“I was saying goodbye to Olivia. I was coming back.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” Pat snapped. “Look, Muriel, you can have any man in town. You don’t need to add this one to your collection.”
“I’m not collecting men!”
“Yes, you are. You like having every boy in town crazy over you. Well, this one isn’t, and I want him.”
“So do I,” Muriel said. “And I can’t just walk away and let you have him, not when he might be the man I’ve dreamed of all these years.”
Pat rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. That stupid dream.”
“It’s not stupid!”
“It is, and it’s selfish, too. And if you think I’m stepping aside because you say so, you can think again.”
That had been the end of the conversation. Maybe even the end of their friendship. For the first time since anyone could remember, Pat and Muriel didn’t sit next to each other at a church function.
“This is making it awkward for everyone,” Olivia said when she came into the shop the following Friday.
“Tell that to Pat,” Muriel said stiffly.
“You guys shouldn’t be fighting over a boy.”
“He’s not a boy. He’s a man, and he’s—”
Olivia cut her off. “I know, the man you’ve dreamed about.”
“We’re meant to be together. I’m sure of it,” Muriel said earnestly.
“But you’re not together. He’s seeing Pat. And it looks like he’s going to keep on seeing her. You know he’s renting a room at the Schoemakers’? And he’s started working part-time over at Swede’s garage. He’s here to stay—and he’s here to stay with Pat.”
Muriel got busy straightening a display of gift boxes.
“Can’t you be happy for her?” Olivia coaxed.
If Stephen wanted Pat instead of her... “I guess I can try,” Muriel said. That was as much as she could promise.
Still, it was painful when she and Olivia went to Herman’s Hamburgers that night and ran into Stephen and Pat there. Pat already had a booth staked out and he was waiting in line to order.
“Good. We can sit with them,” Olivia said. “Here’s your chance to show there’s no hard feelings.” She handed a five-dollar bill to Muriel. “Order me a cheeseburger and a brown cow, will you?” Then she went to join Pat.
“What to Do When Your Best Friend Gets the Man of Your Dreams,” by Muriel Patrick, loser. Feeling awkward and self-conscious, Muriel stepped into line, two people behind Stephen.
He saw her and let the other people go ahead. “Out for a big night in Icicle Falls?” he teased.
“Something like that,” she replied.
“How come you’re not with Arnie?”
“Because I’m not. Should I be?”
“You two are a couple, right?”
She thought she’d made it clear they weren’t. “Who told you that?”
“Pat.”
Pat, her former good friend. “People say a lot of things in a small town. Not everything they say is true.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Arnie and I are friends. That’s all we’ll ever be.”
“So, if someone else was to ask you out?”
“How to Play It Cool When He Shows Interest,” by Muriel Patrick, whose life is looking up. She smiled. “I might say yes.”
By the time they’d picked up their orders and joined Pat and Olivia at the table, Pat was seething. “I don’t remember inviting you to this table,” she said.
“Don’t worry, we’re not staying,” Muriel said frostily. She nudged Olivia. “Let’s go sit with Hildy and Nils.” Olivia had been looking from one friend to the other in concern. Now she nodded and scooted out of the booth. “This isn’t good,” she said as she followed Muriel to the other side of the restaurant.
“No, it’s not,” Muriel agreed.
“We’ve all been friends since we were kids. This just isn’t right.”
Muriel sighed. “I guess there’s nothing like love to ruin a friendship.”
Stephen switched loyalties the next week, coming into the shop and asking Muriel to see True Grit at the new Falls Cinema. She said yes and then felt guilty. Pat had fallen hard for this man and here she was going out with him. Was Pat right? Was she a selfish man-collector?
They shared a popcorn, and he slid an arm around her, and there in the dark, with John Wayne busy fighting bad guys on the screen, her heart fought its own battle. She wanted this man, knew deep down that he was the one for her and that they’d wind up together. But she didn’t want to lose her friend. How would that work with all of them here in Icicle Falls?
A new thought dawned. Did Stephen want to stay in Icicle Falls?
“Do you like it here?” she asked later as they had root beer floats at Herman’s.
“Sure. It’s a nice little town, a heck of a lot smaller than Seattle. Don’t know if I’d want to live here all my life.”
That made the ice cream in Muriel’s stomach harden into a rock. “Where would you want to live?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know yet. I’ve got a lot of country left to check out.”
“You could look all over the world but you’d never find a place as nice as Icicle Falls.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Might be hard to find success in such a small place, though.”
“What kind of success are you looking for?” Muriel had always felt that simply having a life filled with family and close friends qualified as success.
Friends. She thought of Pat and pushed away her glass.
“I don’t know that, either,” Stephen said. “I know I want to make something of myself, but I haven’t figured out what.” He frowned. “One thing I do know, I’m going to be successful. My old man wasn’t much,” he added. “He doesn’t think I’ll be much, either, but I will.”
“I believe you,” she said. “But you don’t need a big city to do that. A man can make something of himself in a small town.”
“People can be prejudiced in a small town.”
“People can be prejudiced anywhere.” She remembered how her father had looked at Stephen, the “long-haired hippie” when he came into the Sweet Dreams gift shop. Was Stephen remembering that, too?
He glanced
