By a lot.

“You said it’s been years?” I asked.

“Babe—”

“Maybe he’s—”

“Baby girl, listen to me,” she whispered fiercely. “After what happened with Kent, if you found a guy, I’d be at your back, rooting for you, glad you’re back in the saddle, hoping for the best because you deserve it. I’m not sure I know anyone who deserves it better. So this conversation is not easy to have.”

“Do you think he—?”

“I think you’re sweet as sugar, cute as a button and he’s a man. He gets a load of you, he’s not gonna think, ‘Best be careful I don’t mess with this one. She’s sweet, cute and sensitive as all get out and my ex burned me so bad I’ll never recover, so I should leave well enough alone.’ He’s not gonna know about that sensitive as all get out part. So he’s just gonna go forth to get him some.”

“He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night,” I blurted.

“Say what?”

“He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I’m making him Crock-Pot chicken enchiladas.”

“You’re pulling out the enchiladas, which means you dig him and he’s good in bed.”

He was very good in bed.

I also dug him.

“They’re easy to make, Deanna, they just taste like they aren’t.”

“They’re the kind of thing any normal girl, like you, would make any normal guy she likes so he’ll think, ‘Man, this woman can cook. I get all that sweetness in my bed and before that I get to eat like this? I better grab hold and do it tight.’ But just to say, Izzy, this guy is not a normal guy. This guy is a guy ruined for all other women by a knockout of a redhead with long legs and big boobs who was almost as sweet as your sugar, but I only say that because I know you and I didn’t know her except in passing. A redhead who he’ll be hung up on forever, even when nature calls and forces him to settle down in order to procreate. The next one will be numero dos. Runner up. Second best.”

Runner up.

Second best.

I did not have red hair.

I was blonde. Of a sort. It was dark blonde, like an amber-ish blonde-brown.

But I was not a redhead.

I did have relatively large breasts and long legs though.

“They were that in love?” I asked quietly, my voice tight.

“I love Charlie with all my heart and soul, you know it, baby girl, but any time I saw those two together, they were so happy, so close, so damned sweet, they gave me a toothache I wanted for myself. So yeah, they were that in love. The air turned hazy and pink around them, they were that in love,” she answered gently, her voice kind.

I looked to my boots.

“Izzy?” she called.

“I like him,” I told my boots.

“I only know him in passing too, but I still know he’s that guy. The kind you can’t help but like. He’s solid. Dependable. From good people. His brother took off before Charlie and I got to town and I heard he’s a bit of a wild one. But I knew the man, and Johnny Gamble’s dad was like that too. Those men are men who fix your car even if you can’t afford it and let you make payments that won’t bite too deep. They sponsor Little League and girls’ softball and Pop Warner teams, and even coach those Pop Warner kids. Heard somewhere there was this ex-con, local screwup who no one trusted, but he gave him a job and the man stayed on the straight and narrow, probably doing it just to give loyalty to a man who took a chance on him.”

She paused.

I waited.

And after she took an audible breath, she kept going.

“And he might like you too. It might be that time where he’s decided he needs to move on from the love of his life and find someone to settle down with. But I’m not Johnny Gamble’s friend. I’m your friend. And you deserve to be the love of someone’s life. Not the one who followed that first act, and you get it good because you got yourself a good man, but you don’t get it how you deserve it.”

I looked unseeing to the pasture. “He had bath salts in his bathroom.”

“He had what?”

“He’s really, you know, a guy. And he had this pretty glass jar with blue bath salts in his bathroom.”

Deanna said nothing.

“Do you think they’re hers?”

“I think this is . . . when you found out, and you’d find out, it just sucks that it’s me who has to tell you . . . the kind of question you’d be asking yourself a lot if things go far beyond this dinner tomorrow with Johnny Gamble.”

“Should I . . . do you think I should tell him I know about this and talk to him about it?”

“I don’t know. Did you guys hook up or did you guys connect?”

I knew what she was asking and answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

“You’d know, Izzy,” she said softly.

I would.

I would know.

He told me about his dad and he gave me the code to his phone and he got mad when he thought I was scraping him off.

But he also talked to me about not wearing panties more than once, and at the time it just seemed sexy and thrilling and flattering, but it could just have meant that he didn’t want any obstructions when he was ready to get back to the real reason he was spending time with me.

“Honestly, Izzy,” she said carefully, “I was hoping you’d get my texts last night so I could stop you from letting anything happen. I’ve seen the man. I’m chocolate with a taste for nothing but chocolate but I still can see clear that man is fine. And if I knew you to be a girl who could go out and get herself some without her head getting in a tangle about it, I wouldn’t have texted back anything except not to worry about your menagerie. But you’re not that girl. You might want to try it out but that’s an outfit that will never fit. Like me and skinny jeans. They look tight on other sisters, but I look like someone squirted me into denim sausage casings.”

I wanted to smile.

But with all she was saying to me, there was no chance of a smile.

“So I’ll just say, be careful,” Deanna continued. “You’re a sweet chick but you aren’t stupid. You’ll see things as they are, especially now that you got all the info that you need. Take care of you and just play it by ear. But most important in that is, take care of you. There’s a man out there for you, Izzy, who’s gonna be your Charlie. He’s gonna treat you like the queen you are and you should accept nothing less. If I’m wrong about Johnny Gamble, I’ll be happy to pour barbeque sauce on them and eat my words. Just . . . be careful.”

“I will.”

“You want me to come over?” she asked.

Deanna said I was sweet but she was even sweeter. She liked to say I was white chocolate. Take a bite of me, I’m so sweet, I’ll make your jaw ache. And she was bitter chocolate, take a bite of her and get a caffeine rush.

But she wasn’t.

She was the finest truffle you’ve ever tasted. The kind you let melt in your mouth, and as it does, you pray it’ll never melt away.

“No, I’m good. I just . . . well, with Kent doing the things Kent did and me not being the kind of girl who does this kind of thing, now this, I don’t know. I mean, we had a night together, he made me breakfast. He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow. We exchanged numbers. But he didn’t ask me to be the mother of his children and pledge the rest of his life to me. I haven’t even known him twenty-four hours.”