CHAPTER 10
Summer
Most everyone assumes that a date with a rodeo cowboy ends with the woman getting bedded. From what I’ve heard, that’s pretty accurate.
Except for me.
In my experience, most of those wild rodeo cowboys become my platonic pal before we even finish our first beer. That usually puts an end to any questions about where the date is headed.
The men who aren’t satisfied with being my friend get the Summer Treatment.
Ironically, the Summer Treatment is ice cold.
And those who put their hands all over me because they can’t comprehend the meaning of the word “no”?
Adam’s apple city.
“Oh my gosh! There you are!” Bryttni greets us in the Bellagio. She’s wearing the skimpiest bikini I’ve ever seen. It’s three lunch lady hairnets attached to her body with spiderweb fibers. Doesn’t the woman have any pubic hair? Where did it go?
Her nipples are present and accounted for, however.
“The parties are already starting,” Bryttni pouts and stomps a high-heeled foot on the marble floor. “I’ve been here all alone! Just waiting for you to come back so we can start to have fun!”
“Summer got hit on,” Declan says, his voice raw.
I look over at him. Poor fella. He’s breaking out in a sweat while staring at Bryttni. I bet dollars to donuts that he’s noticed the lack of public hair, too.
“We’re going to be double-dating for dinner,” Declan adds, still staring, his words flat.
“You go, girl!” Bryttni slaps at my arm. I try to smile. “Is he hot?” she asks. “You better tell me he’s hot, ’cause a cutie-patootie like you absolutely should have a hot guy!”
“Very hot,” I tell her. Because it’s the truth. “Volcano hot. He’s an asset manager.”
“Can you say ‘score’?” Bryttni hoots with laughter. She’s unaware that every person in the lobby, regardless of gender, age, creed, or ethnicity, is staring at her flesh. “But you’re going to need a new outfit, Summer. You can’t go anywhere looking like that.”
Look who’s talkin’.
“Told you,” I tell Declan, finding that he’s not listening. He’s hypnotized by the strip of smooth skin between Bryttni’s navel and her missing pubic hair.
“Makeover!” she shouts.
“Huh?”
“When is our reservation, Declan?” Bryttni waits for him to answer. She waves her hands in front of his face. “Deck-laaan!”
He lifts his eyes. “Eight.”
“Good.” She grabs me by the hand. We get about three steps from Declan when Bryttni spins us around again. “Is it okay to use the same card?” she asks him.
He nods.
We’re off again.
“Uh…” I’m trying to find the right way to ask Bryttni this question. “Do you have anything to put on over your… spiderweb?”
“Oh, shoot. I totally forgot.” Bryttni digs into her giant canvas bag and pulls out a cover-up. It’s sparkly and low-cut and see-through, but at least it hits her at mid-thigh and does a decent job of nipple camouflage.
I look down at myself. Bryttni and I must make an odd couple.
It’s weird. I usually spend about three seconds a day worrying about what I look like or who is or isn’t looking at me. But that’s at home. At the ranch, or town, or my cabin, or on the range, or in my pickup truck. These are all places where I’m comfortable and I know my purpose.
But here? I came here to find Evander and Phoebe and I failed. And now it’s like I’m on a reality TV show I never signed up for, one where they take the farmer’s daughter and doll her up for a night on the town.
Bryttni pulls me into some glass and marble temple that I think had the word “salon” on the sign out front. A quick look around makes me sure of it.
When Bryttni asks for a walk-in appointment, the woman at the reception desk laughs and looks at us funny. But almost immediately, a large, bald man scurries toward us.
“My next client just cancelled,” he tells the receptionist. “I’m Bruno. Can you girls be back in an hour?”
“Done! It’s fate! You’re going to get such a huge tip, Bruno!” Bryttni pulls on my hand and we’re off again. We spend the time in a dizzying race to visit as many obscenely overpriced boutiques as possible in an effort to find something for me to wear.
I’ve heard of speed dating. This is speed shopping.
“Keep repeating this to yourself—it’s your new mantra,” Bryttni says, closing her eyes and taking a cleansing breath. “Sexy dress, sexy shoes, sexy accessories. Sexy all the way down.”
I feel myself grimace. Because I’m a virgin—all the way down. Bryttni doesn’t know that. No one knows that. So what exactly am I doing? I wouldn’t know sexy if it bit me on my left butt cheek.
So how will I handle this? Do I act like I’m not a virgin tonight? Am I actually hoping that tonight’s the night I enter my post-virginal era?
Do I have a plan? And if so, what the fuck is it?
“I want to hear you repeat what I just said.” Bryttni stops. She folds her arms across her sparkly cover-up and waits.
I sigh and mumble, “Sexy all the way down.”
“Yaaaaaassss!”
But I need some clarification. “What exactly do you mean by accessories? Like scarves or something?”
“Are your ears pierced? Let me see. Yes! Good. Earrings, necklace, bracelets. Stuff like that.”
“If you say so.”
Bryttni collects several dresses, a few short skirts and blouses, and a pair of bell-bottomed pants and a halter top and shoves me into a changing room.
Once alone, I grab all the shit I wouldn’t be caught dead in and hand it out the door.
That leaves me with one dress. It’s black.
Some sort of slippery fabric. I tug it on over my clothes and step out to show Bryttni.
She blinks in disbelief.
I’m already out of patience with this farce. I say, “Yes or no, Bryttni. Because it’s either this dress or my ranch clothes.”
On the way to the cash register, Bryttni says, “We’re getting you shoes next, and no, you can’t try them on over your shit kickers.”
She’s true to her word. Bryttni helps me find a pair of heeled sandals that probably won’t cause me to break an ankle. Then she eyeballs me up and down and picks out a black bra-and-panty set, the bottoms looking more like a slingshot than underwear.
“I don’t wear that kind,” I inform her.
“You do tonight,” she says.
Next, Bryttni forces me to look at jewelry. I don’t want to buy any of it. It’s wrong to spend Declan’s money like this, and I tell her so.
She sighs and goes off to pick out some shit without my input.
Not ten minutes later, I’m walking into the spa.
Ten minutes after that, I’m walking out of the spa shower wrapped in a towel, and a woman hands me a fancy spa robe and slippers to wear to my hair appointment.
“I’ll take you to Bruno,” she says, and I can’t help but feel like a horse thief headed to the gallows.
“Fresh as a daisy,” Bruno says, patting a salon chair. He then snaps a giant bib around my neck and spins me around to face a huge mirror. “What are we doing today?”
“Do not cut my hair.”
He rests a hand on his hip and blinks at my reflection in the mirror. “This isn’t a Wendy’s, sweetheart. We do hair here. Let’s try this again, shall we? What are we doing today?”