Page 29 of I Love You, It’s Ruining My Life

Then what am I supposed to do????

Peri gave me an evil grin from across the room, and I knew exactly what it meant. I was going to get stuck with something terrible. Mary-Marigold was still struggling through her speech, giving great insight into why her Reality TV career never took off, before my grumpy best friend stormed onto the stage and grabbed the mic from her.

“If you’re here to try and date a Raine Brother and not help with the New Year’s Eve Festival, get out right now!” she practically growled. While Misty’s death glare looked like something out of a horror movie, Peri’s was on an entirely different level. To the point chills went up my spine, and she wasn’t even mad at me. Half the room took that as their sign to leave, which was a relief. While the community center was still packed, it at least gave most people room to breathe.

“Okay, good news: if you want to be my partner for the Festival, mine abandoned me,” I whispered once Mary-Marigold restarted talking about logistics. “Bad news, we’re going to get a terrible booth.”

Kameron looked at me with a glance I had no idea how to interpret. It might've been presumptuous to assume he wanted to volunteer with me in the first place. He’d just said he'd wanted to be more involved in the town, and it could easily have meant he wanted to partner with someone he didn’t actually know in an attempt to make a new friend.

“Only if you want to,” I added, hoping it'd help. I had to remind myself that even if he said no, it wasn’t a rejection. That we’d figure out a way to get through this weirdness.

“What do you mean by a terrible booth?” Kameron asked, staring at the ground as multiple people tried to get his attention.

“Most people who work the festival do the same thing every year, so they have first pick. Which means anyone new gets stuck with things the regulars don’t want to do. And as Peri has already decided she’s going to work with Misty, because she felt bad for you sitting by yourself…”

“That doesn’t sound like Peri at all,” Kameron cut in, motioning to the fact Peri was standing on stage behind Mary-Marigold like a glaring bodyguard.

“Okay, she knew I’d want to partner with you when you looked like a little lost lamb in here,” I corrected, “I was trying to save your ego before it became too inflated by… all this. Anyway, I now don’t have a partner, and Peri’s going to make sure there’s no way for us to do something easy like the bake sale. So it’ll be either a game where we’ll actively have people the entire night, or something that involves a lot of cleaning. Won’t be fun, but if you come back and help next year, your chances of getting a better job will be high.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best way to keep volunteers coming back,” Kameron said, narrowing his eyes before sighing, as a few women seemed to circle us as the sign-ups were about to open, “They do realize this is a regular volunteer meeting, right?”

“They probably think this is the start of their personal Hallmark movie,” I shrugged, “and I’m clearly the villain about to ruin their love story.”

“Okay, let’s partner up and try to find a booth that doesn’t suck,” Kameron finally decided, “though why do I get the feeling she’s behind all these people here?” He asked, his head slightly motioning in the direction of Maya Phillips. I had a feeling her glare had been constant, though I’d been trying to ignore her. My gut said she’d planned something, and my being here ruined it. I just didn’t care enough to investigate what it was.

“Did you get Cassidy moved out of her class?” I asked, thinking back to how things had gone with them earlier.

“No, she got a warning. “ There are only two teachers for her grade and… everything feels like a mess,” he sighed, “I get they’re overworked, but I’m almost worried if it happened once, it’ll happen again.”

“Hopefully the warning from her boss put Maya on her best behavior,” I said, resisting the urge to glance back at her again. I’d already heard enough of her snide comments in yoga; I didn’t want her to realize I’d been talking about her too.

I could tell he wanted to say something else, but Mary-Marigold released everyone to the sign-up sheets, and it was an absolute free-for-all. The regulars knew exactly where their signups were, ensuring they’d get them for another year, leaving the rest of the room either trying to get to Kameron or trying to find an unwanted booth they could handle. I looked at a couple of them, finding nothing that seemed remotely interesting. The Great Snowball Fight almost always ended with a literal fight I didn’t want to break up. The Snowglobe was really a snowglobe-themed bounce house, and I didn’t want to listen to children squealing all night. I was surprised to see the Cocoa stand available, but someone swooped in before I got a chance to put our names down.

“Okay, don’t be mad, but I signed us up for something,” Kameron said, scaring me as I turned around, “the Karaoke contest.”

I blinked, wondering if he was kidding, before I realized he absolutely wasn’t.

“You do realize you’re the only person in this town who can actually sing. You know that, right?” I asked, blinking, only for him to shrug.

“I thought it’d be fun,” he smiled, “plus what better way to get into everyone’s good graces than for me to judge that particular contest?”

“I really hope they don’t turn it into advertising material,” I mumbled, almost afraid that agreeing to sign up with Kam was a mistake. Yes, his judging a karaoke contest was probably a smart decision — a way to poke fun at himself in a way everyone in town would find funny. But I didn’t want it digging too much into our history. Between the RaineFall stans and the people who’d known us back then, I wasn’t convinced this wouldn’t turn into a ton of conversations I wasn’t particularly interested in having.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fun,” he smiled, “Trust me.”

And as much as I wished I could, I absolutely did not trust him.

Chapter twenty-two

Kameron

Iwas a coward.

I knew attempting to avoid Nalini was the wrong thing to do, especially when the universe decided to push us together as often as possible. First, there was the mortifying volunteer meeting that was filled with more RaineFall fans than I thought still existed. Then there was us accidentally attending the same yoga class — which was equally awkward because Maya was there too. We ran into each other at the grocery store, and we ended up in line next to each other at the post office.

It got to the point that despite the town only having about fifteen stoplights, I’d ended up by her at every single one. Twice.

I still felt like the world expected me to feel guilty about kissing Nalini. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wanted to do it again. I couldn’t blame Nalini for fearing Jack’s words that she might be some replacement for Julia. But I’d never seen it that way, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to even assure her of that. And that was why I was avoiding her; I was trying to think of what to say.