Chapter 1
Shana
I kid you not, it was ten inches long,” Lemon stage whispers to Jeremy from across the table, holding up her arm for reference. “The size of my forearm. Tell me how I was supposed to say no to the tour bus after that.”
“You weren’t.” Jeremy puckers his lips, shaking his head as he slurps down a low-fat chocolate shake.
I sip my drink, too, letting my long, dark curls hang haphazardly in front of my face like a little shield, my cloak of darkness to hide the crimson blush spreading across my chest with each growing moment they contemplate which other items might be longer than this rockstar’s… penis .
I suck in a breath through my nose and blow it out through the red plastic straw, admiring the steady height of the bubbles I’m creating in my root beer float.
“You okay, Shay?” Devyn nudges me. We’ve been coming to the Sugar Stable a lot since she moved back home a few months ago and started the pageant program. Seeing as how rodeo pageants used to be a huge tradition in Pine Forest before Miss Clara passed a few years ago, and Dev is a former Miss American Rodeo queen, the news of her starting the program back up spread like wildfire. It’s becoming extremely popular, to say the least. So many dancers from my studio want to participate that I somehow got roped into becoming a board member too, even though my only experiences with pageants are helping my best friend perfect the dances for her talent portions over the years. Aside from that, I’ve only ever been a spectator, watching Devyn do her thing.
Not that I don’t like being a part of the pageant board.
I do.
It’s basically Lemon, Jeremy, and Dev, and I love being with my friends. Usually .
If I’m being honest with myself, I need any distraction I can get. That’s the real reason I’m here.
So that I won’t be there.
Only today it’s not as reassuring as I’d like, because while we’re supposed to be discussing costumes and whether we should hire a seamstress or have the girls fundraise to purchase catalogue outfits like we do in dance, we seem to be discussing the…male anatomy, and its relation to Lemon’s latest one-and-done.
I sigh to myself, blowing hair strands up with the force of my breath as I contemplate why it bothers me so much that she’s always this vocal about her sexuality.
It’s not like Lemon isn’t a grown woman. She’s allowed to have…trysts , I guess you call them. And I’m not slut-shamey, by any means.
But it’s, like, how is everyone so open to all of this?
One minute you’re a teenager, and its taboo to even think about taking off your bra, and the next thing you know, you’re twenty-six and everyone you know has an OnlyFans.
“Am I the only one who doesn’t want forearm sex?”
“You said that out loud,” Devyn says, squinting her eyes and pressing her lips together.
Crimson Blush, meet Entire Body .
I can’t stand to meet her eyes, embarrassment washing over me like a cold shower. Harsh. Instant. She’s looking at me in a way that…
“You feel sorry for me. Oh, my God—” I watch my best friend bite her bottom lip and scrunch her nose.
“You do want forearm sex. I knew it.” I push my drink away and scuttle my knees up to my chest until I’m hugging them under the fabric of my hoodie, swiftly tugging my hood over my head and tightening the strings until only my nose and mouth are visible through the opening.
“Shana,” Devyn says, shoving my hands off the hoodie strings and loosening the fabric from around my face. “There.” She smiles, making me look her in the eyes while she speaks, and not at Jeremy and Lemon who are pretending they don’t see us—and doing a really crappy job of it — sliding their gazes our way every few seconds as they have, what I assume, is a fake conversation.
I roll my eyes at the theatrics, but a warmth surrounds me despite my mortification, because their stupid little act means something, at least.
They care.
I do have fantastic friends, even if I am the innocent, good girl of the group.
“I don’t want to have sex with a forearm, just so we’re clear.” Devyn offers me a sincere smile.
Jeremy, who is miraculously now paying attention, places his hand on mine from across the table. “I don’t think it would be satisfactory for my, um, preferences , either,” he says, biting his lip to keep from laughing at his own implications. A giggle slips free from my lips at that, and I let myself appreciate just how understanding my friends are of my…
I don’t know what you call it.
Innocence, I guess.
“Do you feel better now that you know Lemon is the only ho of the group?” Devyn asks, shooting a devious wink at Lemon and making me laugh even harder. Lemon rolls her eyes, but she smiles at me with gentle concern.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. We all experience things at different times and levels…” She drones on, trying to explain to me how I’m not the odd woman out, when I know for a fact that I am the only twenty-six-year-old virgin in the world.
Okay, a bit dramatic, I know. Probably not the world, but like, of all the people I know, at least.
And my friends aren’t even privy to that little detail.
They just think I’m conservative, secretive about it all, but the truth is, the last relationship I had was before Dad got sick four years ago. And even then, I was so new to love that I had barely even kissed the guy. Scott was his name, not that it really matters.
He could have been Jim or Timothy for all I recall. He was just a man I met and felt…well, truthfully, very little for. Just like the ones I’d met before him. There was never that spark that told me to lay it all out on the line for someone other than myself.
To be bare. Physically and beyond.
Scott got over me after a while, when I wasn’t ready to do more than first base type stuff, and it just fizzled when I moved back home with Dad.
Lemon’s been with us for a year now. Well, the home health team she works for has. They take care of Dad around the clock. The retirement he won’t ever get to use is paying for it. And really, I’m not needed at home when they’re around to care for him.
I’m just there on my off time, hoping he’ll have a good enough day to sit up and talk, considering myself incredibly blessed on days he’s well enough to crinkle the edges of his eyes and offer me a few lines of Shakespeare. When he can muster the strength. The good days.
Lately, there have been fewer good days.
And he doesn’t need me there hovering over him to die. He might not be alert enough to tell me that right now, but I know my dad. I know how he feels about this. He doesn’t want me to watch him wither away. He’s too proud.
But how can I turn my back on him now? We’re all each other has.
That in itself should be my red flag, though. We’re all each other has. I have nobody else. No family. Just me.
I should be jumping at the idea of going out to bars with my friends at night and meeting strangers for sex with limb-size penises, right? Well, maybe just hot dog size to start, because that sounds a bit much.
“You can’t sit around an’ fuss over your old man forever. Promise me you will find connection outside of caring for me. Find someone worthy of your dance, my sweet Shaker. Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant taste of death but once.”
It was almost three weeks ago when he said that.
The last good day.
So, what’s my excuse? Even my dad’s like, ‘Yo, go get laid,’ in more or less those words.
And it’s not like I mean to be a virgin. I just am. How do you even explain that to people my age?
I was a very focused teenager and an even more determined college student. I was always at rehearsal perfecting my craft, my love of dance.
I didn’t have time for sex.
And now I’m so far behind that any real relationship-material kind of guy I meet is going to expect I have at least some idea how to do things I have exactly no idea whatsoever how to do.
Do you do sex? Or have it?
See? I don’t even know.
It doesn’t help that Lemon is going way farther into this than I need right now. I appreciate it, but it’s not exactly helping to hear about her perceived lesser sexual acts. She’s trying to make this one seem vanilla, but it’s just revealing how very few things I know about intercourse.
What even is a cock ring? Oh, my God, I know zero things.
“It’s fine!” I say, cutting her off, because she starts going on about her first time giving oral, and I do not need to hear that.
Or maybe I do.
My friends all look at me expectantly, like they want me to tell them more of my…feelings or something.
The thing is, I don’t share those.
Feelings.
I have far too many of them running around in my brain all day, and if you ask me, they are extremely demanding little suckers that I simply have no time for and must squash beneath my feet. Literally and figurately.
Doesn’t matter which ones. Sadness, fear, guilt, anxiety, passion… lust.
The only time I let myself succumb to those things willingly is when the music takes over and my body feels them for me.
When I dance.
So, I dance as often as possible. I danced my way through a state college scholarship, on to a master’s degree, became a dance teacher, and bought my own studio with my earnings.
It’s all I ever wanted.
I used to think it was all I’d ever need.
But when the studio closes, and the girls take their sparkling tulle and giggling voices home with them, I go home too.
And there aren’t friends or fun, and certainly no forearms waiting for me.
There’s the only family I have left.
Dying.
“We’re going to Cowboy’s Paradise, if you wanna join.” Lemon smiles at me from across the table, breaking my awkward silence.
Jeremy scrolls his phone, checking to see which of the bartenders are on shift tonight. Not that it matters, since he works there, knows them all, and will find out in a matter of minutes when they arrive. And Devyn, falling quickly into a cute little mommy role since caring for her ex’s…and now not ex’s niece of a daughter—it’s a long story—shuffles the cups around, picking up paper straw wrappers and putting them in a neat little pile for the man bussing tables tonight.
Her brother, it just so happens. Okay, it doesn’t just happen. He owns the place. He’s like, always here, thankfully.
I mean, not thankfully. Did I think that?
Dustin Campbell is the tall, quiet, bad boy down the hall in all my teenage memories. Better known as my best friend’s older brother.
He’s owned the Sugar Stable since he graduated high school two years ahead of us. He started here when he was just fifteen but quickly worked his way up to shift leader. He was always one of those silent, hardworking types, and it’s hard not to admire that his perseverance is what got him ownership over something like this, the local hot spot milkshake bar.
He went from busboy to owner, even after a quick stint in juvie for standing up to a bully in his tenth-grade year. It was only a few months, but when he got out, he was somehow even better looking than before. He kept to himself, did rodeos, worked, and stayed far away from gossip or drama… unlike most people in this town.
And here he is, still making shakes and checking on customers like he’s one of the little guys even though he doesn’t have to. Because he cares about this place from the ground up. He’s worked every part of it, and he understands the business at its core. He knows how to make something he loves and cares about thrive, and he isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty for it.
It reminds me of my dance studio, just across the street.
My studio is my life.
My one true passion.
Other women my age might care about contour makeup or the latest water bottle and leggings crazes, but my obsession comes in the form of beats and melodies that get stuck in my head until my brain commands my body give them physical life.
I tap my foot, even now, listening to the rhythm of the milkshake machine running as strong, muscled hands move the metal cup up and down the spinning rod, spreading the cream around the base until it’s smooth and dripping from the spinner.
I don’t realize I’ve been staring at Dustin, his forearm muscles, of all things, flexing with each extension as he twists the metal rod free from the machine to wipe it down, until Lemon turns her head and widens her eyes.
“You’re totally staring at Dustin, aren’t you?”
“What?” I snap my head back toward her, frantically eyeing the table to make sure Jeremy and Devyn are still locked in conversation and didn’t hear that absolute mistruth that just came out of Lemon’s mouth.
“I am not staring at…” I drop my voice and cut my eyes over to Devyn and then back at Lemon, “ …him .”
Lemon’s eyes widen to round saucers, but only briefly before she smiles mischievously.
“Noted.” That’s all she says. And I have a feeling that’s bad news.
But I wasn’t staring at Dustin.
Was I?
Am I now?
Shoot!
“I think I’m just going to hang out here and look up some music for the recital choreography,” I tell my friends as Lemon eyes me suspiciously, a purse to her knowing lips. I plead with her under a scrunched-up nose poking through my hoodie hole. I just want to be in a hole.
But to her credit, she doesn’t press me. It’s Devyn who does.
“It’s October,” she argues, “and a Christmas recital, Shay, come on. Hang out with us. You might just meet the perfect forearm, for all you know.”
“Oh, my God, you did not just say that.” I groan, shaking my head.
Sometimes my friends can be so…loud.
They’re more open about things I am so very closed about that you might as well say I’m mummified to them. Like sex, for example. I’m wrapped up, in a box, under a curse, and sealed in an underground tomb kinda closed-off to that.
But Devyn knows this and squeezes my hand to soften the blow. “I know you have a lot going on right now. And that’s exactly why you need to let loose sometimes. Meet someone who makes you smile. You don’t have to hide in your hoodie all alone, Shay.”
Lemon and Jeremy have gone to pay and are talking with Dustin at the counter in order to give Devyn and me this moment, and I appreciate that. Everyone here knows my dad is in his last few months, just living at home.
Waiting to die, I think again, that single thought practically a leech feeding off my mind at all times.
And I guess they all feel sorry for me.
I don’t even blame them. I feel sorry for me.
Shana Holiday, the last of her kind.
Like a dumb, young adult, dystopian novel where I find out I have hidden powers, or a fated mate, or some sort of duty and calling to save all of mankind like my ancestors always planned.
Then at least there would be a reason for my fate.
For my solitude.
But there’s not.
It’s just Shana Holiday, the last of her kind.
Even my friends can sense my doom. So, meeting someone right now? A relationship? Someone who makes me smile, as Devyn put it…that’s just not in my cards. It’s not part of this story, because it isn’t a story.
There is no romance through-line.
It’s just reality. And the reality is my dad is dying. I am a weird, emotionally stunted ballerina who only feels in song and loves in movement, and things like smiling someones and love… that’s another person’s story. Not mine.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I tell her, noting the feeling of disappointment coming off in waves with the downward turn of her frown, and the guilt that indicates I put it there. She walks away, and I watch her stop by the register at the door to peck her brother on the cheek before she turns away.
Something I should have done before he saw me.
But I didn’t.
And my body pays the price as goosebumps break across my skin in masses, my heart beating a wild, allegro storm, like the wings of one thousand butterflies live inside me.
The way his eyes kiss mine from across the room makes me feel something that has me scooping my laptop into my bag and darting from the Sugar Stable, across the street, and into my studio as fast as my legs will carry me.
Because I felt something just now. And I can’t un-feel it. Can’t unknow it.
When Dustin Campbell looks at me, it makes me dance.