Page 15 of Bucked By Love

I’m not going to make this my “Belleflower Queen” museum piece anymore. I don’t think museums like that even exist.

Now, I just want to use this as a space to write down my thoughts.

And my sins.

Maybe this will be my confessional. Where I can write things no one else ever has to know about.

Like the river and the boys I’ve met there.

It’s funny. You hit puberty and suddenly things like Sooters and different sides of the railroad tracks don’t seem so important anymore.

This summer, I’ve spent nearly every day at the Old Road Bridge. We’ve become a pack: The Promise Sisters and the Sooter Boys (and Loren. Constantly scowling in the distance).

Ransom’s friends are: Craig, Rafael, and Jude. They’re a rowdy bunch, but I find something charming in their foul humor and boyish roughhousing. They add an interesting dynamic to our crew. We stop recycling the same conversations about Belleflower Queens, school, and dressage. The boys want to talk about their trucks, or hypotheticals that usually involve hitting the lottery, or horse training. Jude and Mary-Kate have fiery debates over the renovations on Main Street and the shiny, new changes to Belleflower.

Elsbeth and Rafael are a secret pair. They think we don’t notice when they vanish and spend their time necking by the river.

I spent a lot of my time with Ransom. We sit side by side, watching the river. Sometimes we talk. His grandparents have a constant buzz of old movies playing at their house, so he has a lot of opinions about Clint Eastwood. He picks up odd jobs where he can—stable hand at a couple neighborhood ranches, janitor at a local tavern, and kitchen work at the Equestrian Club. He tells me stories about dinner service that have me laughing until my sides hurt.

Sometimes, we just spend long hours sitting in silence, listening to the stream gurgle and the birds sing and the occasional, sudden burst of our friends’ laughter.

Sometimes, Ransom braids my hair. He hasn’t lost his touch. In fact, he carries a scrunchie around in his pocket at all times, just in case I need it.

I don’t know what we are. Friends? More than that?

Sometimes, when the sun catches on his bare skin or when his fingers are twisted in my hair or when he laughs one of those deep, Ransom laughs…my thoughts drift to places they shouldn’t.

I know they shouldn’t.

I’m a good girl. I know better.

I found a loose board in my bookshelf. I’m going to start hiding this diary in there, just in case.

This is just for me.

11

CLAIRE

“Who taught you to braid hair?”

The river gurgles below us. I sit on the picnic blanket with Ransom behind me. His fingers twist strands of hair over and over.

“My mom,” he says. “Sometimes she’d pass out on the couch in the middle of a movie and I’d spend the rest of it twisting little braids into her hair.”

I’m facing the river, so I can’t see his expression. I can hear the warmth in his voice when he talks about her, though. With my back to him, I feel bold enough to ask: “Do you miss them?”

“Sure I do. All the time.”

I press my lips together. “I think I’d hate my father, if he ever did something like that. I don’t think I’d be able to get over it.”

For a moment, there’s silence, and just the sensation of tugging on my scalp as he trades one strand for another. “The way I see it…for the most part, people are good. Sometimes, they just make a wrong move.”

“So you forgive them?”

“Not exactly. I guess it’s more like…I see they made a mistake, and I let myself love them anyway. To take away that love…I don’t know. Seems like a worse thing than death.”

I tilt my head back. “Daddy says mistakes are unforgiveable. They show a lack of integrity.”

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