Page 24 of Side Hustle
I blinked and refocused. “Um, sure. But I think it should be Operation Take Down the Bully Parents. We gotta deal with your mom too, remember?”
She made that face girls make when they see a litter of cuddly puppies. “You’ll help me with that?”
“Of course I will. I said I would.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, but people promise things all the time.”
I shook my head, wondering who the hell she’d been dealing with. “Not me. I don’t make a promise unless I mean it.”
She tilted her head and, more than anything, I wanted to hug her again. Which was crazy because I wasn’t a hugger. They usually felt awkward. Like, should my arm go over or under? Do I grip tight or just a pat on the back? Let go now or hold on a second longer? Too many damn decisions at too close of a personal range for my taste.
“Okay. Let’s do this!” She sat back down and I joined her, sifting through the information on the four companies we could hire to do the mining.
We spent over an hour deliberating and researching, finally narrowing it down to two, with one being our favorite. I’d approach them first and see if we could agree on terms after they’d taken a look at the site.
“Now for my father.” I put the papers away and addressed the part of the plan that wasn’t so fun. “I’m thinking I’ll roll things out in three parts. One: the gold discovery on my land. Two: expose his misdeeds. Three: announce my plans to run for mayor.”
With a squeak of excitement and the scrape of the chair on the floor, Hazel popped up, her jaw swinging open. “You’re going to do it?”
I nodded, only having solidified my decision in that moment with Hazel’s happy face in front of me. Maybe I was just high on the fumes coming from the cookie plate, but I felt a type of confidence bubbling up my spine I’d never felt before.
Hazel squealed and ran around the table to crush me in a hug, cutting off anything I might have said. I patted her back and chuckled awkwardly until she let me go, taking her vanilla-scented happiness with her to the other side of the table.
“I’m so excited! This is amazing news! Best news ever, actually. You’d make a really great mayor, Rip. You actually care about this town.” She clasped her hands beneath her chin and something about the confidence behind her words made me feel like I could actually do it. “You’re just like George Bailey inIt’s a Wonderful Lifewhen he sees what the town would be like without him and then he decides to come back and everyone in town rallies around him.” She squealed again and all I could do was shake my head until she settled down.
“You’re the perfect partner for me.”
It was supposed to be a thought in my head, one to stew on and suppress, not words that floated all the way across the table to Hazel’s ears, but there they were, out in the open. My eyes widened, not because I wanted to snatch the words back, but because of the pain in my gut. The words were so true they’d been ripped from the inner most raw part of me.
Her eyes went soft again and I would have laughed at the puppy-dog eyes if the truth hadn’t been so damn painful leaving my body. “Why?”
Which was the exact perfect answer to get me to keep talking. That vulnerability in her eyes, the way the corners of her mouth turned down, like she couldn’t imagine someone picking her as their partner. It was my kryptonite.Shewas my kryptonite.
“You support my ideas, you embrace everything with enthusiasm. You bring cookies.” I didn’t even flinch. Because it was true. She lived her life like a hummingbird, flitting from one bright flower to another while I hung from a tree, the sloth that never made it very far. She was the sunshine to my gray skies. The exact opposite of me, yet exactly what I needed to live a little.
Her mouth straightened out and a flicker of hope lit in her eyes. “I get too excited about things. I know that. And don’t even get me started on all the projects I try to take on. Life is fun and interesting and I just can’t seem to help myself.”
I took a step closer to put my hands on her slim shoulders, her vanilla scent reaching me again. “Don’t you ever think that way about yourself. I’ve always admired those same things about you. They’re what make you uniquely you.”
She froze and then broke out into her signature wide grin, eyes squeezing to tiny slits. “You just gave me the perfect idea!”
I bit back a chuckle. See? Her enthusiasm was amazing. I hoped she never changed, even though just a few short weeks ago I’d found that same enthusiasm annoying as shit. Hopefully I was the one who’d changed.
“What’s that?” I let go of her and crossed my arms over my chest, not trusting myself to keep away from her. What was up with all the touching today?
“The Gold Rush Festival is less than two weeks away. What if you announced the gold at the festival? Wouldn’t that be perfect?” Her eyes were the size of saucers.
I thought about it, realizing quickly how right she was. “Brilliant.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” My smile matched hers. “Let’s announce it then. I’ll do an official press conference. Like you said, there’s no way my father can try to contest the ownership of the land once I’ve already announced it to the whole town. He’d look like an asshole.”
Hazel squealed and clapped her hands.
A memory flashed through my brain. “Wait. You’re not, like, the gold nugget mascot or anything, are you?”
Her grin turned to straight fire right before she slugged me in the arm.
