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Spent from her laughter and the long day of scrambling, she sat on the pier and rested her back against a post. Jason stretched out on his back, crossing his long legs at the ankle and interlacing his hands behind his head so he could look up at the stars.
“Nice night for a disaster,” he murmured.
She tilted her head back and took in the panorama of merrily sparkling stars overhead.
“Yeah, if you’re going to torpedo two careers in one night, why not make it a pretty one?”
He chuckled softly. “You know something, even if I do end up with a boss who has a grudge against me, it was worth it. The one and only Kendra Carter tried to help me. That’s almost better than getting the fire chief job.”
She stuck out her foot to poke him in the thigh. “Don’t say that. You deserve that job.”
He turned his head to look at her. “You think people always get what they deserve?”
“No. Obviously not. But they get what they fight for. Sometimes.” She could think of many examples of that not happening. “How about, you don’t get what you don’t fight for.”
“Unless you’re part of the good-old-boy network. Then you get what you suck up for.”
“Wait wait wait. Aren’t you part of any network like that?”
“Me? Why would I be?”
“You know. White boy that everyone likes.”
“First of all, I’m not all-white. My father is, but my mother’s half-Argentinian. She grew up in Buenos Aires.”
That explained his dark good looks. “How’d she end up here in Random, Minnesota?”
“She met my father on a movie set. She was an extra, and he was a stuntman from LA. They were filming a dance scene. One dance together, and that was it. When they first moved here, it was really hard for my mom. The whole Scandinavian Minnesota-nice vibe is very different from how she grew up. They’d bought the dance studio sight-unseen and were kind of stuck with it. Stuck here. For most of my life, until they finally figured out how to run the business, they had no money. Between that and,” he broke off, as if he’d been about to say something he wasn’t ready to, “my school struggles, I always felt like an outsider. So I compensated by being Mr. Likable. That doesn’t make me part of any network, though.”
There were so many things about Jason that she hadn’t really paid attention to, she realized. That easy smile hid so much. She wanted to know more. She wanted to challenge him.
“Okay, as a dude of some color, here’s the million-dollar question. Do you think there’s any racism here? Like, racism that might keep me from getting that job?”
“Ooh, the ‘r’ word. People don’t like to use that word around here.” He laughed. “What do you think? You’re Black, you grew up here.”
“I already know what I think. I want to know what you think.”
“Why do I feel like this is a trap?” He groaned and stretched his arms over his head, then sat up. “Okay, here goes. Yes, it’s a mostly white world here. So that’s the starting point. Everything’s tilted toward white. On an individual level, I’d say most people in Lake Bittersweet take a person as they are. They judge according to your actions. But not everyone. One old geezer didn’t want me coming on his property even though his freaking shed was on fire.”
“That’s messed up.”
He nodded in agreement. “It hurts when that shit happens. So yeah, I think there’s some racism, but no, I don’t think it’ll keep you from getting the job. The fact that you pushed the new fire chief in the lake might be a bigger issue.”
She groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
He whooshed out a long breath and gave her a nervous look. “Well, how’d I do with the R word?”
“Not bad, Jaybone. Not bad.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I basically agree. My parents had some hard moments when they first moved here. But my dad says most people here are down-to-earth and fair-minded. He says he still keeps his guard up sometimes, but not as much.”
“What about you? You keep quoting your dad.”
“Hmm.” She let her eyes drift half-closed as she thought about it. The wind off the lake felt like a cool breath on her face. The moon was just starting to rise over the pines to the west. Such a beautiful night, and here they were talking about “the r word.”
Funny. Especially when you considered that she’d had a very different “r word” in mind.
