Page 8

Chapter 8

Wyatt

I lose track of time as Moxie and I talk, but if I had to guess, about twenty minutes have gone by when Hannah pops her head around the door, and upon seeing us, pulls out a chair for herself.

Moxie explained the whole drunken logic for this dating fiasco. I'm a little hurt they didn’t tell me about it from the beginning, but I understand Hannah not wanting to get my hopes up. She knows me well, and I don’t have to do deep soul searching to admit that I'm a high-hopes kind of guy. I’ve been falling hard for Moxie since the moment I laid eyes on her, and her latest antics of teasingly letting me flounder with the horse story is no exception. The girl knows how to play and doesn’t give me a free pass on my shit, and I’m into it.

“I’m sorry, I got rid of them as quickly as I could,” Hannah says.

“It’s alright. It gave us some time to catch up,” I say.

“Oh good. What’d I miss?” Hannah asks.

“He knows we work together, obviously.” Moxie waves at the room around us. “And I told him about the pact.”

At that, Hannah’s eyes widen. Maybe she’d planned to own up to setting us up, but not that it was part of a pact. If it got me a shot with Moxie, the why of it doesn’t bother me.

“He’s basically up to speed. I, however, am not. Start talking, you two.” She slumps back in her chair, clearly considering her role in this. Hannah and I look at each other, each willing the other to take the lead. On the other side of the wall, there’s a roar of cheers when a popular line dance comes on. It’s so strange that we’re in our own little pod while outside this room the party rages on, our drama probably already forgotten.

Moxie taps an impatient foot. “Your parents hate each other,” she prompts.

“Our parents are the Montagues and the Capulets. The Hatfields and the McCoys. In our neighborhood, their feud is legendary,” Hannah says.

“Put them in a room together and they force everyone to start taking sides. I carefully time my visits to try and make sure I can slip into my parents' house without running into a member of a rival faction.”

“Why do they hate each other?” Moxie asks. Hannah scoffs and throws her hands up. With each word, my gut churns. It feels like I've jumped off a cliff, realized my harness is disconnected, and am scrambling to grab onto the rope before my chance with Moxie splats onto the canyon floor. Now that I know there wasn’t anything nefarious about this arrangement, I’m all in.

“Nobody seems to know. I don’t think they even remember. They’re just stubborn and have all decided to be enemies forever,” I say.

“The origins have been lost, but they’re constantly escalating with a never-ending barrage of pranks and targeted attacks via the HOA,” Hannah says.

“Well, that’s bound to get people heated. Nobody likes Homeowner Associations,” Moxie says.

“But neither is willing to concede the neighborhood to the other, so they still see each other constantly. They actually broke out tape and made a line on the carpet at Stitch ‘N Bitch.”

“You’re joking,” Moxie says, and her flat tone has my hackles up. I’m losing her. I have to salvage this, but all I can do is watch the train wreck continue.

“I wish. There was a brief hope a while back. I think they just got tired of fighting, and it fizzled out a bit. Wyatt and I grew up around each other and always thought the fight was ridiculous. We dated, and they...” Her wandering eyes search among the stacked chairs and folded tables for words before looking to me for help.

“Tolerated it,” I say. They managed to be cordial while we dated. It was a great respite, even if it was short lived.

“Yep,” Hannah agrees. “When we decided we were better as friends, we meant it.” She looks to me for confirmation and bites her lip, as if afraid her life has been a lie, and I'll say it was completely one-sided.

“Absolutely. We’re cool now, and we were cool then.”

“But they were looking for a reason to stay mad. Like without the drama, they didn’t know what to do. They convinced themselves that things had ended poorly, or that we’d only been in it to manipulate each other on our parents’ behalf all along,” Hannah says.

Moxie studies me, her bright eyes missing nothing, but there’s not a shred of truth to what our parents believed. I only dated Hannah out of genuine interest, but the spark between us was always more friendly than romantic.

“So, the whole thing went kaboom, and the feud came back stronger than ever. If they see me and Hannah anywhere near each other, they lose their damn minds,” I say. I don’t add that our relationship lasted longer than it probably should have because Hannah was a better friend to me than I deserved at a time when I became miserable to be around. That’s a story for another time.

“How’d you get them out of here?” Moxie asks.

“I told them the truth, that I had no idea he was going to be here. It took some convincing and distracting, but I sent them home with a promise to go over there tomorrow. My mom will put me to work with about a dozen half-finished crafty home renovation projects and hopefully forget about the whole incident.”

Moxie’s eyebrows fold in. I add it to the book of Moxie, my mental catalogue of all the looks on her beautifully expressive face.

“Alright, so your parents are a hot angsty mess, and you two are stuck in the middle of it. Sorry to sound unsympathetic, but I have to know. Were you trying to rope me into this, or am I collateral damage?”

I wish I knew her well enough to decode the meaning behind her question because there’s clearly more to it than the words on the surface.

Oh hell, I thought I was the one being played, but maybe Hannah was playing Moxie. She’s tough, but I swear I can see the cracks in her facade. Hannah better not break my potential girlfriend. I whip to face her with my full attention.

“I didn’t want you to be caught up in the drama. Some of my exes really suck beyond us being incompatible. Wyatt was someone who wasn’t a good match for me, but he’s a good guy, and I knew he’d be great with the right person. I genuinely set you two up because I thought you’d hit it off,” Hannah says.

I’d be more annoyed that I'm being talked about like I'm not here if she wasn’t being complimentary. I flash her a grateful smile.

“Okay... I’m sensing a ‘but,’” Moxie says. There’s a lot of tension in the room, and it’s strange with the music still thumping away at the party. I wish I could steal Moxie’s phone and text someone an emergency ice breaking drink order delivery to the storage room.

“But, I also didn’t think it would be terrible to do the whole two birds thing, minus the killing. I hate that expression. Why do we have to kill a bird? Totally barbaric, but you know what I mean,” Hannah says.

“What was the other bird, Hannah?” Moxie sounds like she’s trying very hard to be patient but is close to snapping. Whatever scenario she’s concocted in her head, it isn’t good. I subtly scoot closer to her in my chair. I’m not sure how casual of touchers we are, and I don’t want to spook her, but she seems like she could use some comforting. I awkwardly hold my hand out and she takes it.

“I hoped that since our breakup escalated things, if they could see Wyatt and me both happy with other people, maybe we could mend the rift. Solving that problem was one teensy part of the reason I picked him for you. You two had chemistry the moment you met, so I thought once you got to know each other, the sparks would be visible from a mile away. I thought my parents would have to understand he was no longer a ‘threat’ toward me, and his parents would see that I was just a blip. I also hoped maybe I'd get lucky and hit it off with one of your exes.”

“And so, a pact was born,” I say dramatically.

Moxie shakes her head and laughs. Point, me. Her lips press inward, and she’s for sure got her thinking face on. We sit in relative silence, aside from the muffled beats, while Hannah and I wait her out. Her fist taps on her bouncing knee, and then she lets go of my hand and stands up, pacing frantically about the room.

“I don’t do this whole... talking thing, but I like you two idiots even though I'm sort of pissed right now. I feel like I need to do the talking thing, so I'm going to, but then you’re going to forget I did, okay?”

“Of course,” Hannah says, as if that was the most normal thing to say. I bob my head.

“I’m not great at trusting people, I have some family drama that I am not going into right now, but it drove home the lesson to always be wary. This whole thing made my don’t-trust-them Spidey senses go berserk.”

“I know it seems bad but—”

Moxie holds up her hand silencing Hannah in mid-sentence. “I've lost trust in you, but I’m reluctant to just end this.” She wraps her arms around herself as she studies first me, then Hannah. “If I help you, and that’s a big if, no more of this shit. I need you to be completely honest with me.”

I’m itching to scream that I had no part in this, but her voice is shaking. This vulnerability is clearly hard for her. She doesn’t need me being defensive right now. She’ll figure it out later. Right now, she just needs support. I hold my hand up, thumb and pinky together. “Scout’s honor.”

“You would be a Boy Scout,” Moxie mutters.

“You know it, baby. I can make a fire from sticks in forty seconds flat. I’d prove it too, but I try not to. Forest fires and all that.” I’d be more than glad to show her my other Scouts-learned skills though. Tying knots has come in handy more than once, though usually not in the way the scouts intended.

We both look to Hannah. “Oh, right!” She fumbles to mimic my hand sign. “Me too. Not the Scout’s thing. I missed out on that one. I just like the cookies. But only honesty, I promise.”

“No half-truths either,” Moxie says. “It’s not enough to not lie. You didn’t really lie before; you just kept things from me. If you want me to help, I have to be all in.”

This, she seems to direct at Hannah, so I hope that means she isn’t mad at me.

“I know. It was shitty to keep it from you, but the whole thing is so ridiculous. I didn’t want to scare you away before you gave it a chance. But in the interest of total honesty, I need to add one more little, tiny, barely worth mentioning detail,” Hannah says.

My head drops in my hands. “Here we go.”

Hannah takes a deep breath. “My parents just told me tonight that they want to move in with me.”

Moxie doesn’t even know Hannah’s parents, but her face scrunches into a grimace like she’s bitten into a lemon.

Seeing this, Hannah points at her. “Yes, see? Big problem.”

“What happened?” I ask, already knowing it’s got my parents written all over it.

“The usual. They got into another spat over who knows what. She was still riled up from it when she saw you, so she said, ‘That’s it! I can’t take it anymore. That woman follows me everywhere I go. I can’t even get away from them at my own daughter’s family day.’” Hannah mimics her mother’s overly hysterical voice.

“You’ve really got the impression down,” I say.

“Thanks, I've been working on it. Then she went on about how your parents are getting a ‘fancy new hot tub that will have the whole neighborhood taking their side in everything.’ I could go on and share the hours of complaints my mom has about all this, but we’re at a party. As you can imagine, I’m now highly motivated to mend this feud, so I have to ask, are you still interested in helping?”

At that, Moxie looks to me, and suddenly I feel like I'm sitting on a shelf in some supermarket of bachelors. I straighten my tie and self-consciously shove my fist through my messy hair. While she scrutinizes me, I play back the conversation and don’t love what I'm hearing. Somehow what started as us dating has morphed into her helping with the parents' situation. While I'd like that resolved, that was not my objective at all.

“I have some conditions.” Yeah, that does not sound good.

“Name them,” Hannah says in a tone that conveys that her highness the supreme ruler of the casino customer service desk has been greatly pleased and is confident in her ability and willingness to present Lady Moxie with any boon she might request. Sir Wyatt would very much like a word because this whole thing has gone off the rails.

“They’re not yours to agree to,” Moxie answers, then meets my eyes.

I’m still a part of this conversation then, and that’s good at least. I think. “Hannah, can you give us a minute?”

She frowns but quickly catches herself and brings back her perky Hannah grin. “Sure thing. I’ll be just out there.”

She quickly pops her head back in, “Unless you want me to get some drinks or guard the door for a while.”

“Hannah!” I shout at her.

When the door clicks shut behind her, Moxie sighs. “I’m sorry. I feel like you got blamed for this, but as I was talking, I realized you did nothing wrong. You just showed up to take me on a date.

I scratch at my jaw and throw her a grin. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“I’ll work things out with Hannah, but I owe you an apology too. We didn’t want to get your hopes up. I was going to tell you first thing tonight when we met her here, and then she freaked out about her parents. I truly didn’t think we were up to anything nefarious. That’s not how I operate.”

“It’s all good. I didn’t get the vibe that you do. We cool?”

“Yeah. We’re good, but I think we should redefine some parameters. I agreed to this whole ex swap thing with Hannah because... fuck, I don’t know. It was a weird night.”

I consider this while she crinkles her nose, seemingly trying to work it out, and she puts Hannah’s chair back on the stack. I envy her having something to do with her hands. My whole body is itching to move. “Do you really not know?”

She sighs. “Maybe? I mean, part of it was... well, you know Hannah. She’s sweet, but she’s also convincing, and she was so sad. I just wanted to cheer her up.”

“I get that. But I'm sensing a ‘but.’”

“Yeah. You ever feel a little bit like you’re suffocating? Or you look around and wonder what the hell you’re doing with your life?”

I take the time to think about my answer. The echo of the crack of a bat cranking a home run threatens to drag those desperate feelings back to the surface, but that is the past. Now I get to run a business with my best friend, and that business lets me be active, get out in nature, and do all the fun things that I love. Honestly, my life is kind of a dream, but it’s a dream with a hole punched out where a life partner belongs. Do I ever feel suffocated? Honestly, no, but I have.

“Not lately. But I know what you’re talking about. I always felt trapped in school. In particular, the last few months of high school, after I lost my baseball scholarship, were a special kind of hell. Suffocating is one way of describing how I felt.”

“See? You get it. I came out here expecting something different. More. And I got in this rut doing the same thing, working the same job, and spending all my nights the same way, never even taking advantage of this incredible place we live. So, when Hannah insisted we trade dates, I agreed to her proposal because I needed to shake things up.”

“Not to brag, but we were featured in the Tipton Gazette’s Spring 2023 list of movers and shakers.”

“Impressive.” She laughs but then smooths her face into seriousness again. “This thing with the neighborhood. I want to help with this bananas situation you all have going on, so I'll put on a bit of a show for your families if you agree to take me on some adventures and help me out of my rut.”

My mind runs with all the incredible places I want to take her hiking, kayaking, and exploring... Colorado and each other. “I can do that. I can adventure the hell out of this place with you. This will be dating like you’ve never had before.”

She holds up her hand to stop me. “Hold on. I feel a little weird about exploring our feelings with an audience. For now, I think it’s best if we stick to friends, and just put on a show in the hopes it resolves that ridiculous feud. In the meantime, we can still have fun hanging out together. What do you think?”

My heart sinks. I thought we had a connection. I was ready to slap a label on us. I guess she’s ready for a label too; a nametag that reads “fake”. She speaks about feelings as if they can be turned off or ignored. Trying not to show just how much I'm crumbling on the inside, I offer her a weak smile.

“Sure. Okay. If that’s what you want.”

Her body relaxes, and I hadn’t realized just how tense she’d gotten while waiting for my answer. “It is.”

I’m not good at sitting still to begin with, and this conversation has been a lot. I need to move. I stand up and shake my body out. “Then it’s a plan. So, fake girlfriend, what do you say we head onto that dance floor and show these fools how to really bust a move?”

“I’m in,” she says.

We collect Hannah and some of their other colleagues and shake it on the dance floor. Later, we absolutely demolish people in games as I keep my heart together with two things:

One, Carpe diem-ing the heck out of the evening, living in the moment and having fun.

Two, clinging onto two little words: “For now.”