Page 109 of The Love Haters

I’m no scientist. I don’t know why it worked.

But I knew this much: it was enough.

I looked up and saw Hutch stepping in through the picket-fence gate, dressed up in a collared shirt in Ginger’s honor and carrying a birthday bouquet for her.

I don’t know what he saw in that moment—or what he felt.

But I can tell you that we both held still as we locked eyes—his bouquet forgotten in his hand and my red dress billowing in the wind—for much longer than people who don’t notice each other ever would.

Before we’d broken the stare, the drums for “Copacabana” started up on the speaker system, and Rue raised her arms to The Gals in around-’em-upgesture and said, “Okay, ladies! You know what to do.”

Apparently, they did know what to do. The whole group started assembling itself into a conga line, and Nadine and Benita came to pull us in.

“What is happening?” I asked Hutch, as he lined up behind me.

“It’s a rule around here,” he said. “Whenever ‘Copacabana’ plays, you have to stop what you’re doing and conga.”

“I don’t know how to conga,” I protested, even as I placed my hands on Benita’s waist in front of me.

“It’s easy,” Hutch said, as he settled his hands onto my hips.

“You all just—dothis?” I asked.

“Resistance is futile,” Hutch answered.

I guess it really was.

Were Hutch and I still fighting at this point?

I mean, can you really fight when Barry Manilow is playing?

I felt the warmth of Hutch’s hands through the sundress fabric, and I moved in time with the group, and the bulb lights shone overhead, and the breeze caressed us all… and I felt myself just giving in to it all—letting go.

What did that headline say about Lucas Banks’s ex-fiancée?

She has really let herself go.

Maybe that was right.

And maybe that was a good thing.

The four minutes of that song flew by in a blur of fabric and touch and the warm pressure of Hutch’s palms, and as the song wound down and the line broke apart, Hutch slid his hand over to grab mine and then spun me around for a minute. The swells of the wind, the waving fabric, the steadiness of his grip… it all felt surreal, and alive, and like I was part of something larger than myself.

Even after I stopped spinning, I was still spinning—you know?

And then The Gals started heckling Hutch to dip me, and never one to disappoint them, he did it… and just when I was thinking that this night could not possibly be more surprising, at the lowest point of the dip, with Hutch above me as I leaned back to stretch my neck, just in the seconds of silence between when that song ended and the next one started, a voice called out from across the yard, “Hey! Get your hands off my girlfriend!”

Hutch and I turned at the sound to look over, mid-dip.

And it was Cole.

Eighteen

HUTCH DIDNOTdrop me, right then, at the sound of Cole’s voice.

I’m glad to report.

But he did snap me up into a standing position and then push himself back—hot-potato style. And then he stared at his brother like he’d never seen him before, as Rue walked over to give Cole a hug.

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