“So anyway,” Seb said, as if it were business as usual, nothing to see here. “That’s our news. What’s yours?”
Jazmine held a paper football between two fingers and leanedback in her chair, looking pleased with herself. “Benny and I may have just figured out how we can dig up the time capsule.”
“How?” Seb and I both asked.
A slow smile grew across Benny’s face as he turned his phone around to show us a screen with a poster that advertised the upcoming Cherry Festival. “Like Mabel’s other clue said—right under their noses.”
Chapter 19
If you wanted to do something secretly in public, like dig up a time capsule in the middle of your hometown, you could wait until four in the morning. But as Benny had said, you might have to avoid the occasional car, and of course if you’re unfortunate enough for a cop to drive past, you’re a sitting duck.
You could try your luck at that.
The Wags, however, had come up with a different approach. The guy who’d stopped by to visit was working a booth at Haven Beach’s annual Cherry Festival... the same festival at which I’d won Little Miss Cherry Princess when I was a kid. It was always held downtown in June, a couple weeks before Traverse City’s Cherry Festival—the bigger draw in our state—to try to nab potential attendees.
This year, the festival was being held this week. In two short days, downtown would be blocked off to traffic, and both tourists and locals alike would gather in the street. Thousands of people. And with a little luck, not a single one of them would be paying any attention to the four of us Wags.
Plus Lulu.
Ugh. I suppose evenIcould tolerate Mrs. SquarePants coming with us if she’d keep her nose out of my personal business. So as the day turned to night, we sat around Benny’s party deck, makingplans to dig up the capsule. And thankfully, everyone was more interested in figuring out how to accomplish this task than Seb’s announcement to move into the cottage.
Since he’d already promised Jazmine’s dad that he’d drive an hour down the coast tomorrow afternoon to inspect a boat for repair, Seb thought it would be easier for everyone if he continued staying at Benny’s for the next couple nights before moving his things into the cottage with me.
“After the Cherry Festival,” I confirmed.
He smiled. “Looks like you and I have a plan, Malone.”
Yep, Seb and I had a plan; the Wags had a plan... It was plan central, and that made me happy. Only plan I needed to make now was to track down my father in Grand Rapids.
Unless we find the golden statue. Then I’ll never need to lay eyes on him again.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
The action at Benny’s died down around midnight. Once we’d sobered up, Jazmine gave me a ride home, but not without grilling me during the car ride about Seb moving in.
“Have you lost your mind? It’s a terrible idea. Didn’t I tell you he was obsessed with you?” she said. “If you string him along, playing at roommates, he’s going to get hurt.”
She was concerned about him.Him!
“We’ll be fine,” I assured her. “It’s just a living situation for the summer. No one is going to get hurt.”
But as the next couple days passed, the anticipation I was feeling about him moving in continued ratcheting up, and Jazmine’s words haunted me. I didn’t want to screw this up with Seb, whatever it was. And I convinced myself that I’d made a terrible error in judgment, that we’d never be able to live together withoutburning the cottage to the ground, and our friendship would once again end up in tears.
Maybe I needed to discuss it with Seb again before he brought all his stuff over here.
By the time the Cherry Festival rolled around, however, I’d quelled most of my doubts. I hadn’t seen Seb in person, but we texted a few times, with him asking various questions about what to bring—sheets? Towels? Definitely more towels, we decided. He seemed fully committed to moving in, and everything was normal and good between us.
The next time I saw him was the morning of the Cherry Festival. It was already sunny and hot when Jazmine picked me up at the cottage. We drove into town until traffic started piling up due to the festival parking, so we had to take an alternative route, looping around the stretch of downtown that had been blocked off to traffic. It was nine and already filling with people, so we met up with the others a couple blocks away from the festival area, in the parking lot of Dear Heart Donuts—who made the best glazed doughnuts, period.
As Jaz pulled into a parking spot next to the Speed Buggy, I spotted Seb’s white-blond head ducking out of the shop, and my nerves staged a coup.
He strolled toward us with a box of doughnuts, a faded navy baseball cap with a Red Wings logo sitting backward on his head. When his eyes connected with mine, the sweetest smile lifted his cheeks. I smiled back without thinking. It felt as if someone had suddenly come along, reached inside the darkness of my body, and flipped on a million lights.
“Mornin’, Wags,” he said, opening up the box of doughnuts on top of the Bronco for us. “They’re out of the festival crullersalready, but the plain glazed is on point today. And I had them throw in a couple fancy ones, in case words like ‘cranberry mimosa’ rev your engine.”
I stuck with the glazed. And while Jazmine gathered our purses to lock them in her trunk, I had a small moment alone with Seb.
He squinted into bright sunlight and spoke in a low voice. “So, is Jaz giving you a hard time about our living arrangement?”
