Gypsy Hearts by Lisa Mondello

parked at the beach where they did
the show. A few of the band members had wanted to get
motel rooms and sleep in decent beds, but Will said
they'd save that for when they reached Nashville.
    Now that the crowd was gone, there wasn't a sound
outside but the rumble of the surf. It should have helped
lull her to sleep, but instead, she tossed in her bed,
upsetting Dexter every time she moved.
    As small as her bed was, she'd gotten used to sleeping on the bus as it rolled along the highway. Maybe
that's why she was having such a hard time sleeping tonight. She'd totally disrupted her normal schedule, not that there'd been much of one since she'd left home.
While each town brought something new on this adventure, there was still a repetition of mundane tasks and a
schedule that was impossible to set your watch by.
There was often a rush to set up, break down, and stay
on schedule only to be holed up later in the bus with
nothing to do for hours on end.

    Before she'd left home, she'd remembered how tiring it could be on the road and how boredom could
overwhelm you if you didn't plan to have something to
take your mind off the idleness. Preparing for that,
Josie had remembered to toss a few books she'd been
meaning to read into her bag along with some knitting
she'd started far too many years ago and never seemed
to finish. She hadn't yet pulled out the yarn, but the
books had been a good addition to her duffle.
    It was easier to fill the days than to get through the
nights, she found. In the quiet of the night, she often
found herself thinking back to past mistakes and
regrets. Leaving home so young hadn't seemed like a
bad idea at the time, but she'd paid the price of her
impulsiveness over the years. She couldn't change the
past or take back the pain she'd caused her family any
more than Grant Davies could ease the hurt she'd felt
after his betrayal.
    But that was in her past. This road trip was meant to
right the wrongs she could change. No regrets. Brock
Gentry had pulled her out of a spiraling path to
nowhere and helped her get back on track. For that
she'd always be grateful.
    She yawned, and even though she couldn't sleep,
fatigue pulled at her. At night she could admit to herself the things she refused to acknowledge during the day,
during the moments when Brock's warm blue eyes
would smile at her from the other side of the bus or
when he was on stage and seemed to look out into the
crowd and sing only to her. There were moments when
she felt as though they were the only two people on
earth. Just her and Brock.

    It was a nice fantasy that she'd allowed herself every
so often. There was so much more to what she felt for
Brock thanjust gratitude. It was those feelings that she
feared the most, the ones that made her forget the plans
she'd mapped out on paper that day when she'd wrestled with whether or not to go on this road trip. The last
thing she wanted was to repeat a history that had ended
with her heart being ripped to shreds.
    She flung the curtain closed, shutting out the bright
moon. She rolled over to her side, punching her pillow
twice for good measure. Dexter gave her only a mild
protest for disturbing his peace again and quickly settled. She envied her small friend. If only she could do
the same.
    "Josie? Are you awake?"
    Josie's heart leaped to her throat with the sound of
Brock's whispered voice.
    Pulling back the privacy curtain, she looked up at
him in the darkness. "What are you doing up?"
    "Same as you. Can't sleep."
    Her heart lifted a notch, glad for the company. "I
would have thought you'd be dead tired after today."
    Brock crouched down to where she was and leaned
forward. Though she'd pulled the curtain closed in
order to keep the moonlight from shining in, she now regretted it. There was minimal light in the aisle and
she could barely make out the contours of Brock's face.
But she imagined him smiling down at her, his dimple
marking his cheek,