Now Van felt like a complete jerk. She moaned and dropped her head to the little counter next to the sink.
Charity yelped, “No smearing!”
Van popped back up straight. She’d left a smudge of powder foundation on the edge of the counter. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” Charity grabbed the kabuki brush she’d been using earlier and dabbed at Van’s forehead. “There we go. Good as new.”
“Listen...”
“Hmm?”
“It’s just, well, Idolike your brother.” She liked Charity, as well—liked her too much to keep lying to her by omission. “I like Jameson a lot and I’m going to spend time with him over the summer.”
That radiant smile of Charity’s bloomed wide. “Ha. I knew it.”
I just...” She fumbled for the right words and settled for, “Okay, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want my family to know that I’m seeing Jameson.”
Charity put the brush down. “Do I get to ask why?”
“Of course.” Van explained what she’d already explained to Jameson and Callie—that her family wanted her married to a local guy and living in town, and that wasn’t going to happen. “I don’t want them getting ideas that I might move back to Bronco.”
“So what if they do get ideas? Isn’t that their problem?”
Van almost face-planted on the counter again. “Sometimes I can’t believe you’re only nineteen.”
“Because I’m right. Am I right?”
“Yes, if they can’t accept that I get to make my own life decisions, itistheir problem. But I don’t want to disappoint them. At the same time, I feel awful that I resent them a little. They try so lovingly to run my life.”
Van hovered on the brink of saying more, about what had happened in high school, about how she’d hurt her mother and Grandma Daisy and Evan, too, when things went from bad to worse—hurt them with worry for her. She’d kept her suffering to herself. But they’d known there was more going on with her than she ever told them about. And when they’d tried to get her to open up about the awful things she was keeping from them, she’d lied and said there was nothing.
She’d held on to her pride. It had felt like all she had left. She’d wanted to handle the problem all by herself. And she had.
But Charity didn’t need to hear that old horror story. And Van didn’t want to go there, anyway.
“Let me ask you this,” said Charity. “What if, say, things go really well between you and Jameson this summer and he decides that he might be willing to move to Billings?”
“That’s not going to happen. He’s a Bronco rancher, through and through.”
“But just say theoretically—”
“Stop. It’s for the summer and that’s it.”
“Because you like Jameson, but you don’t like himthatmuch?”
“Your brother is wonderful, he really is.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She thought of Donnie and the awfulness of the way he’d dumped her—twice. Of what Maura and her girlfriends had put her through.
Maybe she’d developed something of a neurosis around the whole idea of ever moving home. Or maybe it was simply that, as much as she longed for love, right now she needed to protect her heart. Keeping the thing with Jameson a secret and putting a time limit on it had the effect of constantly reminding her that it was just for now. It kept her from getting serious.
She met Charity’s gaze. “I like my life the way it is, you know?”
“Relax your lips. Good.” Charity set to work with a lip brush. “So, being single in Billings, that’s a big thrill?”
Van couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter at that one.
