AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Romeo supposed that this was just one of those idiosyncratic facts of life that he’d have to learn to live with. Even if he thought the whole thing was dumb.
In any event, he felt he should catch up. There was a good chance that Monty’s would win the contest. They did last year. Plus all the accompanying perks that went along with it. He should probably be with his folks when and if that happened again.
Problem was, he’d lost them. There was a sea of people now, all gathered around the stage. And his parents were nowhere in sight. He looked to his left and saw a few familiar faces. When you own a popular restaurant in town you get to know a lot of the locals. Then he looked to his right and…
There she was.
Ant stood directly across the street from him. She was not quite next to Nikki, and more than a few steps away from her parents. So it wasn’t immediately apparent that she was with anyone. She was just standing there, her attention to the stage, with the late summer sun bathing her face in the light they call magic hour. Long chestnut hair, olive skin, full pouty lips that glistened ever so slightly…
Romeo couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
Then, for no apparent reason at all, she turned in his direction, and caught his eye. That was pretty much all it took. He smiled, then she smiled and everyone else, everything else, just faded away.
It lasted seconds, maybe less. But the impact hit him like a roundhouse to the heart. It was more than her face, her eyes, her boobs. Damn his mother… It was something deeper, more intense, more connected.
Who is that? he asked himself. And what is that noise?
Something else was happening too. At the same time. Something in the air. Something he could hear. Something off in the distance. A voice he recognized, kind of, but it seemed so far away from where he was in that instant that he couldn’t quite place it. He didn’t want to place it. He wanted to stay right where he was. Lost in her eyes.
But that voice…?
It was his mother, calling him. Again, and again. “Romeo… Romeo…” It seemed distant and unimportant. He willfully ignored it.
Then he heard the whistle. It was the whistle that brought him back. Ripped him back to reality. It was the same whistle he’d heard almost daily since the day he was born. It was his father’s whistle, and it had come to be a sound so Pavlovian to Romeo that he simply couldn’t ignore it.
“What?!” he said. His head snapping around to face them.
His parents had backtracked to come get him. They were just a few feet away. “Let’s go,” said his mom impatiently.
Romeo nodded.
When he looked back she was gone.
5
And then he winked at her. Ant couldn’t quite believe it. What a cheeseball.
On the stage, just to the left of the podium, sat the Mayor. On the scooter he was too short to sit behind it. Next to him was Patrick. Also in attendance were the fair’s organizers and the head of the local Board of Education, presumably because the big prize was that very lucrative, school lunch contract.
The Mayor addressed the crowd. “I’d like to thank each and every one of you for coming out today. You should all give yourselves a big round of applause.”
They did.
“Once again our town’s yearly street fair was a great success. We raised over eleven thousand dollars for our local chapter of Meals on Wheels.”
More applause.
“Our last event of the day is the cheesesteak competition. The ballots have been cast and the votes have been tallied. So now, without further ado, I’d like to announce the winners of this year’s contest.”
“I’m so nervous,” Cap’s wife said as she squeezed his arm.
“Don’t you worry about a thing.”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I worry? What did you do?”
Cap smiled at her then looked from the podium to the crowd. He found Monty. Monty wasn’t looking in Cap’s direction, but Mrs Monty was. Cap winked at her and blew a kiss.
“Ewwww…”
