by Julia Kent
The rumble of a truck engine mercifully cuts through our conversation as a pickup backs into the space next to us. Two guys in red t-shirts climb out of the back, immediately dropping the gate and pulling heavy equipment onto the grass. I spot a basic festival canopy in a bag, much like ours, and then I see the logo.
Oh, no.
The passenger side of the pickup opens, the door swinging just as I realize who is about to climb out.
Fletch.
I grab the schematic for the festival from the stack of papers in front of Ani. Yep. There he is.
Haverly Fitness. Boring name, but it does the job. Haverly is two towns over, so I didn't expect him here. Never noticed him here before. How did I miss it? And his tent is right next to ours.
It's like the universe is conspiring to put us together.
Sending me more signs.
“Hey, Fletch!” Perky shouts, waving, as I struggle to process that.
Cringing, I turn away and shove more ice cream in my mouth.
Fletch waves back with a smile, all bulging muscles and swift, strong movement.
“I can't believe you turned him down,” Ani says with a sigh, straightening brochures on the table that are already perfectly neat.
“I didn't! I said maybe.”
“You didn't say yes,” Perky corrects me. “Might as well be a no.”
“It's not a no! It's just–”
They stare at me with too much focused attention.
“Also, I thought Habitat for Humanity was the table next to us! Where's Mrs. Kormatillo? They started coming last year and Mallory said she would try to man the table.”
“Quit deflecting,” Perky says in a sing-songy voice.
“OH. MAH. GAH!” screams a long-haired teenager a few tents away, her phone's chain jingling as she runs over to my table, gaze pinging between me and the guys setting up Fletch's gym's tent. “It's you two! Feisty Fighter and Hot Boxer!”
“Hot Boxer?” Fletch freezes as one of his guys says the words, the set of Fletch's shoulders making it clear he's prepared to be teased.
“FEISTY FIGHTER?” I scream, unable to control myself.
“Like, duh! From Insta!” Holding out her phone, she shows us pictures of the photo shoot.
I march over to Fletch and get in his face. “You told them to call me Feisty Fighter?”
“What?”
“Someone did!”
“Loads of people in town know your old nickname.”
“Did you tell them?”
Before he can answer, we're interrupted by half of the tail end of Gen Z.
“OMIGOD, you two are so hot when you fight!” another teen screeches, phone pointing at us, clearly recording, two of her friends joining her and whispering. Soon there are about ten girls between the ages of eleven and sixteen, all of them with long hair and phones that cost more than my used car.
Fletch goes back to setting up his canopy tent, three guys in red t-shirts snickering as they hold the other three posts of the frame.
“You're Feisty Fighter, aren't you?” one of the teens says, looking at our sign. “Oh! The Grounded Child! I went to preschool there.”
“Ashleigh, duh. I told you that's where Feisty Fighter worked.”
“I know, Bella, but you didn't put it all together! I just did!” She squints at me. “I must have been before your time.”
While they bicker, I fume at Fletch. In my peripheral vision, I see Perky shooting me weird looks.
Her energy feels... guilty.
“Like, can we get a selfie with you?” one of the teens asks Fletch, her hair flip a talent I'll never possess. How one puts so much volition and emotion into hair is beyond me.
“Sorry. I'm working, Miss.”
“Miss? Hah! Like, my name is Ashleigh,” she replies, giving him her best sultry grin.
Complete with metal mouth.
My heart melts. She can't be more than fifteen, bless her.
“Hi, Ashleigh. I'm not really doing selfies,” Fletch mumbles, stumbling through the awkwardness as if her age brings him down to a less sophisticated speech pattern.
“With her? Both of you?” Ashleigh begs. “I mean, it would be soooo cool to be the first of my friends to have a post on Insta. Not just a story–a real post! I'll put you in my feed.”
The uncertainty on Fletch's face makes it clear he has no idea what that means.
“Sure!” I say, gritting my teeth, my smile more the showing of fangs than friendliness as I give Fletch a look that says, She's just a kid. Come on.
“Okay, Ashleigh, but remember what your mom said when you came to my gym yesterday?” he responds, giving me back a frowny sigh that makes me see I'm the one who misunderstands.
“Like, I know. It's just social media.”
“And you don't stalk people.”
“I'm not stalking! I'm trying to become an influencer and this is how it works! My mom is so, ugh. So BOOMER!”
I reach for her shoulder and curl my left arm around it, Fletch suddenly to my right, hot and a little sweaty, his scent a mix of soap and salt that instantly transports me back to our kiss. His energy shifts, too, as Ashleigh angles her camera, taking pic after pic from above, my body softening against his hard lines, his hand on my waist gripping tighter.
No! No. This is the guy who told Michael and the sponsor about my nickname. I'm not letting my attraction to him matter.
And then it hits me, literally, the second he touches me.
When I am with him, I am Feisty.
I don't know how to be Fiona with Chris Fletcher.
Oh.
My.
God.
We're nearly thirty, two adults who are obviously attracted to each other. I've kissed the guy in a sweaty, hot pile of our bodies on a boxing gym floor, and he's asked me out on a date. Requested the honor of my presence so we can explore each other.
Emotionally and, it goes without saying – physically.
What am I doing?
Why am I letting some old sense of who I am get in the way of this new sense of who I could be?
Of who I could be with him?
Just then, as Ashleigh lets go and wanders off to find a shady spot under a tree where the sun's glare doesn't affect which filter she picks for her pic, Mallory's mom and dad appear.
“What a happy couple you two are!” Sharon says, beaming. “That tenth reunion last year was a godsend for you girls, wasn't it? Mallory and Will got together, then Will asked Parker to be in the wedding and Perky and Parker reunited. Now you and Fletch!”
I cough up half a lung and peel myself out of his grasp.
“Uh, no, Mrs. Monahan, Fiona and I aren't, uh… we're not–”
“I wouldn't date him if he was the last guy on Earth,” I joke.
Half joke.
Whatever.
“Hey!” he protests.
“What?”
“You kissed me,” he whispers in my ear, the words so light, it's like they didn't happen.
“So?”
“That counts for something.”
“What does it count for?”
“I wasn't the last guy on Earth when you kissed me.”
“Quit saying I kissed you. You kissed me!”
“It was a mutual kiss.”
“And your point is?”
“No one mutually kisses someone and then claims they wouldn't date them even if they were the one and only option.”
“It's an expression! A turn of phrase. I'm trying to be light here.”
“Am I really that bad? You use strong, emotional words when you talk about me.”
“Like what?”
“Hate. You said you hated me. Now you say you wouldn't date me if I were the last penis on the planet.”
“Hey! Language! We're at a preschool table!”
With dawning horror, I realize our voices are louder than when we started, and Sharon and Roy are watching us like we're a live reality television show.
Mal's mom
laughs, a loose, wise sound that feels sexy in a way I can't quite comprehend. “You two are definitely a couple.”
“No, ma'am, I said before that we're–”
She cuts off Fletch's argument.
“Anyone who can bicker like you two is a couple. You just don't know it yet.” Patting his cheek gently, she smiles, turning back to catch Roy's eye.
Except Roy's eye is on my rapidly melting pile of ice cream.
“Oh! Hesserman's is here with the ice cream truck.” Weaving his fingers through Sharon's, he takes her by the hand, leading the way to their own version of sugar bliss.
“Relationship goals,” Ani says with a sigh, watching them.
“Yeah,” Fletch agrees, looking straight at me, until one of his guys shouts, “Hey, HOT BOXER!”
And they all fall apart laughing.
“Gotta go set up,” he mutters as he leaves.
Ani's already done with her ice cream, eyeing my melting dish. She leans in and says in a low voice, “You know Fletch's other Insta hashtag?”
“Huh?”
“Ashleigh's right. You guys are #hotboxer and #feistyfighter, but Fletch is also #fletchisacatch.”
Before I can formulate a response to that, a very pregnant woman appears, hand in hand with a three-year-old, a big, curious smile on her face.
Time to charm the crowd.
Time to meet my future students.
And definitely time to forget what's happened these last two weeks and settle back into some normalcy.
“You're the teacher who beat up that attacker in the classroom!” Pregnant Mom says, covering her child's ears. “I love the Instagram photos with that hot boxer!”
So much for normalcy.
For the next two hours, I field questions from parents, most of them curious about what happened with Rico two weeks ago. Our signup sheet for prospects fills up fast, Ani changing it out for a new one every half hour or so. Compared to last year, foot traffic is definitely higher, which makes me wonder how many of these people are just #feistyfighter rubberneckers.
Meanwhile, Fletch's tent is hopping, for the same reason: Teens and tweens have seen the Insta campaign for the workout-wear company and they want to be Insta-famous.
“Fiona?” Fletch calls out. “We've got a church youth group that wants a picture with us. They say they're doing a scavenger hunt and need a selfie with someone famous.”
“I'm not famous!” My nervous laugh should speak for itself.
“FAMOUS FEISTY!” one of the kids screams, the rest laughing.
A spike plunges through my twelve-year-old heart. Fletch catches my eye and shrugs.
“Do it,” Ani whispers.
As I walk over to where Fletch stands, in the center of a group of kids, one of the girls shrieks.
“They’re kissing!” she says excitedly, pointing to her phone. “Look at your stories if you're following MPOWR2Q! Click on hashtag feistyfighter!”
Oh, no.
Michael released the pictures from when we kissed?
Fletch's arm goes around my shoulder as phone screens are passed around, my glimpses of the shot making me remember how it felt to have him on top of me, our breath hot and hard, his body hotter–
Harder.
“Hashtag a million for children's charity,” he mutters.
“Hashtag I hate all the attention.”
“Hashtag even from me?”
“New hashtag!” one of the girls says, looking at Fletch's arm around me, how he's whispering in my ear. “Change #fletchisacatch!”
“To what?” someone else calls out. In my peripheral vision, I see Perky appear, running over to be part of the drama.
“How about #fletchiscaught?” Perky mutters, audible to me but Fletch doesn't hear it.
He pulls me close, nose in my hair, and whispers, “You okay?”
I sigh, looking around the chaos, the clutter of Instagram groupies making it hard for families to get through.
And then I whisper, “Hashtag help.”
“You got it,” he says, surprising me. My words were a quiet joke, meant to riff on the hashtag theme, but he takes my hand, firm in his, and guides me through the throng of excited tweens and teens. We're moving and weaving between canopies, toward the Hesserman's VW ice cream bus, when we come to one of the police cars.
“Hey, Cap? Can we have a minute in the back?” he asks an officer, whose back is turned to us, but when he spins around, I see who it is.
Officer Capobeira gives me a skeptical look. “Is this some sex role play thing? Because your friend already asked.”
“Which friend?” I gasp.
Fletch snorts. “Who do you think?” He looks at the officer. “C'mon, Cap. She needs a place to hide from the crowd.”
“Sure, Fletch,” he says as Fletch grabs the back door handle and ushers me in.
I've never been in the back of a police car.
The cage thing freaks me out.
“Why are we here?”
“You think the teenie boppers will follow us? I wanted privacy.”
“There are six churches within five hundred feet. You could have taken me to one of them.”
“This was closer. And more private. No one will interrupt.”
“Interrupt what?”
If he were the kind of guy to alpha his way through an awkward moment, Chris Fletcher would kiss me right now.
If he were the kind of guy who took what he wanted, he would kiss me right now.
If seventeen years ago, he hadn't overridden my no, he would kiss me right now.
Instead, he's staring at me with a hunger that makes it damn clear he wants to kiss me right now – but won't.
“Interrupt giving you some peace from that crowd.”
“I'm working, Fletch. That's my table. This is our major recruitment event for new families.”
“Your preschool is the preschool in the area, Fiona. You don't need to recruit.”
“How do you think we're so popular? We have to do these events to keep the waitlist churning.”
“Are you seriously telling me that the video of you all over social media isn't sending tons of parents to your school?”
I pause. He's right. The air between us changes as I stop arguing, the backseat of the cop car a mixture of scents, some kind of vinyl and chemical odor mixing with aftershave and urine. It's not exactly sexy.
But Fletch is.
“Thank you,” I finally say in the same second he reaches for my hand. I startle, body moving half an inch off the seat, fire racing through my veins.
“For what?”
“For giving me a break from that madness.” We both look out the window to see the gaggle of Instagirls pestering Officer Capobeira, who is an impenetrable wall of condescension.
“Any time.”
He means it, doesn't he? I can feel it. The energy between us weaves like it's drawn to the warp and weft of a loom, begging to form something bigger, warmer, stronger.
“You know, I didn't choose this, either,” I whisper.
“Choose what?”
“This. Being some sort of crusader. Feisty Fighter, the preschool teacher who kicks ass. I didn't pick this, Fletch. I didn't pick my nickname in seventh grade, and I sure as hell didn't pick having Rico come into my class and do what he did.”
“No. Life threw all of that at you.”
“That's how you think about it? Life just 'threw' it at me?”
“Yeah.” He's uncertain. “How else do you look at it?”
“I – it's – But – ” All the arguments inside me pile on top of each other until I can't separate them anymore.
“You're right, Fiona. You didn't choose to have me try to kiss you all those years ago. You sure as hell didn't ask to have Rico attack you and try to steal Mattie. But when life tossed that at you, you acted.”
His words have the opposite effect.
I freeze.
“I'll go out there and deal with the crowd,” he says, patting my kn
ee in a comforting way that nevertheless makes my pulse race. “You take a break.”
Our eyes meet.
“I think you need one.”
Chapter 11
Having never been in a wedding before, every part of the dress fitting at Ahern's makes me feel like an alien scout, sent to Earth to gather information on these strange creatures. The energy in this fitting room–such a small-sounding name for such a huge space, where the bride comes out and promenades around a large, circular sofa with mirrors on every vertical surface–is filled with decades of emotion.
Most of it pure tension.
You would think that a wedding dress shop, of all places, would be filled with laughter and happy tears, joyous wistfulness and newfound love.
But no.
Will's older sister, Veronica, who is in the wedding, had a last-minute work meeting and couldn’t make it. I'm here, of course. Perky had to leave for Texas because of some issue with Parker. That leaves me, Raye, and... Hastings.
Yes–Hasty is here. Mallory's evil older sister.
Without Perky, I'm the lone filter, although Raye knows the scene pretty well. She's flown in with her wife, Sanni, for a separate family gathering of her own. The convergence is perfect, Mallory grinning as she hugs us all, even Hasty.
Who hugs her back with an earnestness that surprises me.
“We are four, then,” the wedding dress coordinator, Bettina, says to us in a sing-songy voice as she appears with a silver tray of what appears to be mimosas.
“Actually, five,” Mallory corrects her. “My mom, Sharon, is here.”
“Oh! Yes. I meant the actual bridal party. Mother of the bride is a category of her own!” Bettina has long, jet-black hair and high cheekbones, with blue eyes too perfect to be natural. If I were judgmental like Perky, I would note that her breasts defy physics and her wrap dress begs the question of how many ribs she had removed to make the difference between her waist and hips so tremendous.
But I'm not Perky. I don't judge.
And Bettina's smile is genuine.
Some people love the satisfaction of lining details up just so, of design that seems more like fate than art. Physical comfort isn't enough without aesthetic pleasure. Mallory's an interior designer and that's her goal–for people to feel like their environment is perfect in every detail, yet comfortable and casual to inhabit.
