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“Mm. I see.”
Thankfully, he didn’t say anything further. At least for a few minutes.
He shifted toward me and poked a thick finger into my shoulder. “But like… what if the case was open? What if it was a different case? What if it was a sexy case that could suck your dick?”
“Diesel Partridge!” I stared at him. “What the fuck?”
He shrugged. “It’s just… Charlie asked about you. Last night. He was real concerned when Alana said you might be sick—and I mean, lasering-us-all-with-his-eyeballs-for-abandoning-you concerned. Like, if Alana hadn’t been giving us all the same laser eyeballs telling us to keep our mouths shut, some of us might have actually gone to check on you. So… I like him for you, is what I’m saying. If he was that concerned about you before you’d even settled your differences, he must care about you a lot. And he’s good people—a bunch of us were sitting around the fire pit, and he talked with us for hours. He fits around here.”
Diesel sounded sincere, but I knew a matchmaking rat when I saw one.
“And so you just thought you’d come over here with some sweet potato excuse and tell me all that, huh? Don’t lie to me, Partridge. Was Cindy Ann in on this?” It suddenly occurred to me that Cindy Ann Johnson, Katie-Bird Nutter, and Lurleen Jackson had all been at the party last night too. The Thicket Matchmaking Mafia, left unsupervised.
Diesel’s eyes flared wide. “N-no! No, I swear. It was Parrish. He has a big heart and wants everyone to have… well, to have what we have.”
The big guy’s cheeks turned pink, and I groaned. “Don’t weaponize that blush, Diesel. It’s lethal.”
He grinned hopefully. “Give me something to take back to Parrish. Pretty please? I really did fuck up his favorite Thanksgiving dish. I swear.”
I knew better than to kiss and tell in this tiny town. That wouldn’t be fair to Charlie. But I could give him something. Something that could maybe possibly work its way around the Thicket’s grapevine in a way that offered Charlie a little softball of an idea.
“Okay, fine. I like him. I might even like him, like him. There, you happy? I may or may not have fantasized about raising chicks with him, alright? Now, stop asking questions and follow me. We have to be stealthy about this, or Alana will lose her shit.”
He grabbed my arm before I could escape the side-by-side. “Wait. You think… you think he’d want to raise chicks?” There was a gleam in his eyes. “We could form like… a club or something.”
I stared at him. “Yes, Diesel. Gays with Chicks. Start drawing up the bylaws.”
He nodded absently while his brain went in directions I didn’t even want to know about. “Gays with Chicks,” he murmured. “Not sure that sounds right.”
I yanked my arm from his grip and hopped out. “Come on. Let’s steal some casserole.”
Seven hours later, I never wanted to see another potato or potato-based product in my life. I groaned and patted my belly gently, silently apologizing to it for the day’s abuse. “Can’t move.”
My dad grunted. “Shouldn’t have had the whipped cream on the pie. That was the tipping point.”
My mom scoffed. “Sure, babe. It was the whipped cream that did you in. Mmhm.”
Alana turned off the kitchen sink and whipped her head around to pierce me with an accusatory stare. “What did you do?”
“Uh… ate too much?” I looked around to see if anyone else understood what had come over her.
“I just had one of my feelings,” she said. “And I know you did something.”
I tried not to remember the casserole caper from earlier. My sister’s supposed mental telepathy powers were stronger if there were images in the brain she was attempting to breach. “I promise I ate too much food. Oh! And I also fed the leftover drumstick to Butterbean. Sorry.”
My parents gasped. Aunt Connie sighed with disappointment. “That’s how it starts.”
Dad pointed a finger at me. “You gave it to the dog? Y’know I would have eaten that tomorrow.”
I held back a laugh. “No. You would have said you were going to eat it, and then you would have seen Mom make a giant turkey sandwich with stuffing and cranberry sauce, and you would have asked her to make you one, leaving the poor drumstick to get repeatedly overlooked until it went off.”
Dad let out a resigned sigh. “It’s the only time of year you can get that sandwich.”
Aunt Connie sighed again. “Still. Giving a drumstick to the dog? Who raised you? Do you have any idea how much that drumstick cost?”
Mom, Dad, Alana, and I exchanged guilty glances, but no one had the guts to tell Aunt Connie Mom had gotten it for two dollars with her coupons. Aunt Connie and my mother had a years-long coupon war going on, and sometimes the savings were so good you just had to keep it to yourself to keep the peace. This was definitely one of those situations.
