“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 blouse, and a pair of candy-apple red boots. She’d be beating the guys away like flies.