As I brushed my hair for the seventh time, I made a deal with myself. If Johnny knocked on my door tonight, I would open up to him like a lilac on a golden May morning. If he didn’t show, I was packing it up and moving back to Minneapolis to join a nunnery or finish my grad program and become a dried—up, cat—collecting, fist—shaking, asexual English professor.

No one could claim I hadn’t given Battle Lake a chance, not after what I’d been through the last three months. But oh, did I hope that Johnny would do right by me tonight.

While I waited, I tried reading an old copy of Vanity Fair magazine that I had recycled from the library, but I didn’t even have a sufficient attention span to follow Christopher Hitchens’ latest rant. A Frasier rerun on my grainy TV was no more engaging. I settled on spending most of the early night beaming at my animals. Johnny Leeson was coming to my doublewide tonight!

My long dark hair was loose and natural. Except for the wisp of mascara around my gray eyes and shiny, honey—flavored gloss on my lips, I was makeup free. I didn’t want to pull the Mary Kay bait—and—switch, where you are all curled hair, smoky eyes, and sultry lips at the beginning of the make—out session and scary, oven—baked clown face at the end. With me, what you saw was what you got, which might explain why there weren’t a lot of men seeing and getting in my life.

Johnny had spent time with me at my worst, though, from inarticulate and dorky to bruised and battered, and he’d still asked to come over tonight. I hoped our transition from friends to lovers would be a smooth one. I had tried the relationship conversion before and found it to be like that moment when you stroll onto the dance floor and shift from walker to groover—if you think about it too much, you mess it all up.

I peeked anxiously through the kitchen window for his headlights to appear down the driveway. When I saw nothing, I pushed open all the windows on the back of the house so I would hear his car approach. I breathed in deep the spicy woodsmoke—and—zinnias scent of Minnesota in July and listened to the clock tick a happy beat. Johnny Leeson was going to be with me tonight!

I moved from the couch to the kitchen table and then to the edge of my bed, where I tried reading a book. When the clock ticking began to sound a little too much like Chinese water torture, I slid a CD onto my stereo. I blipped through Sting, the Indigo Girls, and Gillian Welch before I figured Norah Jones would convey the desired attitude of suave aloofness and cool availability that I was after.

The moody jazz, however, soon became monotonous, and then taunting, as the minutes ticked off the clock and fell to the floor like gravestones. At first, I consoled myself by recalling that Johnny had simply said “tonight,” and not given a specific time. Tonight means different things to different people.

I kept my optimism revved for nearly an hour after that before I moved on to worrying. Johnny was a decent guy, and he would have called to cancel if he could have. By eleven p.m., however, I was darkly pissed.

I stabbed the “stop” button on my CD player and blew out the beeswax candles that had been melting toward extinction. Apparently, Johnny had had second thoughts. Fine. That was fine. A romantic evening with him probably would have had a terrible ending anyhow, with me discovering that he was a lousy lover, or a collector of fingernail clippings.

That’s what I was telling myself as I walked past my front door, angrily ripping off the cute rainbow T—shirt I had chosen just for the occasion, the one that made me look like I had boobs. When, I wondered fiercely, would interactions with men stop being excruciating experiences I had to learn from, instead of nurturing relationships that I could grow in?

I rubbed itchy tears from my eyes, angry for even getting my hopes up. I should have known from the start. Relationships and me went together as well as dark chocolate and sauerkraut. A cloister loomed in my future, or maybe a job teaching English at a rural technical college.

That’s when the first knock came. I jumped away from the door and yanked my T—shirt over my head. I hadn’t heard or seen a car. Then came a second knock, and my heart and loins did a mighty leprechaun kick. The person on the other side of this door was going to decide whether I returned to Minneapolis to pursue a thrilling career in the English language arts, or stayed in Battle Lake, wrapped in the loving arms of Mr. Johnathon Leeson.

Instead of waiting for the third knock, I ripped the door open, naked hope in my eyes. The hope quickly turned to shock, and then confusion. Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the person standing on my doorstep. This was Battle Lake, after all. Anything can happen here, and it usually does.

“Kennie?”