Sidecar Crush

I hadn’t been watching Roughing It. I’d stopped after my scuffle with Rhett. Felt wrong to watch it, like I was supporting something unsavory. But I’d heard the talk and knew what the show had portrayed.

All those people talking shit about her on the internet didn’t know her, and they certainly didn’t care about her. They wanted their juicy story. Wanted to make themselves feel better about their lives by putting someone else down. Tearing a pretty girl off her pedestal.

They’d torn her down, all right.

I’d spent the last week with my hackles up, ready to defend her. Turned out, it wasn’t necessary. The entire town was outraged. The general consensus had already been that the show was a crock of shit, given how she kept being made to look like she couldn’t take care of herself. No one who’d grown up in Bootleg Springs would ever be as helpless as they made her out to be.

And since she’d been back in town, people had taken to her like she’d never left. She was just Leah Mae, Clay Larkin’s daughter. None of this Leah Larkin, fashion model and reality TV star stuff. They saw her for who she was and embraced her as their own.

Nicolette had declared she’d no longer air the show at the Lookout. The people who’d been hosting viewing parties either canceled or found other shows to follow. I’d even heard a few people talking at Moonshine about how they’d been commenting on articles online, calling out the show as being faked. Millie Waggle, who hardly ever raised her voice or said an unkind word about anyone, had gotten spitting mad when Rhett Ginsler had tried to tell her reality shows were real, this one included. She’d dumped his dinner right in his lap and walked away.

The urge to fix this for her—or at least make her feel better—was strong. But there was a line I couldn’t cross, and I wasn’t quite sure where it was.

Since she’d been back, things between us had felt a lot like old times—like those summers she’d spent living with her dad. I felt as comfortable with her as I ever had. Like she was my best friend again.

But I was nursing a bit of a crush, if I was being honest. I’d been reluctant to admit it, even to myself, but it was hard to deny how I felt when I was around her. She lit me up in ways no one else ever had. It wasn’t right, and I certainly wasn’t going to act on it. But it made what I was feeling for her now—that drive to protect her—complicated.

It wasn’t my place to act like her boyfriend—to be the man in her life. I needed to keep treating her like a friend, no matter what the rest of me wanted. So I asked myself, what would a friend do?

A friend might just have a little surprise in store for her. Something to show her she didn’t have to hide out. Not from Bootleg, at least.

Scarlett was having people over tonight for a bonfire, and I decided to see if I could coax Leah Mae out of hiding. I let my sister know what I had in mind, and of course she was in. No need to convince her. We came up with an idea to make Leah Mae feel better—show her we were all on her side. All I had to do was get her there.

I didn’t bother texting, or even calling. I’d tried that already. Invitations were easier to refuse over the phone. Claim you had things to see to, whether or not you really did. She wasn’t at her cabin, so I drove on out to Clay Larkin’s place to fetch her.

The gravel crunched beneath my tires as I pulled up to the house. Dusk was falling, but the porch light was on. I got a bit nervous, looking up at that front door—wondered if I was doing the right thing in coming. But I hated the idea of Leah Mae sitting in there afraid to come out and face the world.

I went up to the door and knocked, then rubbed the back of my neck and shoved my hands in my pockets. Nervous habit. Leah Mae answered, her eyes widening when she saw me. She was dressed in a pink short-sleeved shirt and skirt with flowers all over it.

God, she was pretty.

“Jameson,” she said.

“Hey, darlin’.” I shouldn’t have been calling her darlin’, and I knew it. But it just rolled right off the tongue. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Thought I’d stop by and see how you are.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m okay, I guess. Do you want to come in?”