5. Reese

Sheila is busy balancing all the registers, whisking around behind me, humming old country classics. She’s a firecracker. Twice my age, witty and subversive. I love her and her spikey haircut. Her ice blue eye shadow. Working with Sheila is the only good thing about this job.

I’m staring at a thick binder, trying to memorize a dozen different handguns.

Apparently, it’s part of Thorne County Bank’s policy to have tellers know which type of gun they were held up by.

Really instills a lot of confidence.

I’m staring at the pages, but my mind is crafting a detailed hypothetical robbery. It would be the perfect time to rob the bank, because I’m not paying any attention to my surroundings.

That’s why I jump and yelp when a fist knocks on the counter. Pressing my hand to my racing heart, I look up and find myself staring into a pair of laughing gray eyes.

“Reese Olson.”

He stretches out my name, lingering in it.

“Tyson Kyle.”

I know him in passing. He was in my brother’s class and on the basketball team. One year, they made the dance team hand out roses to the varsity team and I got paired up with Tyson. He towered over me then, and he towers over me now.

In reality, we’re probably only a year apart in age. Maybe two, but he will forever be an upperclassman in my mind. And a varsity ball player.

I realize he’s staring at me with a grin on his face. That rugged, charming farm boy face. Gray eyes. Messy hair. Scruffy jaw.

He makes me ten types of nervous. I clear my throat. “Sorry, what?”

He chuckles, leaning on the counter so we’re at eye level. “I said, how long have you been working here?”

“Two months.”

He tilts his head. “You like it?”

Not really. Sheila’s great though. Funny as hell. I give him my patented cheerful smile, best mask around. “Yeah. It’s been good.”

He glances at my suit jacket, gaze lingering on my hips. “They make you dress up like that?”

I tug self-consciously at my pencil skirt. “Yeah. Business formal.”

He stands at his full height, big hands gripping the edge of the counter. He tips his head. “It’s a good look for you. Suits you.”

He grins. “I always thought you looked good in whatever you had on. Especially that cheerleader uniform.”

My cheeks heat. Is he flirting? I think he’s flirting. This is where things have always broken down for me. I more or less lucked into Jonah. The fact that I was innocent and awkward was part of my appeal to him. But out in the wild, innocent and awkward doesn’t go very far. It’s my turn to say something, so I scrounge around for the first thing that comes to mind. “It was a dance uniform.”

“Hm?”

“A dance uniform. I was on the dance team.”

He laughs. “Whichever. Still looked good.”

I’m rescued from having to respond when Sheila waltzes back in. She proceeds to engage Tyson in a conversation that has both of them laughing. If there wasn’t a thirty-year age gap, I’d say she was flirting.

When he’s gone, she turns to me with a sheepish smile. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes, just seemed like you needed rescuing.”

I sigh, leaning back on the counter. “I was floundering. Was he flirting with me?”

Sheila laughs. “Oh, honey.”

“He wasn’t?”

She shakes her head. “He was. He most certainly was.”

“I screwed it up.”

She laughs. “I don’t think Tyson is the kind of man you can mess things up with.”

She laughs. “He’d date a fence post if it was pretty enough.”

I gesture at the place where Tyson was standing. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Interact with a guy like that. You make it look easy.”

She grins, her crooked canine showing. “That’s because I got nothing to lose.”

“Is that the key?”

“To confidence?”

She tilts her head. “I guess maybe it is. Realizing a busted heart ain’t gonna kill you.”

I rest my elbows on the counter and stare out at the lobby. “I wish I could believe that.”

She stands next to me, leaning on her elbows. “You got plenty of time, honey. I can’t tell you how to live your life. But I know what I’d do if I could get in the time machine and travel back.”

I turn, leaning on my hip. “What’s that?”

“I’d have a lot more fun, I’ll tell you that.”

She grins. “I’d have that next drink and kiss that boy. I’d say yes a hell of a lot more, and worry a heck of a lot less.” She pauses, shrugging. “It was a different time. So many rules about what a proper woman should and shouldn’t do. It was all bullshit, you know. Because them boys didn’t have to play by the same rules. They was taught to sow their wild oats while us girls were told to stay home. But let me ask you this, if all us girls was staying home, who were them boys sowing their oats to?”

I grin. “The bad girls.”

She laughs. “I should have been one of them bad girls.”

“They have more fun.”

“You’re damn right they do.”

“It’s not so different now.”

I say, fiddling with the binder. “There’s still all kinds of expectations.”

“Yeah, I know, honey. But the difference is, you’ve got a voice now. If I was you, I’d use it.”

She leans on her elbow. “Don’t ever let a man define what kind of woman you’re going to be.”

Too fucking late for that. If Jonah had told me to wear a collar and had me chipped, I would have agreed. “I needed that advice four years ago.”

She grins. “It’s never too late to start living.”