Page 8 of Pumpkin to Talk About

She sniffles and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Will you stay?” she asks, still staring up at the ceiling. Her voice is pitifully small and helpless. “Just for a few weeks?”

There’s no way I’m leaving my baby sister in her time of need. I should be able to do most of my work tasks remotely, at least until Halloween. And while I miss my friends back in Indiana, they all have partners and flourishing careers now. I don’t see as much of them as I used to.

And there’s at least one person in Ironwood Flats that I wouldn’t mind seeing more of.

“What’s that look?” Annie asks, frowning up at me.

My eyes go wide. “What look?” I have no idea what my face was doing, but I was most definitely thinking about Belle again. If Annie caught it, it must have been obvious.

Annie bolts upright in bed, like a zombie coming back to life. “The one where you go all moon-eyed and smile like a doofus.”

“I am not moon-eyed,” I protest. “And I certainly do not smile like a doofus.”

“Oh, yes you do.” The finger she points in my face is topped with chipped nail polish. “Spill it.”

“Don’t change the subject. You need to shower, and you’re not getting out of it.”

She screws up her face in frustration. Now I’m in for it. Sure enough, she starts the interrogation. “You’re the one changing the subject. Did you leave someone special behind in Indiana? Someone you haven’t told me about?”

“No.” The less information she gets, the better. She is very good at manipulating people into telling her what she wants to know. And I’d never lie to her, which she is also well aware of.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Michael Robert Page. You have been in town for all of seventy-two hours. Do not tell me you seduced some poor girl when you went out to that bar Friday night.”

“The only people I saw at that bar were Old Man Peña and Bluebell Allen.” And Annie’s deadbeat soon-to-be-ex-husband, but she doesn’t need to know that. Omitting information isn’t actually lying.

Annie’s eyes go even wider. “Did you fuck Belle Allen?”

“Dammit, Annie! No!”

She narrows her eyes and points her chipped nail polish at me again. “You better not. That girl was so pissed at you after you graduated.”

“What? Why?” I know I wasn’t the nicest to her when we were in school, but I don’t think there was a singular thing I did that would have pissed her off more than she usually was at me.

But Annie rolls her eyes dramatically. “Oh, come on. Everyone heard the rumors.” She looks at me expectantly, but when I just shake my head, she continues. “About how you made out with her behind the bleachers, and the next day you had moved on to Stacey-what’s-her-name.”

I screw up my face, trying to remember. “Stacey Villarreal?”

Annie snaps her fingers. “That’s the one.”

“Stacey and I never…” but I trail off. Like a bad penny, the memory comes right back up.

I had kissed Belle behind the bleachers. That, I remember clear as day. What’s fuzzy is Stacey Villarreal. I never kissed her, but we did hang out after the thing with Belle.

I thought it was fine. Belle had told me she hadn’t ever kissed anyone, and she was nervous to graduate without experiencing it. So, I told her I would do it. It was a good kiss. Great, even. But when it was over, she had said, “Thank you,” and walked away. I figured she got what she came for, and that was that.

Which, in retrospect, only an idiot would think. But I was eighteen, about to graduate high school, and… well… an idiot.

“Belle told Maggie, who told Jackie, who told me,” Annie is saying when I come to. “So even if that’s not what happened, that’s how she perceived it. You know Maggie and Jackie would never start unnecessary drama.”

That is absolutely false, and that ridiculous chain of telephone proves it. But I also believe the drama queens in this instance. Even though I remember it differently, Belle’s standoffishness on Friday night would suggest her wounds go deeper than a little harmless teasing. I even busted out my best jokes this morning to try to get her to laugh because her attitude threw me. I think I almost succeeded.

“I’m going to help her build the haunted house at the kids’ school tomorrow,” I say. I flash Annie my most charming grin. “I can win her over.”

Annie groans. “Oh no. Please do not. The last thing that girl needs is to kiss you and watch you walk away again.”

I shake my head as my grin falls. “I’m not talking about kissing her again.” Okay, that’s a teeny lie, but I still don’t think it counts. “I’m talking about making amends. It’s the right thing to do, don’t you think?”

She eyes me skeptically. “That’s not how this works.”