“We might.” I shrug. I’m not as nonchalant as I’m pretending to be, but I’m done hiding Rachel like she’s a dirty secret. I don’t know what will happen next between us—there’s still the huge matter of three thousand miles—but Connor definitely doesn’t get to have an opinion about it.

She raises her eyebrows. “You ready for that?”

I nod. “Are you?”

She hesitates. Her gaze trails away from me, and my heart stutters over a beat. Then she looks back, brown eyes steady, and nods. “Yeah. I am.”

I try to ignore the warmth that spreads in my chest. It’s impossible. I quit trying. I reach for her hand and squeeze it. She squeezes back.

I’ve made up my mind that sometime today, maybe at the festival, I’m going to ask her if she thinks there’s any future for us.

Because I do.

I don’t know what it would look like. It might be hard. It might mean long distance or sacrifice on one of our parts—but I have to at least ask.

For now, though, I content myself with bending down to kiss her.

And of course, we have to make one more trip back to bed before we finally make it out the door.

We grab Justin from Zoë’s—no muss, no fuss—and head to the festival. Rush Creek is just one of the sites for the summer fair, but there’s still a lot going on. We throw a blanket down in the shade near one of the music stages and let Justin kick his pudgy bare feet while we listen to Logjam, a rock band started by a couple of Connor’s and my friends. After a while that gives way to some seriously lame singer-songwriter on solo guitar, and Rachel and I exchange a look. We don’t even have to say it out loud. We just pack up, strap Justin back into the Baby Bjorn carrier, facing out, and wander off to explore the food booths.

We probably should get real food, but neither of us wants to, so we buy elephant ears and garlic fries. Rachel offers Justin small bites of her food, which Zoë said would be okay as long as I didn’t give him anything he could choke on. He gums them with gusto, whapping his hands and shouting his approval, then drools most of the contents of his mouth into the space between his chest and the carrier. That’ll be fun later.

We end up in the kids’ section of the festival. Justin seems uninterested in the juggler and I don’t think he’ll get anything out of the face painting. It’ll just end up all over me and Rachel.

And then we strike the motherlode of kid joy.

Touch a Truck day.