Page 34 of Small Town Sizzle

I want more of that. I want more of her. I want to be around her as much as I possibly can.

“What seems to be the problem?” she asks as she looks between Alex and Mason.

The two boys glance at each other and shrug.

Dang it, they’re about to give me up.

“We’re not sure if the fog machine is right for karaoke night,” I interject.

“It’s better for Halloween,” Alex adds.

“No, it adds mystique and drama to every performance. No one saw Mr. Befers’s tears during ‘Let it Go’ because of the fog machine,” Mason argues.

“Okay, that’s a fair point,” she giggles as she shakes her head.

“And there’s so much more I can do with it; there’s all these different settings,” Mason says.

He begins testing the machine in increasingly absurd ways. At one point, the fog rolls so thickly across the stage that Alex, trying to adjust the settings, disappears completely.

“This is fine,” Mason says, waving his hands through the fog. “Totally normal.”

“Did the fog machine come from you?” she asks me.

“Sort of,” I chuckle. “Mason asked to go through Mom’s Halloween decorations, and he came out with that and some of the light displays.”

“Oh, that tracks. Your mom loved to do the haunted house here.”

“She did?”

“Yes, it gave her great joy to scare the bejeezus out of people. Especially me.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “Ethan and I loved to try to scare her and Dad growing up. It never happened, but they loved to let us try.”

“That’s hilarious.” She smiles as a woman pulls her away.

“This is what this town needs,” the woman says as she dabs at her eyes. “A place for our kids to be kids. Thank you for making it happen, Maya.” She gestures toward the stage where a father and son had just performed a singing and dance number to an old Backstreet Boys song. “Those two struggle to not butt heads, and…they’ve been prepping for tonight, and it’s the first time they’ve really gotten along in a while.”

“Oh, Mrs. Garza, I love that.”

The woman hugs Maya tightly as she walks away to greet her family. Maya is grinning, fighting back tears as she stares back at the stage.

“It’s a pretty great thing you’ve done here,” I say.

“I didn’t do it alone.” She shrugs. “All of this was your mother’s dream. And honestly, Alex and Mason are God sends, and they usually enlist the football team to help.”

“They seem like pretty good kids.”

“They are. Alex looks up to Mason, and he’s taken him under his wing even though there’s an age difference.”

“That’s good to hear. His parents raised him well,” I say. “Are we going to see you perform tonight?”

She giggles and shakes her head. “Not a chance in hell. My shower is the only one who gets that privilege.”

Lucky shower.

“I get it,” I laugh.

She gets called away again, and I move about the building, networking the room. Maya is always in my line of sight, though. Something about her draws me to her every chance I get.