“Jesse—”
“Was it fake when Boone made you laugh so hard you peed? When Wyatt held you during that storm and didn’t try anything even though you were basically naked? When you said our names in your sleep?”
“I didn’t?—”
“You did. All three. Like a roll call of bad decisions. It was adorable and concerning.”
“This is foolish.”
“Yeah. So? This whole town is foolish. Our families have been trying to murder each other over condiments for three decades. Sanity is relative.”
Festival morning arrives toofast and not fast enough. I’ve been awake since 4 a.m., alternating between practicing my speech and considering fleeing to Mexico. Rita ate my passport last year however, so Mexico’s out.
I’m standing in front of my closet, having a crisis about clothing. The blue dress? Too obvious. Jeans? Too casual. Full body armor? Tempting, but I don’t have any. A nun’s habit? Too dramatic but points for comedy.
“What does one wear to destroy thirty years of foolishness?” I ask Rita, who’s lying on my bed.
She bleats and kicks my pillow off the bed.
“Business casual it is.”
I settle on jeans that make my ass look good, a white shirt that says “I’m approachable but will still ruin your life,” and boots that I can run in if necessary. Or kick in if I have to. And the red lipstick I wore that first night with the McCoys, because symbolism matters.
Dad appears in my doorway, looking he might vomit. He’s already dressed in his good jeans and the shirt I bought him for Christmas that he claimed was “too fancy for Cedar Ridge.”
“You sure about this?” he asks.
“Are you sure about Mrs. Delaney?”
“That’s different.”
“Stop saying that. Nothing’s different. We’re all just idiots trying to be happy in a town that feeds on drama and breathes gossip.”
“The McCoy boys?—”
“Are going to stand with me. Publicly. Deal with it,” I say.
“All three?”
“All three.”
“At the same time?”
“That’s typically what ‘all three’ means.”
“Callie—”
“Dad, Mom would want this. You know she would. She literally wrote ‘choose love’ on a recipe card and hid evidence that the feud was bullshit. She was Team End This Nonsense before there was a team.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then, “She’d be proud of you.”
“She’d be laughing her ass off at the whole thing.”
“That too. She always said we men were idiots. I thought she meant men in general. Turns out, she meant specifically McCoy and me.
The festival is already crowded when we arrive. I can see the McCoy trucks, the brothers standing by the main stage in actual suits. They look good. Dangerously good.Make you forget your speech about expired mayogood.
“Don’t get distracted by the suits,” I tell myself. “You’re here to end a war, not start another one.”
