Page 61 of Sundown Somewhere

Excuse me?

There’s an audible record scratch screeching through my brain, the world slamming to a halt. Rejected? Did he just say Project: Second Star was rejected?

“What?”

“Yeah, town council won’t approve it.”

No. No, that’s not possible. I think back to the text I got from Willa while we were at the spa. She had shown Auggie the plans and said that he and Jack were going to push it through. Jack. As in Jack Keller, who has been my father’s best friend since they were kids. Thick as thieves doesn’t even begin to cover it when it comes to those two. They’re even closer now that Willa is engaged to one of his twins.

Jack who sits on the town council.

“Wait.” I shake my head, trying to make this all make sense. “How do you even know about that?”

Did Willa show Gus the plans as well?

“Auggie brought it to me while you were away on Saturday, filling me in, wondering if I could help him come up with a way to convince them. He had assumed it would be pretty straightforward, and turned out it wasn’t.”

“What do you mean, rejected?” I ask again. I know it’s a dumb question, but I cannot wrap my brain around this.

“The town council won’t approve it.”

“Thanks for that, August,” Milo snarks, in a way only he can. He’s the only one of us who can get away with calling Gus by his full name and not get backhanded. “We had been left wondering the definition of that term.”

“What did they reject?” Ewan injects.

“Why? What could possibly be their reason?” I demand, swinging an arm out wide, almost hitting Anton in the process. He catches it, shoving me out of the way, going into defensive mode of the tree we’re in front of.

“Hurt what’s left of the peaches and so help me…”

We move away, giving the precious peaches a wide berth, waiting for Gus’s explanation.

“They don’t think it’s a good use of town funding.”

“What do you mean good use of town funding? Hayes is paying for it. I’m paying for it!”

This makes no sense.

“In order to do it at Newton Field, a certain percentage of town funding has to be used, and they don’t feel that it’s a good use of funding to do so.”

“Fine, I’ll cover that myself. It’ll all come out of my pocket then.”

“Then we can’t use Newton. We have to find another spot,” Gus counters.

For fuck’s sake…

It shouldn’t be this hard to update the playground at the town recreational field.

“Hold on.” Jace throws up his arms. “Someone needs to catch the rest of us up. You two can only speak in code for so long. What exactly is project second star anyway?”

I swallow hard, turning on my heel and starting to pace. There’s too much energy flowing through me right now to think straight, and I need to work some of it off. Need to get my head clear. I also need to explain this in a way that doesn’t make me look…weird.

“It’s…it was…my wedding present to Dolly,” I answer, owning up to it. My heart squeezes, the idea of this project falling through gutting me. “And now it’s just something I want to do to…”

I trail off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. To what?

Show her what she means to me? To tell her how I feel? To show her that I’m good enough? What? I don’t…I don’t actually know.

All I know is that making sure that I complete this project—for her—seems like the most important thing in the world right now.