Page 31 of Crushes to WHAT

My eyes water as pride fills my chest. That’s my girl.

Wolfe’s eyes do not water. Wolfe’s eyes narrow.

I sigh. Leave it to a man to not appreciate the finer aspects of girlhood.

“I don’t have any plans brewing,” Amia says finally, blink-blink-blinking her big brown eyes. “Because you said that it’s a no scheming month, and I follow the rules.” So innocently, she poses the question, “Are you going to follow the rules?”

Reluctantly, Wolfe says that yes, he is going to follow the rules. The look he aims my way adds a for now.

I shrug. A win is a win, even if it’s only temporary. Plus, once the month is over, I can join in on Amia’s schemes, including the mysterious one she called me for, and her mischief is sure to blow whatever loser plans Wolfe is cooking up out of the water, so my win might not be all that temporary anyway.

To convey my incredible lack of worry, I stick my tongue out at him.

He rolls his eyes. “Mature,” he mutters.

“About as mature as you,” I agree. “Since when do you do schemes, anyway?” It wasn’t too long ago I had to quite literally force the man to abduct his dear love, and he complained the entire way through it. Mischievous is not a word I would ever use to describe him.

“Since Leora likes them for date night,” he replies, nonplussed. “After what you pulled on her, she’ll be more than thrilled to find out she’s got fodder for messing with you.”

I snort. “Leora already knows what’s going on with Emerson and me, and she was perfectly supportive and kind about it.” I lie, just a little. Maybe. She definitely knows about him working at my house and about several dozen of my illicit dreams involving him. I’m less sure on if she knows about the boyfriend thing. It’s not inconceivable that someone would have told her. Plenty of people saw us at Blackwood Brew last night, and I’m sure several of them eavesdropped on Emerson calling me his girlfriend. For all I know, Leora found out three seconds after I did, with the way people spread juicy news in this town.

Wolfe frowns. “She already knows?” he asks, sounding more than a little dejected.

“Yep.” I pop the p. “I bet she’s waiting on you to get home so she can tell you all about it, actually.” I eye my sweating tubs of ice cream. “You should probably hurry up.”

Amia hops in place. “Can we, Dad? Hurry? I want to hear about Almond and Mr. Emerson’s boyfriend-girlfriend thing!”

I press my lips together so that I don’t laugh.

“We could hear about it from Almond,” he suggests to his bubbling, bouncing girl. “The one involved, who’s right in front of us. Instead of going home to gossip about it.”

Amia stops bouncing. “But you said that everybody in a small town gossips. And we’re in a small town.”

Wolfe pinches the bridge of his nose.

I press my lips together even harder and take a teensy tiny little step away from the gossiping gossipers, dragging my cart an inch closer to checkout.

“I believe what I said was that the stereotype is that everyone in a small town gossips, but that we could be better than that stereotype, and I’m equally certain I told you that after you felt bad because that insufferable little Elizabeth in your class was gossiping about you. Do you want to make Almond feel like…”

Wolfe’s voice trails off as I expertly extract myself from his burgeoning lecture, not bothering to let either of them know that I don’t particularly care if anyone gossips about me. The truth is usually ten times nuttier than whatever anyone comes up with. Plus, I doubt that Leora, Wolfe, and Amia are going to meanly gossip about me. And if it’s not mean? Then I extra double super don’t care. It doesn’t affect me either way. I’m going to live my life, and people are going to talk about it. Likewise, people are going to live their lives, and I’m going to eat it up like the entertainment it is. Give some, take some. Balance.

Some people might think of this aspect of small-town life as a drawback, but personally, I think it’s a positive. If everyone is all up in everyone’s business, the place is bound to be a little bit safer. You can’t exactly hide that you’re a raging psychopath serial killer if you’re surrounded by nosy neighbors. If you’re a bad person, everybody knows it, and everybody’s talking about it, and everybody’s watching you even closer because of it. You can’t get away with anything.

Sometimes this system can go a little awry and an awkward-but-decent type gets caught in the crossfire, but that usually clears itself up… eventually… most of the time… except for with poor Sam Grateer… but honestly, how were we supposed to know he wasn’t killing all those cats for fun? He had a whole graveyard of them! No one with any amount of self-preservation would have assumed he simply had horrible luck, and it’s not like he told anyone that he was rescuing near-dead cats in the first place, so them not dying would have been more surprising than the graveyard was.

I maintain that the gossip system is good for general safety and wellbeing, with Sam being an outlier of his own making.

I won’t share my opinion on the subject with Amia, though. Not yet. Wolfe isn’t totally over me telling her that kidnapping is romantic—which it is—and I probably shouldn’t rock the boat too much until he finds his way past that (incredible) advice I gave her. I’ll tell her about the benefits of a town full of busybodies next year.

“Do you want me to run back and get replacements for these?” the high-school-aged checkout boy asks, pulling me from my thoughts as he holds up a dripping ice cream container. He grimaces at a splodge of dairy as it falls to his conveyor belt.

I smile apologetically. “Would you mind? They didn’t quite make it from the freezer.”

The boy glances behind me at the freezers not even thirty feet away.

I smile, megawatt. “Crazy, that.”

Without comment, he leaves his post. He returns with new ice cream, perfectly frosty.