offer that I haven’t made—and wouldn’t ever make—to much more famous, rich, and successful men.
To be fair, though, the men I’d usually date wouldn’t have done what Dylan did for me and my family either.
They wouldn’t know the first thing about switching out a water heater to give us real hot showers for the first time in well over a month.
And now I look likethat womantrying to move in on another woman’s man.
I grew up in a family whose dynamics were defined by the moments when my father was caught cheating, and I just found out my mother’s no saint, either, despite the number of years she spent playing the scorned woman.
