Page 11 of More Than My Hometown

Making my heart plummet.

“Well, if this isn’t kismet…” Emily says, that evil twinkle returning to her eye. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she planned this. Actually, I don’t know better. She very well may have. “I’ll leave y’all to it.”

Giving me a wink, Emily quickly exits the dance floor, leaving Maisey and me standing there like two awkward poles sticking straight up in a stadium blocking the view of an innocent ticketholder. Heat rushes to my face, and I swear, if I could find a way to burrow into the ground right here, I think I would.

“Right, well, so, ummmm,” Maisey sputters over George as he croons about Emmylou in her pink dress writing a note in the third grade.

At least she’s feeling as weird about this as I am. That at least lets me know that maybe she wasn’t in on this. Or if she was, it backfired.

“Maisey,” I hold out my hand, muscle memory taking over.

Wordlessly, she takes it, sending me straight back to when we were us. The connection is still there, the both of us instantly knowing exactly what to do, what beat to start on, losing ourselves in the music. In the dance. Because this was our song.

It had started innocently enough at an all-ages event at The Giddy Up, the local honky-tonk teaching line dances one Sunday afternoon. We’d spent hours practicing the cowboy cha-cha until we’d perfected it, wearing out this song, until it was so engrained in us that there was no way it could ever belong to anyone else. That we could never not dance to it. Just like now.

Holding her again like this—spinning her around, her body against mine, our fingers intertwined—for the life of me, I can’t figure out how I survived without her.

The song ends, and we slow, the bubble we’ve been in for the last three minutes bursting. Out of the corner of my eye I see and feel the eyes that are on us. Judging by the way Maisey stiffens in my arms, she does too.

Leading us off the dance floor, I sidestep an older couple trying to give us some space. The last thing I want right now is to be the center of attention.

Maisey grabs my hand, stopping me. I look down at it, then up at her, my heart slamming into my rib cage. Breathe, I need to breathe…

“Ewan, I…” she starts, rocking backward and biting down on her lip in a way that makes me wonder what that lip tastes like.

“I should find my brothers.” My voice warbles, cracking like a pubescent boy. “We’ve got a big send-off prepared. I should make sure we’re ready.”

“I was hoping we could catch up.”

Catch up. Maisey wants to catch up. With me.

Heat washes over me, the cool breeze flowing through the tent doing nothing to counter it, my mind going blank. I should say something. Anything. Except I can’t because I don’t know what to say. Still.

I love you. I’ve always loved you. Never stopped loving you, and it broke my heart when you left…

“Ewan, we’ll be thirty-four this year and⁠—”

I yank my hand away. Thirty-four. Thirty-four.

That’s why she’s here.

Our pact.