Crazy, Sweet

Chapter Eight

"Over here!" I called out loud behind me as I stopped by the bulletin board outside a gym for seniors. It had about half a dozen flyers about vitamins for seniors and book club meetings. 

"Oh well, they can tell their grand kids about it when they see them," I mumbled, taking three posters from the stack in my sling bag and stapling them neatly in a row on the blank spot by the left.

The posters were brightly colored, glossy and sized at eleven by fourteen—something we wouldn't have really been able to afford for five thousand copies if Seth's family didn't sponsor the printing of all our promotional materials. His family owned one of the biggest publishing businesses in the country and they had their own printing press to support about a dozen of their publications. The posters were shipped from New York.

He wasn't kidding when he said he could rake in a lot of funds for the Children's Play Day. He already has plenty of Ballard's rich sign up as sponsors.

Yet here he is, being my errand boy and helper, putting up posters on foot all over the downtown area in the middle of a hot, humid day, I thought, catching sight of him squeezing through some parked bikes and stapling a couple of posters on a diner's bulletin board. He was in sneakers, golf shorts and a teal shirt, a sling bag of posters on his side, a water bottle on his hip and a staple gun on his hand.

The marketing committee has split up the town and assigned pairs to cover the different areas, putting up posters and distributing flyers. Liam had eagerly paired up with somebody else and Seth quickly volunteered to come with me and to avoid any curious questions if I profusely decline, I casually said okay and now here we were, on our second day scouring downtown. 

It wasn't bad. Seth was actually up for it. He picked me up from home and we parked his car by one of the free parking spots a good ten blocks away from main downtown and started walking and plastering the posters wherever we could. It's been three hours now and I personally wanted to call it a day.

When Seth still hasn't come a good two minutes later, I stopped, cast another glance at his direction and almost laughed out loud. He was  by the sidewalk, surrounded by half a dozen high school girls, each with a flyer in their hand, pretending to be interested in the event as they asked questions while gawking at Seth with starry-eyed looks. 

He caught my eye and flashed me a look pleading for rescue and I chuckled to myself.

I walked up to the small crowd, beamed at the girls who were quite aggressive for their age and slipped my arm behind Seth's waist.

"Hi, sweetie," I greeted him with a matching sweet grin and nodded to the girls. "Are you girls coming to our fundraiser?"

The dreamy smiles on their faces withered just a bit but enough to be obvious to the naked eye and they glanced at each other awkwardly.

"Maybe," one of them, a tall, leggy brunette, answered, eyeing me with blatant scrutiny. "We're not sure. It's all kids stuff. We're not exactly into carousels and ferris wheels anymore. It's like, so juvenile."

I shrugged casually. "I don't know about that. I mean, we will have some of Ballard's young elites there serving food and facilitating the different activities. All your friends will be there, won't they, sweetie?"

Seth beamed and even eagerly pressed a kiss on my temple. Surprisingly, I didn't feel like socking him with my knee for that. "Oh yeah, they'll definitely be there. They think that it's for a really good cause so they're willing to take the day off and help out."

This is such a shallow thing but the moment we finished saying our lines, the expressions on the faces of these young girls had drastically changed. They now looked like somebody who just got told that Louis Vuitton is giving one girl all the designer clothes she can possibly get and it's a race to that golden ticket.