Page 74 of Heartland

Twenty-Three

Chastity

Dear C,

Well, this is awkward.

First of all, thank you for replying to my email. Even if it was only nine words (yes, I counted them) I’m glad to hear from you.

However.

Now I can’t go home. Daphne has decided she needs to visit Burlington and stay with me. And for some reason Griffin thinks this is a great idea and has excused me from working this weekend.

I’m trying to figure out how to make caramels in Burlington. But without Leah’s kitchen, it’s not a slam dunk.

But I’m working on it. If you want a progress report, or if you want to talk, or even if you want to yell at me, please call. Anytime.

Miss you—

D.

“Nine words?”Ellie asks, eyeing me in the mirror. “Cold!”

“I wasn’t cold! You don’t know how I agonized over those nine,” I point out.

She grins. “So how many words did you use in your reply?”

“Twenty,” I admit. “I wrote—It won’t be easy to make it all in one weekend. Maybe Leah will help us. We’ll figure it out.”

“Brrr.” Ellie wraps her arms around her chest and gives a mock shiver. “Not one warm word for our hot farm boy? You’re really making him work for it.”

“It’s not intentional.” I don’t want Dylan to feel bad. But I don’t know how to go back to the way we were before. “If only I hadn’t had the idea for goat caramels in the first place.”

Ellie rolls her eyes at me in her bedroom mirror, where we’re putting on makeup. “You need to buck up and face him. Yeah, it’s awkward now. But the only way to make it less awkward is to see him again.”

“I’m not ready,” I grumble. “And you’re not ready for this party. You didn’t do your lower lashes.”

“I’ll just get it everywhere,” she complains.

“Hold still, then.” I uncap the mascara and fix Ellie’s makeup.

“How are you better at makeup than I am if you grew up in a puritanical cult?”

“Seventeenmagazine, and later,Cosmo,” I tell her. “I was a sponge for this kind of information before I ever owned a tube of lip gloss. Once, I stole my stepfather’s Sharpie marker and used it as mascara. It totally worked, too.”

I’d felt impossibly bold and rebellious all day long, with my darkened lashes. Luckily, nobody noticed. I would have gotten another beating for sure. Or—worse—they might have made me give up my job at Walgreens.

In my heart I’ve always been a rebel. It’s just that my infrequent attempts to stir things up usually end in disaster.

“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?” Ellie says.

“Maybe,” I grumble. “I don’t think I’m ever going to stop feeling like a fool. I took an easy friendship and made it difficult.”

Although for me our friendship was never easy. I’ve always wanted Dylan. Always. I still want him, only now he knows it.

And I just spent two days gearing up to face him again, only to read that email a few hours ago, canceling our weekend at home.

“Time heals all awkwardnesses,” Ellie says. “That’s what my mother says, anyway. It might take a lot of time, though, seeing as I still vividly remember every awkward thing I’ve ever done. Just put on some lipstick, okay? Let’s go to this party.”