Fenn
Super Football Day. *laugh-cry-emoji
Mason
He definitely means Super Bowl. But at least he knew it was football?
Toby
I’m referring to the football-themed Hors d’Oeuvres Banquet so extensive that it will be enshrined in legend and, indeed, become part of the collective consciousness of our island, so that generations from now, the names of those who were disinvited will be spoken in voices of hushed pity. But please, you guys, keep talking about how I don’t know sportsball. It’s totes fun!
Dad
Do you know, I’ve always privately thought it should be called Super Football Day?
Jay
Same! Exact same. Mason and I were just talking about that the other day.
Rafe
Toby, are you making that artichoke feta dip?
Toby
A double batch.
Rafe
Then as mayor, I’m officially declaring it Super Football Day on Whispering Key.
Jay
(You guys, he just banged the kitchen counter at your dad’s house like he had a gavel!!! *laugh emoji The mayor thing has officially gone to his head.)
I snorted. But to be fair, I’d had Toby’s feta artichoke dip when we visited the island last month, and I’d declare a holiday for it, too. In fact, I was planning to make a batch for our SuperFootball Day party back at the orchard, and I’d told Marco I might or might not be willing to barter if he ponied up his precious shortbread recipe.
“Gage?” Knox stepped out the front door and immediately clocked me where I was perched on the porch railing. “You okay, baby? It’s fucking freezing out here and you don’t have a coat.”
I slid my phone into the front pocket of my sweatshirt—the sweatshirt that Knox no longer even pretended was his—and leaned back against the porch railing. I looked up at the love of my life, the man who made me smile each and every day, the man who was myhomeevery bit as much as this town was, and scoffed loudly. “Pssht. You flatlanders with your sensitivity to the cold. Honestly. Ernest’s right about you.”
Knox leaned against the railing beside me and folded his arms over his chest, which would have been a lot more intimidating if he hadn’t also been fighting a smile. “Oh, really. And what does the bartender have to say about ‘us flatlanders,’ pray tell?”
“That you can’t tell your applewine from your English,” I said smugly.
Knox looked up at the porch roof. “Nearly a billion gay men in the world, Jesus, and I had to end up falling in love with the one who can make apple cider varietals sound like dirty talk? Really?”
I snickered and tugged at the hem of his bulky sweater until he scooted close enough for me to lean my head on his shoulder. “You had to end up falling in love with the one who got so excited about helping Uncle Drew with his retirement project that he became just theteensiestbit obsessed with cider. But on the plus side, Ernest says anyone who knows cider as well as I do is clearly a native of the Hollow, no matter where he happened to be born?—”
“Oh, well as long as an authority likeErnestsays you belong here.” Knox rolled his eyes even as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder.
“Unlike certain folk,” I interrupted, wrinkling my nose, “who had the ‘overwhelming good fortune’ to be born in the Hollow and then ‘absconded to parts unknown?—'”
Knox snorted. “Boston is hardly parts unknown?—”
“Which was like giving up your right to citizenship in the Hollow forever,” I concluded sadly. “According to Ernest.”
“That’s… fascinating, but it doesn’t actually work like that,” Knox said with the trademark grumpy expression I loved.
