Chapter 19

Lucky had never flown before. She’d never even been to an airport.

Her heart belonged to driving—the longer the road trip the better. She’d had her rusty brown Toyota Corolla since she’d packed up and left home for college, very rarely ever looking back.

On the plane, she’d closed her eyes during takeoff and next thing she knew they were landing at an airport four states over.

Penny Place Amusement Park was owned and operated by Georgia’s uncle. He also graciously offered for them to stay in his guesthouse for free. However, when Georgia used the word Podunk to describe her tiny hometown, Springstop, she failed to mention that her family had the kind of money that owned property large enough to have a main house and a guesthouse, which itself was house-size—multiple bedrooms, a full-size kitchen, and two bathrooms. Not to mention the massive pool, giant treehouse, and barn with horses that resided in the space between the two homes. The weather was perfect blue skies above endless flatland, and the warm summer air carried the distinct scent of cows from somewhere nearby.

Maverick asked, “Your uncle wouldn’t happen to be interested in being an investor for a promising new production company, would he?”

Georgia laughed as she led them up the walkway to the guesthouse. They passed a hand-painted sign that read Horizon Cottage. “I already asked. Media isn’t his thing. But you can try my aunt. Fair warning, though, she’ll try to hit on you.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, don’t worry. My uncle will be cool with it. They’re s-w-i-n-g-e-r-s.”

“What’s swingers?” Rebel asked.

“You know she can spell and read. Come on.” Maverick stared Georgia down, who only smiled.

“Calm down, Super Dad. Little miss, that’s only for consenting adults so forget I said that, okay?”

“Okay.” Rebel shrugged.

A vein in Maverick’s forehead began pulsating. There was no way Rebel wouldn’t ask him about that later. Knowing him, he’d find an age-appropriate way to answer her curiosity.

Georgia continued to be unbothered. “I’m thinking Maverick and Rebel in the primary bedroom—the bed in there is huge, excellent for jumping. And me and Lucky together?”

The four of them were on their own. Chase would’ve joined but had already been put on the schedule to assist with filming a scripted production. Stephen and Xander gave their blessing and their money, respectively, but didn’t feel they needed to be on set. NQP had multiple arms and projects running at any given time and they’d already devoted so much to Hennessee House.

Lucky nodded.

“This way, roomie.”

Their room was big enough to comfortably fit two full-size beds. That shouldn’t have been shocking and yet, Lucky had to force herself to not comment on it.

Georgia lugged her suitcase onto the foldable rack and unzipped it. “How do you feel about bars? There’s a couple in town. I was thinking we could head over, check out the scene, get dinner and some drinks? Maverick’s not a bar kind of guy and has Rebel, which leaves you and me. Together again.”

“Oh, I’m honestly not really a bar person either. I don’t do well in large crowds and people asking why I’m wearing sunglasses indoors gets really old, really fast…”

Disappointment filled Georgia’s eyes as Lucky spoke.

“But you know what? To hell with it. Let’s go.” She had an entire weekend ahead of her to spend time with Maverick and Rebel—the actual reason why she wanted to stay behind.

“I knew I liked you. Are you going to wear that?” Georgia didn’t wait for an answer, pulling clothes out of her suitcase. “Do you want to borrow something of mine?”

“I think I want to shower first. Get the feel of airport off me and then I’ll decide.”

Decidemeaning letting Georgia have her way and squeezing into matching little black dresses.

“This is the only reliable way to stand out among the aggressive self-tanner, cowboy hats, and boots,” Georgia explained as she drove them downtown. “Minus tourists, almost everyone there will have practically grown up together. They expect outsiders to dress like this and make fun of them when it happens.”

“But you’re not an outsider.”

“True, but I left, which is an entirely different beast. You’re my way back in. They’ll be forced to talk to me because they’ll want to talk to you. A new hot girl in town will always be the great equalizer.”

Lucky snorted. “And here I thought you wanted to hang out because of my sparkling personality.”

“That too. We all have ulterior motives. Some people are simply more up-front about it than others. Like us.”

Lucky’s phone buzzed in her purse. She side-eyed Georgia before silencing it—unknown call. She never answered those on principle. “What do you think my motives are?”

“For tonight? I think you agreed to have dinner with me because you want to be friends.” Georgia grinned. “You’re weirder than I’d usually like, but I’m strangely into it.”

“Wow. Thanks.” The word weird felt like a weapon formed to be used specifically against Lucky. It followed her everywhere, beating and berating her until she internalized it. Okay, fine, so she was weird—why did that have to be seen as a bad thing?

“No, for real. I used to know this one girl, who was also weird, but in a bad way because she did it for attention. It wasn’t a part of her, you know what I mean? I thought she didn’t know how to fit in or something, so I tried to be nice to her,” she said. “Plot twist: she was just a huge bitch.”

The parking situation turned out to be awful. Georgia found a garage a good distance away from the restaurant she’d chosen after charitably deciding to skip the bar crawl. They walked over, passing other shops, pubs, and bars that were ignored in favor of going to Ditto Road—because her family also owned it.

“We get to eat for free and have as many drinks as we want,” Georgia said, waving her hand. “Stop looking so shocked.”

“You’re as bad as Xander.”

She shook her head with a serious look. “I may be small-town princess rich, but that philanthropic asshole is fucking loaded.”

At Ditto Road, they were seated right away by a hostess with reddened, sunburned skin and a teal ear-length bowl cut. Lucky immediately channeled her indecisiveness. From the scale tattoo on the inside of her wrist to the way her shoulders naturally sloped downward as if they were bowing from the pressure of dealing with too many choices—she was a Libra, left to her own devices for too long.

“She must be new,” Georgia whispered as she left with their drink order.

“Have you spotted anyone you know?”

“No one worth talking to.” Georgia glanced around the room. “Or worth a new introduction.”

Interesting. “Are you hoping to pick someone up?”

“Never hoping, no. My options are wide open if you know what I mean,” she said. “I have a feeling I’m going to meet my future spouse here or somewhere mundane like a bar or a grocery store. Don’t ask me why.”

“Aren’t you supposed to despise your hometown and all it represents? No one worthy of your time kind of vibe.”

“Why would I do that?” Georgia laughed.

“I don’t know. Sorry. I haven’t read you—that was my best uneducated guess.” She cleared her throat. “Sorry.”

Georgia gave her a funny look, but it didn’t last. “If I could’ve networked and got work experience from here, I never would’ve left. But I want to make movies—when Xander offered me a job as an intern I was on the next flight out of here, no questions asked. I thought I’d go the usual route by slogging it out as a PA to work my way up and writing my scripts whenever I could, but then I met Maverick. He started sharing some of his story ideas with me. They were so atmospheric and cerebral, but also viscerally heartfelt and sensual, all wrapped in an intriguingly horrifying bow. I knew immediately I wanted to be the one to interpret them visually.”

“He wants to make movies?”

“He wants to tell original stories. I want to adapt said stories. We work really well together. He gets me.” Georgia smiled. “He was the one who pushed me to lobby for a promotion to coproducer on BARD after I’d only been with them for a few months.” She playfully rolled her eyes. “He’s the worst. I hate him.”

“Yeah,” Lucky agreed, fully aboard the sarcasm train. “It’s kind of annoying how much he believes in people. How dare he.”

Georgia snorted, grinning now. “When he practiced pitching Shortcake to me, I immediately volunteered. If Stephen had said no, we would’ve found a way to do it ourselves. We’re planning to strike out on our own as partners.”

So, that was what Maverick meant when he asked if Georgia’s uncle wanted to invest in a new company. Lucky had thought he meant NQP.

Georgia continued, “For now, though, NQP is great. Rebel needs stability and health care, which Maverick gets from working there, and it still aligns with my current goals.” She continued talking about how she started filming makeup tutorials and school vlogs in high school. She was a self-taught editor, majored in film and TV in college, and transitioned to working full-time after interning at NQP.

Lucky asked, “Did you leave your videos up?”

She snorted. “Hell no. I privated everything after I got hired. I’m not trying to be judged by work I did as a teenager. Fortunately, my channel never took off. Those videos were for me. They’re cringy as hell, but I’m proud of them. They’re how I found myself.” The waitress returned, smiling and setting down their drinks with practiced hands before flitting away. Lucky checked her phone during the interruption—three missed calls, all from the unknown number. She raised her drink to toast. “To new opportunities.”

“New opportunities.” They clinked glasses. Lucky was in mid-drink when Georgia asked, “So how long have you and Maverick been fucking?”

Half of Lucky’s drink sprayed out of her mouth and the other went down the wrong pipe. She stared at Georgia in disbelief while gasping and forcefully coughing against the burn of her whiskey sour. “Why would you ask me that? Are you trying to kill me?”

“What? We all know you are. I just want to know when you started because I haven’t been able to figure it out. It’s been driving me up a wall.”

“You don’t know anything.” She continued coughing as she cleaned the table.

“I’ll get you another one.” Georgia gestured for the waitress’s attention and pointed to Lucky’s drink. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me. No need to be dramatic about it.”

“I’m not being dramatic. We’re…not. I don’t really date.” That seemed like the safer word.

“I wouldn’t have guessed that.” She eyed Lucky, a curious expression on her face as she sipped her martini. “But you’re obviously into each other. At first, I couldn’t tell if you were genuinely flirting or being overly friendly. I knew a girl like that once. Confused the hell out of everybody.”

“I, um, I see it more as me actively trying to be…charming. That doesn’t have anything to do with Maverick specifically. I want people to like me. I also want to get my way. The details of how that’s interpreted are for the devil, not me.”

“I see you”—she raised her glass in salute—“but no. That’s not what I mean. We had a team meeting before deciding to offer you a spot on Shortcake. Stephen put it in perspective for me: friendly with everyone, flirting with Maverick.”

“Uh, no?” If anything, it was the opposite. The first few days around Maverick she’d been a damn disaster. Skills she’d developed from years of reading and people-watching suddenly flew out of her brain like a murder of startled crows. Something about him consistently knocked her off her game.

“Uh, yeah.” Georgia laughed. “You’re different with him than you are with the rest of us.”

“Different?”

“You’re softer. More serious. You talk to him like you mean it, like if you had to lie to one hundred people in a row, you’d only get to ninety-nine if he was in line. That’s how you flirt for real—painfully earnest with your heart so far down your sleeve it’s almost in your hand.”

Lucky opened her mouth to object, but no words came out.

Georgia full-on witch-cackled, snapping her fingers. “Finally got you, bitch. I knew it.”

But Lucky still hadn’t recovered from the revelation. “Is that what’s happening?”

“Yes. I might not have ESP, but this is my lane. I can spot it from a mile away,” Georgia said. “Anyway, the only rule we have is no dating between employees and upper management. You two are good to go.”

“We’re not dating.”

“Well, when you are it’s fine. Super Dad is way too perfect and uptight. He needs someone like you to shake things up—what?! You look like you’re struggling to remember how to blink.”

Lucky focused on her drink, taking a hearty chug. She needed time! Lots of it! Slow was not dating! “We’re not dating.”

“Fine, you’re exclusive.” Georgia winked and grinned. “Same difference, babes. Get over it.”

There was nothing to get over. Lucky cleared the reluctance hurdle but got tripped up on nerves. She was nervous, which was perfectly okay.

But people like Georgia expected Lucky to move the same way, and at the same speed, as everyone else. She knew the expectations—at her big age, dating shouldn’t be a big deal. They rolled their eyes, gave pitying looks, hit her with the Girl, it’s not that serious. Except it was.

Lucky finished her drink, hoping to take the edge off.

“Do you want another one?”

“No, I’m good. I should stick to water now.”

“Suit yourself.” Georgia was on her second of what would probably be many.

“I know that’s not Georgia,” someone called out.

“Something tells me you’ve been spotted,” Lucky deadpanned.

Georgia smiled into her drink and then whispered, “Watch this.” She set her glass down and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Who’s asking?”

“You’re gonna act like you don’t recognize me?” A tall sunburned white man wearing a plaid shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots approached their table.

Lucky winced. Did no one in this town invest in sunscreen? She’d never experienced sunburn a day in her life, but it always looked so painful. Maybe they’d just gotten used to it.

“It’s not an act.” Georgia laughed, flirtatiously delicate.

He grinned. “You move away, leave us all behind, and suddenly you’re too good for us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Georgia chided. “I was too good for you while I was here.”

“I thought you didn’t know who I was.”

“I don’t.” Georgia shrugged. “Don’t be rude. Introduce yourself to my friend.”

He ran a hand through his thick dark brown hair, which had a healthy sheen to it. The color even matched his kind eyes and noticeably wispy eyelashes. “Excuse my bad manners, I’m Randall. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss…”

“Oh, I’m Lucky.”

His eyebrow quirked, eyes alight with sudden interest. “Is that right?”

“Oh my god,” Georgia complained. “Randall, you are shameless, and she’s taken. Go away.”

He winked at Lucky. “She hates not being the center of attention. Anytime you want to get under her skin, just ignore her.”

“Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know me.”

“She’s been like that her whole life. Since we were babies.” He laughed, leaning over to plant a kiss on Georgia’s forehead. She surprisingly let him do it, playfully rolling her eyes.

“How’s your mama? Is she here?”

He shook his head. “Me and Jake are on our way to Outpost. He’s the one who spotted you through the window.”

“And he didn’t come in? He’s always such a bastard.”

Lucky couldn’t use Georgia’s life story to understand her choices. Every second of her interaction with Randall felt like a delightful surprise because despite Georgia’s insistence, they did know each other. Very well. The way he softly gazed at her was filled with loyalty and affection—years and years’ worth of it. And she smiled at him as if she’d watched him hang the moon and was determined to appear unimpressed but was slowly losing the battle for the millionth time.

“Are we ready to order?” Their cheery waitress returned holding a small notepad.

“I’ll let you two get on with your dinner,” Randall said. “Call me before you leave town again.”

“No,” Georgia said sweetly. “Bye, stranger.”

Dinner arrived in three courses accompanied by a slew of drinks for Georgia. People continued approaching their table in a steady stream. Strangers wanting to shoot their shot. Old friends and acquaintances wanting to make plans to catch up. And never once did Georgia forget Lucky or pretend like she wasn’t there.