“That was ‘Bet on Us’ by Brooke Holt here on the Heart of Harvest Ranch,” he said innocently, but Lucy didn’t trust him further than she could throw a cheesecake underwater. He was up to something. He gave her a playful smirk, talking all the while. “I never get tired of her debut song, though she just gets better and better, doesn’t she? Brooke’s summer tour will bring her to Charlottesville. July, I think?” His voice rose in question, and he nodded to the microphone sitting in front of Lucy. When she didn’t answer right away, he let the dead air sit between them.
Without thinking, Lucy clicked on the mic in front of her. “That’s right, Crew,” she said to fill the space, just as he’d known she would. He would always win a game of chicken between the two of them. “And you can win your tickets right here on 103.1.” She threw in the plug automatically, still eying Crew with distrust. He’d baited her, but for what?
“Speaking of summer plans—” He shot her a playful look, and she squirmed. “What says summer more than a good old nostalgic drive-in theater?”
She threw him a warning look, and he grinned even wider, not giving her a chance to pipe up.
“I have some great memories from our very own Starlight Theater: warm summer nights, my parents in the front seat happy, me and my brother jostling for the best seats only to fall asleep before the second film even started . . .” He let the memory drift on the air, no doubt connecting with many of his listeners. “There is nothing better than catching a double feature at the drive-in, is there? I don’t care if my streaming service has the same movie; nothing compares to watching it with friends and family under the stars. It’s communal and personal and . . . well—” His tone went from wistful to conversational. “I know I’m not the only one with good memories. Let’s hear yours. Phone lines are open.”
They weren’t, actually. The blinking had started before he finished his invitation, and he hadn’t even let her jump into the conversation before throwing it out to the audience.
Lucy felt a wave of nerves. What if the community didn’t agree? Drive-in theaters had had their heyday in the ’80s—okay for her parents’ generation—but did they have a place in today’s world?
Her heart thumped hard. She wasn’t ready for the rejection. Not yet.
A few months back, when she’d stumbled upon a podcast with an especially engaging motivational speaker, she’d started exploring the possibility of reopening the Starlight. Listening week after week with rapt attention, it had become her secret focus. Her research into the process of updating the drive-in had given her little hope of success, yet every time she tuned in to a Carter Hughes video, she felt her confidence built. He inspired her. She could do this big and scary thing. She had to.
She wanted to reopen the Starlight so badly, but it was difficult to take the leap. If the drive-in wasn’t the last connection she had to her parents, it would have been easier to risk losing it. But what was that quote Carter had mentioned in this week’s video? Something about a ship in harbor being safe. “‘But that is not what ships are for,’” he’d finished the quote. “If you have a dream, reach out and make it happen.”
She closed her eyes, picturing Carter with his dark hair that fell over his forehead, his celebrity-perfect looks and confidence, and leaned into it, borrowing his assurance and strength. What was the point of having the drive-in if she never did anything with it? What was the point of having dreams if she never pursued them? Her heart thumped in anticipation. Carter Hughes believed she could do this, and she believed in him.
2
Lucy braced herself for the first caller’s opinions about the Starlight Drive-In. Her heart couldn’t handle the crush if Harvest Ranch didn’t care about saving it. Though she might as well know what support to expect before investing the time, and especially the money, in getting it running again. Without the community patronage, she’d end up bankrupt within a couple of years, and if that happened, she would lose the one thing her parents had left her when they’d passed on. She just wasn’t sure she could do this live and on the air.
But Crew had already thrown the question over the radio waves. “103.1 WHHR. You’re on the air with the Morning Crew show,” he answered the call, automatically throwing in the identifying call letters and name of his show for ratings and recognition. “What are your thoughts about Harvest Ranch’s own Starlight Drive-In Theater?”
Nervous, Lucy clicked her pen a few times until Crew shot her an annoyed glare. Clenching her fist around the pen, she dropped her hands to her desk in front of her. He would answer the first one live, get more conversation going, and throw in a couple of songs while he answered the next few calls. This was not the program she’d planned out the day before, but if she weren’t the subject of it, she wouldn’t mind so much. Getting the listeners involved wasn’t a bad thing.
“You aren’t the only one with good memories of the Starlight.” Lucy heard Mike over her headphones. “My friends and I used to pile in—” He seemed to be trying to remember a number. “—more people than we had seat belts for.” The young farmer chuckled; the man probably had a million stories to tell.
“Careful Deputy Danny doesn’t hear you say that,” Crew warned teasingly. “I don’t know if there’s a statute of limitations.”
“On not wearing a seat belt or on having fun?” the caller teased back. “In that case, I don’t suppose he’d want to hear how we’d all cram into the back of my buddy’s pickup—”
“Whoa!” Crew pretended offense. “Just so we’re clear here, you’re not advocating reckless driving now, are you?” His fingers moved quickly across his keyboard, fast enough to indicate he wasn’t lazily clicking through social media. He had to be writing something. How did he do that? She couldn’t write and listen at the same time, let alone make comments that actually made sense.
Mike barked another guffaw. “Course not. And I’m sure we were all over sixteen.” The way he said it clearly indicated that he was stretching the truth. “We had a lot of good, clean fun as teenagers because of the Starlight. Let’s face it: Harvest Ranch is a great place to live, but sometimes there doesn’t seem to be much for teenagers to do in the evenings.”
If the rest of the callers were as positive as Mike was, maybe this idea wasn’t so far-fetched after all. Lucy was kind of shocked. Once the theater’s lights had been turned off for the last time, she figured that it was out of the community’s mind, other than the occasional complaint that the massive screens were an eyesore. She’d assumed it was all but forgotten by everyone but her.
“I had chicken pox the summer I was ten,” the next caller, Jim the pawn shop owner, was saying, “and I think I was driving my mother bonkers with my incessant pleading to get out of the house. The drive-in was the perfect escape, and the original Ghostbusters will always be one of my favorites because of it—though I get a little itchy whenever I watch it now.”
“Good point,” Crew answered. “Drive-ins are a perfect solution for anyone isolating due to illness—as long as you stay in your car.”
“I wish it was still open,” a decidedly young-sounding caller said next. “It sounds dope. It’d be legit if they did Throwback Thursdays, like with the movies my parents liked in the nineties.”
“Not a half-bad idea,” Crew mused. “I like it. Maybe themed weekends—”
“Like horror flicks for Halloween,” the teen jumped in, excited at Crew’s encouragement.
“Not slasher movies, though. Maybe Beetlejuice and Hocus Pocus?”
Lucy liked where Crew was steering this conversation, though she wasn’t planning on keeping the drive-in to movies only. Over the past few years, some drive-ins had used their facilities to hold concerts and other events.
“Or a John Wayne,” Crew suggested.
“Eh, maybe not that one,” the teenaged caller hedged, “but Harry Potter or Star Wars.”
“All good ideas.” Crew disconnected the caller but didn’t go to the next yet. “See, Harvest Ranch would benefit from re
opening the Starlight. The problem is, updating from film to digital—which isn’t an option; it’s a requirement—comes with a heftier price tag than any one person could shoulder. Unless you’re one of those billionaires my girl—” He stopped quickly and swallowed. “—my friend,” he quickly corrected, “is always reading about.” Crew pulled a face at Lucy.
Curious that he’d felt he needed to stop himself from saying “girlfriend.” It wasn’t like the whole town didn’t see the two of them together all the time. She grinned, recalling his recent rant about how there really weren’t that many single, handsome billionaires in the real world.
“WHHR. What do you think?” he asked. “Should Lucy reopen the Starlight or sell the land back to the city? Maybe she could find a developer, have a new subdivision built? She could make some good money.”
Crew was most assuredly baiting the next caller. Risky, considering he had no idea what they’d been about to say. Whatever their opinion had been, Lucy could almost one hundred percent guarantee they wouldn’t be for a new housing development that close to the fairgrounds.
“The community could help raise the money. It would be worth it to me,” the caller suggested. “Maybe a fundraising campaign?”
If Lucy wasn’t mistaken, it was Mrs. Dudley. The woman had a heart of gold—serving on most of the town’s committees for festivals and one of Lucy’s go-tos for the spring cleanup committee.
Crew was nodding his head, grinning at Lucy across the desk like that cat who swallowed the canary. “Excellent suggestion, ma’am. In fact, a few minutes ago, I posted a fundraising campaign on the station’s social media accounts.” He clicked his mouse. “Wouldn’t it be great if Harvest Ranch could reach the goal before summer? And because I love the idea of having the drive-in back—” He wiggled his fingers over the keyboard for half a second before clicking again. “—I’m going to be the first one to contrib—” He stopped in the middle of the word.
Not sure what had stopped him but blindsided by the announcement of a fundraising campaign, Lucy brought the computer in front of her to life and clicked the permanently open tab on the browser. Taking in the station’s main social media account, she knew immediately what had left Crew at a loss for words.
“Man, you are all so quick,” he said. “I just started this campaign—what, thirty seconds ago? And already we’ve got five hundred dollars raised. Humph,” he pouted. “So I won’t be first to donate, but I can match what’s there so far.”
Lucy swallowed, shocked that Crew would donate so much. It wasn’t like he was rolling in the dough as a small-town morning show announcer—at least not as far as she knew. She opened her eyes wide at him and shook her head almost imperceptibly. Deliberately, exaggeratedly, he pushed a button, and she saw the amount double in front of her eyes. He clicked another button, starting a commercial break.
“You didn’t—” With emotion threatening to choke her, she couldn’t finish what she was about to say.
“It’s a good thing I caught it when the amount was so low. Any higher and I wouldn’t have been able to look so gallant.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” she finally managed.
The door behind Crew opened, and in walked a petite woman with a strawberry-blond lob, the waves bouncing with each step. “Yes, he did. And I, for one, am glad I got my donation in first so he’d have to cough up more.” Carly laid a graceful hand on Crew’s blazer-clad shoulder and squeezed before she flopped into a seat next to him. She wheeled it closer to his side, so close he’d have to put his arm around her if he wanted to do anything on that side of the desk, but he didn’t seem to mind. “He owes you—or your father—for what he almost did.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “What did he do?”
Carly turned a playful glare on Crew and swatted his knee with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell her!”
“Almost being the key word here,” Crew defended himself.
She folded her arms and rolled her seat back a couple of inches, glowering at him. “Are you going to tell her, or should I?”
“Tell me what?” Though Lucy had no idea what Crew had supposedly done to her father, it couldn’t have been anything nefarious. Crew had grown up a noted jokester, but out of respect for their friendship—she’d assumed—his pranks had never reached the drive-in. She added her glare to Carly’s, the two of them on opposite sides, pinning Crew like an insect.
“Hey—” He lifted a hand to each of them, fending them off. “—it wasn’t me who almost burned down the drive-in. I was the one who saved it.” Though the way he shifted in his seat, there was some guilty weight on his shoulders.
“Burned down the—” Lucy couldn’t finish, couldn’t say the words out loud. She lifted an eyebrow, and Crew crumbled under her gaze.
“Fine. I’ll tell you.” He blew out a breath. “There might have been a slight—” He rubbed his forehead, obviously reaching for the right words. “—miscalculation during a certain drought year. A couple of guys who shall remain nameless were a little too into firecrackers that summer. One of them lit a large rocket the size requiring a launch holder, and threw it into the air, thinking he was strong enough to get it into the sky. Gravity, of course, did its thing, and the surprise blast of fireworks he’d planned to fly above the drive-in screen never happened. Instead, the rocket flipped, tip pointing down, and crashed a hundred feet away in the dried briars with flames shooting out the back of the rocket. You can pretty much guess what happened next.”
Having spent so much of her growing up years at the drive-in, Lucy had no trouble picturing the wild blackberry patch behind screen one, and her eyes went wide. How had she not known about this? Surely, her father would have noticed something. And rumors should have spread like a similar wildfire through their social circles.
“One of us—” Crew stopped and corrected himself. “One of the young men wanted to run. The other insisted they had to put it out. We—” He paused for a fraction of a second and gave up the ruse of anonymity. “—ran through the thorns, stomping on the fire, and luckily extinguished it.”
Crisis averted.
“Afterwards, we snuck back home,” Crew continued, “put on long pants, and tried to hide the whole thing from our parents.” He sighed. “Apparently, wearing jeans in the August heat was a dead giveaway.”
“They weren’t tipped off by the smell of smoke? That should have been more of a dead giveaway.”
“They told their families they’d been to a bonfire,” Carly said.
“You’re so lucky—” Lucy began.
“I know,” Crew said, not letting her tell him all the ways things could have gone worse.
“Which is why he owes the drive-in that generous donation.” Carly laid a hand on Crew’s arm.
Not really. No damage had actually occurred.
In what felt like a deliberate attempt to avoid Lucy’s gaze, Crew looked at his computer screen. He was right; the commercial break was over. Having a serious conversation during the show was nearly impossible. Lucy nodded, agreeing they were done.
He took up his microphone again. “We’re back with your Morning Crew, talking about the Starlight Drive-In. Talking with you, citizens of Harvest Ranch, we’ve decided to start a ‘Save the Starlight’ campaign which you can find links to on our social media page—”
This was getting too much. It felt all sorts of wrong—reeking of conflict of interest. Lucy had a microphone and full access in front of her, so she took it, breaking in on Crew’s comment. “I just have to say how blessed I am to live in this community! You all are so supportive . . . and—” She blinked back tears as she watched the donation amount increase. There was an astronomical amount to raise, but the spontaneous generosity of her neighbors did her heart good. “—generous. However, please do not feel pressure to donate. We might actually be jumping the gun a little. Until I have a chance to inspect the property, I have no idea if our little ice storm last night did enough damage to make savi
ng the drive-in impossible.” She closed her eyes with a silent prayer that she wasn’t too late.
“Nothing that couldn’t be added to the community cleanup, I’m sure,” Crew said, picking up where she’d drifted off. He clicked on to the caller. “Thank you for holding. We’re live on WHHR, and we want to know what you think. Adding the Starlight to the community cleanup shouldn’t be an issue, right?”
“As much a part of cleaning up the town as any other,” the caller agreed. “With all the downed tree limbs, we’ll have a lot to take care of, and since we’ll be cleaning up the fairgrounds anyway—” She paused as if a silent shrug. “I say we do it. And I wanted to say that I added my donation as well. Harvest Ranch needs our drive-in.”
Gratitude and guilt warred in Lucy’s chest. “Thank you, Stella.” As owner of Wicked Dough, the fancy pizza parlor in town, adding another inviting entertainment downtown would also benefit her own business, but she was genuine in her willingness to help. “I have to say, I’m struggling a little with all of this.” Lucy forced the emotion back so it would come across in her voice. “I don’t think it’s Harvest Ranch’s responsibility to get the drive-in up and running again.” She couldn’t let them take it on.
“But it is. That’s what community is for—to help each other. Besides,” Stella said with finality, “I want to. It is completely my pleasure.”
Crew thanked her and took the next call.
“We do have a great community.” The next caller’s skepticism was evident. A but was definitely coming. “But everyone’s always got so much going on. Spring is a busy time for our own properties—this is a ranching and farming community—and I barely have time to get my own chores done. How do we motivate people to come out and help?” She spoke quickly and then hung up before Crew had a chance to respond.
Lucy was grateful the question hadn’t been posed to her. She had no satisfactory answer. It was a question she’d been grappling with for weeks as the head of this year’s community cleanup committee.
While You Were Speaking: Spring Flings and Engagement Rings Page 2