Page 21 of Love Arranged

Me

Fix the car first thing in the morning?

Manny

Morning? I plan on heading to the shop now and getting started once it arrives.

My good deed is quickly spiraling into something else thanks to Manny’s ability to romanticize the mundane.

Me

That’s unnecessary.

Manny

Nonsense. Can you imagine what she’ll think about you if she wakes up to find out you already had her car fixed?

Doubt anything will change her opinion of me, but Manny isn’t aware of what happened between Lily and me. No one is.

Me

I’d rather we not find out.

Manny

Please. It’ll be part of my best man speech when you get married because of me.

Manny is both a romantic and a certified yapper—two qualities I’m uninterested in exposing myself to—but he is also thoroughly up to date on all the town gossip, so I’ve accepted his quirks in exchange for information.

Manny

For the record, my full name is Emanuel, so feel obliged to name your first kid after me.

I pocket my phone and ignore the way it vibrates from whatever ridiculous messages Manny is sending me right now about Lily.

During the charity softball game two weeks ago, he caughtme checking out Lily, but he didn’t say anything until after he saw us having a littlechatat Last Call after the game.

Should Manny decide to make a big deal about this, I’ll remind him and anyone else how I’m helping someone in need…even if that someone happens to be the woman I pushed away because falling in love with her isn’t an option.

I take a seat in front of the one-way mirror as Willow, my publicist, campaign manager, and unsolicited friend, sits beside me. We both watch as a campaign volunteer walks into a conference room full of townspeople. She asks the focus group to have a seat at the long table before she reviews today’s payment and the rules.

“Please feel free to be as honest as you’d like while answering the questions. Your paperwork will remain anonymous, and anything you say in this room will be kept private.”

The ten people fill out the paperwork full of questions. A woman I once politely turned down after she asked me out on a date looks up from her clipboard and clocks the one-way mirror, but thankfully she doesn’t say anything to the rest of the group.

Once an elderly man with a pocket protector and aviator reading glasses finishes his set of questions, the volunteer asks the first one.

“In your opinion, what are the three biggest problems facing Lake Wisteria today?”

A few people share similar responses: property taxes increasing,the growing class divide, a similar concern I have about a billionaire real estate developer named Julian Lopez turning older homes into summer houses for the new and more affluent residents.

I’m not surprised by everyone’s answers to the next set of questions, although I’m bothered by how they respond to the volunteer asking, “If you had to pick between Lorenzo Vittori and Trevor Ludlow, who do you think would do a better job protecting the town’s interests?”

It’s nearly a clean sweep in Trevor’s favor despite his family playing a significant role in all their concerns, and it makes me question what I’m doing wrong because I’m campaigning in their best interests.

Trevor Ludlow—like his father, who is retiring this election season—comes from a long line of town mayors, so his nepotistic connections run deep. Their family is a pillar in the community, while I’m still viewed as an outsider despite my Lake Wisteria birth certificate.

Maybe if people knew more about the man vying to replace his father, they’d reconsider, but that’s one of my biggest problems with this campaign. No one knows the truth about Trevor and what he cost my family, so they have no problem voting for him.