“Day one of an eternity,” Joelle muttered. She had been dreading sleeping in a tent, but even that sounded good after listening to their music for the past three hundred miles and now their bickering. What she would give for some Blake Shelton, Chris Stapleton, JasonAldean, or Luke Combs couldn’t be measured in dollars and cents.
Are you talking about the distance you have to travel or having to sit beside your old crush for two weeks?the voice in her head asked.
Both,she answered without hesitation.
“Think we’ll live through it?” Ford asked as he parked the bus.
“You know what they say: That which don’t kill us makes us stronger,” she answered.
“Then we should each be able to bench press an Angus bull when this is over,” he said, chuckling.
“We got to get these tents up before we can cook,” Sharlene said as she crawled out of the van. “And Nita gets downright bitchy when she’s hungry.”
“All I’ve had today was a beer and a little snack from the gas station back down the road, and the kids today call it ‘hangry,’” Nita told her.
“I guess that’s our cue to help with the tents,” Ford said as he got out of the bus. “I’m starving. Did someone mention fried potatoes back there?”
“Yep, we’ll cook soon as we get the two tents…” Sharlene said.
Two tentswas all Joelle heard. Did that mean she would be wedged in between Nita and Sharlene?
“Me and Nita will be taking one tent.” Sharlene was removing stuff from the trailer and setting it on the picnic tables.
“Me and Ford will get the other one,” Billy Joe said as he carried one of the tents to a place under a shade tree. “Man, it feels good to stretch my legs. I’m glad we’re getting to our ranch on Saturday so I can go to the honky-tonk and dance away all my stiff muscles.”
“Hmph,” Nita snorted. “It’ll take more than one night of dancing to work the soreness out of eighty-year-old muscles. I just now heard your knees cracking, and you were trying not to groan when you got up from that position you were in for our first picture.”
“I ain’t eighty yet,” Billy Joe shot back at her as he rounded the bus to get the supplies out of the trailer, “and there’s a lot of good left in this old body.”
Sharlene patted Joelle on the shoulder as she got out of the bus. “You’ll be throwing your sleeping bag on the floor back here at night. When we get to the ranch, we’ve rented a big cabin with three bedrooms, so you can even have your own room then.”
Joelle didn’t realize she was holding her breath until it came out in a long whoosh. She’d gladly sleep in the bus rather than crowd into a two-person tent with two old ladies—especially with her aunt who snored like a six-hundred-pound grizzly bear. She had learned years ago to bring earplugs when she visited the farm. She had often wondered if the neighbors—that would be Nita on the next ranch over, and Billy Joe just past that one—could hear her aunt. But then she figured that if she stepped out onto the porch in the middle of thenight, she could probably hear them making just as much noise.
“What are you thinking about?” Ford asked as he opened the driver’s side door.
“Snoring,” she answered honestly.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” he groaned. “I didn’t bring my earplugs. I may be bringing my sleeping bag and joining you on the floor of this thing.”
“Would you really sleep in a pink hippie wagon?” she asked. “Won’t that ruin your big he-man Army Ranger image?”
“To get some good sleep, I just might,” he answered. “And I finished my twenty years in the service as of two weeks ago, so the image, if I ever had one, retired with me.”
She gave him a slow once-over, from head to toe. “I don’t think the image knows that yet.”
“If it doesn’t know now, it will by the time this trip is over. Did you really not know how long this trip would last?” he asked.
“Not until this morning,” Joelle answered, “but I’d planned to spend the whole summer with Aunt Sharlene anyway.”
Chapter 2
A cool morning breeze flowed through the open door of the bus when Joelle awoke the next morning. When she got her bearings and realized that she was in a sleeping bag on the floor, she turned over to find Ford right beside her—eyes wide open and a big smile on his face.
“Good morning,” he whispered.
“How…why…” she stammered.
“I told you that I might be joining you,” he said. “Grandpa snores. If you listen…”
