But I’m actually here because I want to be.
Not because of my position on the team or to fix my damaged reputation.
I’m here on this Hallmark movie set with an honest-to-god gazebo in the middle of a town square because I want to be Jo’s real-life…something.
Anything.
Everything.
But I’ll settle for friend. For now.
I glance over at Jo, to find her practically vibrating with worry, her lip red and puffy and…is that blood?
I touch her chin, gently turning her face toward mine. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” When I tug her lip out from under her teeth, she leans into my palm as if it comforts her, and nothing has ever been more important than this right here. “You doing all right?”
“Not really.”
“I got you, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She nods, and I drag my thumb over her lip. “You’re not wearing your lipstick.”
“My mom doesn’t like it.”
“Well, I do, and I think you should put it on.”
The corner of her mouth tugs up. “Okay.”
I pull away from her to continue driving while she paints her lips blue with that weird coating she lets harden before peeling it off to reveal her Berry Queen lips. It’s my favorite magic trick.
On our way to her house, Jo points out various landmarks of the small town. The school she went to, the park where she took her famous trash among grass photo, and I suggest pulling over so she can recreate it, but she jokingly whacks my arm and directs me past the day care where she worked.
Finally, we pull up to her childhood home at 115 Newton Street, the brick house bigger than I expected. Set back on an incline, the whole neighborhood is different from what I imagined, and when I inform Jo of this, she tips her head to the side. “What did you think it was going to be?”
I lift a shoulder. “More… I don’t know…Deliverance…?”
“That movie is an awful stereotype of Appalachian people. We’re not backwater inbred racist hillbillies with bad teeth.”
Her sudden defense of the town she hates makes me curious. “No? Then what are you?”
She blows out a breath and turns to gaze out her window, down the slope to where we can view the center of town and the wooded mountains all around us. “We’re fighters. Wild and wonderful.”
She tucks her hair behind her ear, a new habit she’s picked up recently, and I smile even as she hands me my ass. “We’re proudand hearty and have survived for centuries on nothing because the government has forgotten about us, even though our coal has fueled this country since it was first formed.” She narrows her focus on me. “Did you know that West Virginia became a state because it wanted to stay with the Union when Virginia seceded to the Confederacy? We have one of the strongest histories of labor unions, with men literally fighting and dying for fair wages, and during Prohibition, we supplied all those in power with alcohol, so they could turn their backs on us. We have no reliable internet, terrible infrastructure, no help for families living in poverty, no help for those struggling with addiction, but I guess it’s our fault for being born barefoot and poor.”
She stares at me like I’m a dumbass, and apparently I am because I knew none of this. “I’m sorry, Jo. I had no idea.”
She shrugs as if it’s no skin off her back. “You’re not the only one who thinks that way. Everyone does.”
“Yeah, but you’re right. We’re wrong.”
“Not totally,” she says with a sigh. “My teeth are messed up, and I do have a backwater racist hillbilly Uncle Randy who collects guns and lives in conspiracy theories.”
I cup her face with my palms. “I like your teeth, and I’ll avoid your uncle.” I lean in to kiss her but stop. “Just to be sure… No one’s gonna make me, like, go hunt and skin our dinner, right?”
She fights a smile. “No.”
It’s when I move to kiss her again that someone knocks on my window, and I break apart from Jo with a very unmasculine shriek, all but jumping into her lap. But we’re still in Appalachia and I could be murdered by a bear or Uncle Randy, and Jo is clearly more prepared for either situation.
Once my fear subsides, I peer out my window to find a man in a police uniform. He bends, and I recognize him as Waylon. That son of a bitch who broke Jo’s heart. Or, one of them, I should say. As much as I admire how proud she is of being West Virginian, I won’t ever forgive any of her asshole family members or the town for treating her the way they did.
