Page 42 of A Country Kind Of Love

Nice? Really?

Her cheeks flush, again, it seems to be a regular occurrence when Cleo is around. She can’t look Cleo in the eye because she’s doing the thing with her lip that makes Peyton want to eat her face for breakfast.

“What are you thinking?”Cleo smirks.

“That I could eat your face forbreakfast.”

What the hell is wrong with you?

Cleo laughs. “Interesting.”

“Not in a creepy cannibalistic way.” She shakes her head. “In a I find you really attractive kind of way.”

“Ah, well I’m glad you cleared that up. I like my face intact.”

Peyton takes another rook. It’s too easy.

“So, you moved here from Indiana three yearsago, right?”

“Correct.” Cleo nods.

“You never really told me why?”

“The same reason you came here. I love country music. I love writing songs. I love singing songs. My aunt moved here when she was twenty-one and never looked back. I stayed with her for the first year until I saved enough to rent myown place.”

“Would you ever go back to home?” Peyton hopes the answer is no.

“I don’t think so, me and my parents get along better when there’s four hundred miles between us,” she jests, but she won’t look at Peyton. Her eyes drop back to the chessboard. Peyton senses underlyingpain there.

Cleo reaches forwards and takes Peyton’s rook with her bishop. “By the way, I also find you really attractive.” Way to changethe subject.

There’s that lip bite again. The chess game is about to become a game of sexualresistance.

“Sneaky,”Peyton says.

“My question for you is... what’s one of your most fun childhood memories?”

The memories come flooding back, fighting with her brothers, visiting their cousin who had the most amazing treehouse filled with toys, weekend trips to the beach, their family trip to the local shop on Friday’s for a large bag of candy, the ice cream truck on a warm summer’s day. The list is endless. Trying to pick one seemsimpossible.

“I remember one year me and my mom went to watch Kenny Chesney in concert. The whole day I was so excited. We listened to his album,Hemingway’s Whiskey,all the way to the venue. My mom bought me a T-shirt from the concert, and we had pizza beforehand. It was one of the best days of my life from morning to night.”

“It sounds amazing.”

“It was, but that wasn’t thebest part.”

“It wasn’t? Did you meet him?” Cleo sitsup straight.

“No, that would’ve been cool. Well, more so for my mom; she had a huge crush on him. I wasn’t allowed to tell my dad of course.” Peyton chuckles. “The best part was the drive home afterwards. We stopped off at the pier not far from our house. My mom had this little speaker that connected to her iPod. We walked to the end of the pier; we got shakes from Ruby’s Diner, and we stood right in the corner singing our favourite country songs.” Peyton remembers the sound of the waves crashing and the cool ocean breeze like it was yesterday. “We used to love harmonising together. We stayed there for an hour just singing, laughing, and talking. Nothing of significance happened, but I felt... truly happy.”

“Sometimes there’s ecstasy in momentslike that.”

Ecstasy.

Peyton didn’t hear that word often; why did it sound so relevant now? She can hear the melody in her mind, the song she’d been writing before Cleo arrived. The final line inthe chorus.

How did it go now?

She jumps up. “You’ve just given me an idea.” She rushes towards the bedroom, and makes a beeline for the piano.