Chapter Ten #2
Any day now, Charlie expected that invite to arrive in the mailbox. She almost didn’t have the heart to let Daisy see it this time.
“Do you, uh, wanna go with me instead?” Charlie hedged. “To the carnival? I know what happened tonight isn’t really about the carnival. But, you know. Could be fun?”
Daisy looked up at her. Shrugged. Looked back out the window.
“I thought you didn’t like public things.”
“Negative, babe. Artex and I would love to go with you.”
She reached back and scratched the dog’s ear who turned and slobbered over her hand. They rumbled over train tracks. Coming to the intersection toward downtown.
“What d’you say, chica? Should I turn right? Or head straight?”
She pulled up to the T. Glanced back at Daisy.
“Cotton candy? Carnie rides?”
“I thought those things were petri dishes that grow the kind of flora you don’t want to study,” the girl snarked, though a hint of something that wasn’t quite a frown teased her mouth as Artex flopped his head on her lap.
“Guess who went to Bargain Barn, babe.”
Charlie held up the massive pump of hand sanitizer she kept in the door, shaking it with a waggle of the eyebrow. “Let’s go get elbow deep in that petri dish.” Her teasing finally earned a reluctant smile from the girl’s lips. “That’s right, girlie. Your momma’s got all the moves.”
Daisy pursed her lips to manage her smile and rolled her eyes. Sweet girl.
Her default, at age nine, was blessedly still a bright smile, despite everything. It wouldn’t be long before those innocent smiles turned into angst, and if Jason kept up drinking, and then complaining to the courts about Charlie sabotaging his visitation, Daisy’s smile would soon vanish forever.
Charlie cleared the emotion thickening her throat.
“It won’t change what happened tonight, Daisy May.
I know that. I just thought…” She forced a fun smile.
“It’s okay. Silly idea.” She bobbed her head side to side.
“Let’s go home and throw a pizza in the oven.
Girls’ night, nail polish, Disney movie.
” She let off the brake to roll onward. What had she been thinking, offering her daughter the thing that hurt most right now—
“Go right.”
Charlie braked again and glanced back at Daisy’s bright blue eyes.
Daisy smiled. “The carnival is to the right.”
And just like that, tears welled on Charlie’s eyelids as she craned around and met her daughter’s smile. “You sure?”
Daisy nodded.
“Maybe Seth Dixon will be there.”
Oh, man, Heart’s boyfriend’s son, who’d just been hospitalized. Heart had taken Daisy with her to a university open house the other day so Charlie could proctor her summer final, and met those boys, and Daisy was oh so smitten. Sweet girl, cute boys get us in all sorts of trouble.
She flipped on the blinker, clicking a metronome into the void of radio DJ chatter. “Here’s one from local sensation, McClintock and the Disclaimers—”
Her heart pinched. That egg on her face burned anew.
“Comment on our live feed and tell us what you think … honest to God, Chuck, I can’t for the life of me figure out how these guys were never snatched up by a label … hopefully, we see them at the Homegrown Music Awards…”
His deep, twangy voice that melted panties right off of women came on the radio. The first guy she’d welcomed into her home and body in a long time.
“And the Houston Chronicle just announced that it’s up for the Texas Music Award’s best new original song…”
The player with the unfinished tattoo sleeve and megawatt smolder, who’d rocked her world and had the audacity to act hurt when she’d made him leave. What a jerk he’d turned out to be when he hadn’t gotten her immediate compliance to further their one-nighter into a one-dayer.
“Light me up like a moon-lit sky…”
That voice. Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel and her jaw clenched at his betrayal, the oldest trick in the book, and she’d fallen for it.
“Love me like it’s our last goodbye.
Pretty as a flower, kiss like a sin.”
She cranked the volume down—
“I like this one, Momma. Turn it up. I thought you liked McClintock.”
Reluctantly, Charlie smiled in the rearview and turned it back up as she turned into the outskirts of Nacogdoches.
“Feels like my life’s about to begin.”
Her skin tingled, stomach fluttered madly, as anger burgeoned. She pulled into the fairgrounds, carnival lights blinking, teens congregating, and rolled into the grass since all the parking spots were full.
Live music blared from a side stage as Daisy dragged her through the ticket booth amid the din.
“Three a.m. and I’m wide awake—” That voice again! “Thinkin’ on the one that got away.”
Her head swiveled, looking for the source of those baritone vocals as adrenaline at being near him again flooded her bloodstream.
“She knocked me flat in the neon lights,
Left me flounderin’, stole my fight.”
Charlie’s attention trained beyond the twenty-one and over ropes, onto the plywood dais nestled against an old silo not more than fifty feet away.
There he was. The man on the radio and on her mind.
Thaddeus McClintock, stood plying his wares in carnival lights, his guitar slung across his muscled back while he cupped the microphone to his lips like he was making love to it.
“That laugh on her lips, secret in her eyes.
Flower Girl stole my heart and I don’t know why.
Daisy on her skin, gold in her hair,
I could drown a happy man in that green-eyed stare…”
Her brow crinkled at the lyrics. Flower Girl…
“Hey, Momma, we just heard him on the radio!” Daisy crowed over the noise. “Did you know he was at Mr. Dixon’s ranch with Auntie Heart too? I think they’re friends!”
Thaddeus and Heart’s boyfriend were friends? Or was Tyler Dixon the Harvard cousin?
Stetson propped on his head, blond hair splayed out in disarray, leather bands cuffing his wrists, eyes closed as he pushed his voice, brow furrowed, his tight, worn Wranglers hugging his rear as his beat-up boot tapped the rhythm and he lost himself in the music.
“I’m either stupid or a fool, to dream of one,
who don’t want me after she was done.”
Something like anger, no … confusion, nipped. Was he singing about her? Had he had the audacity to wrong-number her, then use their night to write his next hit? Acting like some wounded puppy?
“That laugh on her lips, secret in her eye,
Flower Girl stole my heart and I don’t know why…”
A roar of cheers as the song ended.
Then those blue eyes that forever lived beneath her eyelids opened, roved across his gathering crammed into the tight space as his divot popped in his cheek and he waggled his eyes at the ladies and then …
he reached down to a woman. Blond. Cute body.
And pulled her on stage as she collapsed against him, draping her arms about his body and laughing, fawning over him.
Charlie’s throat knotted.
She swallowed, but the illness wouldn’t dissipate.
Just like the videos she’d seen. Just like Jason humiliating her with every other girl he cheated with for all to see, while she sat hidden at home with a baby he didn’t even want.
What lies would McClintock tell this woman tomorrow morning?
Would he use the same flirty puns about back roads and recording studios on her, too? Have a proposition for her?
“You’re gonna sing the ending with me, okay?” He held the mic to her lips while she giggled uncontrollably instead.
Charlie’s grip on Artex’s leash slackened as she rolled her eyes unabashedly, as her pulse roared in her ears to be anywhere but here.
“Momma! They have chicks here! If I knock over three bottles I get to pick one! Oh, can I…” Daisy yanked on her arm, and oh God, they were going to end up with a chicken after Charlie had been deflecting Daisy’s begging for years and…
Charlie held her breath as the woman fawned all over Thaddeus and he chuckled that panty-dropping sound down at her. She’d been such a fool, getting up on that stage! Singing, of all the stupid things, and letting him woo her and tie her heart in a knot, thinking she’d been special.
Pain lanced through her, watching this—
“Momma?”
Daisy was tugging on her hand.
“Are you okay? You’re not still thinking … a, about … him, are you?”
Him. Jason.
Oh God, her little girl had no idea what was wrong with her. Daisy needed her right now, and here she was, twisted up over a guy she’d barely met.
“I’m fine, Daisy May.” She forced a smile, turning away from the betrayal on stage, and walked to the ticket line.
Daisy smiled again, squeezing her hand. “I’m going to ride the tilty-thing first, and then I’m gonna do the bottle knock thing and win a chick next, and…”
Thaddeus laughed loudly. She glanced back, feet stalling, as Charlie watched his hand settling on the woman’s waist as if a train wreck she couldn’t bear to see and yet, couldn’t shield her eyes from—