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“We have to win,” she repeats with ten times the emphasis. “We have to beat Betty and her biddies, and we have to do it in spectacular fashion. I’m not going to let her terrorize this place one more day.”
“Terrorize this place?” I question with a laugh. “That’s a pretty serious accusation. Are you sure you’re not—”
“You weren’t there, Ryan!” she interrupts me to insist. “At the curb with the trash can or today at the pool. She’s ruthless, and if it’s the last thing I do here at Sunny Creek, I’m going to make sure she gets hers.”
“Carly.”
“Go up there and get us bingo cards,” she orders, completely disinterested in hearing any kind of reason. “She probably won’t recognize you as an ally of mine, and if we need to, we can act like we hate each other to really sell it.”
It’s almost shocking how much I don’t want to pretend like I hate Carly Page. A week ago, maybe. Now? Not a chance.
“I’m not pretending to hate you.”
“We’ll play it by ear,” she qualifies with a placating wave of her arm.
“No, Carly—”
“Oh, there goes Betty,” she says, too completely preoccupied by hatching her evil plan to listen to me. “I’m going to go grab the cards while she’s distracted.”
She jumps up and out of her seat and takes off for the front of the room like a woman on a mission. She smiles and waves at everyone like the community fucking diplomat too, all as a means, I’m sure, to further ruin her mortal enemy, old lady Betty Matthews.
She grabs two cards off the front table and a couple markers and then weaves her way back through the crowd to her seat next to me. By the time she gets back, Betty is headed back up to the main stage, but Carly’s flown under the radar, Bitchy Betty none the wiser.
“You know if you win, she’s going to realize you’re you, right? You’re not in disguise.”
Carly waves an arm, strategically marking her free space and getting reacquainted with the game and her card. “We’ll deal with that when we get to it. But if I win fair and square, that old biddy is going to eat shit.”
I sink my forehead into one hand and do a semi-sigh, half-laugh thing. I’m honestly not sure if my brain knows how to feel about all of this.
Briefly, my gaze flits from this war-room version of Carly to the old couples across from us, just to see if they’re taking any of this in, but it’s pretty apparent by the way they stare down at their plates of food in silence that they passed the need for conversation about five years ago.
I jerk my head in their direction, tapping Carly on the arm. “Do you think they ever talk to each other at home?”
“What?” she asks, confused by my discussion of anything but bingo strategy. Finally, she glances over and follows my line of sight, gaining a modicum of understanding. “Oh. Probably not. They probably don’t even turn on their hearing aids.”
“Yes, we do,” the old woman across from Carly says suddenly, startling us both.
I wince at the huge faux pas in manners, but the little eavesdropper shrugs, nonplussed by our commentary.
“It’s hard to find excitement at our age. This silent act is what we do everywhere we go to dinner, right, honey?” The old man next to her nods and chuckles. “You really hear some interesting stuff when people don’t think you can.”
“Oh my God,” Carly breathes, finally distracted from her bingo plot. “That’s amazing.”
She giggles, and my smile triples in size. I don’t know what it is about the sound of her laugh that makes me feel lighter, but it does. It’s free, uninhibited, and genuine. That isn’t the kind of laugh I’m used to hearing in New York, and if I’m honest, I’m pretty sure at least part of that is my fault.
In the past, I’ve been hesitant to let myself start anything with anyone but a serious woman. Someone with big career goals—and an even bigger commitment to achieving them. Someone who knows how to take action but can assess the weight of those actions accordingly.
I’ve never felt anything close to the base-level attraction I feel for Carly, though. At all.
Eventually, everyone at our table, including me, dives into the food, spooning big helpings from the dishes onto our plates.
It’s good. I can’t deny that. And by the fervor with which Carly eats her brisket and momentarily forgets about beating Betty’s ass at bingo, I’m happy to find I’m not the only one enjoying the spread.
But all good things must come to an end, and when ole Betty steps up to the microphone at the front of the room, Carly’s food focus is a distant memory.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Betty announces, tapping the mic with two fingers to test the efficacy of the sound output even though she just spoke into it. “Quiet down, quiet down. Let’s get some order in here, people.”
