Page 22 of The Summer I Destroyed You

Nothing like a crack at Sandra’s age to get everyone’s day off to a good start. And maybe it’s time she realized that when she hits, I can hit back.

Over breakfast at a restaurant that isn’t the diner—thus avoiding a run-in with Paul Bellamy—the mayor tells me which town council members are not on board with my plan and what they’re objecting to. One of them doesn’t like the idea of an outside firm owning so much of Elliott Springs because we won’t place the town’s interests first; another thinks we’re going to run the existing stores out of business. They are correct on both counts.

The mayor is not especially subtle about what he wants—population growth, a park in his name, or perhaps new administrative offices for the town. He also suggests that he’d ask for something else from me if he was ten years younger, and I smile as if I’m entertaining the idea while thinking that if he were ten years younger, he’d still be forty years too old for me.

I call Stella from the car. “I need a parcel of land somewhere in Elliott Springs that we can snatch up for a park, and a blueprint for the park. Oh, and come up with a name for it that has Joe Latham in the title.”

I slide into a spot near the theater and climb out of the car. “And the purchase of the land has to be contingent on the town council’s agreement to let us build the Homes of Lucas Hall. I’m not building the mayor his fucking park just because he’s a nice guy. Also, he’s not a nice guy. I’m pretty sure he hit on me today and he was born before women had the vote.”

“That would make him well over a hundred years old, and since the last gift you had me get him was a pair of Beats, I doubt that’s true.”

“Even centenarians like—”

“Smile, sweetheart,” says a guy sitting on the hood of a truck outside the theater.

Stella laughs. “Oh, boy.”

“I need to go,” I tell her as I end the call and turn toward him. “What was that?”

“Smile,” he repeats, brushing something off his construction vest. “You’re a pretty girl; it’s a sunny day. Wouldn’t kill you to smile.”

I look around us—at all the people with their heads down, staring at their phones as they walk by. At this fucking asshole telling me to smile, though he himself isn’t smiling.

I’m supposed to smile because young women, especially pretty women, are considered adornment, and powerless adornment at that. Because guys like this fucking asshole right here want to remind you that you’re a pretty face, here for their amusement. That you should rearrange your fucking mood and temperament if a man’s requested you do so, even if you were in the middle of a work call and he’s sitting there like an asshole doing absolutely nothing.

“Hey, you want to make five hundred dollars real quick?” I ask.

He sets down his sandwich next to his hard hat and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. He’s wary, but not so wary that he’s going to turn down five hundred dollars. “I mean, it depends on what you need me to do. And I gotta be back at work in ten minutes.”

“Nothing illegal and it’ll take two seconds,” I tell him with my sweetest smile. “Though out of curiosity, what won’t you do?”

His grin turns positively feral. His eyes dart to my crotch, as if that’s the area in need of his help. Yeah, buddy, you wish. “If it’s not illegal and takes two seconds, I’ll do anything you want.”

“Excellent,” I reply with a smile. “All I want is for you to say ‘smile, sweetheart’ to someone walking down the street.” I nod toward the bear of a man walking our way—the one with biceps twice the size of my thighs and what appears to be a Harley-Davidson tattoo on his neck. “Him. And you can’t tell him I made you ask. If he asks you to repeat yourself, you stand by your guns. You tell him he’s pretty—you can even go with ‘attractive’ if that’s more comfortable—and that it wouldn’t kill him to smile. Deal?”

His face shutters. He picks up his sandwich again. “Nah.”

“Oh? Why not? Is it because telling someone else to smile is a way to assert dominance? Is it because it’s inherently disrespectful to tell a complete stranger how they should feel or project themselves in the world and that guy might kick your ass?”

“Fuck you, whore,” he mutters.

I laugh as a door opens behind me. “Funny that I’m the one you’re calling whore, but you’re the one who was willing to do anything for five hundred bucks.”

Liam is suddenly standing between us, narrowing his eyes at me. “Is there a problem here?”

“Oh, he’s one of yours?” I demand. “Then I can guarantee this will fall on deaf ears, but I’ll repeat what I just said to him. Telling a woman who’s walking past to smile isn’t a friendly gesture. It’s a demeaning one. I’m not an ornamental object. I’m not here to make any man’s life more aesthetically pleasing or cheerful.”

Liam’s scowl grows. I fully expect him to turn on me, the way a thousand other men would, and ask why I’m making a big deal of nothing. Instead, he rounds on the guy. “You told her to smile?”

“I was just being—”

“Don’t defend it,” Liam says, his voice hard. “She’s right. You wouldn’t say that to me, so you’ve got no business saying it to her.”

I struggle not to let my jaw fall to the floor. The guy who calls me princess is suddenly a feminist?

“But the more troubling piece,” Liam continues, “is what I heard her say as I was walking out. Did you call her a whore?”

The guy rolls his eyes. “She was being a bitch. I just—”

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