“Well,” says Lee, “every girl needs her beauty closet.”

Dale scoffs. “Closet? More like gallery.”

Lee smiles at him dotingly. “Well, it started out as a closet, and then you transformed it.” Lee looks to Hannah. “Now, catch me up on all the happenings. How are my girls doing? Willowdean came around here a while back with that boyfriend of hers.”

Hannah grimaces. “Yeah, they, uh, hit a rough patch.”

“He proposed,” I blurt. “I mean promposed. In front of a whole restaurant of people. It was . . . adorable until it was awful. She sort of walked out without giving an answer. It was a car wreck, but I couldn’t look away.”

Lee’s eyes widen. “Oh my.”

Hannah shakes her head. “I think they’re . . . school’s ending soon. We’re all going our separate ways—”

“That kind of stuff will make you silly,” Dale says.

Lee nods. “Ground shifts around you and you figure out the fastest way to fall is to stand still. But sometimes when we know we need to take a leap, we’re jumping off the wrong cliffs.”

Dale takes Lee’s hand. “They’re good kids, though. Either it works out or it doesn’t. No matter what, none of it is time wasted.”

Lee sizes up me and then Clem. “Twins, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, but then take in the lack of wig and the sweatpants and T-shirt. “Or sir.”

“Either’ll do,” she says. “Y’all look like a couple tornadoes about to take on the world. Where are y’all off to after graduation?”

Clem takes Hannah’s hand. “I’m heading to the University of Georgia and Hannah is headed to Savannah and Waylon—”

“Has no clue what he’s going to do. I’ve dabbled in drag,” I admit, my voice lowering and my cheeks burning with immediate embarrassment. I can’t believe I just said that out loud to a real-life drag queen. “But . . . my plans for the future recently shifted.” I decide not to throw Clem under the bus. “And now I’m trying to reconfigure, I guess. Not a lot of options currently.”

Lee swats a hand at the air. “At your age, the world is nothing but a buffet of options, baby.”

Dale affirms her with a nod. “Well, we better let y’all get home before you go turning into pumpkins on us.”

We stand and say goodbyes, and both Lee and Dale embrace me in a hug. “The House of Way is always taking applications,” Lee whispers.

“Hannah, you text us when y’all get home safely.”

Hannah nods and doubles back for one last hug from Dale.

As we walk back out through the bar, I search for Tucker, but he’s nowhere to be found. The House of Way is fresh on my mind as I start the truck, but the thing I really can’t get out of my head is the memory of Tucker Watson and our gazes linking in the middle of the only gay bar in a hundred-mile radius.

We drive home and behind us the Hideaway stands like a lighthouse, and even as it grows smaller in the distance, we still feel the warmth of its beacon light.

Seventeen

That night, I lie in bed with my phone dangling from my fingers, an open text message to Tucker on the screen. The flashing of the cursor is the only thing keeping me awake. I type out failed texts one after the other.

Maybe I was hallucinating, but were you—backspace, backspace, backspace.

Did my eyes deceive me—backspace, backspace, backspace.

Stalking me now, are you? Backspace, backspace, backspace.

I’m guessing you didn’t make the hike all the way out to the Hideaway just to see me. Backspace, backspace, backspace.

I try once more.

What other secrets are you keeping?

I hit send and stare at my phone for . . . as . . . long . . . as . . . I . . . possibly . . . can . . .

The next morning—no, I check my phone, afternoon—I stumble out of bed in search of the source of the scent of freshly cooked bacon.

As I’m walking down the hallway to the kitchen in the silk robe I wore last night, I say to whoever will listen, “Do you think Miss Piggy knows how good bacon tastes?”

“No, but I bet Kermit does,” says a voice—a voice belonging to—

“Tucker!” I screech. “What the hell are you doing in my house?” I pull my robe tight around me, but he still definitely saw me in my boxers. Tucker Watson stands in the middle of my kitchen in jeans and an undershirt, chugging a glass of water. “Is this a hallucination? Do I have a tumor? Is this a stroke? Is that smell burning toast?”

“No, no, no, and yes,” says Mom as she walks past me, teasing her fingers through my hair. “Your sister definitely burned toast at one point this morning.”

Tucker puts his glass down on the counter and wipes his mouth with his forearm. He nods toward Mom. “Thank you, ma’am, for the water. I better get back to it.” He looks to me. “Morning, Waylon.”

“To what?” I ask, still completely shocked at this boy’s ability to show up in the most unlikely places like a damn leprechaun.

“You will do no such thing,” Mom says to him. “You sit down and have some bacon and eggs. I was about to make some fresh toast for Waylon.”

I blink at the pair of them until my head suddenly realizes that oh-holy-shit-I’m-in-my-underwear-in-the-middle-of-my-kitchen-with-Tucker-Watson. “I’ll be right back,” I say before racing down the hallway to the bathroom.

“Great,” I mutter as I notice the mascara and glitter smeared down my left cheek. Nothing says I have my shit together like waking up at noon with last night’s evidence all over your face. After a quick sink scrub-down and some deodorant on my pits, I piece together actual clothes and take a second shot at my grand entrance.

Tucker is sitting at the kitchen table, twiddling his thumbs, like this is the most normal thing in the world and he’s been at my kitchen table a million morning/afternoons before.

I take my seat just in time for Mom to serve up fresh toast and orange juice. “Thank you, Mommy Dearest.”

She swats me on the head with a dish towel before taking her cup of coffee back into the living room, leaving Tucker and me with a bowl of eggs and a plate of bacon covered with a damp paper towel.

“So, you’re at my house for breakfast,” I venture.

He scoops eggs onto his plate and piles it up with bacon. “Well, not actually for breakfast. More like brunch. But I never turn down breakfast. Even this late in the day. Long night?”

“Uh-uh,” I say, wagging a finger at him. “I ask the questions. What are you doing at my house on a Sunday? Scratch that. What are you doing at my house at all?”

“Your dad asked me to look at your mom’s alternator.”

“Well,” I say with a disappointed huff, “that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“But I don’t think that’s what you really wanted to ask me,” he says with a smirk as he hunches over his plate like someone might take it.

“So then why don’t you tell me what I really want to ask you?”

He eats a slice of bacon in one bite and washes it down with a swig of orange juice. “You’re wondering if I think Peppa Roni was really the most deserving queen last night or if her win was nepotism.”