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“Don’t get in any trouble,” Jo warned. “Public indecency is a crime.”
“Iris Jo,” Dottie scolded. “You watch your mouth.”
“My mouth isn’t the one you should be worried about.”
“Bye,” Presley said on a laugh before falling into step beside me. “Ignore them.”
“The Blum sisters have made an Olympic sport out of heckling. I learned how to ignore them in middle school.”
I walked around to the passenger side of my truck and opened the door for her, offering a hand to help her in, enjoying the hell out of her flushed cheeks.
That was really the reason for any gentlemanly behavior. It was entirely selfish, motivated purely by the look on a woman’s face when she was treated like she should be.
Once she was inside, I strode to my side and climbed in, firing up the engine, resting my hand on the back of her seat as I looked over my shoulder to back up.
“What a weird couple of days,” she said.
“That’s putting it lightly.” I turned onto Main Street.
Presley watched out the window at the buildings we passed. “I can’t imagine what the world would be like without this town in it.”
“I don’t want to even think about it. Goddamn Mitchell. He won’t get away with it. I don’t give a shit how many of their kind have run this town. We’re stronger than he is if we stick together.”
“You think you can really stop him?”
“I know we can. I don’t know how yet, but we’ll do it. I wouldn’t be sad to see him go. This town could use a new mayor. Seventy years is sixty years too long to be under one family’s thumb.”
“I hope you’re right.” She fiddled with the air vents before asking, “Can we put down the windows?”
“Nothing would please me more.”
One of her brows rose with one corner of her lips. “Nothing?”
“Don’t tempt me, Presley Hale.” I flicked off the A/C, and a second later, the windows were down.
The hot summer air whipped around the cab, lifting locks of Presley’s hair as she smiled out the window. She looked at home in Lindenbach in a way I couldn’t imagine she did in California. Something about this place brought out something in her—she fit in just right while also managing to float a little bit higher than everyone else.
When Patsy Cline came on the radio, she leaned over and turned it up and sang along to “I Don’t Wanna” with exaggerated expressions as she told me she didn’t want to walk unless it was with me, didn’t want to talk unless it was to me, all to a bouncy honky-tonk beat that had me laughing and wishing I had a bench seat so she could be tucked into my side instead of all the way on the other side of the truck.
When Elvis came on after Patsy, Presley straight up clapped and launched into “Jailhouse Rock,” somehow managing to swing her hips while seated. Years of practice, I figured.
It was the single most entertaining thing I’d seen in years.
In my defense, it’d been a rough couple of years.
We were a few minutes out onto a country road when she quieted, perked up, and looked at me like she’d figured out where we were going.
I nodded with a lazy smile on my face.
“The river?”
“The river.”
“Our spot?”
“Where else?”
I thought she was going to bust out of her skin, she was so excited. For a second, I just watched her laugh and talk and beam and bounce, remembering that girl I used to know. I could see that girl I met one summer long ago clear as day, especially as she recited a story we told each other often—Wyatt and the rope swing that broke midair. He’d somehow managed to pull a flip out of the ordeal, then lost his trunks in the river and nobody’d give him a towel.
We’d turned down the trail to the river by the time she finished, our laughter fading, though our smiles weren’t going anywhere. I snuck glances here and there as we crept toward the river, catching her watching out the window with her face bright with wonder, her arm outstretched to brush tree branches. Patsy was back on singing “Always,” and all I could think was that Presley was the living verse, from every haunting chord to every single word. I’d been loving her always.
But she was right. Our timing always sucked.
I pulled into the clearing at the riverbank and turned the truck around so the bed faced the water. This trail was less used than most, the bank here too rocky for more than a couple people at a time. The forest was thick enough on both sides of the river that it was secluded, quiet other than the sound of rushing water.
She hopped out before I put it in park, kicking off her shoes to wade in up to her calves.
