Page 54 of The Hometown Legend

“You had to be there. I’m supposed to think of a safe word.”

“Rory... Are you sure that he thinks of you as a wingman if he wants you to have a safe word?”

“It’s notthat kindof safe word, Fia.”

Fia narrowed her eyes. “Is there another kind?”

“It’s a code word. If he’s acting too grim. And he’s going to have to say it if I’m too boring, or too weird, or too...”

“Why do you think that about yourself?”

“It’s how everyone has always treated me.” She wasn’t getting into The Beer Incident. Or The Diary Incident.

“It’s not true. People are just... Kids are jerks. If you’re basing this off the way people treated you in high school, then you just have to stop.”

“It’s notthat. I wish it were just that. But it’s like I’m... In middle school I was an object of ridicule, but now I’m just...furniture or wallpaper at best. I’m tired of it.”

“Nobody thinks of you as wallpaper.”

“Fia...”

“You’re sweet and funny. And just because you’re like that in a quiet way, does not mean that you’re boring, or wallpaper. It doesn’t. It isn’t fair if anyone made you feel that way.”

“A lot of people have made me feel that way.”

“Have I?”

“No.” She ground her back teeth together. “I don’t know, there was something about being the age I was when Dad left, and Mom was just so...grief-stricken. And I needed help with things, and I didn’t feel like she cared.”

“Rory,” she said. “That was her. Her stuff. It wasn’t about you.”

“I don’t know how to get dressed up.”

“I didn’t know that you wanted to dress a certain way, or different than you do.”

“Yes, I desperately do. I don’t know how to be like you. You always looks so put together and pretty. Quinn is so sharp you can’t ignore her. Alaina is a bombshell. And I’m none of those things.”

“You are adorable. I’m annoyed that anybody gave you the idea you weren’t.”

She sighed. “It’s just, all the markers in my life seem to indicate that I’m not interesting at all.”

“Come on. We’re about the same size, even though I’m two inches taller than you. I can find you something to wear.”

She found herself getting ushered into Fia’s room, which was funny because generally Fia guarded her bedroom at all costs from intruders of any kind.

Her sister’s room was always a little bit haphazard. There were quite a few dresses slung over the armoire and even a few on the floor. There were about four pairs of shoes in various places about the room—they weren’t paired up together.

Fia was so together and type A about most things. Running the house, the farm store, the ranch. But very much not her bedroom.

Maybe it was just a bridge too far. She organized all these other things, and she couldn’t possibly organize that as well.

It was fair.

“So...what are you after?” Fia asked.

“I need to look a little bit shocking. Where the people in town almost won’t recognize me. And I am kind of like a rom-com where the heroine takes her glasses off and then she’s pretty.”

“You don’t wear glasses anymore,” Fia pointed out.

---