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I tried to shake it off. I really did. But as we went through her itemized list of repairs, I kept looking over at Laney. Despite the jab from my busybody customer, I couldn’t go more than a few seconds without drinking in the sight of her. And it was too bad, too, since Riley’d wandered back with that better-be-unnecessary guitar and they were chatting away like I wasn’t over here wishing I could kick something. Something like myself, maybe.
It was surreal, though. I’d been just fine going about my business for the last six years—okay, not quite fine, but I fell wherever was close enough to it that wouldn’t qualify me as being a pathetic sap. And then boom—here she was, back in Charlotte Oaks, looking a little different on the outside but fitting back into my view of the world like she’d never even left. Ever-present boyfriend, aside, obviously.
After escorting Mrs. McClusky to her car and sending her on her way, I ambled back over to Laney and braced myself for the torture of talking to her without being allowed to touch her.
“Where’d your boyfriend go?” I asked, looking casually around my shop like I expected to find him tinkering under someone’s hood.
“Bathroom,” she replied. When she fiddled with the ring on her right hand, my chest seized with pain first, and then relief, after I realized it wasn’t her left.
Don’t judge me, she had me so topsy-turvy I hardly knew the street from the sky at this point.
“Anyway, your car’s undercarriage is a mess,” I told her, getting down to business. “I’m confident I can fix it once the parts come in, but it’ll take some time. If it dills your pickle to sell it and have a new one delivered, now’d be the time to tell me before I dig in.”
I watched her carefully while she thought about it. I knew she had buckets of money, and it’d be so easy for her to do just that if she wanted to. Someone would come down from the dealership in Nashville and take her old car away, leaving a brand-spankin’-new one in its place. Nobody round here could afford such extravagance, so it was yet another reminder of how we lived in two different worlds now.
She looked over she shoulder at Paisley, her full bottom lip tucked between her teeth. Finally, she turned back to me with a sigh. “No, I’m sure you can fix it. How long is ‘some time’?”
“A couple weeks.”
“A couple weeks?” Paisley echoed as she walked up, eyes wide. “Wait. You know what? That’s actually perfect.”
I frowned. “How you figure?”
“We can hang out here and set up a little concert. A small-town show in your hometown. It’ll be great PR.”
“Paisley—”
“Hear me out. The fall harvest festival is next weekend—I’ve already been low-key looking into it. We could have you do a concert there and bring out a crew to shoot it to use for a music video. It’ll be great for the album and for ticket sales for the stadium tour.”
My brows went up. “Stadium tour, huh? One of those year-long deals?”
“Yep,” Laney said so low I almost missed it.
“When’s that start?” I asked.
“January, and it’s going to be amazing,” Paisley answered with a little bounce of glee. Laney actually looked a little sick, not that her manager noticed. “Riley can stay and do it with you.”
“Do what with her?” Riley asked as he ambled up.
I held my tongue, wishing I could tell him it wasn’t whatever was making him smile like a wolf in the hen house.
As Laney filled him in about the harvest festival, I realized that this was actually good. I was glad this country king was here with his little queen, since I needed the reminder of how having her back in Charlotte Oaks for this dang high school reunion didn’t mean any other reunions were likely to happen. We were too different now, and our shared past wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Besides, this highfalutin’ version of Laney would probably rather be with a guy like Riley Conrad over me any day of the week. Just like her new music differed so much from the stuff she always used to play, Riley Conrad was the new stuff, and I was the old—discarded and left behind.
“Hang on, Riley, your manager’s calling,” Paisley said, holding up her phone. “Come with me so we can work it out with your schedule.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, raising his brows at Laney as her manager clipped off without waiting for him.
“Does she do that a lot?” I asked.
When I pointed at Paisley’s retreating form, Laney let out a little snort in response. “Her phone’s always ringin’ off the hook. But I’m glad for it.”
“Glad for it?”
“Heck yes. If it weren’t her phone, it’d be mine. I’m glad I have her to handle all this … craziness.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, since the only person who blew up my phone was a five-foot-nothin’ ball of spitfire otherwise known as my momma. Not even the girls I’d dated seemed to bother much with the phone unless it was texting me about when I’d be off work and where to meet ’em.
