Page 124 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

Tonight, though, I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed with my laptop balanced across my knees, staring at the same handful of listings until the words blur together.

Spokane, Boise, Missoula, Pendleton.

Any other week, I’d have picked one by now, planned my route, and started packing. Instead I keep scrolling back to the top like a different answer might appear if I read them one more time.

I scrub a hand over my face. “Why are you making this weird?”

The empty room doesn’t answer, which probably says enough.

I close the laptop before I can waste another hour arguing with myself. Future me can figure out where she’s sleeping next week. Right now I’ve got a show to play.

By the time I reach The Silver Bit, every table is packed, and the smell of beer and fried food hangs over the room.

Riley looks up as soon as I walk through the door. “Rock star.”

“I’ve told you to stop calling me that.”

He chuckles. “I remember.” He slides a whiskey across the bar with a grin. “One sip.”

“I’ve got to sing.”

“Exactly why it’s one sip.”

I shake my head, laughing as I pick up the glass. “You’re terrible.”

“I run a bar. I’d lose my license if I encouraged good decisions.”

I take the promised sip and push the whiskey back before it turns into two.

The stage doesn’t feel borrowed anymore. I know which floorboard creaks, I know the microphone pops if I get too close, and I know the stool still wobbles enough to keep me awake.

Carl Benson is already waiting in his usual chair, and Margaret O’Hara waves from her booth with enough enthusiasm to make me laugh before I’ve even unzipped my guitar case.

I climb onto the stage while conversations taper off around the room. “Evening, everyone.”

A chorus of greetings rolls back at me, warm enough to tug at my chest in a way I’d rather not examine.

I hook the guitar over my shoulder and play the opening chords.

The first song gets heads bobbing. The second has people clapping along, and by the third, couples have drifted into the open space between the tables to dance.

When I finish, whistles echo across the room, somebody calls for another song, and Riley rings the little brass bell behind the bar.

I grin into the microphone. “You’re making it really hard to leave.”

The crowd laughs.

I do too, although mine catches before it settles.

I finish with the song I wrote after driving through Montana last summer. Usually that’s enough to leave me thinking about the next town, the next crowd, the next stretch of highway waiting outside.

Tonight I stay where I am after the applause dies away, my fingers resting across the strings while I look out at faces that don’t feel unfamiliar anymore.

I don’t remember when that changed.

By the time I put my guitar away, the rest of the night disappears into conversations I never planned on having. Somebody presses a slice of pie into my hands before I can escape, Tommy from the feed store spends a solid fifteen minutes pitching a country anthem about tractors, and Carl tells him nobody wants to fall in love with a piece of farm equipment.

Margaret folds her arms and shakes her head at him. “That’s because you’re lacking imagination, Carl. Give the right woman a handsome farmer on a tractor and she’ll swoon.”