“Whatever you say,” Reagan said. “How’s it going, listening to him kissing other women for hours?”
“We’re not here to talk about me. We’re comforting Ava,” I said quickly.
Ava barked a short laugh. “Come on, you can make me feel better. How bad is it?”
I groaned, slumping forward. “It’s not even the kissing. It’s the who. Lindsay Rinna was front and freakin’ center, ready to pucker her ass-lips up to kiss him.”
Both of their faces scrunched up. We’d all been on the receiving end of Lindsay’s wrath in high school.
“He’s not interested in her,” Reagan said. “Nobody with a brain cell is.”
Even Ava shook her head. “There’s no way. She’s too high maintenance for him. Preston is too chill to deal with her dramas.”
“I don’t care.” I plucked a leaf off the table and dropped it onto the ground.
“You care.”
“Only because it’s Lindsay.”
“Some things don’t change.” Reagan sighed and propped her chin on her hands. “What are y’all doing today?”
“Kissing people,” I muttered.
Ava slid me a look. “I have nothing to do. I had plans with Butler, but…” She shrugged. “Leo isn’t in town until tomorrow. His plane got delayed out of Detroit—something to do with thunderstorms or some crap.”
Reagan looked at me. “How long are you at the booth today?”
I smacked my lips together. “Twelve ‘til three, then four-thirty ‘til seven, then seven-thirty ‘til nine-thirty.”
Ava shuddered.
“That’s a lot of kissing. Or listening to kissing.” Reagan waggled her eyebrows.
I blinked at her, then finished my coffee. “I don’t have to listen to this. I’m going to find someone who won’t piss me off before I have to deal with other people.”
“Good luck!” Reagan called as I got up and threw my cup in the nearest trash can. “We’ll come kiss you later!”
I flipped her the bird over my shoulder and left them both laughing their asses off at me.
I was charging their asses ten dollars a kiss.
CHAPTER EIGHT
* * *
PRESTON
Pretzels Are For Winners
I slipped into the tent from the side, avoiding the line that was already forming outside the front of the booth. There was still thirty minutes until the booth opened, but I already had a fucking fanbase out there waiting.
Once again, I was asking myself why the hell I’d agreed to this.
I should have guessed that I would be in trouble. That there’d be a long line of admirers outside, waiting to kiss me and seduce me into marrying them.
The joke was on them. I wasn’t interested in marriage—at least not to the kind of girls who wanted to marry me.
I knew this town. I was born and raised here, and that meant I was well acquainted with every single nook and cranny, every alley and shortcut, and every dirty little secret.
The biggest dirty little secret wasn’t a secret at all—it was that money talked. And money was hot. And people wanted to marry money.
That meant that I was a sitting duck for everyone in my generation who wasn’t already married or engaged.
I was young, I was handsome, and I came from a family that had money—hard-earned money.
It also meant I never got a break.
Reagan didn’t get shit like this. Neither did Halley. Given that Reagan was my sister and Halley’s dad was the mayor and had money in his own right, they should get the same treatment that I did.
But they didn’t.
That was probably the fact they weren’t anywhere near as charming as I was. They were more liable to eating you alive and spitting you back out in a near-dead state than anything else.
Now, I loved my sister, but if she weren’t my sister, I wouldn’t date her. She was hard work.
As for Halley…
I didn’t want to talk about Halley. The last thing I needed was to get a boner before I had to sit on that stupid fucking stool and kiss a bunch of people. There’d been more than enough ‘accidental’ swipes of a hand across my lap last night.
The only hand I wanted near my dick was my own.
And maybe Halley’s.
But that was a story for another day—or another shower.
Shit.
I rubbed my hands down my face and looked around the tent. It was still eerily calm in here, despite the people who were outside and making a ton of noise.
It was a weird place to be.
I sat on the stool on my side of the booth. It smelled awful in here—like dust and history and, well, mothballs. How the hell did Halley handle this every year?
Shit, I knew.
It was because she was a good person. An inherently good person who wanted the best for everyone else, and she’d put herself through hell and sitting in a musky tent if it meant giving other people a better life.
Maybe I had her on a pedestal. Maybe I held Halley Dawson to a really high standard, and she wasn’t actually that perfect, but I doubted it.
She’d never been anything other than a sickeningly nice person for as long as I’d known her.
Which, if you asked my dick, was far too long.
I blew out a long breath and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I clasped my hands in front of me and looked around. It was almost a quarter to twelve now, and Halley still wasn’t here.
It wasn’t like her at all.
This might have been my first year in the booth, but if there was one thing I knew about Halley, it was that this booth was her baby. She was never ever late.
She was too early, in fact. A bit like a teenage boy losing his virginity.
It was a little scary that she wasn’t here.
Mostly because I was thinking about her far too much for someone who wasn’t directly in front of me.
I also had absolutely no business thinking about her. She was my sister’s best friend, for the love of God. I needed the rest of me to get that damn memo, though, because it was seriously lagging right now.
My attraction to the feisty blonde librarian was a moot point. She and I could not and would not ever be together. We were like chalk and cheese, and I was ninety percent sure she didn’t even like me as a person.
There was no chance of kissing her, let alone anything else.
I was okay with that. Even though Halley was just about the only person I would entertain dating right now—
Wait, shit, no, that wasn’t right.
Someone like her.
Or maybe Halley herself, if it meant I got to pull back the layers of her life and find out what was wrong with her.
Something had to be wrong with her.
I fucking stood by that. Nobody, ever, could be as perfect as she appeared to be.
The curtain swung open, and Halley stormed in. Her hair flew around her head, framing it like a lion’s mane, and she shoved the curtain shut behind her with a shout of, “Shut your mouth, Lindsay!”
My lips tugged to one side. Ah. My friend Lindsay was outside again. I wasn’t surprised about that—when she’d come in here to kiss me last night, she’d whispered something in my ear that would have made a room full of gigolos blush.