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The party was at the edge of town, and the people of Strawberry Sands had been working for days. All of it had been headed up by Eleanor, Sally’s friend who had done such a great job on the first annual barn dance last Christmas.
That had been such a raging success that the town had decided to do something like that for the tourists who came every summer.
They hadn’t gotten organized in time to do it during the summer, so they decided to celebrate the end of summer.
They were expecting a huge turnout and were hoping to make a good bit of money off of it, enough to hopefully tide everyone over until the next tourist season.
Money might have been the first consideration, but the town wanted everyone to have a good time as well.
And they were pulling out all the stops. They had some big donations, and the decorations were fantastic. The food would be top-notch too, since Griff, who cooked at the diner and owned it with his wife, would be making most of it.
In fact, once Sally was done hanging these lights, she and Norma Jean had planned to stop in at the diner to taste his strawberry cream cheese cobbler. He’d already made three different versions of it, each one better than the last, and Sally could only imagine what this latest version tasted like. If there was any left when she got there.
And if Norma Jean didn’t break something when she was trying to fall off the ladder.
“Do you think this is a good idea?” Sally said as Norma Jean scurried up the ladder, the high-heeled sandals she wore making her wobble dangerously.
“Of course! He’s barely looked at me since the barn dance. I’ve got to do something to catch his attention.” She looked over the crowd, her eyes searching until they landed on Peter.
Sally opened her mouth, but Norma Jean hissed, “Be quiet! I don’t want him to know that we planned this. Not until later. Then I’ll tell him, and he’ll be amazed at the great lengths I’ll go to grab his attention. It will impress him, and we’ll tell that story to our great-great-grandchildren.”
Sally closed her mouth and held on to the ladder, praying Norma Jean didn’t hurt herself.
Also, she was thankful that people’s thoughts didn’t actually get written in a bubble above their head. If they did, Peter would probably be running in the opposite direction the second he realized that Norma Jean not only had them married but had them pegged as great-great-grandparents.
Sally didn’t know a whole lot about men, but she was pretty sure that would be enough to scare almost anyone off. Actually, if some man looked at her and thought about their grandchildren, it would scare her.
Regardless, Norma Jean seemed oblivious to that type of thing. Maybe it was because she was so focused on herself, Sally wasn’t sure, but they’d been friends since kindergarten, and Sally loved her, even if she wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with most of the time.
“All right. Get ready to catch me. I don’t actually want to get hurt,” Norma Jean hissed, and her voice must have been loud enough to carry to the unsuspecting Peter, since he turned his head and tilted it a little, a friendly smile on his face, only his eyes weren’t focused on Norma Jean. He was looking at Sally.
Peter was rather handsome, and she’d had a couple conversations with him. She definitely liked him and would have been interested in him herself, if it hadn’t been for Norma Jean.
Well, that and the fact that Peter owned a farm outside of Strawberry Sands, and Sally wasn’t exactly farm girl material. She was an accountant, and she loved her job. She’d quit her job in Chicago in order to care for her Aunt Wilma, but sitting inside, manipulating numbers, drooling over spreadsheets, and creating her own formulas was her idea of a good time.
Not looking at the back end of a cow and dodging the stuff that came out of it.
Of course, Norma Jean didn’t exactly seem like that kind of girl either, but that was none of Sally’s business. If Peter wanted to choose someone like Norma Jean as a wife, she supposed it would be his responsibility to train her in whatever duties she would be expected to perform on the farm.
Norma Jean probably hadn’t thought that far ahead, and Sally hadn’t wanted to say anything to destroy the castles that Norma Jean had built in the air, all around Peter. Reality would come crashing in soon enough.
“Peter! Oh, yoohoo, Peter!” Norma Jean’s shrill voice seemed to carry over the crowd and be amplified.
Peter’s friendly smile wobbled a bit as his eyes shifted from Sally up to Norma Jean. He grimaced as his eyes widened, and later, Sally apologized profusely to Norma Jean because she was so busy looking at the stubble on Peter’s jaw and the angled line of his nose that she forgot that she was supposed to have her arms out ready to catch her best friend as she fell off.
She only remembered as Norma Jean tumbled down on top of her, and they both fell to the ground. At least Sally did her job a little, by cushioning Norma Jean’s fall.
Unfortunately, she sprained her own ankle in the process, as sharp pain shot up her leg, and her eyes flashed red and black.
“Oh,” she groaned.
“You were supposed to catch me!” Norma Jean hissed at her before she turned to Peter with one arm held out. “Oh, Peter, could you please help me. I’m afraid I might have hurt myself,” she said, in a completely different tone than the one that she had just used on Sally.
In the meantime, Sally bit back another groan. She didn’t want to take Peter’s attention off Norma Jean and put it on her. Norma Jean would be furious with her, if Peter ended up helping Sally because Sally hadn’t been paying attention and allowed Norma Jean to fall and actually got hurt herself.
She could only imagine Norma Jean’s reaction to that.
So she swallowed the groan and winced as Norma Jean’s elbow dug into her ribs as she angled herself to reach out to Peter.
