Chapter One #2
“All right, all right.” I tossed my rag aside.
“Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re going to take a bottle of water, walk downstairs and just chat with Terry until they clear the bar in twenty minutes.
You’re not only the fake sheriff in town, you’re also the guy who’s friends with the security guard.
Safe. Dependable. Sober. You’ll offer to walk these ladies back to their hotel because you have to talk to Jean in the back office anyway. She’s on the night shift.”
“Who’s Jean?” he mumbled into his arms.
“There is no fucking Jean. You use that as a chance to make small talk with the group. Keep it casual. You’re not flirting.
You’re their tour guide. You point out fun facts about Bravetown.
There’s gonna be one friend who wants to bang the cowboy.
She couldn’t say as much while they were all celebrating their emancipation, but the night is coming to an end.
She’ll talk to you more than the others.
So when you get to the hotel, you check your phone.
Jean cancelled. You ask the woman if she wants to grab a nightcap at the hotel bar.
If that still doesn’t get you laid, you’re shit out of luck. ”
“What kind of mastermind plan is that?”
“Lucky, you struck out because you misread the situation. They weren’t letting loose for one last hurrah before being shackled, ball and chain. They wanted a girls’ night. Doesn’t mean all of them have given up on men.”
“Okay.” His mouth set in a determined line. “Water please.”
“Here you go.” I set a plastic bottle down in front of him.
“If this works, I’ll owe you one.”
“Noted.”
He shot me a pair of finger guns and disappeared downstairs.
For good measure, I wiped the counter down again where he’d leaned on it.
As soon as the office ladies cleared out too, I could close down for the night, head home to my leftover veggie lasagna and a grainy concert live stream on YouTube.
I didn’t even care which one. Someone was always streaming something these days and it easily beat scrolling through Netflix for hours because nothing hit the right spot.
I glanced over at the white wine ladies, just to gauge how long they might need, and realized my mistake the second I met Sheila Benson’s gaze.
Her brows twitched and her shoulders stiffened as she leaned forward to whisper something to her companion without breaking eye contact.
For some reason, it had been the middle-aged crowd that had developed the worst grudge against me.
Sheila among them. Sure, I’d been super judgy about my hometown and the people in it.
Loud and publicly. But I had a feeling that their own midlife crises about their life choices played a part in how personal they’d taken the opinion of one random girl they’d never paid much attention to before she’d been on the radio.
Barely concealing her intention, Sheila pushed her wrist against the stem of her wineglass. It inched toward the edge of the table. It teetered on the corner just long enough for me to raise my brows at this middle-aged woman with her sharply angled blond bob.
The glass dropped and shattered.
Yep. That tracked.
I sighed and rolled my eyes at the high-school-level bullying.
Without a word, I dove under the counter to get out a bucket and the dustpan. By the time I resurfaced, the two women were gone. I preferred it that way. Since I didn’t want to provoke this to go further, I’d rather clean up by myself than under their sneering gazes.
The people of Wild Fields really knew how to hold a grudge.
Funny how quick this shit stopped shocking you. If this had happened to me during the few months I bartended in Nashville, I would have ripped the customer a new one.
Shattered glass in the trash and floor mopped, I closed out the register and made my way out the back of the saloon to the staff parking lot.
The second I stepped into the thick air of the late summer night, my fingers flew to my collar, tugging on my buttons.
Unlike all the other park staff’s historical costumes, the ones for the saloon workers were really basic.
A frilly cotton shirt and an ankle-length brown skirt, paired with a red bandanna tied around my neck.
Still too stifling for summers in Tennessee once you stepped out of the air-conditioned saloon.
Maybe I’d swap my lasagna plans for strawberry ice cream. I still had half a tub in the freezer.
I dumped my bag and the bandanna in the backseat of my car and cranked the AC as soon as I turned the key in the ignition—only for the dashboard to beep and flash at me.
“Are you kidding me?”
The tire pressure signal was nonstop attacking my senses worse than any Shania Twain song could.
“Fine,” I huffed and got back out.
The parking lot was well lit, so I barely had to squint to find the issue. A gaping dark slash in my front tire.
“Sure, sure, sure,” I mumbled, squeezing my eyes shut. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”
A little vandalism. Could be worse, right?
Sure, I couldn’t demand the police check the security camera footage of the parking lot and arrest the culprit, because that would just make people hate me more for causing legal drama—but it was just a tire.
I could change a tire.
Except…
Skill wasn’t the issue. This was already my spare tire. I’d dealt with this same situation two months ago and hadn’t gotten to replacing the spare—and Gil’s auto repair wouldn’t open until morning. Shitballs.
I dropped into the driver’s seat and pulled out my phone to call my mom.
It barely rang before I got her voicemail.
Should have known. Unfortunately, my mother was the kind of person who believed in digital boundaries.
No TV in the bedroom, no phone at the table, and all electronics got shut off when she and her husband went to bed.
I could be dying and she wouldn’t know. In an emergency, you don’t call me, you call 911.
And if you don’t want to call 911, it’s not an emergency, so why would you wake me?
The list of friends I could call was abysmally short.
Lucas was off getting laid and Esra was probably vomiting her guts out.
And if I called Renee, my aforementioned boss-friend, she’d send out another email to all Bravetown employees about bullying tomorrow morning, and everyone would know it was about me. Ugh.
Technically, we had a ride service in our sleepy little town.
It was barely needed, since most theme park visitors came in their own cars.
Those who didn’t took the shuttle from the Nashville airport to the Bravetown hotel and back.
For the occasional stray, Jake Benson just picked up people in his private Prius and charged them a flat-rate ten bucks per person.
Considering his wife had just deliberately shattered a wineglass, I somehow doubted Jake would be willing to play my late-night chauffeur though.
Welp. The upside of living in a small town: It was small.
Downside of working in a small-town theme park: It was on the outskirts of town.
Bag shouldered, phone in hand, I started my trek down the deserted country road into town.
There were no streetlamps out here and the sky was covered in thick clouds barely letting any moonlight through.
My phone battery was low enough for me not to chance using the flashlight, so I focused on planting my feet firmly on the asphalt with each step.
Crickets chirped in the grassy ditch, and critters scattered as I walked past.
If I was going to get mauled by a pack of coyotes, I’d haunt the shit out of my mother’s electronics. Also out of the asshole that slashed my tires.
“This is not how I die. This is not how I die,” I mumbled to myself, less to reassure myself, more to keep any stupid animals away from me with the sound of my voice.
Wild Fields turned from a blurry sheen in the distance to the geometric silhouettes of buildings and the beautiful glaring LEDs of civilization.
Unfortunately, I didn’t live in the town center.
So instead of walking toward the sound of a few cars still making their turns, I took a right down another dimly lit road.
The first wet splotch landed right on my cheek. I barely had time to reach up and double-check that it was just water when the skies opened.
“Bad things come in three? That’s number three, asshole,” I grumbled and glared at the dark clouds. I felt like that meme of an old man shaking his fist in the air. At least the rain clouds, unlike people, wouldn’t make my life harder if I cursed them out.
I shoved my phone to the bottom of my bag and hugged it tight to my chest. The slouchy leather would be somewhat waterproof, but I really couldn’t chance it. A new phone was not in the budget right now.
The rain soaked through my clothes within minutes. The skirt turned into a heavy, slopping sack that squelched with every step, clinging to my legs from hip to ankle. And my hair, usually a long mess of bouncing curls, stuck to my neck and shoulders like a wet rag.
I’d be dead tomorrow. My nose was already running.
Slowed down by the drenched clothes, I finally made it to my little corner of the earth. From the side of the road, it didn’t look like much. Just a small path leading through some trees and a mailbox at the corner.
I’d gotten myself a shiny red mailbox with a cute matching red flag when I first bought the cottage.
I’d always wanted a shiny red mailbox growing up.
We’d lived in apartment buildings all my life, so we didn’t have a choice in how we wanted to get our mail—but all the families on TV had these pretty mailboxes with hatches and flags.
Perfectly charming. When I was finally able to buy a house, I signed the papers, drove to Home Depot, and got myself a shiny red mailbox.
Six months ago, after I moved back to Wild Fields, someone sprayed thick black letters over the red varnish.