Page 3 of Fairground (Whitewood Creek Farm #3)

I jog up the steps to my sister’s house, one of those picture-perfect row homes that line the quaint town square—the kind of place where everything’s close enough to ditch your car and pretend like you don’t mind walking everywhere.

As soon as I step inside, the familiar creak of the door announcing me, I spot her in the living room, sitting like she’s been expecting me.

Laken’s perched on the couch, knee-deep in what must be her third mountain of laundry today, folding with the mechanical precision of someone who’s been a mom for a long time and knows what it’s like to constantly be multi-tasking.

Without even glancing up, she asks, “Where were you?”

No hello. Just straight to the interrogation. Classic Laken.

“Trying to find some decent coffee in this town,” I reply, closing the door behind me.

“And? Did you find it?”

“Tragically, no.”

She finally looks up, giving me a classic Laken eye roll, the kind only an older sister can truly master. Then she goes right back to folding like she’s performing eye surgery on the clothing, all clean cut lines and no wrinkles.

Another pant leg gets crossed, tucked, and added to the growing stack before she collapses backward into the couch cushion. She lets out a sigh and drapes an arm protectively over the laundry mound like it’s her third child.

“I don’t know why you’re so picky about coffee,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re not in Charlotte anymore. This is small-town America. You get what you get.”

“Yeah, well, small-town charm doesn’t exactly make up for bad coffee,” I mutter, kicking off my shoes.

She snorts a laugh. “Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you’ll learn to lower your standards.”

Touché, Laken. Touché. Probably good advice for me to take into everything in my life right now.

“Sit,” she commands. It’s not a question and I know despite how little I want to have this conversation; there's no fighting it when she has that older sister look in her eye. The last time I saw it was when she told me my college boyfriend was a total douche and going nowhere in life. She wasn’t wrong, I’m pretty sure he’s still ‘figuring things out,’ despite being out of school for six years now, but still, a lecture from her without any caffeine in my system sounds like a special kind of sisterly torture.

I take a very slow, dramatically tentative seat in the only other free chair in their small living room, completely avoiding the couch.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“We need to talk before I head into work.”

Ah here we go.

I brace myself for her to tell me how everything I’m doing is wrong and what she’d do differently to suck a little less.

Most times, it’s just easier to endure it than try to counter any of her points.

How I ever got into politics, where people talk just to hear their voices and rarely care if anyone’s listening, I have no idea.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always enjoyed working on the campaign and marketing side of things. Making persuasive content to encourage others to vote a certain way, demonstrating the difference my candidate can make in a citizen’s world, that's the kind of things I enjoy doing.

Not sitting and listening to lectures or defending my sometimes shitty decisions.

I zone out, staring out the bay windows of her living room at the leaves that are already orange on the large, oak tree in her backyard while I think about what the hell I’m going to do to pass my time while living here temporarily.

I can't imagine spending all my evenings with Laken and my nephews.

I mean, I love them, but I need to be doing something more with my free time.

Her voice fades in, catching on the last line.

“...the other day, Felix told me you came downstairs and into the kitchen to get their breakfast ready before school and you were dress in all black, muttering, ' ah, another day, another darkness. The horrors persist.' ”

I snort despite my sister's obvious displeasure over my comment. Fucking, Felix. Six years old and way too damn observant.

“I'd like to point out that I'm always wearing all black," I gesture to my black leggings and black long-sleeved athletic wear shirt I put on to go to the gym later. "And also, the horrors do persist.”

Laken rolls her eyes dramatically and lets out a huff. “You’ve been moping around for two weeks since you moved here, haven’t gone out and done anything fun. So, what, you lost your job? Plenty of people do every day. You’ve changed jobs like a dozen times over the last decade.”

Um, rude, only eight times.

"Find a new job that you can work while the boys are at school to keep you occupied," she continues.

"May I point out that I also clean your house, do the laundry and prepare dinner while they are at school," I try to interject.

She raises a brow that calls me on my shit. Yes, I do clean the house but I fucking hate doing the laundry which explains why there's a mound of it freshly folded at her hands sitting next to her on the couch.

"Okay, I'll start doing the laundry," I correct myself as she lets out another sigh.

"Yes, you do prepare dinner for the boys and keep the house clean, and trust me sis, I really do appreciate that and everything else you’re doing here.

I love having you living with us. You've been running the boys to school and their activities for the past two weeks now but why don’t you see this move as an opportunity for the next nine months instead of a curse like the way you’re acting?

Plus, I miss you. It’s like old times where we lived together growing up.

You just weren’t such a… storm cloud, back then. ”

“Wait, hold up,” I put my hands up, stopping her mid-conversation which was apparently the wrong move since she looks annoyed by it. “How did you know I lost my job?”

She rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t take me being an eye doctor to see that.”

“Okay… well… I have other prospects lined up.”

“You don’t.”

Ouch.

Rude.

But again, true.

“When I get home from this surgery in three hours, I want you to go out and try to make a friend. It's Saturday. You have the whole weekend to do it, starting tonight.”

“Make… a friend…” I say the words like I’m just learning sentence structure and proper punctuation because she can’t be serious right now.

Though it would be nice to have someone to hang out with when I “ clock out ” of my aunt shift with the kiddos around three o'clock in the afternoon every day, I don’t mind my current routine: walk to the gym in town, work out, get a smoothie from the smoothie bar, make it home in time for whatever dinner I've thrown in the crock-pot for the boys, shower, clean the house, then fall asleep in my bed while watching a Halloween movie or reading a smutty book.

Sure, it isn’t exactly exciting stuff for a twenty-eight year old single woman, but it’s me right now in the season of life that I’m in. It won’t always be this way, but I might as will really lean into it while I’m unemployed and living in this godforsaken town.

“Where do people even make friends at in this town? The graveyard?” I whisper, trying to make a joke but she just stares at me blankly, brown eyes blinking, completely unamused.

“You might be able to find a few friends there who can tolerate you,” she shoots back, and the corner of my lips twitch into a half-smile.

“There’s a new bar that just opened,” she continues, her tone breezy.

“It’s walking distance from here. One of the most well-known families in Whitewood Creek expanded their successful Charlotte brewery and restaurant to their hometown. ”

I sit up, finally interested because a strong drink is exactly what I could use right now. “They had a bar in Charlotte and decided to open one here ? Why would anyone do that?”

She rolls her eyes, the quintessential older sister move.

“Because they live here, genius. They’re based here.

They have an egg farm—it’s this whole sustainable, GMO-free thing I don’t really get—but they also have a distillery on their property too.

They make their own beer and whiskey. The bar is all decked out for Halloween—ghosts, bats, witches, tombstones, death.

You know, all things that remind me of you. ”

Interesting... and rude again, but I'll take it.

“Anyway,” she says, ignoring my smile, “go there tonight. Grab a drink at the bar by yourself. Maybe you’ll make a friend or, I don’t know, charm someone into tolerating a conversation with you for an hour. Then walk home by midnight so I don’t have to freak out about you getting murdered.”

“Wasn’t this voted the safest town in North Carolina?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, but with you on the loose, I’m worried it’s about to lose that title,” she quips as she stands up and pats me on the head like I’m a misbehaving toddler.

I swat her hand away, and she smooths down her scrubs, already shifting into surgery mode as she heads for the door. “Thanks for putting the laundry away,” she calls over her shoulder.

I let out a loud snort.

"I’ll see you in a couple of hours and you better be dressed to make a friend.”

And with that, she’s gone, leaving me with nothing but my thoughts, a passive aggressive insult, and the not-so-subtle suggestion that I should try to get a life while I'm stuck here living this one.