On the Corner of Love and Hate Read online

  Touching the buttons on his shirt to draw attention to his chest—check.

  Shifting his hips to draw attention to his southern assets—check, check.

  Rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip to make you think about kissing—what?

  I sputtered and coughed unexpectedly, causing Nancy to slap me on the back. “Don’t die on me. Not here,” she teased.

  “I’m fine. Stop slapping me!” I laughed, but she got in one last strong pat on my back. “They’re eating this up now.”

  “Look at Kirby’s face. He’s so red, his head looks like it’s about to explode off of his shoulders.”

  I nodded. “They’re all focused on Cooper now. Kirby can’t get a word in edgewise.”

  “Agreed. He looks livid,” Nancy whispered, and pulled her phone from her purse to take a photo. “For posterity,” she explained when I glanced over.

  “You’re a trip. The dial’s definitely swung to Cooper’s side for now, but he should be walking around, shaking hands and chatting voters up. Not letting his fan club fawn all over him. This isn’t the time to pick up women.” I paused. “I can’t believe those words just came out of my mouth.”

  “Believe it,” Mrs. Rogers said, sliding out from where she’d been eavesdropping behind me. I froze. She’d been lurking—that was never good.

  “My husband will breathe new life into this town. Restore its values and put the focus back on Hope Lake, not on a beauty contest for the better-looking mayoral candidate. The last thing we need here is someone like Cooper Endicott running the show.” When she turned, the crowd swallowed her up.

  “Yeah, definitely not good, Nancy.”

  • • •

  THE HULLABALOO with Cooper and Kirby lasted only about twenty minutes. By the time my father stepped up to the microphone, people were growing tired of the scene. Mayor Dad acted as a bit of a closer—a way to get the focus back to where he wanted, and that meant on Cooper.

  He was dressed casually, passing up his usual suit for his favorite green Hope Lake Country Club polo shirt and tan slacks. His mayor belly, as my mother called it, bumped the podium, earning a giggle that reverberated through the crowd. In his left hand he carried his notes, which I’d copied onto index cards in large print for him the night before.

  “Welcome, my friends. Welcome. I’m proud to once again stand here today as your mayor.” He paused, pushing his glasses up his nose. I knew that tactic—he was getting emotional and needed to stall for time. He’d served as mayor for more than twenty-five years, and although he was looking forward to retirement, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t miss the job.

  He cleared his throat. “One of these two gentlemen will replace me as your mayor in a few short months, and while I’m sad for this journey to be ending, I’m eager to see what adventures lie ahead and, more important, what achievements and progress await Hope Lake in the future.” That was my line. I smiled at the cheers it received from the onlookers. “This is one of my last public engagements as the mayor of Hope Lake. That brings up a lot of feelings. Many of you will be sad to see me go; some of you, I know, will be applauding. But I hope more than anything that most of you will reflect upon my time as your mayor with fondness.” He paused abruptly, but this time it wasn’t because he was getting overly sentimental.

  Kirby had scoffed so loudly that nearly every head had turned in his direction—except my father’s. Over the years he had learned not to address people who drew attention to themselves. “Ignoring them frustrates them more,” he would say.

  “Clearly not everyone will bid me a fond farewell,” he joked, earning him a few chuckles from the crowd. “That being said, I hope that those of you who believe Hope Lake is moving forward in the right direction will turn out to vote. Whether for or against me, you know how much I have encouraged everyone to exercise their right.” He patted his stomach. “Even I can use a little more motivation by way of the exercise.” More chuckles, and a few people were even wiping tears.

  Whether you liked him or not, my father had devoted the better part of his life to public service. It was a sometimes thankless job in which he had gotten his fair, and unfair, share of grief, but he had always done it with a smile. Whoever won the election would have big shoes to fill.

  He continued on for a few more minutes, barely glancing down at the rest of the cards I had prepared. Then he delivered the pièce de résistance that I was very happy I’d added at the last minute: “Just remember, always vote for principle. Although you may vote alone, you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. John Quincy Adams said that, and I hope that come November, you’ll reflect back on your vote as being one based on your beliefs, values, and principles.”

  That, my friends, is how you throw shade without anyone being the wiser.

  With a small wave and a smile, he stepped away from the podium and disappeared into Borough Building, where I knew my mom was waiting.

  The crowd was dispersing. Nancy begged off to run into the office before heading back home. Kirby and his wife had slipped off after the scoffing incident, and Cooper—well, he was being Cooper, casually leaning against my favorite tree while he chatted up the reporter from Philly.

  With a couple of hours ahead of me, I took a deep breath and relaxed as much as I could. I was thrilled to see that my phone was alive thanks to the portable charger I’d brought. Checking it, I found it blinking with messages. If there was ever a case to reinstall a landline at my apartment, my mother would be it.

  Mom cell, Mom cell, parents’ house phone, Mom cell, Dad cell. Ah, trying to mix it up to see if I was ignoring just her or the both of them. If I didn’t call her back soon, she would be calling Nancy to track me down. Or worse, “popping in” to cheer me up after I’d been stood up. I’d sent her a quick text last night to let her know so she wouldn’t hound me. But usually when she “popped in” she brought lunch with her, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea, considering I hadn’t eaten yet.

  I sent her a text instead of calling. That was me chickening out from having to explain, in the greatest of detail, why last night’s no-show wouldn’t keep me from looking for Mr. Right. If I was a hopeless romantic princess in a fairy tale, my mother was the true-love-cures-all fairy godmother.

  Except she was bedazzled in animal print, not primary colors.

  ME: Mother.

  MOTHER: Oh, thank you Jesus. My baby is alive!

  ME: Mother, you’re being dramatic. You knew I was at the press event. I’ll bring a bottle of wine for dinner.

  MOTHER: Yum! Don’t judge, I didn’t see you with my own eyes.

  ME: Not AS dinner, FOR dinner. Red or white, what’s on the menu. And I know you saw me. I felt your eyes on me.

  MOTHER: Mannaggia, don’t say that. You might have the malocchio! We’ll get rid of it later.

  MOTHER: White. I’ve got a hankering for shrimp kabobs and don’t laugh, I was just lighting the holy candles to pray that you were OK! You know I have a couple in your father’s office.

  MOTHER: Cooper looked good, spoke well too. I watched him from the window. You know, behind him.

  Good Lord. She really was insufferable. That meant my father wouldn’t be joining us, because he wasn’t a fan of anything from the ocean. He must have kept his standing man date with his crew at the country club for their usual first-Saturday-of-the-month golf outing. Mom and I had a monthly dinner date, while Dad had beer, chitchat, and a friendly golf tournament with his buddies.

  She called it our girl time. I called it the one thing that kept my dad from going insane.

  ME: No candles needed. I’m fine. Stop staring at Cooper’s butt.

  MOTHER: YES! Girl’s Night PS it’s a nice butt.

  Is there a limit on how many emojis your mother can use in one text conversation? The answer is no, but there should be.

  I would need lots of wine for dinner. And dessert.

  ME: Goodie

  I wasn’t exactly eager to sit through an awkward di
nner while she dissected my carefully constructed dating profile before insisting that I should just let her set me up with a nice boy from town or church or . . . the where didn’t matter to her as long as he was nice and respectful and his whole world revolved around me. Tall order, but that’s what overprotective mothers like mine do.

  Broken heart? She called the boy’s mother.

  Girls being catty at school? You guessed it, a phone call to make amends.

  This was definitely not something that she could fix with a call.

  Her friends all had daughters who had either married and then moved or moved and then married, as well as a few who, like me, hadn’t moved or married and instead had chosen to focus on career. Her grandmotherly fertility clock wasn’t just ticking, it was looking like the atomic clock counting down to the apocalypse if she didn’t get a grandbaby to spoil soon.

  The woes of being an only child. It required being the center of her attention, even when I didn’t want to.

  7

  * * *

  After the photo shoot, I decided not to waste the day by stewing over Cooper’s potential troubles or his stupidity from his night in Barreton.

  Back in my apartment, I pulled on yoga pants, sneakers, and a denim shirt and threw my hair into a high pony that swished with each step I took. The weather was improving along with my mood. Whenever I had the option to walk or bike around town, I would take it, especially in unpredictable weather. But with my bike still at Notte’s, I would be hoofing it to get my usual Saturday errands done. Though lugging my dry cleaning down the stairs had me debating taking my car, the beautiful day won me over.

  I had started going through my to-do list on my now thankfully fully charged phone when it buzzed with a text from Cooper.

  JACKASS: Going to get your bike for you

  ME: No need. Will grab it later, thanks anyway.

  JACKASS: Already on the way to drop it off at your apartment

  ME: Not home

  JACKASS: . . .

  I found few things more annoying than five minutes of the elusive three dots, especially when waiting for a time-sensitive response. This sort of flub was how novice texters like my parents acted, not nearly-thirty-year-old men who knew the ins and outs of an iPhone.

  He’s probably preoccupied.

  Either way, I had to admit that the gesture was oddly kind of him. Also, one hundred percent out of character.

  He must need something.

  So instead of a call, I sent a follow-up text to thank him and tell him to just leave it in the office. Short and to the point—I had errands to run. I headed into the main part of town to drop off my dry cleaning first.

  Anytime I walked from my apartment into town, I marveled at how long it took to go such a short distance. Though it may have been only a few blocks, it took substantially longer than it should have, considering I would stop to chat with the owners at China Garden, Treasures Antiques Store, or just people on the street before actually getting to my destination. Instead of a ten-minute walk to the dry cleaners, it stretched to nearly thirty. When you were the mayor’s daughter, everyone wanted to say hi. And you had to say hi to everyone.

  As I navigated the litter strewn across the sidewalk, I realized that I really had slept through a crazy storm. Bins were upturned, branches were hanging from their trees by a thread, and a couple tables and chairs outside the café were tipped over. I stopped to pick up a plastic bottle that had blown out of a recycling container outside the dry cleaner’s. Lining up, I readied my stance to practice my foul shot when I heard another ding. From a bike bell.

  My bike bell.

  “You’re going to flatten my tires.” I scowled, taking the shot with the bottle in lieu of turning. I missed, sending the empty plastic clunking to the ground to rest in the well-manicured lawn in front of the shop. Turning, I found Cooper coming toward me with my bike.

  Correction, on my bike.

  “How did you know I was riding it?” He dismounted gracefully, walking the last few steps toward me. His hands were on the handlebars, his knuckles white with strain, but why? It was an adult tricycle, and he looked ridiculous pushing it. I wished I’d seen him when he was still riding it.

  “How did you know I was here?” I countered.

  He shrugged. “It’s Saturday. When you said you weren’t home, I figured you were out running errands.”

  I didn’t know how to process the fact that Cooper, who screwed up his own schedule on a weekly basis, knew mine.

  “Did you ride that all the way from the restaurant?”

  He nodded.

  “All the way through town?” I was fighting back a grin. Thinking about what people had seen cracked me up. Cooper was over six feet tall, and though he wasn’t supermuscular in the traditional sense, he wasn’t skinny as a rail, either. The sight must have been ridiculous.

  “I’m secure enough in my masculinity to ride an orange bike,” he boasted, puffing out his chest a bit.

  “Orange tricycle. With a white basket,” I corrected. “And a dainty bell.” I was mocked mercilessly by our mutual friend Nick, who thought a grown woman riding a tricycle was ridiculous, but he didn’t see the practicality of it. Hope Lake wasn’t a huge town by any stretch, at least not the populated part, and I wasn’t a “serious cyclist.” I didn’t care for the miles of rocky-terrain trails that lined our mountainside or the river tracks that the town had smoothed out the last few years. I just enjoyed riding slowly and enjoying the town’s scenery on wide, paved roads and sidewalks. Plus it was cute, and I looked adorable riding it.

  Cooper grinned. “I have to tell you, the basket comes in handy for buzzing around town. I see why you’re so fond of it.”

  “You know, the bike shop in Barreton has a green one just like it. If you win the election, I’ll buy it for you. That could be your mayoral hook. My father has his notoriously goofy golf cart with the wonky wheels that he rides around town in. You can have your equally dorky tricycle.”

  He grinned. “So you’re admitting it’s dorky.”

  I huffed protectively. “With you on it, yes.”

  Cooper leaned on the handlebars.

  My eyes fell to the sidewalk beside him, then to the trees and the leaves that would soon fall. They made for a great place to look so as not to focus on Cooper trying to be charming. That doesn’t work on me, I reminded myself.

  I focused on the basket that sat just behind his long legs. It was hooked between the back tires, just below the seat. It was wide, padded in an orange-and-white gingham print, and filled with the spoils from Cooper’s busy ride over.

  “How did you get all this in the short amount of time since you left the event?” I marveled. It appeared as though he’d hit every store on the way over. “And how are you getting it home? I don’t have a sidecar to stick you in,” I joked.

  “Funny. I’m waiting for—”

  Just then a loud silver pickup truck rolled up to the curb, rubbing its tires against it.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, stepping back as the window slid down to reveal a perpetually tanned, canary-grinning man. One of our best friends, just in time for his and Cooper’s weekend lunch date.

  Cooper isn’t the only one who knows schedules.

  “Morning, sunshine.” Nick Arthur, resident pain in my ass, grinned. Every town had a guy like him: a charming, affable goofball whom the majority of people found irresistible. Like Cooper, he was handed everything on a silver platter. Unlike Cooper, it wasn’t because of money, lineage, or the fact that his family was absurdly influential. Nick was just an endearingly agreeable guy, who just so happened to have teased me for years.

  He had been doing it since we were kids. Was he really a pain in my ass? No, not at all, but it was our shtick. Bickering and teasing made us us. Nick and I argued like siblings. Cooper and I argued like . . . well, not siblings.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Cooper shake his head but smile at the bike before setting it beside him. He waved to us, ho
lding up a finger to signal that we should give him a second before heading toward the café. He was smiling at a pair of women who were seated at a table in the fenced-off area near Viola’s Sweet Shop. I didn’t recognize them, but judging by the bags around their feet, they must have been shopping.

  They looked like they were mother and daughter. Both beautiful, blond, and slender. The one I assumed was the mother was tittering over something Cooper had said. Probably something about them being sisters. I’d heard that comment before.

  Having witnessed Cooper being an unrepentant ladies’ man over the years, I would have assumed that his supply of cheesy one-liners and pickup lines would have aged right along with him, but alas, it appeared that the same old routine he’d been working on since high school still worked. Still watching them, I saw the mother wave her daughter inside to pay the bill. The moment she left the table, the mother was typing her number into Cooper’s phone.

  Turning away from the show of shameless flirting, I asked Nick, “Free next week? I need to speak with you about some work.” Moving the conversation to business was always safe around Nick. “I have some ideas.”

  “There’s a surprise.” Nick chuckled, slapping his hand over the Arthur Landscape Architecture logo on his truck’s door. He slid a knowing look toward Cooper, who was nodding a slick good-bye to the woman. “There’s never been an idea that you haven’t had, Emma.”

  “Not true, I just haven’t yet found a way to keep you both from driving me insane. Where’s Henry?”

  Henry rounded out their trifecta for weekly lunch. As the quiet and generally most responsible one, he also happened to be my favorite of the three.