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Matching looks of sympathy found their faces, which I hated almost as much. I didn’t want them to be sorry for me. I already felt sorry enough for myself. Everyone said you should feel “complete” on your own. But I’d lived almost forty years alone, and I wanted more.
“Look,” I explained, “the dating pool in Cottonwood Falls is very small. And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, I’ve tried staying here. I’ve tried waiting for love to find me. Now, I have to change something to find my person too.”
Liv flipped over a new sheet of paper. “But that doesn’t mean you have to move to find him. We just need to catch with a wider net, right?”
I eyed her doubtfully while my other friends nodded in agreement.
Liv said, “Let’s make a list of all the eligible bachelors. We have two and a half months to make something stick.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” This wasn’t some high school revenge movie. It was my life.
But Liv came up to me, taking both my hands in hers. “I know you said you haven’t found your person yet... but you’re my person, Della. I can’t let you leave without at least trying.”
My throat felt tight with emotion, and I blinked back tears. I wanted to stay here too—even if the plan to make it happen was a moonshot. “Okay, we’ll try.”
A cheer erupted around the room. And for the next half hour, my friends listed every single, non-terrible guy within a sixty-mile radius. Once we accounted for no major age gaps, there were only four on the list. And that was the problem. I didn’t want non-terrible. I didn’t want bottom of the barrel.
I wanted real, heart-stopping, all-consuming, lifelong love.
Liv frowned at the paper. “Only four guys? I could have sworn there were more.”
“Oh!” Larkin said. “Give me the marker.” She got up from the couch and took the marker from Liv. In steady strokes, she wrote HAYES MADIGAN.
Maggie whooped, and Hen giggled. Liv only frowned. “We have two and a half months,” Liv said. “It’ll take a lot longer than that for him to be ready for a woman like Della.” She crossed his name off the list.
Hen replied, “It’s a solid start.”
Larkin nodded. “You only need one, right?”
I tried to act positive for their sake, but looking at the names on the list, I wasn’t so sure. As much as I hated to admit it, maybe Hayes was right. Maybe I was stupid to hope for a happily ever after.
Bennett Smith
Ethan Miller
Joshua Jones
Matteo Garcia
Hayes Madigan
All the guys listed had lived here for over five years, and nothing had happened yet. But even so, a small glimmer of hope battled for a hold on my heart. I didn’t want to end up grumpy and cynical like Hayes. I wanted more.
Maybe we could find a way to make this work.
And if not... Dallas was waiting.
9
HAYES
So I might have lied to Della about no place in my house being for women. Because in the bottom of my closet, I kept a basket I fondly referred to as my treasure chest. Any item left behind got tossed into the basket, where it waited for its owner to claim it. Some items had been in there over five years—half a dozen lipstick containers, hair scrunchies, a pair of Buckle jeans, Silly Putty, slippers. It all went in the treasure chest.
When I was old and gray and sagging, I’d sit in my rocking chair telling the younger generation about my adventures.
But I was about to add a strange item to the treasure chest—a pink, frilly throw pillow. The chick I was with last night must have brought it for a comfy place to lay her head (although I had no idea how it could be comfortable with all the sequins) and forgotten it entirely.
I dropped the pillow in the basket and then finished getting ready for work. The shop was about half a mile from my house, and I got on my Harley for the ride. My helmet waited on the back seat, and I pulled it over my head, thinking of the infuriating woman with the luscious hips who led to the purchase. Her face when she discovered the sticker would be imprinted in my memory forever. If only that moment could make it in the treasure chest too.