“Sure—if you like whiny kids and horse poop. The pony cart is everyone’s least favorite job, but it’s a crowd pleaser.”
“Then what’s the best job?”
“The cider tasting room. Or cashier. I’m good with numbers. I don’t mind making change.”
He’s quiet for a second. “What’s your other reason?”
“For what?”
“For going home on a random November weekend.”
“Veteran’s Day—we’ve got Monday off. That’s all.”
“Okay, sure. But when a girl wears makeup on a rainy Saturday morning, it usually means there's a guy.”
Daphne’s face heats. “Wow, six weeks of psychology classes and you’re already putting everyone on the couch, huh?”
“Tell me I’m wrong.” He leans back against the headrest and grins.
“Sorry, Sigmund. There’s no guy.”
“What? Impossible. Wait—a girl, then? Sorry, I should have been more inclusive.”
Daphne laughs. “Nope. Maybe I really just like makeup.” She doesn’t. But Rickie doesn’t know that.
“Nah. There has to be someone. Six weeks into freshman year…” He thinks for a moment. “You're going home to try to keep a guy, or you're going home to try to catch him. It has to be one or the other.”
Daphne looks out at the wet highway as her heart flutters. The guy in the driver’s seat is really not her type. He’s got a bad boy glint in his eye that she’d usually avoid. But his quick wit is an awfully good time. Sparring with him is fun. “Listen, I think your analysis lacks subtlety.”
“Tell me where I went wrong,” he insists.
“There’s this guy—”
He hoots.
“Hey! I wasn’t done. There’s this guy who works on our farm. And I spent all of high school thinking I was in love with him.”
“An older man,” Rickie says with a wink.
“Exactly. He never looked twice at me. But I didn’t do a very good job of hiding my crush. A few weeks ago I found out that he’s seeing someone. And I had, uh, a bad reaction.”
“Ouch.” He has the decency to flinch.
“Yeah. Not my finest hour. It’s worse than that, because in the middle of my tantrum I was horrible to my sister, too. She’s probably never speaking to me again.” For good reason. Daphne is deeply ashamed of what she’d said and done. If she could rewind time and undo the damage, she would.
“So the makeup is like body armor,” he says. “You have to walk back into this mess you’ve made, and you want to look confident.”
“More or less.”
“I get it. I’m stopping for gas at the next exit. I’m going to grab a drink. Want anything? Soda? Terrible gas station coffee?”
“No thanks.”
He pulls into the gas station a few minutes later. Daphne is overly aware of the muscles in his forearm as he pops the parking brake. A hint of a tattoo peeks from beneath the sleeve of his uniform shirt.
I don’t even like tattoos, Daphne tells herself, even if it’s less true now than it was an hour ago.
Rickie sets up the pump and then heads into the store. His walk is cocky, and his uniform pants make his backside look muscular.
Daphne drags her eyes off his butt and sits back in the seat to wait. But now she’s second-guessing the makeup she put on this morning. Is it really so obvious? If Rickie noticed it, maybe her family will, too.
She reaches down to unzip her duffel, and pulls out her makeup bag, setting it on her lap. Inside, there’s a packet of makeup remover wipes. She uses one of these to dab at her mascara.
“Hey,” Rickie says a couple minutes later, setting a paper cup into the cupholder. “Don’t do that. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”
“It’s not nice to psychoanalyze your new friends,” she grumbles as the mascara comes off.
“I thought it looked hot,” he says. “I should have led with that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she argues. “It’s out of character for me, anyway.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Rickie reaches into her makeup bag and removes her eyeliner pencil.
“What are you doing?”
He uncaps it. Then he grabs the rearview mirror and tilts it toward his face. “There’s nothing wrong with keeping everyone guessing.”
Daphne watches, open mouthed, while Rickie begins to do a surprisingly good job of lining his right eye.
“Don’t give them that kind of power,” he says, switching to his left eye. “If you’re someone who wears makeup today, then that’s who you are.” He caps the liner, returns the mirror to its former position, and then turns to look at Daphne.
Her heart stutters as she gets a full-on view of those fiercely bright gray eyes, enlarged