Page 4 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

The Goods and Provision store also had an apartment over the storefront. Currently, it was filled with everyone else’s junk. I could clean it out, make a space for myself. Would Mom be heartbroken if I did that?

I crossed off moving out and instead added:

Clean out apartment above store.

Cleaning out an apartment wasn’t as sexy as moving out on my own, but baby steps.

Speaking of sexy…

Have sex?

That would be nice. Really nice. But, considering my current dry spell, (see the boyfriend who dumped me) it was perhaps too far out of reach. Like trying to get to the moon on a paper airplane.

There just weren’t a whole lot of single, eligible men in town.

Well, there were some, but they were all McGraws or part time cowboys so…hard pass.

Outside, the wind blew and rattled the window.

Snow swirled around Main Street like we were in a toy globe.

I could see the Darryls, out there in the elements in their bright orange Carhartt jumpsuits.

Darryl Jones and Darryl Hernandez, a married couple who both worked for the township, were taking down the Christmas decorations hung up on the old cast iron street lights and town statues.

They didn’t abide by my January and February needing more lights, not fewer rule.

“Mrs. McCormick? You still doing all right?” I asked, worried about the silence.

“Fine!” she called out. “Bert’s got the reflux and I’m just trying to find something that can help him.”

I found her in the pharmacy section and handed her a bottle of our most popular antacids. “Start with that,” I said.

“Honestly, Harmony,” she said, squeezing my arm. “What would this town do without you?”

I laughed, like she was making a joke, but I knew she was serious.

She wasn’t exactly wrong. Yes, this town needed me, but I needed it back. For all its quirks and faults, I still loved it. I loved the people and the traditions, even if they might be in need of a medical miracle.

I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t Harmony Calloway of Last Hope Gulch.

Back at my desk, I looked down at my resolutions and put a line through drink more water. Too boring. I put a line through being nice to the McGraws. Too impossible.

Which left me with cleaning out the apartment and sex.

What was more attainable than sex?

More dates? The apps didn’t provide the best options, because in this part of the country, you needed a three hundred mile radius to get any hits, and the few times I’d tried it were all complete misses.

What if it didn’t have to be about guys and dating?

More fun.

Too vague. I crossed out more fun, and wrote:

Making out.

Making out like they did in the movies and in books. I wanted that hand on my cheek and that slow motion leaning into each other, that second of breath. Of hesitation. Will we or won’t we? Until finally, when we couldn’t stand the suspense anymore…contact.

Locked away in a place I rarely visited, was the memory of a kiss like that. A high school party, a dark pantry, and one of the hottest guys in school. It wasn’t fair that the best kiss of my life was with my nemesis.

A person who had not only forgotten the kiss entirely, but also thought I’d punched him in the face.

The jerk.

I should have punched him in the face.

He’d spent the rest of the year being teased for getting punched by one of the Calloway girls. And I spent the rest of that year (and sort of the rest of my life) trying to forget what kissing him had been like. My first C&C.

My ex-boyfriend had been an okay kisser. A solid six out of ten, a five out of ten when he got real excited, which, when I thought of it that way, seemed sad. But he’d been good at other things.

Like…science. And paperwork. The truth was, the guy knew his way around an Excel spreadsheet better than he did my body.

My love life was so sad.

I was going to reclaim kissing. I’d get back on the apps. I’d let my sisters set me up on blind dates. I’d flirt with tourists and some of the part-time cowboys. I’d even go on a date with Mrs. McCormick’s nephew in Cheyenne.

Yep. Forget cleaning the apartment upstairs – I’d found my New Year’s Resolution.

Making out.

I wrote it down on my paper, circled it, and then ripped the paper off the pad.

Normally, I’d walk it over to the potbelly stove to ceremonially burn it in fire, but Mrs. McCormick reappeared, and set ammonia, rat poison, a bunch of kale, and duct tape onto the desk along with the antacids I’d already set aside for her.

I dropped the list in my purse under the desk.

“That’s quite an assortment,” I said. I kind of wanted to take a picture. It looked like the shopping of a healthy serial killer.

The door to the store blew open. More cold wind, more Jenny barking and Bruce honking.

The two Darryls stepped into the store and shut the door behind them.

“Girls!” I shouted, trying to shush Jenny and Bruce.

“I have to ask, Harmony. What are you going to do with that goose?” Darryl J. asked as he pulled off his balaclava, making his bright red hair stand on end.

“Her name is Bruce and she’s mine now. Or I’m hers. I’m not sure who adopted whom.”

“Yeah, but that wing,” Darryl H. said, as he stuffed his balaclava in his back pocket and ran a hand over his tight braids. “Sooner or later, you gotta do something. A bird with only one wing is bad luck.”

“What?” I cried. “That’s not true, is it?”

“Ask my abuela,” Darryl H. said. “She had a goose with one wing and she lost at bingo for three straight weeks. She cooked up that goose and she started winning again.”

“Stop!” I cried, and covered Bruce’s ears with my hands. No one was cooking up Bruce. Not ever.

The front door slammed open again. Jenny jumped up and barked in the wrong direction. The goose flapped her wing and honked.

My younger sister, Bliss, stood in the doorway, without a coat, in a thin black t-shirt with a black thermal underneath it. “Did you hear?” she asked.

“Close the door, would you?” I said.

She closed the door. “Did you hear?”

“I haven’t heard anything,” I said. Which was strange. Usually Goods and Provisions was the epicenter of gossip. But some days, my sister’s bar, The Last Stand, beat me out. Today must be one of those days.

“What’s going on?” Mrs. McCormick asked.

“You’re never going to believe it,” Bliss said, her long red hair back in a ponytail.

She got Mom’s auburn hair that made her look like a movie star from the 40’s.

I got grandma’s hair which was carrot red, and I looked like Pippi Longstocking.

I often came out on the wrong side of the genetic lottery in our family.

“Did you walk over here without a coat?” I asked, distracted by how cold she must be.

“Yeah, because this gossip is so hot it kept me warm,” she said.

I laughed. “What’s the news?”

“Leroy McGraw died.”

“When?” I asked, the smile dropping from my face.

“This morning,” she said. “I just heard it from Mrs. Walker.” Mrs. Walker was the long-time housekeeper on the Swinging D.

“How?” I asked.

“Apparently, he had cancer,” Bliss said.

The Darryls and Mrs. McCormick gasped. Stunned, I leaned back against the counter. Jenny nosed my leg and I scratched her ear. Small comforts.

“You know,” Darryl J. said, leaning into the gossip. “I thought he was looking pretty worn out lately.”

“He lost a bunch of weight,” Mrs. McCormick agreed.

“You know what that means, don’t you?” Bliss came up to me, holding onto my arms. I could feel her cold hands through my sweater.

“Honestly,” I said, in a bit of a daze. “You should have a coat.”

“Will you focus?” she asked, shaking me. “You know what this means?”

It meant so much. It meant my mom could finally stop putting a hex on that man. It meant the city council would get some fresh blood. It meant there might be a thawing in this age-old stupid feud. It meant… oh shit.

“That’s right,” she said. Her big, green eyes wide with delight and worry. “Ethan McGraw is coming back to town.”