Page 91 of A Summer Mismatch
Suddenly, from the bridge that led to the library, loud music began to play. She squinted. Was that Rosa with a boombox?
”Is that Adele?” Logan asked, looking around. “Someone Like You” blasted toward them.
“It is. You know Adele’s music?” Julia asked, surprised.
“Willow’s obsessed.” He grinned and sang the next line about showing up out of the blue, which made Julia laugh.
“Do you feel… set up?” she asked quietly.
“What?” Logan put a hand on his chest to feign shock. “Romantic music doesn’t always play from a bridge after two people have been coerced into a rickety canoe by their grandmas?”
“To be fair… I’m pretty sure this is a break-up song.” She snorted a laugh. “What I can’t understand is what Grandpa’s doing. Does he know we’re coming to rescue him? Are we going to find him tied up and drugged?”
“That seems pretty hard core for your grandma.” He paused. “But my nonna is definitely capable of that. You do not want to get on her bad side.”
“What do you think?” Julia said, feeling a little playful herself. “Should we give the crowd what they want and kiss?”
Logan’s grin grew wide.
“Or pretend to fight and make them think they failed, which would serve them right.”
“I like the kissing option. Let’s go with that one.”
“I like that one too.” She leaned closer to him, and the canoe wobbled. She paused with her lips only inches from his. “I’m scared.”
“Me too,” he replied. His eyes shifted sideways, though no other part of his body moved. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe we should wait to kiss until after we get back on land.”
“Good idea.”
She eased backward onto her seat, exhaling slowly when they didn’t tip over. With renewed determination to save Grandpa, probably motivated, in part, with the promise of a kiss at the end, Logan rowed them to Grandpa in a very short amount of time.
The song had changed to “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus, and a few additional people had started to gather on the bridge and shore, perhaps drawn in by the music and growing crowd.
Logan and Julia looked at each other and started laughing so hard, it was tricky to keep the canoe from wobbling. And in that moment, she realized she could spend forever with Logan. Talking to him. Laughing with him. And feeling this overwhelming, incredible spark that existed between them.
But first, getting out of this canoe in one piece.
“Grandpa!” she yelled, once they got closer to him. Her heart skipped when she saw his eyes were closed, but then he opened them and his clear-eyed glance abated her worry.
“Oh good. You’re here.”
Then his gaze slid over to Logan and she held her breath, waiting for an explosion of some kind, maybe a refusal to be helped or a reminder that you couldn’t trust a Byrd. Instead he swallowed and looked to Julia. “Please tell me you brought me some oars.”
“Sure did.” Anxiety made her voice a little too chipper. She handed over the oars, and to her shock, he fumbled his grasp, and they dropped into the lake. It wasn’t a super deep lake, maybe seven or eight feet was all, and she could see the bright yellow and blue plastic glinting on the bottom. She didn’t see the other pair he must have dropped because he’d drifted.
“How did that even happen?” she asked. Had he really lost two sets of oars in a single morning?
“I didn’t have a good grip.” Grandpa frowned. “Did you bring another set?”
“Yes, but we need them too,” she said.
“We could get by with one,” Logan said. “Then we can all get back to shore.”
“If Grandpa doesn’t drop this one too,” she muttered, but apparently not quietly enough because Grandpa growled.
“Just hand it over.”
With a sigh, she did, and this time, she wasn’t going to let go until she was absolutely sure he had a good grip on it. She extended the oar to him and felt his hand on it.
