The Thing About Three

chapter six | sister golden hair

I STILL REMEMBER the day I realized I had fallen in love with Dallas Whitlock.

It was during the second week I had started working at Whitlock's. I had shown up to work on a day I had thought I was scheduled to work on, the other part-time service advisor, Amelia, looking at me with raised eyebrows when I entered the front.

After a quick conversation, we found out that I had gotten the schedule wrong. Before I went to leave, Dallas caught me as he was exiting his office, inviting me along with him to go pick up a car part at the Whitlock's Auto Care his dad managed a few towns over.

Psyched at the opportunity to spend a whole car ride with him, I said yes.

Now, one of Dallas's little quirks was that if he had a song stuck in his head, he'd listen to it on repeat until he was sick of it.

On that particular day, he had America's "Sister Golden Hair" on his mind.

"Is it okay if I play this song a few times?" he'd asked me before he pulled out of the parking lot.

"Yeah," I said back. "I like this song."

That was one thing that made Dallas and I feel so perfect together—we had the same taste in music. We liked the old stuff, usually gravitating towards the 70s and 80s.

We sang the song three times through together. He had a nice voice. I did not, but he never said anything about it. On the fourth time, when we were on the main highway passing by a field of cows and yellow flowers, he rolled the windows down.

I started laughing as the wind whipped my blonde hair every which way. He turned up the volume as high as it would go, and we sang the song at the top of our lungs. I even started dancing as best I could sitting down, earning a deep chuckle from Dallas.

I remember us locking eyes for a brief moment, and me wishing with all of my heart that I could freeze the moment because just existing there with Dallas and the windows down and the music loud felt like the most perfect thing on earth.

And that was when I realized that I wanted a whole lifetime of that moment—a whole lifetime spent with Dallas. The future plans I had imagined for myself shifted in my head, making room for Dallas in each and every self-constructed image.

I sat back in my seat when I realized this, the song slowly fading from my lips as I stopped singing, my eyes caught on Dallas's profile as he continued singing along to the song, bobbing his head along to the beat as the wind ruffled his honey-blonde hair.

And then I realized I was totally screwed.

Because being in love with your best friend who doubled as your boss was not a good thing, no matter how incredible it made you feel.

But, as I drove to Whitlock's the Sunday night following the football game we had spent with Alayna and Rex, I tried not to pay that any mind. Which wasn't hard considering I already had a lot on my mind that night.

Dad and I had gotten into a big fight, which almost never happened with us. I was a good kid. I did what I was supposed to, I didn't drink or party, and I never gave him anything to complain about. And he was a good dad, he communicated with me, let me set my own boundaries, and always put me before him.

We were closer than most father-daughter relationships, though maybe that was because we were all each other had. I didn't have a mother or any siblings, and both sets of my grandparents were dead, so it was just us and we held onto each other with all we had in us.

Our conversation that night had started out harmless, with Dad asking me about what I had planned for the week since I was on fall break.

I told him that I didn't have anything planned, which was usual. I didn't have any friends besides Dallas, after all, and I saw him all the time at work.