The Best Friend Zone

My teeth grit together. A wave of ice-cold sadness strikes as I glance in the rearview mirror at the stock trailer I’m pulling.

The one full of goats.

Forget Broadway, prestigious dance halls, two-timing competitors, and cheating exes. This is my life now in Dallas. Hauling around Rent-A-Goats for my lazy slug of an uncle, bless his heart.

“Never mind,” I tell the dog, swallowing my frustration. “But having pink highlights in brown hair is no easy task. They had to strip all the color out of those sections, so for a week I was walking around with white stripes, looking like some kind of overgrown skunk. Then Cheryl, she’s my—was my—hairdresser, put in the pink. Bright neon pink. You should’ve seen it, Owl. I basically glowed in the dark. This is after two months, so it’s pretty faded now.” I release a heavy sigh. “Good things don’t last forever. I’m not going through the process of having my hair stripped again.”

He leans forward then, laying his big scrunched muzzle on the dashboard with a hint of drool.

“Jeez, sorry to bore you!”

He lets out a long grumble-sigh, no doubt counting down the seconds until he’s free to flop down on Uncle Dean’s porch again without a care in the world.

Who can blame him?

My personal tragedy only makes sense to yours truly. To anyone else, it’s one more dream that fell short.

But I’m so bright, they tell me. Good education, good looks, and oh-so-pleasant. Hey, my parents are even rich.

I can reinvent myself and do practically anything.

I’m young. I’m smart. I’ll figure it out.

And sometimes I take a second to count my blessings and realize they’re almost right. Almost.

But if I had my druthers? I’d still be in Chicago, dancing my heart out, working toward the day when people would spend exorbitant sums on tickets to see the fantabulous Tory Redson-Riddle-Coffey.

Yeah, I’m certain the Queen Bitch tripped me intentionally, right in the middle of a double cabriole.

Madeline was in line behind me. There was no reason whatsoever for her to have gotten close enough to bump into me.

Her little oopsie sent me crashing down face-first, narrowly avoiding a broken nose. The way my knee hyperextended meant nasty surgery to repair the torn ligaments and a ruptured tendon.

I still have over three more months of real healing before I can even consider slow dancing again. Light exercise and a few other physical therapy exercises are all I’m allowed to do right now.

Good thing the goats and Owl do ninety-nine percent of the work on this gig, or so I’ve been told.

The dog sits up and lets out a low woof a split second before my phone’s navigation tells me I’ll need to turn in a quarter mile.

“How’d you know?” I ask him.

He barks again, but because I don’t speak canine, I have no idea what he’s saying.

“Good dog.” I flip on the blinker.

He is a good dog from what I’ve seen. This will be our first time truly working together, besides loading the goats into the stock trailer back at Uncle Dean’s place.

Owl pretty much did that part all by himself.

I swear, if he had hands instead of paws, he wouldn’t have even needed me to pull down the ramp or open the trailer doors.

“Ever met this guy before?” I ask, turning down the long dirt road leading up to the grand country estate on a hill. “Our client today is no less than Ridge Barnet, the famous actor.”

I grin. I haven’t ever met him since I came back here, but he’s still the talk of the town.

I’ve heard the same story over a dozen times from so many people, how the billionaire actor moved here over a year ago and got himself in a mighty big pickle with a girl being chased by some bad guys her dad owed money to.

It had a happy ending, of course.

All the best stories do.

A sham engagement, a whirlwind romance, a gaggle of villains brought to justice.

Dallasfolk seem just as grateful to Ridge for giving them something to boast about as they are for the times when he let half the town put their drinks on his tab.

I’m still thinking it over when Owl barks, just as my phone navigation speaks. Our destination is a mile ahead, on the right, underscoring just how big the Barnet ranch is.

We drive past a small herd of cattle grazing on a hill. They’re the start of big plans for this ranch from what I’ve heard, though last fall they had plenty of business in the run up to Halloween.

“Uncle Dean says the Barnets want this land cleared for more pumpkins,” I tell the dog, shaking my head at the thought of a rich and famous badass movie star growing freaking pumpkins. “Can you believe it?”

It seems so odd, but maybe it’s his wife’s pet project or something. Almost as odd as the fact that I’m talking to a dog and half expecting him to answer.