Barbara Samuel by A Piece of Heaven

of it trail down your neck.” She piled it up to illustrate. “See?”
    So she wore it the way Joy pinned it, feeling like she was getting a special blessing for the date as she headed toward town. It was a gorgeous evening. The air was dry, cooling now as purple rain clouds ambled in from the southwest, turning the mountains a deep, dark blue. Sunlight poked through the clouds here and there, falling like solid golden needles in some places, liquid as orange juice in others.
    It was those kinds of views that had haunted her in her years away. Whenever people would sigh over a beautiful sky or landscape, she had to bite her tongue to keep from saying, “Yeah, it’s nice, but you should see my hometown.” Hard to tell people that their landscapes are beautiful, but … well, not quite like this. She sometimes felt drunk on all that color, wanting to eat it, rub it all over herself, save it in jars and paint it on her clothes and ceilings.
    Most of her walk was quiet. She walked past small houses with wide expanses of field around them. Once in a while, she heard a goat bleat, or a dog rush up to a fence. For the space of a quarter mile, a cheerful stray Border collie with a bandana collar trotted along beside her.
    The quiet changed when she hit the main drag, ofcourse. Tourists clogged the streets with RVs and BMWs and motorcycles. They walked the sidewalks in groups of two and three and four, sporting sunburns and Tshirts with pictures of aspen trees and Indian pottery. Luna fell into the swarm, suddenly nervous when she spied the DQ sign up ahead. In a moment of panic, she ducked into the coffee shop and ordered a double latte on ice, buying herself a little time along with the infusion of caffeine courage. Carrying the paper cup, she drank of it deeply, undissolved sprinkles of turbinado sugar landing like heavy stars on her tongue as she walked the last block to the DQ.
    Thomas was there already, and he didn’t see her right away. She slowed down, taking him in, marveling with a little smile that she was actually going to sit down with him. Talk with him. Eat something with him. How often had she eyed him at the grocery store, peeked through her windows at him as he carried bags of supplies into his grandmother’s house?
    Passersby noticed him. His body was angled to the west so that the purple and orange light illuminated the craggy size of his nose, the high brow, and unkindly lit on the small curve of belly over his belt. He looked calm and dangerous with his hair loose on his shoulders, and she realized that he probably knew a certain sort of woman would like that hair a lot.
    He saw her and raised his chin, crossing his arms over his chest in a loose way. The edge of a welcoming smile touched his mouth and it made Luna feel so wildly beautiful that she wanted to giggle. Toss her hair. Something.
    “Hey,” he said, quietly.
    She took a sip of her latte and moved closer. “Hi,” she said, feeling small next to him. He wore boots with a good heel, and her head only came to his chin.
    “Did you walk?” he asked.
    She nodded.
    “You have no car or you like walking?”
    She met his eyes and told the truth. “I don’t have a driver’s license.”
    “Drinking?”
    Rare that anyone just came out and asked. Luna found it made it a lot easier to say simply, “That’s right.”
    “Maybe you can tell me that story sometime.”
    She let go of a laugh that sounded a lot more bitter than sweet, and it embarrassed her. “I’d have to know you a whole lot better.”
    A heartbeat of a pause, during which he looked steadily at her face. “Okay.” He tipped his head toward the window beneath the list of goods and prices. “You want to go in or stay outside?”
    “Oh, outside definitely. With that sky?”
    She felt she’d won something when he smiled. Together they walked to the window, where a painfully thin brown boy waited in an ill-fitting uniform to take their orders. Thomas looked at Luna. “Hot