A Deal Before the Altar. Rachael Thomas

Him in person.

      Virginia pulled a pair of jeans from the sack and wiggled into them, thinking maybe they looked pretty good for her first pair. At $12.99 they hadn’t eaten her whole paycheck, and they had a little strip of elastic in the back so, even though they were sort of tight, she’d still be able to breathe.

      Next she pulled out a brown short-sleeved cotton shirt with little horseshoes on it. Very Western. She put it on, leaving the top two buttons undone. On second thought, she unbuttoned a third one, then spread the edges of the shirt apart to reveal a hint of her newly enhanced bustline. She froze again, holding her breath, waiting for the inevitable. But it never came.

      Maybe God was fresh out of thunderbolts.

      She pulled a pair of plain brown cowboy boots from the sack and tugged them on, knowing they couldn’t possibly be leather for $17.99, but figuring they looked the part, anyway. Turning to the mirror, she ran a brush through her hair, wishing for the umpteenth time in her life that she’d been blessed with wavy blond tresses instead of the limp brown mop she’d gotten stuck with. Then she pulled a tube of lipstick from the sack. It wasn’t the cherry red she’d planned on getting, but it wasn’t baby pink, either. She spent a good five minutes nose-to-nose with her reflection in the mirror, dabbing at her lips, telling herself it was just like kindergarten and all she had to do was color inside the lines.

      She smacked her lips together, then backed off from the mirror for an arm’s-length exam. Okay. Not bad. Truth be told, though, she didn’t much care what she looked like.

      As long as she didn’t look like Virginia White.

      A few minutes later she was back on the blacktop, moving down the road. She rolled down the windows and jacked up the radio, singing along with Shania Twain. The crisp breeze lifted her hair off the back of her neck. The sun had just set, filling the countryside with the muted shades of twilight. It would be dark by the time she reached her destination.

      Happy birthday, Virginia, she told herself. It’s time to go live it up.

      Tonight she was giving herself a long overdue gift. She was going someplace where there were hundreds of people she didn’t know. People to whom her name meant nothing. People who wouldn’t automatically dismiss her because she was the daughter of the town recluse, or because she didn’t dress right, or because she was just a painfully shy nobody who’d never learned how to be anything else.

      While she’d been working at the library after school to help support her and her mother, other girls were chatting on the phone, painting each other’s nails and talking about boys. While she was paying bills and balancing the checkbook, other girls were making out in the back seats of cars. While she was living with her mother, taking care of her various ailments and catering to her whims, other women were getting married, making love and having children.

      Sooner or later she would save enough money for college, and then she’d start a whole new life. But bank tellers didn’t make much, particularly when they worked at the First State Bank of Coldwater, Texas, where raises came around about as often as Halley’s Comet. So it could take a while, maybe even a couple of years, and she couldn’t wait that long to start grabbing some of the fun and excitement the rest of the world took for granted.

      She kept singing along with Shania, letting her foot get heavy on the gas pedal until she teetered on the edge of the forty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Then, just as she was starting to feel pretty cool, she topped a hill and her destination came into sight, and she felt self-conscious all over again.

      The Lone Wolf Saloon was nothing more than a gigantic, flat-sided metal building with its name on the side in red-and-blue neon. But looks were deceiving. From what Virginia had heard, it was sitting smack-dab in the middle of the fast lane of life, offering a wild, rowdy evening of decadence to every fun-loving person within a thirty-mile radius.

      The gravel parking lot was nearly full. Virginia found a space between a pair of spit-polished, fresh-off-the-lot pickup trucks. She turned off the engine and sat in silence for a moment, hearing her mother’s voice reverberating inside her head.

      Places like that ought to be outlawed. They’re sinful, that’s what they are. Sinful.

      She took a few deep, calming breaths, telling herself that if going out and having a good time was a sin, hell would be so full by now that there wouldn’t be any room for her, anyway.

      She grabbed her purse, eased out of her car and locked it behind her. She toddled across the gravel parking lot as best she could in her new footwear and made it to the front door. She squared her shoulders, bracing herself against the unknown, but still she was unprepared for the sensory overload that assaulted her the moment she opened the door.

      The music, played by a country-western band gyrating with wild enthusiasm on a rainbow-lit stage, hit her eardrums at approximately a hundred decibels above the supersonic range. Every chord, every drumbeat, every twang of the lead singer’s voice hummed through her body like an electrical circuit gone haywire. A beer. That’s what she needed.

      She headed toward the bar, passing table after table crowded with people and littered with beer bottles and ashtrays. The entire place seemed to be in motion, from the slow rhythm of interaction between men and women, to the sway of denim and leather on the dance floor, to the slither of waitresses from one table to the next. Every molecule of air was drenched in cigarette smoke, giving the room a surreal, otherworldly feel. Virginia had a thought about secondhand smoke, then chastised herself. She’d spent twenty-four years breathing the right air, so one evening of sucking in a few carcinogens was hardly going to matter.

      She found an empty bar stool and climbed onto it. The bartender, a brawny beast with biceps the size of telephone poles, approached her. He wore a single gold earring that glinted under the neon lights surrounding the bar.

      She cleared her throat. “A beer, please?”

      “Any particular kind?”

      Virginia froze. “In a bottle?”

      The bartender gave her a sarcastic little smile and walked away, leaving her feeling dumb as a rock. To her relief, though, he returned a moment later and slapped a bottle on the bar in front of her. “Three bucks.”

      She gave the bartender three one-dollar bills, then picked up the beer. It felt ice-cold. She sniffed it tentatively, then put the bottle to her lips and took a sip. She swallowed, and her eyes started to water. It was like drinking a rancid, extra-fizzy soda, but she managed to get it down without it coming back up. Buoyed by that small victory, she took another sip, this time a bigger one, and felt it burn all the way down her throat.

      Okay. That wasn’t so bad. And because she was still among the living, she decided maybe God was taking the weekend off.

      She took mini-sips of the beer and turned around on the bar stool to watch the crowd. Nobody seemed to notice her, which was pretty much par for the course. She was one of those people who didn’t speak up, who blended into the woodwork, who got lost in a crowd of two. It had been that way all her life, and she didn’t expect things would change overnight.

      As long as they changed eventually.

      The couples on the dance floor moved with intricate little steps and whirls, their feet always falling in just the right places. Then a dozen or so people lined up to do a little group dance, where everybody seemed to know just where to step to avoid kicking the person in front of them.

      And everywhere, people were laughing.

      Pretty soon Virginia started to loosen up, and by the time she’d drained the bottle, she felt warm and a little woozy. She ordered another one, thinking if one made her feel good, two would be even better.

      Then the band played a soft, soulful number. Couples inched closer to each other, body-to-body, moving together as one. Virginia felt as if the world had suddenly paired up two by two and she was the odd woman out.

      She rested her elbow on the bar, her cheek against her palm, watching all the lucky women who knew what it felt like to ease next to a man, tuck their heads against a broad