Church
The line to my and Mari’s table was almost triple the length of every other vendor’s line—even the lines for food. I felt grateful, blessed, and overwhelmed all at the same time.
“There’s no way I’m gonna have enough product for all of these people,” I told my oldest sister, Perkins, who had agreed to help out. “I’m halfway through both the Apple Repair Hair Breakage Serum and the Roots Renew Scalp Nourisher. And let’s not even talk about the Apple Alpha Beard Oil.”
“Plus, we can only do what we can do,” Mari reminded me.
“This is a small business. We’re making this stuff basically by hand.
We don’t have some big manufacturer creating it for us.
It’s small-batch, personally touched, and quality controlled.
If that’s not what they want, then they can go to the hair supply store and pick up something made with chemicals and stuff that breaks our hair off and dries it out. ”
Even with a five-product maximum purchase per customer and a price point well above what you could spend at the big-box store, we sold out. It wasn’t even noon before Mari and I started breaking down empty boxes and cleaning out the booth.
Once the booth was back to its original state, I checked on my family to see if they needed any help at their booths. When I determined that everybody’s booths were good, Marigny and I decided to enjoy Manor Days like visitors.
We stopped by the Good Ashes booth. Good Ashes was the premier restaurant at Manor at Sienna Sunset Resort, and it was run by my brother-in-law, Brewer.
I got an order of mini-Dungeness crab cakes and a festival-sized portion of truffle fries.
Then we stopped at Bailey’s booth. The chefs at the bed and breakfast were a husband-and-wife duo who made upscale soul food with a New Orleans twist. Both Mari and I loved their banana pudding shooters.
Once we had our food, we just bopped around, taking in anything that interested us. Not long after we finished our food, an announcement came over the strategically placed loudspeakers that mudding would start in twenty minutes out in pasture twelve.
The lodge sat on over three hundred acres. To get to pasture twelve, Mari and I had to hop on one of the lodge’s trolleys that was taking visitors that way.
Before I moved to Jackson Falls, I had never even heard of “mudding.” But since the move, I’d discovered that it was a popular pastime.
Riding ATVs, monster trucks, or trucks sitting on thirty-inch rims through pits of mud was something I’d never done.
The thought of driving around in mud, getting beyond dirty, didn’t necessarily appeal to me.
But I didn’t mind watching other people indulge.
We made it to pasture twelve in time to find standing room on the edge of the mudding course. There were about fifteen competitors set up at the starting line.
“Look. There’s Beck.” Marigny pointed. I followed her finger until I spotted my brother-in-law.
Of all my brothers-in-law, Beck was the least surprising for me to see.
He owned an outdoor adventure tour company.
He loved nature, wilderness, and stuff like that.
Mudding was right up his alley. Bright and Brewer were the more “pretty boy” brothers-in-law.
I couldn’t imagine either of them liking to be dirty, although Bright worked in construction.
Mari pointed out more of the competitors that she recognized.
Since she was born and raised in Jackson Falls, she knew almost everybody.
Before she could point him out, I spotted Jones.
Our eyes met, and our gazes held for longer than they should have.
His tongue came out of his mouth, slowly tracing along the contour of his plush-looking lips.
Even though I willed myself to look away, it was like my mind couldn’t get the message to my eyes.
Then he winked. He knew what he was doing, and he knew my response to it.
I gave him a smile, then mouthed the words, “Fuck you,” before finally tearing my gaze away.
“Um,” Mari hummed softly. “Jenna’s over there trying to get Jones’ attention.”
I subconsciously glanced over at the starting line.
There was Jenna, doing her best to get Jones to engage her.
Unfortunately, when I looked over there, he was already looking at me.
We stared at each other for a few seconds.
Finally, he said a few words to her. She grinned real big, then climbed on the back of his ATV.
Music started blasting through the speakers.
“Okay. I guess the rumors are true,” Mari spoke over the volume of the music.
“What rumors?” I asked. I didn’t keep up with the Jackson Falls gossip.
First of all, I had only lived in Jackson Falls for five years.
I didn’t know the town’s residents enough to care about their business.
Secondly, I minded my own. I was too focused on Apple Head to even have time to worry about others.
The volume of the music lowered by one decibel, and the sound of the MC’s voice came through the speakers, announcing that the racers needed to take their marks.
“People are saying that Jenna got caught giving Jones head behind a barn over off Wilson Road.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, wow. Okay.” Before I could say more, the starting pistol went off, and engines started to rev.
The crowd cheered as the vehicles took off toward the course.
Vehicles sped across the terrain, dipping into trenches filled with watery mud.
Wheels spun, unable to find traction, throwing the wet dirt behind them as they finally freed themselves.
Sticky, thick mud landed on different vehicles and their passengers.
I shook my head. “Gross,” I muttered.
Mari laughed. “It’s actually fun. I love mudding.”
“How do you get your ATV clean . . . or your body?”
She shrugged. “Mud does get everywhere. In your face, in your bra, down your booty crack.”
“That sounds like a mess.”
“It is, but it’s a fun mess. I mean, clean-up is hell, but it’s a fun time.”
I watched wet mud rain down on top of an ATV and grimaced. “Hard pass.” Mud was flying as tires moved through it. Almost every vehicle on the course had been doused, and so had some of the spectators. I was so glad that Mari and I weren’t in a place to have mud land on us.
When everything was said and done, Beckham came out victorious. Somebody that I didn’t know came in second place, and Jones came in third. Even while Jenna threw her arms around his neck for a hug, his eyes watched me.
I sighed. “Let’s go find Collins and tell her that her man won the mudding competition,” I told Mari.
“Cool.”
Mari and I were supposed to vend at Manor Days on both Saturday and Sunday. Since we sold out of products on Saturday afternoon, I spent Sunday going in between family members at their booths.
After attending church, I started my morning at my sister, Collins’ booth. Collins co-owned and operated the on-site salon at the lodge. It was called Posh Moments at the Resort. She was the person who inspired me to start a hair care business—she and Mrs. Strong.
When I discovered the small apple orchard on my property, my first thought was to start baking apple products—apple cake, apple pie, apple Danish, and so on and so forth.
I’d even gone to Mari, who had a background in food chemistry to help me out.
She was very knowledgeable. She discouraged me against it by telling me about all the food licensure and stuff that I would need.
The whole process seemed demanding and involved.
I wasn’t passionate enough about baking to jump through all of the necessary hoops.
Mari inspired me to look into doing skin care with the apples.
I wasn’t passionate about that either. I was messing around when I asked the internet if I could use the apples to make hair care products.
When I realized I could, I went straight to Collins and Mrs. Strong.
They were super helpful, and then Mari agreed to come on as the chemist. She agreed to be responsible for handling the formulations, and we were off to the races.
“I hope you didn’t sell all your inventory yesterday,” Collins said to me as we set up the booth. “I’m almost out of clarifying shampoo, deep conditioner, and the serum.”
“Yes, on the shampoo and deep conditioner. I’ll drop some off on Tuesday. No, on the serum. I’m completely out. I’ll be working on making a couple of batches of that tomorrow.”
She glanced over at me. “How is progress coming on your production space at the house?”
I moved my gaze to Bright’s booth. Jonah was over there, setting things up for the day. “It’s going. After I told him off for being late on day one, he managed to get there on time for the rest of the week.”
Collins followed my gaze. “He’s cute, Churchy.”
“He is,” I admitted. And he was. “But his reputation is trash. They say he’s a bop, you know? Community dick. Plus, there’s a rumor going around that he was getting head in public—”
She let out a bark of laughter. “No lie?”
“Nah.” I shook my head.
“Head in public in a town the size of Jackson Falls? Oh, he must wanna be the topic of conversation.”
“I don’t know what he wants to be, but I do know that I don’t want my name attached to whatever it is.”