by Zoe Lee
His heart contracted like it was having a charley horse.
Maybe not.
Chapter 15
Daisy
The 4th of July was going to suck.
There was no way to sugarcoat it, even though Daisy tried… by eating donuts, popsicles, and a double scoop ice cream cone before the parade.
She had prepared herself, because it was the first big Maybelle thing she was doing since Dunk broke up with her, and she knew they’d see each other. So she had been a cliché, spending forever on her hair and makeup and finding just the right outfit to say I’m happy but not evil-gleeful.
Her family was in the parade, riding on the Hart Foundation float because her dad was on the board and her sister-in-law was a Hart. She sat on a folding chair next to Conor, busying herself with a running commentary on everyone, trying to keep him laughing so that she wouldn’t accidentally meet Dunk’s eyes. Or Aden’s or Chase’s or Jamie’s or Leda’s or Seth’s or Jesse’s or Tristan’s.
Gah, there are so many people I can’t meet eyes with anymore, she thought, harrumphing.
During the carnival after the parade, she worked at that booth where you shot a water gun into a clown’s open mouth, filling up the water balloon. Clowns were creepy, so she wasn’t able to just watch people play or it would give her nightmares. She had to face the crowds.
When she had asked Tyler to leave, he’d moved to New York almost immediately. Since she had been the one left in Maybelle—and looked like the kind of girl who was never trouble or made a mistake—everyone had been on her side. And staying close with Jamie, Tristan, and Tyler’s dad helped, of course. Everyone firmly believed Tyler was in the wrong. They didn’t know what he’d done, but they didn’t like it one bit.
But with Dunk, it was… different.
Dunk McCoy wasn’t easy to blame for leaving Princess Daisy.
He had been Maybelle’s football coach for eight seasons, getting the team to the semifinals three times and the championship once. Twenty of his players had gone on to play sports in college. He was the women’s sweetheart, their sugar-free treat, and they loved him fiercely, protectively, and without any shred of competitiveness among themselves over him.
So the good people of Maybelle just didn’t know what to do.
How could Princess Daisy, giant-eyed and adorable, have done something wrong? But how could Coach McCoy, hot and with the sunny, enthusiastic disposition of a golden retriever, have done something wrong? If no one did anything wrong, what the hell had happened?
So there Daisy was, valiantly keeping the open-mouthed clowns out of her sight while simultaneously trying not to meet the eyes of… anyone.
She couldn’t help but wonder if Dunk was having the same experience. Not the unable-to-meet-people’s-eyes thing, because that was frankly impossible to imagine, but watching people not know what to say.
Well, until Karen and Stephanie came up to chat.
There was nothing weird here. They’d already had a relationship post-mortem, complete with way too much wine and The Proposal, their longtime ritual after one of them went through a breakup.
Daisy had ugly cried about how this would never have happened to Sandra Bullock, and Karen and Stephanie had told her that Dunk was a weenie, the worst insult Karen could muster even while drunk. They’d been one glass of wine away from toilet papering his place, but the thought of getting caught by Shelly had ended that quickly.
“Hey, Daisy!” Karen chirped, then stopped dead and shuddered.
“Whoa,” Stephanie griped, “what the—holy shit, scary clowns!”
“That’s why I’m facing this way. I’m giving everyone prizes because I’m too freaked out to see if they win or loose, y’all,” Daisy confessed.
They all shuddered again and resolutely clumped together, easy since there was hardly any traffic by Daisy’s booth and no one else was there.
Karen sighed and touched Daisy’s shoulder. “You know, I really miss seeing you over at the arts and crafts section, Daisy,” she confessed.
Daisy looked longingly towards the booths set up for arts and crafts, where she’d always been a part of the Gilded Superstitions Gallery’s space. She’d always brought tons of air-dry clay and helped kids make bowls or animal statues, whatever they wanted, her works on display nearby.
“Me, too,” she agreed with a sigh. “But I wasn’t making enough money… even though one of the gallery owners is my sister-in-law!” she joked. “And now I get to wear blazers and match my belts to my earrings and invoice people.”
“Such a glamorous life,” Stephanie intoned seriously.
Karen shook her head abruptly and set her mouth in a mulish line. “But now that you have the glamorous job, you can do your art a little too, can’t you? Maybe not all the art fairs, but you can still make some things for the gallery, can’t you? Or update your Etsy page!”
“Yeah,” Stephanie jumped in enthusiastically. “I mean, didn’t you say the other day you got used to being busy all the time and now you’re bored?”
Daisy’s face scrunched up. Her first reaction was to deny, deny, deny.
But she really was a little bored. Of course she was so relieved that Conor was healing up so well, but going to wine and paint, working, hanging out with Stephanie and Karen, and sleeping wasn’t enough.
Especially now that she didn’t have tons of fun with Dunk.
“Hmph,” she finally huffed, still feeling mutinous at their completely supportive, enthusiastic suggestion, refusing to admit that she really did miss her art too.
“I’m taking that as an I’ll seriously consider it,” Stephanie said triumphantly.
“But—”
“Hey, Daisy.”
Daisy startled like a kitten sliding off the edge of a bed.
“H-Hi, Chase,” she said, her eyes flying wide open for so long without blinking, they dried out. “How’s it going? Did you want to play the game?” she asked idiotically.
Chase was appraising her coolly.
Her heart sank. She’d never thought that making the tough decision to look out for herself first, even if it meant accepting Dunk’s decision to break up without a fight, would cost her her budding friendships with Chase, Leda and Jesse. Silly her.
“I don’t want to play that game,” Chase finally replied.
“Do you know Stephanie and Karen? Y’all, this is Chase Cade.”
“Hello,” Chase said, offering them one of her intent smiles.
“Nice to meet you,” Stephanie said for both of them. “Are you enjoying the carnival? I thought your group usually went to the charity event?”
Chase blinked and then laughed a little. “Sometimes I still forget how well everyone knows everyone else here,” she said. “The others are at the lake, but I swung by here so that I could talk to Mayor Earl,” she explained with a dismissive wave before fixing her eyes back on Daisy. “But when I saw you, I wanted to come over and say hello. Since I haven’t seen you.”
“Yes, well, ah,” Daisy stammered.
“Dunk got you in the breakup,” Stephanie supplied.
Chase cut her eyes over to Stephanie and nodded once sharply.
Daisy knew Chase’s hourglass pinup girl body and style housed the fast, complex brain of a lawyer. So she prepared herself all over again, sensing an oncoming interrogation.
But all Chase did was reply, “I didn’t think there was any acrimony in the breakup, so I don’t see why it should stop us from being friends.”
“Acrimony?” Karen had to ask.
“Bad blood,” Chase clarified.
“Oh, no, no,” Daisy promised, shaking her head so quickly that her hair bounced off her cheeks like ricochets. But then her heart sank, thinking how easy it would be for Dunk to paint her as selfish. “Did… Dunk say it was acrimonious?”
Chase slid her hands into the pockets of her retro sundress and asked, without responding to the question, “So you don’t have any hard feelings?”
“No, I
understand why he—”
“So you wanted to break up too?”
Daisy reared back. She wanted to fire back that of course she hadn’t wanted to! She was head over heels for him. But he hadn’t been willing to see it from her perspective, or if he had, it hadn’t made him sympathetic enough to give her the space and time she’d asked for.
But she bit her tongue; most of her family was, after all, lawyers. They might not be fancy corporate lawyers like Chase, but they knew all the same verbal tricks. “It was a mutual decision,” she landed on after some thought.
“Mutual decisions only happen when people don’t really care about each other,” Chase declared, a fire in her eyes that dared Daisy to disagree.
And, oh, Daisy was the daughter and sisters of lawyers. She might not have gone to law school, but she knew a sneaky challenge when she heard one. Her small hands fisted on her waist and she jutted out her chin before she declared, “Or mutual decisions happen when people care too much!”
“Ah,” Chase sighed, “I see.”
Crap.
And that was why Daisy wasn’t a lawyer. She could only see one move ahead, not ten or twelve like Chase, her dad, Levi, and Shane did.
“Now, now,” Stephanie finally intervened, “the breakup is still fresh.”
At that, Chase’s shoulders curled in a tiny bit and she met Daisy’s eyes sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Daisy. Dunk won’t say what happened between you two, and it’s none of my business, but… I’m just confused because you two seemed so happy. I know neither of you would hurt each other.”
Daisy’s defensiveness slid away and she hugged Chase.
When their matching sets of generous breasts crashed together and then squished out like toothpaste exploding out of a tube, they both burst into helpless wails of laughter. Their arms could barely reach around the other, there was so much boob between them.
Stephanie muttered, “Y’all are a pair of show-offs. Not everyone can’t hug someone their own size because of their… embarrassment of riches.”
Chase started laughing again, then squinted one eye and told Stephanie, “I like you. You should give me your number so we can get coffee sometime.”
Handing over her cell for Chase to put in her contact information, Stephanie snickered at the big city opening move for friendship. “I’d much rather get some ice cream or a smoothie,” she said, “but definitely.”
“You, too, Karen,” Chase said authoritatively, making a give it here gesture with her hand for Karen’s cell. When she got it, she tapped away quickly while she said, “I better get going or Aden will get too grumpy to agree to come back over here and do the hammer thing to ring the bell.”
She winked conspiratorially at them all before strolling off, tossing back over one shoulder, “Later, Maybelles.”
“She is so cool,” Karen breathed in awe. “How come we never thought of Maybelles? I’m using that all of the time now. It’s official. I’m a Maybelle.”
“Nerd,” Stephanie laughed, shoving at Karen a little.
“Hey, Buttercup,” Shane called, coming up to the booth with Conor hobbling along behind him on his crutches, their friend Billy at the back. “Hey, Karen, hey, Stephanie,” he added, offering them his smirky smile.
“Gross,” Daisy muttered while her friends blushed a little and stammered their hellos to the three men, their shyness in full effect.
“Are y’all going to have a celebration at Daisy’s luxurious studio apartment tonight, now that she’s moved back in?” Shane asked.
Karen shook her head. “We’re just going to the diner,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” Stephanie muttered out of the side of her mouth to Daisy, “so we can convince you to show up at Dunk’s in only a raincoat.”
The men obviously heard because Shane and Conor grimaced, not wanting to hear anything about Daisy’s private life. “Please God, don’t ever say something like that ever again, Stephanie!” Shane practically wailed.
Daisy covered her face in her hands, slumping against one of the support beams on the booth, giggling helplessly. “All y’all need to get out of here before I die of embarrassment,” she mumbled.
The men left first—she figured they would’ve fled, if Conor were quicker with his crutches—and then she smacked Stephanie in the arm.
“Ouch!”
“Naked in a raincoat?” Daisy hissed.
“I’d do it,” Stephanie proclaimed.
Needing to derail Stephanie’s determined push that Daisy revisit the Dunk Debacle, Daisy blurted out, way louder than she intended, “Okay, fine, I’m going to start doing my pottery again!”
Both of her friends hopped and hugged her, squeezing her tight.
“Yay!” they screeched.
Once Daisy heard her own words aloud, she knew it wasn’t just something she’d thrown out there to change the subject. It was something that she wanted, something that she needed and missed. Maybe she’d never be like some of the other artists at Gilded Superstitions, who made their living through the gallery and art fairs, but she could still do it. She had started saving since she’d started at the firm, but she could figure out how much of her income she could responsibly put into her art instead.
Also, she had to admit there was merit to the idea of keeping busy to finish getting over Dunk. No way could she get under someone new to get over someone old. So she needed something else to help her keep busy, to fulfill her and remind her that she could keep standing on her own.
The right man would come along into her life when she was ready to be the right woman, right?
“Yeah,” she said decisively. “I’m going to do it.”
“We’re going to help!” Karen promised excitedly.
“This is going to be great,” Stephanie agreed.
Daisy sighed and hugged them tighter. “I love y’all.”
They bent their heads together and then bounced again, just like they’d been doing since they were little girls when they hatched a great plan.
“Okay, let me wrap up at this creepy clown booth and I’ll come meet y’all later,” she said, pushing them away by poking their butts.
“Let’s go to Archer Farm’s tent,” Stephanie suggested, linking arms with Karen and grinning at Daisy, “and stare at Maple Archer’s bubble butt.”
Snickering, Daisy started cleaning up the booth.
Her heart felt lighter and more clear than it had in so long, as if it had gone from a dank cellar to a glass aviary, fluttering like it was full of colorful birds singing their most joyous songs. It had been devastating to have things end with Dunk, but he hadn’t been the only good thing in her life. She had a wonderful family, the best friends, a steady job that didn’t overwork her, and she now had the time to take up her art again. Her heart was bursting with love and affection, and if she couldn’t pour it on Dunk, well, then she’d keep it for herself until someone was worthy of it.
Chapter 16
Daisy
The Maybelle Arts Center had been built as an annex to the Rec Center, offering theater camps, daycare, and art classes. When Daisy was a teenager, she had taken every art class in school she could, plus classes here—sketching, painting, photography, and ceramics. She’d made still lifes, landscapes, portraits, vases, and busts. She had worked in charcoal, chalk pastels, watercolors, and clay. The Arts Center and Bookworm’s Delight had been her two homes, where she let her imagination run wild.
After she graduated, Daisy had still lived at home, working in the registration office at the Arts Center in the mornings and using its classrooms and kiln to work on her art until late at night. Her sister-in-law had started displaying a few of her bowls and mugs at her gallery, and one of Daisy’s teachers let her assist at art fairs, showing her the ropes.
Her life had had a quiet, lovely rhythm. Daisy was sure now that it would’ve just flowed on like that, little waves of change, like moving out, happening naturally, if not for Tyler.
She had had a crush on him for yea
rs, since he was best friends with her brother Levi, but he didn’t pay her any mind until she was almost nineteen. Nineteen, wearing a dark pink top under jean overall shorts, her bare arms and thighs and neck streaked with flaking clay, she’d run into him in that shared parking lot between the Arts Center and the Rec.
Her things had gone flying, while his bag had fallen off his shoulder to the pavement with a heavy thud of shoes and climbing gear.
It was like fate, a moment without her brother around, and something had started to bloom that she’d been dreaming of for years. Her crush returned her interest, telling her he always loved being around her, that he felt at peace with her, and she told him that she felt alive with him.
All of it had been true, but it had changed her course.
It hadn’t seemed wrong at all to be Tyler’s safe haven, to be his champion when his mom pushed too hard. If Daisy had lost some focus with her work, if she’d worked fewer art fairs, then it was no matter; she was happy, and they didn’t need the money that badly. When it was over, when she asked him to go, he had fled, horrified to realize what her support of him had done to her.
She’d tried, for almost three years, to recapture her dreams. But living at Shane’s house, scraping by without a car and barely making any money overall from the art, felt demoralizing. Her pottery was all she loved to do, and people called it cute or said her bowls were perfect for their keys. Men still saw her as this fragile, innocent girl who’d gotten her heart broken by Tyler Houston, and her love life was more like awkward-first-date life.
That was when she’d gotten fed up, moved out of Shane’s, taken the job at the firm, and put aside childish dreams of being a full-time artist.