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Dear Miss Jewel,
My boyfriend of three years still hasn’t proposed, and now he wants me to move in with him. Should I tell him to put a ring on it?
Sincerely,
Nina, confused in Dallas
Dear Nina,
Three years? You’ve been patient long enough, honey. It’s time to give him that ultimatum. Tell him where you stand. Demand that he meet you halfway in this relationship. If he doesn’t, then it’s his loss, and you’ll be moving on to better things.
Jana Harris backspaced on the entire paragraph, then took another sip of her lemon tea as she read through Nina’s plight again. Sometimes, Jana’s first response wasn’t the best one.
Dear Nina,
There comes a time in every relationship when we need to give the ultimatum, but you need to be able to live with those consequences, whatever that might be. If three years with no ring is your threshold, then yes, it’s time. Have that talk, dear. Let him know that you have hopes and dreams, too.
Rooting for you,
Miss Jewel
There. The relationship advice was solid and genuine, and wouldn’t seem pushy to the hundreds of thousands of readers out there. Jana’s relationship advice column was syndicated in every major newspaper in Texas, a huge feat if she considered that she operated out of the tiny town of Prosper, and hadn’t dated anyone seriously in… years.
It wasn’t like she didn’t want to date. Heck, she was at Racoons, the town bar, every weekend with her besties Patsy and Barb. Jana flirted, laughed, batted her eyes, and danced. Yet…
No one was like him. And no one would ever be. That was okay, though. First crushes, or loves, or obsessions, never really faded away. Right? Jana should know. After all, she was Miss Jewel, the Queen of Dating, at least to the masses out there who didn’t even know her real name, or the fact that she lived in a teeny tiny Texan town where the biggest thing during the year was the rodeo.
Yep. Cowboys and cowgirls, roping calves, riding bulls, and racing around barrels.
None of it Jana could do. In fact, she hadn’t watched a rodeo since he left town.
She couldn’t. It only reminded her once again how she’d failed at everything she’d tried. Failed to get into college. Failed to get any of her novels published. Failed to be friends with her older sister. Failed to heal her broken heart. Failed to move on.
Jana had read enough self-help books and written enough advice columns to know that she was in a rut. Problem was, the rut was so deep and the bottom so muddy that she hadn’t been able to get out, no matter how many promising green bushes she tried to grab onto.
Her phone alarm went off, pulling Jana from her thoughts. It was time to get to work—her real job, that is. The one that paid the bills at her parents’ small farmhouse. They’d left their business to Jana and her sister, but only Jana had stayed.
Natalie was the brains out of the two sisters and had gone on to college, then law school. She didn’t want to live in a tiny town and get her hands dirty—or sticky, as the case would be with the homemade jams that their parents had turned into a fledgling business. One that Mr. and Mrs. Harris had mostly retired from. They spent their time in San Antonio, living at a country club, and golfing or playing tennis every day. Who would have thought?
Not Jana. Her parents weren’t ranchers. They didn’t have enough property for that, not after her grandpa had sold off parcel after parcel, and never invested a dime. Her mom had come up with the idea of making homemade jams, and her dad had locked down a distributor. Now, Harris Farms Preserves were sold in most small-town grocery stores from here to San Antonio. Not quite large enough to move out of the farmhouse kitchen, but busy enough that Jana spent four to six hours a day on the business.
Her dad still ran the financial side of the business, and her mom managed the website and customer service. It was up to Jana to make the jam, fill the jars, and ensure the pickup went smoothly when the truck came to collect the jam jars.
On today’s to-do list was making raspberry jam batches.
But her phone rang before she finished unloading a crate of new jars. Jana frowned when she answered. “What’s up, Barb?” Her friend didn’t usually call in the middle of the day.
“You’re not gonna believe this, hon,” Barb said, her voice a gushing tidal wave. “Not in a million years. Or a hundred million years.”
Suffice it to say, Barb could be a bit over-the-top, and she was probably the biggest gossip in Prosper. But Jana had no problem being entertained. “Oh yeah? Are you going to make me guess that long?”
Barb scoffed. “I don’t have all day, hon. Besides, it’s burning my tongue.”
“Then out with it,” Jana said with a laugh.
“Mayor Prosper had the lineup for this weekend’s rodeo on the computer screen at the arena office,” Barb said. “It was there in plain sight, so I didn’t think there’d be any harm in looking, you know? Just to see which fine cowboys might be coming to our little town.”
Jana opened the cupboard and pulled out a box of pectin she bought in bulk. “I thought this was burning your tongue. Out with it.”
