Page 29 of Lost and Lassoed

I turned down the alley right before the diner. There was parking back there, and going inside through the back meant that I didn’t have to face that empty building again.

I saw Dusty’s black Ford Bronco in the parking lot andpulled up next to it. He was still inside the cab and gave me a wave before we got out of our trucks.

“Why is your shirt so tight? You look like Peter Frampton,” I said when Dusty and I fell into step next to each other.

He ran a hand through his blond hair. It was long right now, falling just past his chin. “You know, no one under fifty is going to get that joke.”

“You’re under fifty,” I said.

“Yeah, but I’m me.”

“And thank god for that,” I responded. Dusty slung his arm over my shoulder and left it there until we got to the door of the diner. He opened it, and we stepped inside.

“Hey, kids!” Betty called. Betty was probably in her late sixties. She didn’t own the diner, but she’d worked there since before Dusty and I were born. She had short box-dyed black hair and had been wearing the same bright red lip stain for as long as I could remember. Meadowlark’s own Betty Boop. “Sit anywhere!”

“Booth?” Dusty asked.

“Booth,” I agreed. We walked toward the wall of booths on the west side of the diner, but there was only one left, and it was the booth that had the stupid broken seat. If you sat in it, you’d probably get motion sick before you got your dinner, itwas so rickety, so Dusty and I slid into the same side of the booth.

“How’d your first week go as Riley’s nanny?” he asked as he grabbed the menu from the center of the table.

“Fine,” I said. “And I’m not her nanny—I’m a part-time babysitter, basically.”

“Is there a difference?” he asked, and I shrugged. “Nanny” felt a lot more official—I felt like I was just hanging out at myfavorite place with a kid I liked. “Are you missing the boutique? We haven’t really gotten to talk about it since it closed. How are you doing?”

I was saved by answering that impossible question when Betty came over to take our orders. “What can I get for you, honey?” she asked me.

I got my usual. “Patty melt with jalapeños, please. And fries—can you put cheese on them? And a Diet Coke.”

“Hot beef, please,” Dusty said, “and a regular Coke.” Dusty looked at me. “Do you want a rainbow?”

“Oh my god,” I moaned. “Yes.” A rainbow was a Meadowlark delicacy—a disgustingly sweet artificially sweetened slushy topped with soft serve vanilla ice cream.

Betty smiled. “Blue raspberry for you”—she looked at Dusty—“and peach for you?” she said to me.

“Yes ma’am.” I nodded. Betty smiled again and walked away to put our orders in, leaving a flash of pink in her place.

“Teddy!” Riley squealed and jumped onto the seat next tome.

I laughed. “Hello, Sunshine. What are you doing here?”

“Eating dinner and getting shakes,” she said. “Dad and Coach and Sara are over there.” Riley pointed to a table toward the center of the diner, where Gus was sitting with Nicole and the girl who had been waiting with them when I picked Riley up.

Go, Nicole,I thought. She’d pulled off a dinner—a dinner that Gus had probably reluctantly agreed to, judging by the shitty look on his face, which only got shittier when he saw where Riley had gone.

Gus’s emerald eyes met mine. I waved at him. His eyes shifted to Dusty, who also waved. Gus’s frown deepened just a bit, but he recovered quickly to just a normal frown.

I didn’t know why he was frowning at Dusty—those two were friends. Gus liked Dusty a hell of a lot more than he liked me.

We were all connected in our weird little small-town web, but Dusty and Gus’s connection was the weirdest, I think. The woman Dusty was in love with was the mother of Gus’s child. Did they ever talk about that? Probably not. Men.

And now Gus was Dusty’s boss and Cam was getting married to someone else. I guess life doesn’t always work out the way you expect it to.

Oh, and my dad was dating Dusty’s mom. Small towns were a trip.

“Patty melt with jalapeños, cheese fries, a hot beef, and two rainbows.” Betty had made her way back to the table with our food. “And it looks like you’ve got yourself a straggler,” she said, smiling at Riley. “How was soccer, honey?”

“Good,” Riley said. “I knocked a girl over.”

---