Wake My Heart (Jasper Falls 1)

“He knows what I mean.” Luke’s stare turned probing. “Well?”

Ryan shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t even know the girl.”

“Her name’s Willow. She does yoga every day and doesn’t do dairy or meat. She’s single and looking for a hookup. What more do you need to know?”

He rubbed his head, wishing a fight would break out on the ice. “I don’t know.”

“Just meet her. Stop by her booth and try her weird burger and see if anything clicks. She’s pretty.”

Luke might be in a long committed marriage to Tristan, but before they met, Luke was a womanizer. He wasn’t blind when it came to the opposite sex and Ryan trusted his opinion. “Maybe.”

“Good enough.” The topic dropped and they watched the rest of the game in relative peace.

The morning of the burger festival the town bustled with activity, much like it did before any town jubilee. The hosed off sidewalks and thoroughfare of Main Street was cluttered with booths where cars usually parked. The police closed off the main strip and restaurant owners hooked up generators and mobile grills. In a few hours, the streets would smell like red meat man heaven.

The town was voting on a new name and signs were everywhere. Posters encouraged residents to stop by the ballot boxes at the end of Main Street to weigh in. Ryan found the ballots and read over the choices, irritated that Center County wasn’t even an option.

Jasper Falls had a nice ring to it. And he recalled learning about Jasper Willcot in high school. He’d been the first settler in their area. That was probably where the name came from. It was better than the other options Peach Grove and Mountain Ville. He checked off his vote and moved on.

Ryan helped Kelly unload a large charcoal grill outside of O’Malley’s. The pub was contributing Bloody Mary’s complete with seasoned shrimp and bacon cheeseburger sliders bursting from the tops. It was a town favorite, and no one mixed a Bloody Mary like Kelly.

“You sticking around today?” his cousin asked, scraping and prepping the grill.

“Might as well eat.” His eyes searched the booths for the vegan girl, but nothing jumped out. If he didn’t see her, he didn’t see her. He wasn’t even sure why he looked for her in the first place.

“How are things going with the O’Malley chick?”

“They’re not.”

Kelly paused and glanced at him, then turned back to the grill. “You okay?”

“I’ll live.”

“Sorry to hear things didn’t work out. She was cute.”

Cute didn’t begin to describe her. “She had baggage.”

“Because of Nash?”

Surprised he knew Nash’s name, Ryan stopped stacking cups and looked at his cousin. “Did you know him?”

“Didn’t everyone? He wasn’t hard to miss. I used to try to get him to play at the pub, but he always turned me down. Probably the rivalry.”

“You would have let an O’Malley perform here?”

Kelly shrugged. “Business is business. He was insanely talented. It’s a shame he died before ever making something of himself.”

“Yeah.” Ryan returned to stacking the cups under the stand, wondering if he seemed boring compared to Nash and all of his talent. That’s probably why it was so easy to walk away.

Once the booth was running and Kelly had the grill going, Ryan took a walk to check out how other people were setting up. The café had a special coffee rub they were selling, and Aunt Maureen was handing out samples of grilled beef. He stopped by to get a coffee but didn’t stay long.

At the pizza parlor, Maria and Angela were stirring a large vat of sauce for braciola. It wasn’t necessarily a burger, but they were serving it over thick Italian bread and the girls said it counted. He didn’t have the balls to argue.

The hardware store was working with a classic small charcoal grill and basic burgers with traditional fixings. They never won, but Ryan secretly preferred their burgers most each year.

A box collapsed on the sidewalk and a woman cursed as large cans of black beans went rolling into the road. Ryan stopped a runaway can with his foot and walked it over to her.

“You lost this.”

She looked up at him, strands of pale blonde hair clinging to her golden lashes, and huffed. “Thanks. The box sort of got away from me.”

The bottom of the cardboard had caved in and now looked useless, so he picked up another large can and asked, “Where’s your booth?”

“Just over there by the salon.”

He followed her finger and did a double take. “Vegan?”

She laughed and a soft pink flush crested her high cheekbones. “I know, this is a Burger Festival. But there are lots of people who prefer veggie burgers nowadays, and there’s proven health benefits to limiting meat consumption, not to mention the effects cows are having on our environment.”

If he wasn’t holding two heavy cans of beans, he would have held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not judging.”