“She forget, did she?” Ivy did a little hop-step as she hurried back to her car. The girl was like a bottle of fizzy orange soda and had been all her life. How a woman could lose so much and be so damn resilient was beyond me, though I suppose with the little ones, she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Gravel dust trailed behind her as she sped down the long drive and turned back toward the highway.
Dakota stood back a ways from me, eyeing me carefully as if she was still trying to figure out if she was okay with me kissing her. Judging by the half-scowl on her lips and the burn of her stare, things weren’t looking to be in my favor.
“I’m going to look at some horses in a little bit,” I said. “You can come with if you want.”
“I’ll probably go back into town and visit Mom,” she said after clearing her throat, her voice slightly shaking. Her arms hugged her sides, almost in a defensive stance, like she was protecting herself from me.
“All right then.” I rested my hands against my hips, thumbing my belt loops. “Guess I’ll see you back here tonight.”
She nodded, glancing up at me through her lashes and apparently opting to keep her opinion to herself. Adjusting her purse strap over her shoulder, she marched toward her rental car and sped off.
Ruby whimpered from the bed of the truck, reminding me she needed help getting out. I hoisted her up and out and placed her gently on the ground. “Sorry, girl. Got a little distracted there.”
She licked my hand and moseyed back up to the front porch where she found her favorite sunny spot and collapsed herself into a furry ball of snoring dog.
Lowering myself into an old white rocker, I drew in a long breath and recalled the first time I knew I had to let Dakota Andrews go.
11 years ago
We were parked outside the Dairy Barn in town enjoying a lazy May afternoon as Dakota finished her senior year of high school, her sun-kissed legs kicked up across my dusty dash as she licked chocolate soft serve off a red plastic spoon. She finished off the last bite before reaching into her faded pink backpack and pulling out a starched white envelope with a royal blue return address stamped from the University of Kentucky.
“Look what came today,” she said with a sing-song drawl. “I wanted to open it with you.”
I turned my body toward her, watching intently as she drew in a long, slow breath and tore at the white paper. She yanked out a single page, and my heart fell as I watched her eyes well up as she read it. I readied myself with an apology and a few words of encouragement until she finally spoke up.
“I got in.”
“What?” I should’ve been happy for her. And I was. But her words were a bullet to our future, sealing our destiny, at least for the foreseeable future. “That’s great.”
“They’re giving me a full ride. An academic scholarship, Beau.” She wiped her eyes and pressed the letter across her heart as she smiled big.
I leaned across the truck and kissed her lips, tasting the happy tears that streaked her cheeks and fell onto her pretty lips. Cool and salty, it was a taste I would never quite be able to forget.
“You know what this means, right?” she asked, looking up at me as if she needed my permission to pursue the best damn thing that’d ever happened to her.
“I know,” I said. “It means we just have the summer.”
“I want to spend every single day with you,” she said. “Up until the very end. Before I leave.”
I nodded. All relationships were a gamble, but putting a time stamp on the best thing that had ever happened to me stung like nothing else. “I’m happy for you, Kota. I really am.”
I glanced into the soft blue eyes I’d grown dangerously in love with over the course of the last few years, never forgetting the first time I saw her at school. Helping one of the disabled kids after they spilled the contents of their backpack all over the floor of a busy hallway, she was the only person kind enough to stop what she was doing and assist the flustered and embarrassed guy.
And then I saw her the following week as I walked past a classroom. She was seated in the front row, nibbling on the eraser of her yellow pencil and listening intently as the teacher droned on and on about Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
But the week after that, when I saw her smile for the first time as she laughed about something with her friend, I was a goner. She had a grin that lit up her whole face and sent my heart into an uncontrollable state of arrhythmia. I’d made the rookie mistake of telling my best friend I thought she was hot, and in true high school fashion, he purposely pushed me into her in the hall.
“There’s a community college near UK,” Dakota said. “If that’s something you might want to consider someday?”
I shook my head. She and I both knew academics were never my strong suit, and in my family, it had always been a given that the farm would someday be mine to run. I was two grades older than Dakota, and staying put in Darlington after high school was a no-brainer. I had a good job waiting for me and a pretty girl who made it damn near impossible to want to leave.
“We can try to do the long distance thing if you want? It’s only a couple hours from here. Long distance might not be so bad.” She shrugged a shoulder, her eyes waiting for my response, as if she wanted me to make the decision for her. Dakota was a pretty girl who’d blossomed into a level of ridiculously stunning beauty, and the thought of her turning heads on campus that fall sent my blood into an instant boil. I couldn’t sit back home in Darlington, working on my father’s farm and wondering if she was being asked on dates left and right by frat boys with ulterior motives.
“You know we’d crash and burn by Christmas,” I said, giving an apologetic huff. “We’ll just have to put things on pause.”
She leaned toward me and pressed her honey-sweet lips against mine once more. She was so excited about her letter that I doubted she could fully appreciate that it was going to be one of our last carefree kisses. “What are you going to do back home while I’m gone?”
I pursed my lips, staring over the dash. “Play music and work the farm. What I’ve always done. Got some gigs booked at some county fairs this summer. Who knows, maybe something’ll come out of those.”
“Come with me,” she said, her eyes sparkling and fearful all at the same time. “I don’t think I can do this alone. Without you.”
“Don’t say that.” I shook my head. “You got a full ride scholarship, Dakota. You’re going to make something of yourself and get the hell out of Darlington just like you always wanted. And I’ll be waiting right here for you when you get back.”
Her home life hadn’t always been that great, and the kids at school hadn’t always taken kindly to her on account of her living in a trailer and wearing faded old clothes that barely fit half the time. But damn if she wasn’t still the prettiest, smartest, kindest girl in all of Darlington. I knew she was going places in life, and I’d have been damned if I even considered holding her back. Dakota couldn’t help being driven and intelligent and ambitious anymore than Ivy could help being so damn optimistic all the time.