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He nodded, his lips set in a grim line. “Obviously.”
“And now that there’s a trophy, of course they’re going to try even harder.”
Beau frowned. “Now that there’s awhat?”
“Apparently, there’s a trophy now.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” He swore. “Of course, you’re not kidding. That’s exactly something they would do.”
She laughed lightly. “I guess Leo and Ellie came up with it,” she said of the heads of the Landry family who were also owners of the bar in town. “It’s a golden alligator standing on its back legs. It’s got big lips pursed like it’s ready for a kiss and a sash across its body that says ‘“Master Matchmaker’”.”
Beau groaned and dragged a hand over his face. “Holy shit.”
“Well, you didn’t think they’d settle for a plain old gold cup or something, did you?”
Their hometown was nuts. Delightful, and mostly well-meaning, and a lot of fun. But nuts.
Beau looked at her. “So it’s not just our moms playing matchmaker and everyone else watching? If there’s a trophy, that means more people are in on it.”
She nodded. “Oh, for sure.” She also couldn’tquitebring herself to be upset. She wasn’t sure if she would have gotten a chance to spend so much time with Beau if they hadn’t been rehearsing for the play together. And shewassure she would not have kissed him so much. Or at all.
Beau ran a hand through his hair. “This is…” He sighed. “Typical.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“The way I understand it, the trophy and bragging rights go to whoever comes up with the plan that finally gets us back together,” Becca said. “But it was the school secretary talking about it around a corner with the P.E. teacher, so I might have missed some key bullet points.”
Beau shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. It means there’s a competition now. Everyone is going to think this is hilarious and even more fun. And it’ll be coming at us from multiple directions, not just our moms.” After a beat, he said, “Now I want to see this trophy.”
“It’s probably big, don’t you think?” she asked.
“Autre wouldn’t do anything that wasn’t over-the-top,” he agreed.
She wouldn’t be surprised if the thing stood two or three feet tall, in fact. And whoever won it would carry it around proudly for at least a month after. And would bring it to their wedding…
She shutthatdown immediately. There wasn’t going to be any wedding.
“So I guess that just leaves the question of what are we gonna do about it?” she asked.
“The door?”
“Their scheme.”
He met her gaze and held it for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “What do you want to do about it?”
That was a loaded question. There were things she wanted to do about it. Her knee-jerk reaction was: Get back together. Get married.Thankwhoever won the trophy by naming their first child after him or her.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I feel like it won’t do any good totellthem to stop or to push back. They’ll think they know best. And refusing to be in the same place or spend time together seems…” She sighed. “Sad. I don’t want that.”
He was quiet for several long seconds. Finally, he said, “I think we play along.”
She lifted both brows. “Play along?”
He shrugged. “You’re right that they’re not going to stop if we justtellthem to. We have toshowthem that when we say we’re just friends, wemeanit.”
“How do we do that?”
“We just let them do their thing, but we keep doingourthing too.”
