Pocket Full of Posies

Chapter Seventeen

“You know you’re the only one without a date to the weddin’, don’t you?”

  “Sally Marie Mallory, what a thing to say!” Felicity cried, accidentally giving my hair a good yank in her indignation.

  “Ow!” I yelped. Never again would I let this woman near me with a curling iron. My hair was barely long enough to curl twice. And yet here Lissie was, determined to make a wavy mess out of my short hair.

  “Oh, sorry, hon!” she apologized. She promptly went back to glaring daggers at my sixteen year old cousin. “And what do you mean by ‘only one’? It’s not like you have some hot date.”

  I bit my lip at the same time Sally did.

  Lissie looked at both of us in confusion. “Something y’all wanna fill me in on?”

  And here I was afraid she’d forgotten her thick southern accent. That was the funny thing about Liss. While she tried to turn into a California diva, it just wasn’t working when she wasn’t actually in California. Down here, surrounded by southerners, she had no choice but to take back up her sweet, Dixie ways. I wasn’t positive, but I was pretty sure poor Brady was going into system overload. What attracted her to him in the first place was her accent. But now that she had the sweet, southern attitude in hypermode, he was fixing to die a happy man.

  “I, uh, sorta gotta date,” Sally stuttered.

  Lissie put her hands on her hips and gave her sister a look of pure disapproval. “Do Mama and Daddy know about this date?”

  “See, here’s the thing, Liss,” I tried to intervene. “Sally here has had this huge crush on a certain fella for quite some time now, and he asked her to be his date to the wedding. Isn’t that exciting?!”

  “No! It is not exciting at all!” Liss looked back to Sally. “Not if you’re gonna lie to Mama and Daddy about it. That’s not honest at all, and you know that is not the way to get Daddy to approve of your little boyfriend.”

  “I’m gonna tell them,” Sally sighed. “I just didn’t want Daddy ruining this for me. I’ve liked Scott for years now and—”

  “Scott?” Liss interrupted. “As in Scott Dresden?”

  Here’s the thing about Scott Dresden. For years, he’s been Sally’s top competitor in the showing business. He almost always takes the blue ribbon, leaving Sally with red. It’s always a close call, and she’s only one-upped him a handful of times. Our family has sworn to hate Scott Dresden for all time because we love Sally so much. She’s always heartbroken she loses to him. They’ve fought for years. Every time they see eachother, they make snide comments in the form of compliments. They’re really good at it, too. My uncle, especially, hates Scott. More than once he’s expressed the opinion that Scott is a “stuck up rich boy who gets whatever he wants without ever having to work for it”.

  The thing is, Scott is really good at showing. His main horse, Thunderbolt’s Pride and Joy, is a champion by no mistake. He deserves the ribbons he gets. And Sally knows that; which is why she’s had a crush on him for years. She’s always admired him. And, apparently, he admires her. But could we tell Uncle Harmon that? Of course not! He wouldn’t understand. It’s been a while since he was sixteen, after all.