Page 99 of The Fall Classic

Then I flush hotter.

Because Logan puts his hand on my lower back, the pressure firm, like he’s thinking the same exact thing.

I want this.

And I want it with you.

“So, what can I get you?” I ask.

Rusty and Ash smile at me and place their order.

“Two vanilla Whip Smarts, please,” Ash says. “They’ve been all over my feed this morning.”

“What feed?” Chick Parkinson asks.

“It’s what the younguns call social media,” Chick Allen says.

“I have an alert for anything tagged in Sugar Maple,” Ash explains to me. “I do marketing for the town.”

As I back up and start helping Olivia make drinks, I notice that Logan is outside on a call.

Rusty hands Ash her drink first, and she’s nodding the second she tastes it. “Yum. Any chance you could add marshmallow syrup to this?”

“It’s more of a health drink,” Rusty says.

“Ew. Then why does it smell so good?”

I laugh and take the drink back, stir in a pump of marshmallow syrup, and hand it back.

Ash takes a long, slow drink. “Oh, that’s good. Y’all have got to start advertising this thing. A health drink that isn’t gross could almost convince me to be healthy.”

“Or it could at least let you eat more candy without feeling guilty about it,” Rusty says.

“I feel guilty eating anything but candy. I don’t want it to think I’m cheating.”

Rusty and the Chicks all laugh. They pay and say their goodbyes, and Olivia ducks out to the back of the truck to grab a fresh sleeve of cups from the storage bins, which leaves me alone in the truck with nothing but the hum of the compressor and the sudden quiet that comes from a rush ending.

The truck feels huge now that I’m alone. This is my first time working here with anyone else, and I’m afraid of how much harder it’ll be to work by myself after this. How much harder it’ll be to be alone. To be content with my lot and never let myself want more again.

Because my word, do I ever want it.

Logan’s leaving at three. I could drive to the airport in Augusta. I could rush and get there to the gate in time to see the look on his face when he turns and finds me standing there instead of three hundred miles away—the heartwarming, wish-fulfilling, climactic version of a goodbye that exists in books but not in real life.

Except it could.

I have a car. I know the roads. There’s nothing stopping me except me.

“Your phone’s vibrating,” Olivia says, returning from the back of the truck with the cups balanced against her hip.

I take my phone off the counter and see a text⁠—

Poof.

My idle fantasy vanishes faster than smoke in a tornado.

It’s my dad’s “Raymond’s Girls” chat.

Dad