Fakers (Licking Thicket 1)

Paul ducked his head slightly to meet my eyes. “You okay?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Pfft. Totally. Why wouldn’t I be?” Get it together, Brooks. But thinking about Licking Thicket and my crazy family had opened a doorway in my mind that I usually kept firmly shut.

“You literally sang and danced today,” Paul agreed. “I’ve occasionally wondered if there’s a line you won’t cross to get the job done, and it looks like the answer’s no.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’d better believe it, buddy. But frankly, I’m also sitting here mystified that a single, straight man has absorbed so much about the ins and outs of pregnancy. Sciatica and morning sickness?”

Paul shrugged, totally unconcerned. “Four of my sisters have kids, a minimum of three kids each, and my mom likes me to be present for every family event, just in case there’s a single woman around I haven’t been introduced to.” He rolled his eyes. “At least being gay means your mom isn’t trying to set you up all the time.”

“She probably would,” I said darkly. “If she really believed I was gay.”

I definitely hadn’t meant to say that either. My mouth seemed to be disconnected from my brain suddenly.

“Does she think you’re lying?” Paul wrinkled his nose. “Why would you do that? I mean, it’s none of my business, probably. It’s just… you never talk about your family, and you never go home to visit. I’ve always kinda wondered why.”

“It’s not really a secret,” I hedged. “My family is great.” But I didn’t elaborate.

Paul was maybe my closest friend in the city—the guy I’d call if I ended up in the hospital, and the one who’d feed my cat when my boyfriend and I were away on vacation…

If I’d ever had a cat.

Or a boyfriend.

Or took vacations.

But “magical” Brooks Johnson, VP of Storms Marketing, was a completely different creature from Brooks Johnson, former high school quarterback and once-upon-a-time winner of Mr. Licking Thicket. The Venn diagram of those lives had no overlap, and I’d made that decision consciously. I’d never wavered… until now.

“So, are they, like, super conservative, or—?”

“Not at all. My dad’s sister Birdie’s a lesbian, and everyone in town adores her.” I tapped my pen on the desk some more, pondering how to explain the whirlwind called Cindy Ann Johnson to a person who’d never met her. “Mama can be a bit dramatic. Even though her accuracy rate is less than zero, she likes to think she has her finger on the pulse of every situation in town—”

Like I’d summoned her with my thoughts, my phone began to dance and twitch across the desk, playing her ringtone and flashing her smiling face on the screen.

“Whoa. Maybe she does,” Paul joked, looking down at the phone.

I didn’t laugh.

A phone call, not a video chat. On a weekday, not a Sunday. In the middle of the day, not the evening. When everyone in Licking Thicket, Tennessee, knew Fridays were for Luncheon Club.

This could not be good.

I slid to accept the call on speaker without hesitating. “Mama? Are you okay?”

“Oh, Brooks, honey!” she cried. “I’m so glad you answered! I need you to come home, baby. It’s your daddy. His heart.”

My chest seized, my limbs went numb. Somehow, I was on my feet without even realizing it.

Then my dad’s voice called from the background, “I’m fine, Brooks!”

I struggled to fill my lungs with oxygen as my mom chided, “Honestly, Redmond. Settle down. You’re not fine. You heard what Dr. Yates said.”

“He said,” my dad insisted, “that I’m gonna be fine, Brooks.”

My mother sighed gustily. “As fine as a man can be when he has a stent where his heart once was, I suppose, Red.”

“That’s not how arterial stents work, and you know it, Cindy Ann.” But my dad’s voice sounded… threadier than usual. Tired. Not his usual deep, gruff tone. It worried me.

I slumped back down in my seat.

Paul motioned between himself and the door, but I shook my head. I needed one sane person in the room, and it wasn’t gonna be me after a few minutes on the phone with my family.

“Mama,” I interrupted. “Please explain to me very precisely what’s happening.”

“Wellllllllll,” she began, and I closed my eyes, mentally settling in for a very long and imprecise story. “You know it’s August, Brooks.”

“Yes, it is.”

“And you know what that means here in Licking Thicket.”

Paul mouthed the words “Licking Thicket?” like he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly, but he had. Oh, he had.

“Yes, ma’am,” I admitted with a wince. “I guess I know.”

“It’s time for the Great Lickin’ Festival,” she said unnecessarily, “to celebrate our glorious agricultural heritage.” She sighed again. “And I don’t need to tell you how excited your daddy and the other men in the Thicket get at Lickin’ time.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I hadn’t put the phone on speaker, but it was too late now. “No, ma’am.”