“No, silly,” Clementine replied before her face wrinkled up. “Rowen? Are you a fairy godmother?”
“Definitely not,” I said.
“I don’t know about that,” Lily said as I moved on to the next chunk of hair. Three down, three hundred to go. “I think you’re working some magic in here.”
I made a face at Lily in the mirror. She didn’t need magic to make her any more beautiful than she already was.
“Are you going to the dance tonight?”
I had to look up to see who his question was directed at. Jesse was staring at me again.
I nodded. “Yep. I’ve got my dancing boots ready to go.” Could our conversation get any lamer? I didn’t want to answer that. “What about you?”
Jesse shrugged. “I don’t know. It was a long week, and I’m pretty tired. I might just lay low and catch up on some sleep.”
He got a trio of groans from the girls. I kept my own groan inside.
“Come on, Jesse. You always come to these things. If you don’t come, all the single girls will revolt,” Lily said.
“I’m sure the dance and everyone at it will get along just fine without me,” he said, glancing my way once more before slipping back outside the door.
“Keep lying to yourself, Jesse!” Hyacinth shouted after him. “You’re not fooling any of us!”
“He’s been acting so strange lately,” Lily mumbled.
“That’s because Jesse’s in love,” Hyacinth announced.
I choked on . . . nothing. Yep, I just choked on nothing.
After the three girls gave me strange looks, I kept my head down and focused on Lily’s hair, praying Jesse and love wouldn’t be mentioned in the same sentence again.
“He is not in love,” Lily said. “If he was, we’d know about it. Jesse can’t keep a secret like that to himself.”
“Just think about it, Lily,” Hyacinth said, marching toward us. “He’s acting strange, he’s all moody, he gets this strange look on his face all the time, and I caught him checking out bouquets of flowers last week when he took me to the store and thought I wasn’t looking. He’s definitely in love with somebody.”
Lily rolled her eyes. I was about to continue on with the lame conversation theme and ask about the weather when Hyacinth angled herself toward me.
“What about you, Rowen?” she said. “Do you know who Jesse’s in love with?”
That time, I did drop the curling iron. Thankfully, no skin or carpet was damaged.
“Oh, for crying out loud, Hyacinth. Quick acting like Nancy Drew and go get changed. There’s no mystery here. Jesse isn’t in love, and if he was, I’m sure you wouldn’t be the first he’d tell.”
Hyacinth wandered back over to the closet where Clementine had just emerged with yet another dress ten sizes too big. “Yeah, yeah, well, maybe he’s in love but doesn’t even know he is. You know?”
“You watch too many movies,” Lily said.
“And you don’t watch enough.”
After that, the conversation was kept to a minimum as the girls changed and I finished Lily’s hair. By then, Rose and Neil had already been hollering at them for the past ten minutes that the Suburban was leaving, so I helped Lily get zipped into her cotton summer dress, helped her pick out a pair of boots, and flew down the hall to my bedroom.
Josie was planning on picking me up, so I had a few minutes to spare but not many. I threw on one of my old dresses that wasn’t black or especially dramatic, pulled on the boots Jesse had gotten me, and ripped a brush through my hair. Instead of throwing my hair into the side French braid I lived in at Willow Springs, I kept it down. I wasn’t cooking or cleaning, so I could, literally, let my hair down.
I had just finished putting on my lipstick when I heard a truck pull into the driveway. I had the window open, and I would have been lying if I said it was to let the cool air in. I hoped it would let something else in. Even though I was just as confused as before about Jesse and me and what, if any, future we could have together, I did have some explaining to do. I had some apologizing to do as well.
I stuck my head out the window and waved at Josie so she wouldn’t blast the horn in case Jesse was upstairs resting. Knowing he could be a floor above me, asleep in bed, didn’t make me want to head downstairs and ride off with Josie, but I’d promised her.
She’d called again the night before to make sure I was still on for the dance, and a girl who went so far out of the way to be friends with me was someone I wouldn’t ditch in the eleventh hour.
Josie waved back, then made a Come on! motion with her hands.
Coming I mouthed before ducking back inside. I grabbed my purse and jogged out the door. Neil and Rose had left with the girls, so the house was a rare quiet and I didn’t even get ten seconds to enjoy it. Before I’d made it out of the living room, Josie’s truck started thumping with music.
My ears were already bleeding before I’d closed and locked the front door. If there was a God, I knew one thing: He’d been on vacation the day someone invented country music.
“Hey, girl!” Josie shouted at me from the driver’s side window.
“Hey, yourself!” I shouted back. Only because she wouldn’t have heard me otherwise. “Did you know that every time a country song is played, a cute little puppy keels over dead?” Again, I had to shout because Josie was really blaring the honky tonk.
And we still had the actual honky tonk to get to.
“Aww, that’s sweet,” Josie said, cranking down the music to a level where I could be relatively certain my eardrums wouldn’t burst. “Is our little girl making jokes about country music? I’ve never, ever heard one of those.” She rolled her eyes at me.
“You know what they say about jokes,” I said, bounding down the porch steps. “There’s a kernel of truth in every one.”
She gave me a look, then scanned my outfit. “Hot mama!” She was back to shouting again. “When you’re not wearing pants or those shredded legging thingies, a person can actually see you’ve got some killer legs.”
I stopped in the driveway, leaned over a bit, and scanned my legs. Nothing but a couple of knees and freckles.
“But, girl, do you have vampire in you or something? Because I’ve never seen skin that white.”
“This is tan.” I examined my arms. Yeah, they were at least a shade and a half darker than normal. I skirted around the front of her shiny truck and climbed up into the passenger seat.
“No, Rowen, this is tan.” Josie held her bare arm against mine. Sure enough, I looked see-through compared to her golden goodness.
“Two words, Josie,” I said, moving my arm from hers. “Skin. Cancer.”
She laughed as she hit the gas. And by hit the gas, I meant we hit forty before we’d made it out of the driveway. “Two words, Rowen,” she said, taking the corner the way she’d taken it last week. “Vitamin. D.”
I double-checked my seat belt. “D isn’t really a word. It’s a letter.”
“Oh, dear God!” Josie shouted out the window. “Get me to the honky tonk and get me there quick!”
“The way you drive . . .” I said, checking the speedometer. Yeah. We were going as fast as I felt we were. “You could be in Idaho ‘quick.’”
“I knew there was a reason I was drawn to you, Rowen,” Josie said as she skipped to the next song. The next one sounded exactly like the previous one that sounded like every single song ever sung in country music. “You have as wicked a sense of humor as me.”
“And here I thought it was because you loved those shredded legging thingies of mine.”
She tilted her head back and laughed loudly. Josie looked amazing, even more so than the night I’d met her at the rodeo. Some girls are pretty because they put a lot of work into it, and some girls are pretty when they wake up in the morning. Josie was in that second group. She had the glow that a beauty cream company would kill to replicate, and her hair was so shiny it looked like glass. She had on a short denim skirt, a floral sleeveless blou
se, and a pair of candy-apple red boots. She’d be beating the guys away like flies.
Which made me wonder again what had happened between Jesse and Josie. Really, those two were the dream couple.
Before another song came to its twangy end, Josie pulled into a packed parking lot.
“The party’s hopping tonight,” she said, making her own parking spot in the front. Everywhere I looked, there were trucks. Big ones, little ones, old ones, new ones. Trucks, trucks, and more trucks. Maybe a few SUVs like the Walkers’, but there was not a single car to be seen. I didn’t know what those Montana people had against cars, but obviously gas mileage wasn’t a concern around there.
“You ready for this?” Josie unfastened her seatbelt and examined herself in the mirror.
“Nope,” I answered, swinging open my door. “But I promised you I’d let you be the one to pop my honky tonk cherry, so let’s get this thing over with.”
Josie shoved my arm before we leapt—I wondered if I should call for a footstool—out of her truck. “You city girls sure are crass.”
“And you country girls aren’t crass enough,” I threw back before slamming the door.
The boys were already tipping their hats, and a few were brazen enough to whistle, as Josie and I made our way to the entrance. And when I say they were whistling at us, I mean they were whistling at Josie.
She smiled, made flirty eyes with a few of them, and walked with a sway in her step. In short, she was a pro at the man-eating game. I didn’t sway, I more like clopped around, and I sure as heck didn’t make flirty eyes. I would have looked like I had a nervous tic if I even tried, I’m sure.
Since I had no idea what to expect from a honky tonk, I was neither surprised nor unsurprised when we walked through the door. I guess it was normally more of a bar, band, and dancing sort of place, but a few nights every year, they turned it into more of a family place and served some good food, good music, and a good time. At least that’s the way Rose had described it. I had yet to determine if there was a good time to be had or good food for that matter. I already knew the music would be a far cry from good.
“Josie Gibson! You’d better save me a dance, or I’m going home with a broken heart,” a good looking guy in a flashy shirt called over to her as we walked in. He was also the type of guy that knew he was good looking. I looked at Josie and stuck my index finger in my mouth.
She snickered and elbowed me. “No promises, Ben,” she said as we walked by. “And besides, don’t you have a girlfriend down in Boise?” She lifted her eyebrows and waited for an answer.
A sheepish smile and a shrug was all the answer she received.
“Men,” she groaned as she steered me through the crowd.
The place was bustling. People ranged in age from infancy to knocking-on-death’s-door. Everyone was talking, eating, or dancing. Everyone had a smile. Everyone appeared to be having a good time. Just like Rose had said, and from the looks of the fried chicken, baked beans, and potato salad stacked high on plates, it looked like the food was pretty darn good.
The music, as predicted, blew big time. A live band was going to town up on stage, but really, how many times could they sing about could’a, should’a, would’a, and a dog before people’s brains started to liquefy?
“You want something to eat?” Josie asked, motioning over to the food table.
My stomach grumbled. “We better before it’s all gone.” I’d learned at the ranch that if I didn’t have my butt in a chair within the first five minutes of mealtime, I wasn’t eating anything because nothing was left.
Josie and I made our way through the crowd toward the food. She seemed to know everybody and everybody knew her. In a town like that, I doubted there were any quick trips to the grocery store. Not when you passed a person you knew on every aisle. Josie grabbed a couple of plates and handed me one before making her way down the table.
“Who do we pay?” I asked as she dropped a drumstick on her plate.
She looked over at me like I’d grown a second head. “Nobody.”
I returned the two-headed look favor. “Wait. So the food’s free, there’s no entrance fee, and you don’t have to pay to park?”
“Free, free, and free,” she said, plopping a scoop of potato salad onto her plate. “This is a community deal, not a money-making venture.”
Whoa. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Or downtown Portland.
After I let that mental confusion bomb settle, I shook it off and helped myself to some home cooking. Some free home cooking.
We grabbed a couple of sodas from one of the big, ice-filled buckets then made our way toward what looked to be the only two free seats in the house. After saying hello to every single person we passed, Josie dropped into a chair. I plopped down beside her and cracked open my soda.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I said. “I know I’m a snarky pain in the ass, but it was nice to be invited to something.” I quickly took a sip of my soda and tried not to squirm.
“I like you, Rowen. You’re different. You’ve got . . .” Josie’s eyebrows came together for a moment. “Moxie. That’s it. You’ve got moxie.”
My jaw dropped a little. “Wow. Really?”
She nodded her head emphatically. “Absolutely. Total, unadulterated moxie.”
I didn’t have to fake my smile. “That is the coolest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Thank you.”
She shot me a thumbs up before biting into her drumstick.
I was still too touched by Josie’s unexpected compliment to eat, so when her eyes zeroed in on something across the room, I noticed right away. Whatever had caught her attention was also doing a good job of keeping it. She couldn’t seem to look away. Following her gaze, I understood why.
A tall cowboy in a straw hat and a white undershirt was surrounded by a flock of females. Even from my seat, I made out every curve and bend of his lips and remembered the way they’d felt against mine. Jesse’d made it. I didn’t know how long he’d been there, but once I knew he was there, I wasn’t sure I could look away.
It seemed like Josie was having the same problem.
“I wish I knew what was going on with him,” Josie said suddenly, sighing as she studied him. “I used to know everything going on in that head of his, but now I can’t seem to figure out one single thing.”
I cleared my throat and made myself look away from Jesse. It was hard to do, especially when one of those Jesse Walker fangirls rubbed her hand up and down his arm. “Why do you think something’s going on with him?” Luckily, I sounded more innocent than my question was.
Josie huffed and waved her hand at him. “Because Jesse doesn’t brood. He doesn’t stand cross-armed and straight-faced on the sidelines when there’s a dance floor in front of him. Jesse has never done that whole angsty, moody guy thing like he has been lately. Something’s gotten under his skin.” Her own eyes narrowed as fangirl number one made a double pass on Jesse’s bicep. “Or someone.”
I couldn’t agree or disagree with her for fear of Josie seeing right through me. I wasn’t sure how she’d take it if she knew Jesse and I’d had a few hot and heavy mouth-mashes. I didn’t want to chance an impromptu cat fight if she didn’t take it so well.
So what did I go with instead?
“What happened to you and Jesse? Why did you guys break up?” No points for steering the conversation into shallower water.
Josie sighed and looked away from him. Like it had suddenly become painful to look at him. “Cheating.”
“What?” I twisted in my seat and scooted closer. “He slept with somebody else?” The idea was . . . earth shattering.
“No.” Josie whipped her head from side to side. “I did.”
“What?” I repeated, stunned. The idea was, again, earth shattering.
A tear looked close to spilling from the corner of Josie’s eye, so I grabbed one of her hands and gave it a squeeze. She looked like she needed it.
“You don’t have to say anything else. I’m sorry
I asked. I just . . . I never guessed that was what happened.” Cheating had never crossed my mind when I’d wondered at the reasons for their break up.
“Jesse was leaving town for the weekend,” she began, shifting in her seat. “He was going to some cattleman’s conference in Missoula the same weekend of my brother’s twenty-first birthday party. Jesse was sorry he couldn’t make it, but he asked one of his good friends to keep a close eye on me and make sure I didn’t get into too much trouble.” Josie paused and bit her lip. She was worrying the hell out of the hem of her denim skirt. The poor girl was a wreck. “I had a lot to drink that night, more than usual, but I knew Jesse’s friend would make sure I didn’t pass out on the bathroom floor or go home with some random guy.” The first tear fell down her cheek. I felt so badly for Josie I wanted to hug her. “Turns out I just went home with him instead.” She wiped her eyes and let her hair fall around her face. “When I woke up the next morning, I knew I’d ruined everything I had with Jesse. I couldn’t lie to him about what had happened, but I couldn’t find the courage to tell him either. So,” Josie’s head fell even more, “his friend told him.”
I wasn’t only hurting for Josie, but I was hurting for Jesse, too. He’d been betrayed by someone who loved him. I knew how that kind of pain felt. I knew how it left a scar behind. I knew how it changed a person.
“Oh, God, Josie,” I breathed, letting her squeeze the hell out of my hand. I couldn’t believe that there, at a honky tonk, I’d just had a girl pour her heart out to me about how she’d ripped out the heart of the man I cared for. It made the world seem very small. “Who was it? Which friend of Jesse’s?” I’d only met a handful, most were ranch hands, but I wanted a name. The next time I saw him, he was getting hot coffee poured into his lap.
Her eyes flicked to mine, and I knew her answer before she said it. “Garth Black.”
“Come again?” That was all I had. Garth Black and Josie Gibson. Getting it on. It just didn’t equate.
“I had sex with Garth Black and have regretted it every single day since.”
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