Sidecar Crush

The conversation the girls behind me were having caught my attention. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but one of them had said something about Roughing It.

“I can’t get enough of that show,” she said. “I don’t even know why. Like, it’s ridiculous, right? But it’s so addictive.”

“Oh my god, I know,” the other girl said. “It’s like a car wreck. You know you should turn it off, but you can’t look away.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I can’t even with Leah Larkin. Like, who does she think she is? It was obvious from the first episode that she was going to be all over Brock Winston.”

I swallowed hard and bit my lip. They obviously hadn’t seen me sitting here. My hair was braided, and I was wearing one of Jameson’s Bootleg Cock Spurs baseball caps, so I wouldn’t be as recognizable in public.

“I know, right?” the other girl asked. “And what was Brock thinking? Leah Larkin isn’t even that pretty. She’s all bony and weird looking. That gap in her teeth? Oh my god, they’re called braces, sweetie.”

“Oh, I know.”

“I guess I can’t blame her about Brock, though,” the other girl said. “He is hot.”

“Yeah, but he’s married,” she said. “That’s low.”

“Some girls don’t care.”

“I’d care,” the first girl said. “Anyone who stoops to stealing another woman’s husband is a special kind of whore.”

I pulled the ball cap down and squeezed my eyes shut to stop the sudden rush of tears. I was not going to cry sitting here in Yee Haw Yarn and Coffee. Not over this. These girls didn’t know me.

“You know she’s supposedly here, right?” the second girl asked.

“Here?” she asked. “Like, here, in this town? What is she doing here?”

“Running around with some guy,” she said. “James or Jamie or something like that. I don’t know, I saw it this morning. He’s probably married, too.”

“Oh my god, I have to see this,” the first girl said. “Can you imagine if we saw her in person?”

There was a pause—I figured they were looking things up on their phones—and I should have left. But I held my breath, waiting. James or Jamie… did that mean the media knew about Jameson?

The first girl gasped. “You’re right. Look at this. Oh my god, he’s hotter than Brock. I guess when Brock went crawling back to Maisie, Leah went and found herself a rebound. Who is this guy?”

“According to this, he’s just some random guy,” she said. “Jameson Bodine? How did she even meet him? It’s so weird.”

“I hope he knows what he’s getting into,” the other girl said. “I wonder if they even know about the show out here. Oh my god, maybe he has no idea who she is. Wouldn’t that be crazy? He’s just some poor, innocent country boy, thinking he lucked out with a hot girl. What’s he going to think when he finds out the truth?”

“I don’t know, but according to this, his dad is being investigated for the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl,” she said.

“Holy shit.”

Oh, no. My chest felt like it had caved in on itself and a swirl of nausea rolled through my belly. I grabbed my phone and searched my name, clicking on the first result. It was an article in a gossip column. I skimmed it quickly and my fears were confirmed. It mentioned me, Bootleg Springs, and Jameson Bodine.

But it didn’t stop there. It said that Jameson was a local artist, but then went into the Callie Kendall case and his father’s possible connection to her disappearance. I felt sicker by the second.

WITH LEAH LARKIN’S failed attempt to steal Brock Winston away from his wife, Maisie Miller, she has apparently taken refuge in the backwoods of West Virginia, in a little town called Bootleg Springs. And she’s not alone. Confirmed photographs show Leah Larkin with local Bootleg Springs artist Jameson Bodine. But if Leah was hoping to keep her fling with the hot country boy out of the press, she should have chosen someone with a lower profile. Jameson Bodine’s father, the late Jonah Bodine, is being investigated as a person of interest in the disappearance of Callie Kendall, a sixteen-year-old girl. Kendall, the daughter of Judge and Mrs. Kendall, went missing from Bootleg Springs twelve years ago, and her disappearance has gone unsolved. Recently uncovered evidence points the finger at the Bodine family, and resulted in the reopening of the case.