"I brought coffee," Brooke yells to me across the street. She's wearing a mini denim skirt with a sheer lace top, a black bandana tied around her wild red hair, and a pair of black ankle booties even though the temperature will be hitting the nineties today. "Like my festival attire?" Crossing Howe, the heel of her booties click against the pavement as she carries a compostable drink carrier from Dream Bean. "Hank says good luck. Iced Mocha Cappuccinos for everyone," she shouts in excitement.

"Thanks," I say, grabbing one of the three cloudy plastic cups. "How'd you pull that one off? Hank doesn't believe in iced coffee."

Brooke smirks and curtsies, digging the toe of her boot into the pavement. "I strong-armed him." She takes her own cup of iced coffee, leaving one to rest in the drink holder. "Dennis should be around here somewhere," she says, craning her neck around the park. She spots him walking up the street, already having parked the car. He's holding his own drink, so I furrow my brow.

“Who’s that one for?” I ask, nodding at the last iced coffee.

Brooke shrugs and feigns a polite smile. “No one in particular. Just in case.”

I can read her ambivalent response. It’s code for just in case Mason decides to show up.

Luckily, my schedule for the next forty-eight hours is so jam-packed that I'll barely have time to think about Mason, to obsess over how I ruined things with him. I blink away my embarrassing, desperate attempt at reconciliation when I showed up to his house uninvited two days ago.

So we won't have a write-up of the actual festival being run in The Anchor. So what?

So there won’t be any press coverage, the festival will be doomed, and no one will ever let me forget it.

"Shut up, Ellie," I whisper under my breath. I can't shake these negative thoughts from my mind. And if I'm being honest, what's bothering me isn't so much the lack of press at the festival. It's the fact that I don't want Mason to see me as a toxic person, this person who thinks only of themselves and doesn't let anyone in. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I'd demonstrated for him. I realize that I want to be better. For myself, but also for him. Because of him. But it's too late. Isn't that how most fatally flawed almost-relationships smolder out into nothing?

“Hey, El,” Dennis says, pulling me from my misery. When I look up, he’s holding a fist out to me in some sort of a friendly greeting.

I tap my first to his with a smile. "Nice backpack," I say as he spins around to showcase it for me. It's black with rainbow patches all over it, and he's not one bit embarrassed to be wearing it. "Pretty hipster of you. Security may ask you to search it, but at least it looks good."

Brooke rolls her eyes. “I told him not to bring it. It belonged to my sister, YEARS AGO,” she enunciates, shaking her head at him. “Anyway, nice shirt,” she says, waggling her eyebrows at my bright purple festival shirt, the shirts I’d handed out to all the volunteers at our last meeting. Aside from a few wanderers, the park is a sea of purple shirts right now.

“Thanks,” I laugh. “My super talented best friend designed it. She just got into SCAD, you know.”

Brooke giggles. “You don’t say. So, what’s on the agenda today?”

Though I know everything by heart, I grab my clipboard from the folding table beside me just to quiz myself. "Soundcheck for the bands is at ten. Vendors are starting to set up now. Your chummy ol' pal Charlie is coming by for a final and thorough inspection at noon which is also when they'll be roping off these few blocks," I say, pointing down Howe Street. "Security is setting up soon, and then we'll start letting people in the gates at one." I take a swig of iced coffee to quell my nerves. "The Quirks start us off at three, and then it's all systems go."

"What about the fireworks?"

"Those are tomorrow night over the river at approximately 9:45."

"Damn," Dennis says. "You're really good at this, El."

“Thanks,” I say, looking into his eyes with a small smile.

For a second, I wonder if Dennis knows that John had called me drunk and fired up for no good reason the other week. Had he told Dennis that I'd blocked him or that I never returned any of his messages or phone calls? I'd made it a point of never telling Brooke John had called me in Raleigh while I was sleeping with Mason. It's not like I tried hiding it from her. I just didn't want the drama circulating back into my life. Plus, with everything going on with Mason, having spoken to John was the least of my worries.

The morning passes in a whirlwind. The only issue during soundcheck is easily remedied when Morris, our audio guy, rolls in an extra amp and replaces a single wire on the backend of things. Each band set to perform today shows up, and I greet them all with information packets full of beer and meal tickets, accommodation arrangements, gift certificates for each of the vendors, and free swag bags that I'd put together myself, all goodies gathered from the Brunswick and New Hanover counties.

After soundcheck, I trail the sidewalks of Howe Street making sure vendors are setting up and have everything they were promised. The street is filled with scents of fried food, beer, and freshly mown grass.

"Wow," Brooke says as she meets up with me after I check in with the two men who are running the snow cone cart. "It's a pick your poison type of situation here, and I don't hate it." She looks up and down the street that's still teeming with cars but will soon be closed to traffic. "Corn dogs, homemade ice cream, popcorn, burgers, barbeque, cupcakes. What do you want to eat?" she asks me.

Shaking my head, I’m not all that hungry.

“Come on, you’ve gotta eat something. The day is still young.”

“I’m not sure then,” I laugh. “Just grab whatever,” I say, handing her a few of my meal tickets from my pocket.

Looking down at my clipboard, I total up the number of vendors that had shown up: six beer and wine tents, eleven different food trucks, almost twenty local businesses from Southport and Oak Island, with a few even faring from Wilmington. And it looks like all will be set up by the time Charlie arrives.

Brooke meets me at the back corner of the park under the shade of an oak tree to eat a quick lunch. She lays out her wares: two glazed doughnuts, a Tuscan sunset snow cone, a funnel cake the size of her face, and a styrofoam platter of pulled pork.

"Let's update the picture finally," she says, handing me the paper plate with both doughnuts.

“What are you talking about?”

"No offense, but I'm tired of looking at you with that pink cotton candy beard from three years ago. I wanted the damn pink beard because it matched my hair better. But you hung me out to dry with the blue one." She rolls her eyes.

I start laughing when she blows on the funnel cake, sending a plume of powdered sugar into the air in front of her. Bending the hatched treat in half, she bites a mouth-sized hole in it toward the top, unfolds it, and holds it up to her face. A freaking funnel cake beard.

Oh, my God. I laugh so hard, I feel like I might pee my pants.

"Dennis," she shouts over the local radio station tunes that are still coming through the

loudspeakers of the park. "Hey, come here," she waves.

Jogging over, he's immediately suspicious when he sees our food laid out with a big hole in the fried dough.

“Babe, take a picture of us,” Brooke says, tossing her phone up to him.

“What am I in this? Chopped liver?” I ask, surveying the food. “What am I supposed to—”

“Doughnut eyes,” she spits, readying her beard. “Hold ‘em up.”

Dennis shakes his head at us with a grin as we both pose with no shame. "This one's a keeper," he says, chuckling.

"Oh, darling, everything looks amazing!" Charlie says when he finds me handing out the laminated special guests list to a few of the volunteers who are readying themselves to start taking tickets.

“Yeah, it’s really coming together,” I say with a smile.

Charlie is wearing a pair of tight-tailored jeans, an incredibly deep V-neck graphic T-shirt, and some kind of a fedora that looks brand new. I have no idea which part of this outfit he needed to have dry-cleaned, but I'm not about to ask.

"You are just an angel sent from music heaven," he sings, popping a piece of gum in his mouth. "But throw a little makeup on, would you? I'm sure press will want pictures at some point."

As Charlie walks away to make flourishing small talk with the owners of Flare and Moonwater and the lead bass guitarist of Call Me June, it hits me just how wrong Charlie is. Sad as I am that press will not be here, it's no one's fault by my own.

"We have a problem," Brooke says, suddenly pulling me toward Howe street.

A hundred ideas flash through my mind. The bands all quit. Maze already detonated their fireworks leaving us none for tomorrow. Charlie offended the mayor without even trying. Mason did show up, but with another girl. All of these thoughts rush through my head at once. "What is it?" I ask, my chest tightening at her urgency.

“Three of the underage volunteers are drinking at the beer tent,” she says, drawing a few stares from patrons.

"Which tent?"

"Fernweh," she says, pointing toward the river.

I breathe a deep, wavering sigh of relief and walk past her. "Alright, thanks. That I can handle."

“Awesome, because I’m totally not cut out for this. You look hot by the way,” she calls behind me.

The crowds have started growing thick, and within the next fifteen minutes, I handle the beer boozer situation, find the stage manager to hand her the set list to go over once more, and finally make my way to the ticket booths to see how sales are going. To my complete and utter shock, there is a line of people waiting to get in that winds around the block, and it isn’t even time for the first show yet.

"Holy shit."

“I know,” says one of the volunteers. “I hope we have enough tickets.”

The event might sell out? The idea had never crossed my mind that more than 2,000 people would want to attend this little festival, especially in its first year. But by the looks of it, the possibility is a very real thing.

When the gates officially open, Franklin Square Park and the surrounding block is flooded with local and tourist traffic like nothing I've ever seen. I have to assign five volunteers just to empty the trash cans, one of the more popular breweries has to get a second delivery of booze brought in, and the barbeque and the shish kebab food trucks almost sell out before the first set has even started.

The Quirks take the stage without a hitch, and I allow myself one brief moment of rest under the oak tree on the perimeter of the park. Closing my eyes, I let the breeze of the afternoon wash over me and the edgy, folk sound of the Quirks lull me into a state of peace. I smile in a way that feels more natural than anything I've experienced in a while. And with a single, lingering pang of sadness, I wish Mason was here to experience the glory of this with me.