Eyes lazily drifting in and out of focus danced over the honeysuckle blossoms that climbed the battered trellis. They teased him with the allure of their sweet nectar. He’d picked it clean one afternoon last Summer; Dicey hadn’t talked to him for a week after that. Perhaps some things were better left on the vine.

“Whatchu’ thinkin ’bout, Pistol?” Dicey asked in a lazy drawl that indicated as much an interest in his thoughts as a disinterest in the reigning silence.

Shutting his eyes for a moment and smiling with imagined savoring, he answered, “Honeysuckle.”

“Don’t even think it.”

“No harm in thinkin a thing, is there?”

She didn’t answer, and Pistol craned his neck to consider her instead. At fourteen she acted like a ten year old half the time and looked like a college girl the other half. Strawberry blond hair framed a lightly freckled face, a face now giving him a stern look.

“Whatchu’ thinkin ’bout now?”

He turned his head about, “Jus’ honeysuckle. Tha’s all. You know, flowers an’ stuff.”