Tucker
Oh, I think I will.
Judging by the smile splitting her face, we’ve had vastly different interactions with the blonde bombshell who’s found herself back in Beaumont Ridge.
“A certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed blast from the past is in town?” I respond with a raised brow.
It’s a battle to keep from grinning when her face falls ever so slightly.
“If you’re about to tell me you’ve seen her already and didn’t tell me, you’d better sleep with one eye open.
” Her eyes narrow. My sister isn’t menacing by any means, but the withering look she’s giving me right now has always made me a little uneasy.
The look on my face must tell her everything she needs to know because she doesn’t wait for a response.
Eyes widening, she gasps, throwing her arms in the air. “What the hell, Tuck!”
I raise my hands, surrendering. “I’m sorry, Whit. Truly. But if it helps, it was only yesterday.”
Apparently this does not help. If anything, it makes it worse.
Her arms drop like lead to her sides and she slides into the chair across from me.
“You mean to tell me you’ve known for an entire twenty-four hours, and you didn’t say a peep to me?
” Her voice is low and calm, which is kind of terrifying.
“I want to know everything. Where? How? What was said? What were you wearing?”
“How the hell is what I was wearing relevant?”
She narrows her eyes further, resting her forearm on the edge of the table and jabbing her thumb toward her chest. “I’m asking the questions here, boy.”
I choke on a laugh at the last word. Whit is several years younger than me, and close to a foot shorter, so it’s ironic for her to call me ‘boy’.
If there’s one thing I’ve mastered over the span of my sister’s life, it’s knowing when to push her buttons, and when to shut up and do as she says.
Right now, it’s the latter. “Do you want the responses in that order?”
She ponders the question for a minute, her fingertip tapping the edge of her lips. “No, outfit first, then where, how, and what was said.”
“I was just ducking in to collect the order for the ranch and the school, so I had my uniform on.”
The sound that comes out of my sister can only be described as a squeal—it’s unsettling to say the least. “Couldn’t have planned it better myself.” Her voice is low, almost as though she wasn’t intending on being heard.
“What’d you just say?”
“Oh! Nothing.” A blush creeps across her cheeks as she grins at me. This screams mischief. “A perfectly respectable outfit. Next.”
I’ve just finished a painstakingly detailed play by play of my encounter with Gracie when our phones buzz simultaneously on the tabletop.
I glance over to see a text from Rhett in our group chat, aptly named The Beau Bros.
An outsider might see the group name and think Whitney’s been excluded, but she was actually the one to name it.
The suggestions from the actual brothers were…
well, let’s just say they weren’t great.
They buzz again, and again, as texts from Hudson pop up too. Whit picks hers up with a smirk.
“What’s that look for?”
Whit looks up at me, her eyes slightly wide. She tries—and fails, miserably—to hide the smirk beneath her fingers. “What look?” she mumbles.
“It’s your I know something you don’t know look.”
She huffs. “Excuse me, I don’t have one of those.”
A laugh bellows out of me, but is abruptly cut off when a thought occurs to me. “Whitney, did you mention seeing Grace to Rhett and Hudson?”
“So what if I did?” She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms across her chest.
My phone is in my hand in a heartbeat, and I pull up our sibling group chat.
Rhett
I can’t believe we had to hear this from Whit. Why are you holding out on us, Tucker?
Hudson
We never get the goss first.
Ever.
Rhett
That’s a bit dramatic coming from the person who doesn’t even remember Grace.
Hudson
Not my fault I ain’t as old as your sorry asses.
Plus, I don’t need to remember her to have an opinion.
Rhett
eye roll emoji
Hudson
So when can I meet her?
Rhett begins typing, but I don’t see his response—my phone is ripped out of my hands from across the table. Whitney tosses both phones into her purse with gusto.
“Whit, what the fuck?”
“We can deal with those knuckleheads later. Right now, I have something far more pressing to discuss.”
I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms across my chest and sighing. Whit sure does love to add a little dramatic flair to every situation; must be where Hudson gets it, too.
“Strap in, big brother, because you’re about to hear a plan that may very well blow your mind.”
“I hate to admit it, but my mind is a little blown.” I say ten minutes later once Whit has detailed her entire Rodeo Festival master plan. “How’d you come up with that all by yourself?”
My sister raises her brows, her lips pressing into a fine line. “Are you assuming I couldn’t possibly think that up on my own?”
“Uh…” I rub the back of my neck. “Didn’t mean to imply that. Sorry, Whit.”
She drops her head, one hand clutching her stomach and the other covering her mouth. I just sit there, stunned. When she looks up at me a moment later, there’s a wide smile across her lips. “Oh man, you should’ve seen your face,” she wheezes. “I’m just fucking with you.”
I give a quick shake of my head. “You’ve spent too much time with Hudson.”
Laughter continues to bubble out of my sister, and I join in. Once we’ve regained ourselves, Whit crosses her arms over her chest and smirks. “I didn’t come up with it by myself; it was a joint effort with Grace. She’s joined the planning committee.”
There’s no denying the way my stomach dips at the mention of her name. But having her on board to help out with the rodeo? That’s got my heart almost beating out my chest. It almost seems too good to be true though, and we all know what they say about that.
“Hold on, whose idea was this?” My eyes narrow in Whit’s direction.
“Well—okay, hear me out before rolling your eyes please. It might’ve been mine, but Grace is totally on board with it; she even agreed to hang posters with you next week.
I’m just waiting for her to let me know when she’s free, but y’all will go ‘round town and out to the edges of Iris Meadows. Shouldn’t be more than a few hours. ”
This completely stumps me. “She agreed to that?”
“Of course, you dummy. Why wouldn’t she?”
I could think of a hell of a lot of reasons why she wouldn’t, but I keep that to myself. “Just wasn’t sure, given our history and all.”
Whitney has good intentions, and her heart is in the right place, so there’s no need to bite her head off.
Plus, the more I think about it, this could actually be a good thing.
If Gracie has willingly agreed to Whit’s insanity, some part of her is okay with spending time with me in that proximity.
Is it too much to hope that she might even be looking forward to it?
“Oh I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” Whit responds with a flick of her wrist. “I’ve never seen someone’s pupils dilate as much as G’s did when I mentioned you.”
If she didn’t have my attention before, she sure as shit does now. “Come again?”
Whit’s lips turn up at the corners like the Cheshire Cat. “That certainly got your attention, didn’t it.”
“Y’know what? Never mind.”
The pout directed my way is dramatic. “Oh come on, don’t be like that, Tuckster.”
I roll my eyes at the nickname. “You’re stirring the pot, Whitney.”
“I am not!” She smacks both hands down on the table, disturbing the poor shakes and fries. “Cross my heart, I mentioned your name and her pupils dilated almost immediately. And you know what that means, right?”
I could go along with it and just Google it later to save myself some embarrassment, or I could admit that no, I do not know what that means, and find out now after a heaping of belittling from my sister—quite the dilemma. I go with the latter, unable to quell my piqued curiosity.
“Uh n-no, I don’t. Care to elaborate?”
The kind smile my sister gives me is quite the surprise. I was sure she’d laugh at my naivety and call me a buffoon, but she doesn’t do either. Instead, she reaches over and clasps one of my hands in both of hers. “It means she still cares about you too, silly.”
The connection between dilated pupils and caring is lost on me, but that’s suddenly the least of my worries—Gracie still cares about me.
With each year that’s passed, I’ve let myself hope less and less for the happy ending I always thought we’d have.
Twelve years is a long time to be apart.
It wouldn’t be fair to expect that she’d come back to me, especially since I turned my back on her first. But this little glimmer of hope is the most I’ve had since that day, and I’ll be damned if I let it die out.
“That’s what I thought.” Whit gives a slow nod, rather proud of herself. Only then do I feel the ear-to-ear smile that’s found its way onto my face. “Now, back to the posters.”
Whit’s midway through her list of my responsibilities when one of our phones vibrates in her bag. She digs out her phones and glances down at it. The smile that splits her face makes me equal parts anxious as hell and intrigued.
“Grace is free next Tuesday—it’s a date.” She doesn’t even try to hide her glee.
I roll my eyes. “It ain’t even close to a date.”
“Wow, y’all are quite the match. She rolled her eyes too.” Whit shows me her text thread, Gracie’s eye roll emoji being her response to Whit’s it’s a date message.
My lips pull up into a small smile, and Whit returns it.
She continues on about location and time, but I don’t catch any of it as her voice fades into the background of my thoughts.
Images of actual dates with Gracie swarm, unbidden but certainly not unwelcome.
Our last date comes to mind—a picnic in the bed of my old pickup, out in the forest-esque part of the ranch.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that would be our last date. But even if I knew that back then, I wouldn’t change a damn thing about that date. When I’d dropped her home that evening, Gracie kissed me and told me that was her new favorite day.
As I’d laid in bed later that night, she texted me saying how excited she was to find a place in Chicago where we could recreate that date. I wonder if she ever found a spot, or if she never got the chance to look for it, instead waiting for me to show up.
But I never did.