Chapter 4
Sweat drips down my back, my hair is frizzy, and my sundress might be ruined, but I’m all moved in.
Not long after Silas left, Brian and his crew arrived like knights in a shining U-Haul with a truck full of my belongings and, in the second most beautiful sight of the day, a large plastic cup filled with iced coffee.
They lugged in all my furniture and brought all my boxes to their designated rooms before spending an extra three hours assembling my new furniture and hooking up the sparkling new washer and dryer I purchased before the move.
“I know you’re going to miss me,” I say to Brian as he starts the engine of the truck. “You don’t have to rush out. There’s still time for me to order dinner.”
“Yeah right, girl.” He rolls his eyes, but it doesn’t distract from the quiet affection in his voice. “You were crazy moving to Texas in August. It felt like I drove this truck straight into hell. I need to get back to Colorado yesterday.”
“Fine,” I agree, but only because he’s blaming his desire to leave on the weather and not disagreeing that he’s going to miss me…
which he will, obviously. And not just because I tipped them more than triple the amount the internet suggested either.
“Thank you again for everything, and safe travels back through the seven circles.”
“Will do.” His quick huff of laughter is the last thing I hear before he rolls up the window and down my driveway.
I lock the door behind me and take in the living room with all my stuff in it. Boxes are stacked in the corner of almost every room. The walls are still white(ish) and empty, but it’s already starting to feel like home.
Something I haven’t felt in the last three months. It feels as terrifying as it does good.
I’m deciding between unpacking a box, taking another shower, or calling Gabby to fill her in on the not one, but two gorgeous men I’ve already met when Gabby’s name on the screen makes the decision for me.
“Good evening, Gabrielle Owens.” I collapse onto the pink couch I ordered leading up to the move. “How’s your day going?”
“Oh, you know.” She sighs dreamily into the phone. “Just pondering my existence now that my best friend has abandoned me for Texas and already forgotten to call me.”
“Really, Gabby?” I should have known the calm, peaceful lilt in her voice was a trap. “The movers left not even ten minutes ago, and I was literally just getting ready to call you.”
“How convenient. You know, if you’re going to lie, you should at least make it believable.”
“First of all, you know I’ve never lied to you.
” Not once. Not when she asked about getting bangs or when she asked what I thought of her last boyfriend.
Not even when I lied to everyone else about my mom.
Not ever. “Second, do you want to keep having this fight or do you want me to tell you about my neighbor who stopped by earlier today and the even hotter guy I met at the bar last night?”
“You have my attention,” she says in the way she does when she knows the gossip is going to be good. “Start with the neighbor.”
“He was wearing cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and drives a pickup truck that only makes sense if someone lives and works on a ranch.” I give her the highlight reel. “He brought me milk from his cows and a bag of vegetables from his garden.”
“Okay.” The giddiness I’m feeling is reflected in her voice, and I momentarily regret not FaceTiming her so I could see her reaction. “Say more…”
“The T-shirt he had on hugged his biceps with such precision it looked like he ordered it custom. He has a lazy smile, and you can tell from only meeting him once that it comes easy and often.” I pause and take a breath as I remember his words from this morning.
“Before he left, he told me to come over. That he’d love to get me on a horse and show me his ranch. And—”
“There’s more?” She cuts me off. “How could there possibly be any more?”
“He has a brother…a twin brother.” I pause to make room for her gasp. “They aren’t identical, but he lives in Celestial too. He’s a handyman, and after seeing Silas, I think it’s safe to assume he’s also hot.”
Silence hangs loud and heavy between us as I let the gravity of my words sink in. And then, even though we’re thirty-year-old adult women with more baggage than my new house could ever contain, we scream.
Because at the end of the day, despite all the garbage life has thrown at me, when faced with the possibility of my cowboy dreams coming true, only one thing stands true: I’m just a girl.
And as someone wise once said, girls will be girls.
“Hot twin cowboy neighbors?” she asks once we’ve stopped screeching like tween girls at a boy band concert.
“One hot cowboy neighbor, one likely hot handyman,” I correct her before adding on, “and one even hotter man from the bar who told me his name and nothing else. He had locs, flawless brown skin, and eyes so dark I almost started speaking in sonnets.”
“What the hell?” she screams through the phone. “I thought this place had a population of, like, ten? How in the fuck are there this many hot guys there?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” After the last few months—no, years—that I’ve had? A little eye candy is the least that I deserve. “I’m just grateful for the view.”
“Yeah, screw the mountains. I want to look at asses. Actually, you know what?” She stops talking, and I can hear her slippers shuffling around on her always spotless hardwood floors. “Fuck it.”
I wait for her to explain further, but no explanation comes. Gabby is the most responsible person I’ve ever met. I don’t think I’ve heard her say fuck it to anything. Ever.
“Wait…what’s happening?”
I knew I should’ve FaceTimed her!
“I’m booking my ticket. I was going to let you get settled and come down for Christmas break, but now I’m bumping it up to fall break.
Twin neighbors and a hot mystery townie change everything.
” She says this like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and she can’t understand why I’m asking. “What airport should I fly into?”
“I just got here yesterday. I have no idea. Hold, please.” I switch her over to speaker and search “airport” in my maps app. “Looks like Dallas is your best bet, but it’s still going to be a pretty far drive to Celestial.”
Two to three hours to be exact, but at least I’ll have an excuse to stop at Buc-ee’s on the way to and from.
“Even better. You know I love a road trip.”
I absolutely do not know that she loves a road trip.
“Since when?” I ask incredulously. “You wouldn’t even drive to the mountains with me, and you spent the last month complaining about my drive here, which, might I add, you didn’t even go on.”
“Semantics.” She brushes me off as her fingers click away on her keyboard. “Woo! It’s booked and official! I arrive in Dallas on October 15th at 12:20 p.m. I want to come before school starts, but I have that stupid wedding in freaking Connecticut.”
“The wedding with the dress?”
“Yes, that wedding.” She practically growls, and I feel bad asking for clarification. “But the money I’m making from it is covering the ticket, so I guess it worked out in the end.”
Gabby agreed to be a bridesmaid in her cousin’s wedding, but did so before she knew that the dress was not only hideous, it was also six hundred dollars.
Before alterations. It took me and her mom two hours to talk her off the ledge, and I’m still not sure we could be considered successful.
The only reason she didn’t tell her cousin where to shove the chartreuse nightmare is because her dad intervened and promised to reimburse her for the entire cost of the dress plus twenty percent if she went along with it.
The only catch was he wouldn’t pay her until the day after the wedding, and she had to smile for all the pictures.
“I need you to know that since your sacrifice is now directly benefitting me, I deeply appreciate it.” I look over the stack of boxes at the darkening sky through the curtainless windows. “So please keep that in mind when I tell you what I have to say next—”
“You’re hanging up on me, aren’t you?” She reads my mind.
“I don’t want to.” I say it like I mean it, because I do. Yapping with Gabby is my favorite pastime. “But it’s getting late, and I have to start unpacking now if I want my house to be ready for guests by October.”
“Since this sacrifice will directly benefit me, I’ll allow it.” She echoes my earlier sentiment. “But when you’re preparing for me, remember that I want wallpaper in my room and just because you moved into a farmhouse, doesn’t mean your decor style can morph into a beige-and-white girlie.”
“Excuse me? How dare you!” If I sound offended, it’s because I am. “I showed you the Pinterest board for your room before I left. You know I’d never be a beige decor stan.”
Don’t get me wrong, if someone loves beige and white, I’d never yuck their yum. It’s just that their yum will never influence or override mine. And my yum is a pink couch and more wallpaper than a house can handle.
“I know, it’s just so easy to get you worked up.” Her twinkly giggle floats through the speaker. “Call me tomorrow if you have time, but send me pictures and videos of your house no matter what.”
“I’ll do both,” I promise and make good on half of it the second we hang up by spamming her with pictures of the new furniture Brian assembled and selfies of me with my washer and dryer.
Like the best friend that she is, she dutifully adds a heart to every picture and peppers in the occasional compliment. She sends a screenshot with all of her travel details, and I respond with an ungodly number of crying emojis.
I add the dates into my calendar before tapping back into my project management skills and opening up my to-do list. In no time, it’s transformed into the detailed spreadsheet of my dreams, complete with start and finish dates for each item.
Beginning with unpacking my kitchen before bed tonight.
Sure, starting over at square one isn’t where I imagined I’d be, but as I listen to the cowboy romance while I go through the boxes, the reality of my life blends seamlessly with the fantasy of fiction. I can’t help but start to believe that maybe, just maybe, my dreams can come true too.
No matter how dirty they might be.