Happenstance: Part Two (Happenstance #2) Read Free Page A

this work with me…and I’m crazy about you, Erin. Do you have any idea how much that freaks me out?”
    “You wanna talk about being freaked out? You already know that my mom is a good cook, because you’ve already dated her daughter. You’ve probably had sex in the room I sleep in. You know my house and my parents better than I do. I’m living someone else’s life, Weston. So tell me more about how you’re afraid of getting dumped.”
    I gasped and covered my mouth. He exhaled like I’d just punched him in the gut.
    “Oh my God, I’m so sorry I said that.” My hands muffled my shrill words.
    He shook his head, rubbing his bottom lip with his index finger. “There are no rules for this. I might have deserved that. I don’t even know.”
    “Nobody deserves that. Your feelings are just as important as mine. We’ve both been through a lot. I’m sorry,” I said, reaching for him.
    He switched off the ignition and turned to pull the door handle. A jolt of fear went through me.
    The door opened just a few inches, and then he paused. He turned and wrapped me in his arms. The tears I’d been holding in all day finally escaped in streams down my cheeks.
    Mrs. Cup rapped on the driver’s side window, and we both turned to see the top of her head. Weston pushed open his door.
    “Come on, you two. You’ve got work to do.”
    I wiped my eyes with my sleeves, nodding.
    When we climbed out of the truck with our paints and brushes and walked over to the wall, several pairs of eyes glared at us. If we had been anyone else, detention or at least a stern talking-to would have ensued. There was something about being an Alderman, or a Gates, or a Masterson, or a Beck. Rules didn’t seem to apply to people with those last names. Not in Blackwell.

FRANKIE PRACTICALLY MASSAGED THE SOFT SERVE INTO THE blue-and-red cup in her hands. Even though she filled it with the perfect amount of ice cream and then tossed in the precise amount of strawberry sauce and bananas, she was absently chatting away about her kids and their weekend.
    “I woke up with not only gum in my hair, but also two boogers and a Popsicle stick. I mean, only me, right?”
    My eyebrow arched, and she shrugged, dipping a waffle cone in chocolate dip cone sauce. She stared at it for a moment until she was sure the chocolate was dry, and then shook the Blizzard concoction inside the cone without even a smear of white on the chocolate.
    “Will you ever tell me your Blizzard waffle-cone-making secrets?” I asked.
    “What’s the point? You’ll be leaving me soon.”
    I frowned. “I still have four months, thank you very much.”
    Frankie held the cone out the drive-through window and then slid the glass shut. “You don’t need the money anymore, Erin. Go be a kid. Enjoy the rest of your senior year.”
    I made a face. “I haven’t worked this long to have to ask someone for money.”
    “They’re your parents, Erin. That’s what kids do. And it’s okay. You deserve it.”
    “I understand what you’re trying to say. I still don’t want to depend on someone else for money. Not even Sam and Julianne. Besides, I may or may not miss you.”
    “Aw,” she said, flipping the OPEN sign. “I hate you.”
    “I hate you too.”
    The sound of Weston’s Chevy rumbled behind the shop while we restocked and cleaned.
    “I kind of miss you turning me down for rides,” Frankie said.
    “I kind of miss you barely asking because you know I’ll say no.”
    “Why do you let him and you never let me?” she asked, wiping down the soft-serve machine.
    “He lets me drive,” I said with a smile.
    She held out her hands and let them fall to her thighs. “You could have driven my piece-of-crap Taurus! All you had to do was ask!”
    I chuckled as I followed her out of the storeroom. “’Night, Frankie.”
    “Good-night, Erin. Hi, Weston!” she said with a wave.
    Weston waved back to Frankie, and then looked down to me, his elbow resting against the red paint of his