Page 123 of Falling for Mr. October

“It’s almost time,” Rhett calls out, trying to add gravitas to his voice. “I’m so proud of our competitors for showing up today and supporting Apple Ridge with your contributions. We’re becoming a stronger community every day, thanks to you.

“Now, remember the rules.” He points to the list of rules beside the dripping sign. 1. No hitting the actors. 2. No tripping or shoving. 3. Have fun. “There can only be one winner, but all of you are winners in my book.”

“Oh lord,” Emily says under her breath.

Giovanni laughs. “What book did you pick for him, out of curiosity?”

“No one book could save him,” she mutters. “I’d have to choose a whole library, and he’d never read it, so all that wisdom would go to waste.”

We’re all still laughing when Rhett signals that it’s time to start by slapping the jack-o’-lantern button in the center of the table next to the entrance to the maze. A tinny, witchy laugh echoes from it, and the crowd pours toward the maze, instantly forgetting the no tripping or shoving rule.

Emily turns toward us, salutes, and then takes off at a power walk she definitely must have learned from Mr. Campbell.

“See,” I tell Giovanni, weaving my hand into his. “This is what happens when you try too hard to be fair. People lose faith that you have a winner’s spirit.”

I’m teasing, though. I like the fact that Giovanni doesn’t want to play Rhett’s games.

Especially since there’s nothing that could piss Rhett off more.

“I figured we’d have a nice stroll,” Giovanni says with a grin. “I brought snacks.”

We step through the lip of the maze and start winding our way through the dried stalks shaking in the wind. A few people enter with us, but they’re clearly more competitively minded—one of them is equipped with a compass, the other a long spool of twine, presumably so they do not backtrack. Within minutes, we’re alone on our path, but ghostly voices continue to drift through the corn, conversations half heard, and we catch glimpses of other people wandering through the maze.

It takes us about five minutes to hit the first dead end.

We’re weaving our way back out of the trap when Giovanni asks, “So what’s the deal with the actors?”

As if his words summoned him, a figure in a Jason hockey mask bursts out from behind a cluster of corn stalks, wielding a plastic knife, and Giovanni curses and shoves me behind him. I laugh so hard I have to lean on him to stand upright.

“They’re from the theater group,” I say through gasps. “Mr. Mayor hires them to scare people.”

“Good job,” Giovanni says, giving Jason a crooked grin. “You shaved at least three years off my life, but I’m told the last three years are the worst. Would you like a cookie?”

Jason accepts a cookie without removing his mask, then shrugs and says in a voice I recognize but can’t identify, “Take the fourth left. Then you’re going to want to take the very next right you get to.”

Giovanni nods in acknowledgment. “Thanks, my friend.”

“So you’ll accept Jason’s help but not Whit’s?” I ask him in a whisper as we move onward.

He shrugs, wrapping an arm around me. “He could be leading us to our death. It’s fun not knowing, isn’t it?”

Uncertainty isn’t all that much fun for me, actually. I want to know what’s going to happen between Giovanni and me. I want to know if I’m foolish to let myself hope for something more than the existence I had before he arrived—the comfortable yet stifling familiarity of being surrounded by older versions of people who’ve been around me for my entire life.

“It’s fun being with you,” I say honestly. “It would be fun anywhere.”

He kisses the top of my hand just as an adult-sized Chucky bursts out at us from around a corner, his plastic knife poised to stab.

Giovanni sighs and offers him a cookie.

Chucky expands on Jason’s directions, but the maze is large, and it only covers a small section of it. The next time we find ourselves in a dead end, this one gloriously free of paid actors, Giovanni grins at me. “Seems like a good place to make out for a few minutes.”

“Yes, Mr. October. Yes, it does.”

We stop to chat with Mr. O’Connor, who’s dressed like a knockoff Freddy Krueger, and a couple of other town figures. Nearly two hours later, we finally emerge from the maze, and Giovanni’s crown is on my head. We fully expect to see Rhett lording his “shocking” victory over everyone, but it turns out Emily was the first to emerge.

Rhett looks incredibly pissed off when he announces her victory to the gathered crowd, everyone drinking apple slushies because the cool start to the day has burned off into a sunnier-than-seasonal afternoon.

After claiming her prize, Emily grabs a slushie from one of the high-school-age servers strolling around with trays of refreshments. She drinks it down in a few quick gulps. “Tastes like victory,” she says with a huge grin.