Chapter Two #2
“Okay, then,” I sighed and grabbed my hat and sunglasses from the backseat.
Skye had taken it upon herself to order us clothes fit for a Wild West theme park.
I had tried to argue that we didn’t need to dress up, had even searched up videos from the park to show her that plenty of visitors went in their street clothes.
But her mind had already been made up. Cowboy theme park meant cowboy clothes.
While she got to walk around in a frilly red dress with white flowers on it and a little white apron tied around her waist—looking somewhat normal—she’d put me in a white button-down with balloon-like sleeves, brown trousers up to my navel, and a pair of suspenders that reminded me of my grandpa.
We had compromised on my sunglasses for at least a hint of anonymity.
I’d stayed out of the limelight for three years, but that didn’t stop people from asking for selfies or sneakily taking videos of me pumping gas or grabbing takeout.
I didn’t mind when I was alone, but between limited outings and tinted car windows, I’d managed to keep Skye safe from cameras so far.
The people who knew us knew about her. Others may have heard rumors, but there were zero pictures of her flooding the gossip blogs. I wasn’t keen on changing that.
Especially these days. The repercussions could be catastrophic.
I’d just opened the trunk of the car when a woman with fiery red hair in a huge mess of a bun popped up next to me. She clutched a tablet to her chest with one hand and stretched the other out toward me. “Hi there, I’m Renee, Bravetown’s park director. It’s a real honor to meet you.”
“Brooks. It’s a pleasure to be here,” I replied, automatically falling back into the drawl that was just a little thicker than my normal voice, deemed the perfect southern-charm interview voice by a whole PR team many moons ago.
“And you must be Skye,” Renee said and held her hand out to my daughter.
Skye pinched her lips together and gave a little wave instead. She didn’t like talking to strangers, and she didn’t like touching strangers, and I couldn’t fault her for either.
To her credit, Renee turned her offered handshake into a wave herself without her smile dropping.
“If you need help with your bags, I can have someone take them to your room for you,” Renee said, pointing at my duffel and Skye’s little vintage leather suitcase.
“Thank you. We’ll be all right. The band may need some help with the equipment.”
“Of course.” Renee tapped around on the screen of her tablet. “Why don’t I show you to your room? You’ll get two special key cards that allow you to use the staff entrance and staff elevator. We don’t often have VIP guests, so if you have any other privacy requests, just let me know.”
“Thank you. We don’t want to be any trouble like that.”
“Oh, you’re no trouble at all.” She waved me off. “You’re really doing us a big favor by playing at the Rattlesnake Saloon.”
I wasn’t exactly doing them a favor. I was doing Adriana a favor. I’d half expected her to be the one to greet us. Maybe she was busy working. Or maybe her boss had swooped in on the chance to greet the VIPs.
Skye had witnessed people’s eager friendliness around me, and the special treatment I got, a couple of times. I didn’t want her to get used to it though.
Renee walked us across the hotel staff parking lot, where I’d been instructed to park, to the staff entrance, telling us about the hotel’s mealtimes, gym and pool, and room service.
We took the elevator to the top floor, and I paused in the open doors.
The walls were covered in a yellow floral wallpaper and dark wooden wainscoting.
A small alcove was fitted with a vintage fainting couch, framed by Western paintings of cowboys to either side.
Even the sconces by the hotel room doors looked like flickering oil lamps.
“Awesome,” Skye whispered.
“Thank you,” Renee beamed. She’d stopped in front of one of only three doors on this floor.
A little golden plaque read Night Hawk Suite.
“I’ll let you get settled. I’ll come back around four to take you to sound check.
You’re welcome to explore the park until then but I should tell you that there’s a lot of fans around who came for your show tonight. ”
“Got it,” I said, but Skye made a disgruntled sound in the back of her throat.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got you scheduled for a private park tour tomorrow at eight a.m. You’ll have the park all to yourselves for a bit, and if you want to stay afterward, you’ll have two staff members making sure nobody bothers you all day.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Renee left us each with a key card on a Bravetown-branded lanyard. Skye’s even had a shiny gold sheriff’s star pinned to it, imprinted with the word brAVE.
Once we were inside the suite and the door fell shut, Skye let out a loud groan. “Night Hawk Suite doesn’t make sense for a hotel room. Night hawks were the ones who had to stay up all night to protect the livestock. You book a hotel room to sleep in it, not to stay up all night.”
“Well…” I swallowed the first reply that came to my mind before it made it to the tip of my tongue. “You have to give this place a little leeway on historical accuracy. It’s an amusement park, not a Wild West reenactment.”
The themed decor from the hallway continued inside the suite—driving my point home, because the antique-looking furniture was interspersed with a flat screen TV, a modern kitchenette, and a chalkboard with the Wi-Fi password on it.
I set the bags down on the sofa, while Skye dashed back and forth between the two bedrooms on either side of the living room a few times, a blur of long blond hair and red frills.
She then sprinted into the bathroom by the entryway and turned the shower on, only to head back to both bedrooms one after another, closing the door for a few seconds.
“I’ll take this one,” she decided and pointed at the room she’d just left. “Shower isn’t as loud.”
“You know that we might still hear the neighboring rooms, right?”
“There’s only so much I can control,” Skye sighed.
That line had become a mantra for her over the last few months, and every single time she recited it, my chest swelled with love and pride.
As much as I wanted her to have the easiest life possible, it would never just be easy.
It was a balancing act, but I was determined to do my part in making her feel safe and comfortable enough to voice her needs.
I’d grown up getting chastised by my parents and pressured into discomfort with wisdom like that’s just how things work or you’ll get used to it. I didn’t want that for Skye.
I gave her a thumbs-up and took my bag to the other bedroom. It was fitted with a king-sized bed, a chest of drawers, and a leather armchair in the corner. While it wasn’t luxurious, I’d stayed in five-star suites much smaller than this one.
On the bed waited a bulky cotton tote bag with Bravetown’s logo embroidered on it. I’d barely opened it and glanced at the thermos cup shaped like a pink cowboy boot when Skye snatched the bag from my hands and shoved an identical one at me.
“Your sizes,” she said. “Also the merch could be better. I don’t want a notebook with the logo on it. I want a notebook that looks like it could be from the Wild West. Something leather-bound or covered in simple cotton cloth.”
“I’m sure they’ll have some in the gift shop. This is free. Of course it’s branded. And you’re still going to thank Renee later, got it?”
“Sure, sure, but look.” She rummaged through her tote bag and pulled out a headband with a miniature cowboy hat attached to it. “This is cute even if not accurate. This I would wear in the park. This?” She pulled out a white T-shirt with the park’s logo on the chest pocket. “This is just boring.”
“Plenty of boring people in the world, honey. They’d love a plain shirt like that. You should be grateful you’re getting free merch in the first place.”
“Da-ad.” Two-syllable groan, and blue eyes rolling dramatically. She turned on her heel and beelined back to her room with her gift bag.
“You can wear it as a PJ top,” I called after her—and she slammed her door shut in response. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d done to earn that, but I was learning fast that tween girl logic didn’t always make sense to me.
I checked the window, pulling the thin white curtains aside just enough to peek out.
We were on the side facing the park, and there was no building as tall as the hotel across the street.
Good. That meant no sneaky photographs from parallel windows.
There was still a chance of park guests taking pictures from below, but Skye knew to keep the curtains shut, and with the park’s closing hours, we’d at least be able to open the windows for a while tonight and in the morning.
A little reassured, I let myself take in the outside.
Bravetown’s main street was off in the distance, recognizable by the Ferris wheel shaped like a water mill and the roller coaster that looked like a tiny train snaking around a bright orange mesa mountain.
On our street, the wooden building fronts promised shops, a café, and something called Journey Downstream that seemed to lead to a small boat ride behind the buildings.
My gaze slid up and down the street until every sign was burned into my retinas.
No saloon.
I let the curtain fall back into place and pulled my phone out instead.
Brooks: You weren’t kidding about this place.
Adriana’s reply popped up almost instantly.
Addie: Yearning for civilization already?
Brooks: Where’s the saloon?
Addie: Right at the park entrance but it’s closed until the show today.
Brooks: You aren’t here yet?
Addie: Don’t you worry your pretty little head. I’ll be there.
I contemplated offering to meet her elsewhere, but I didn’t want to leave Skye alone more than necessary. She wasn’t going to come to the saloon later, so she’d be alone in the hotel for a few hours already. I also didn’t want to risk running into hordes of tourists or fans without any backup.
As much as I wanted to see Adriana again after three years, I couldn’t come up with a solution other than inviting myself to her place—or inviting her here.
Neither option felt…right. We’d stayed in touch.
We’d emailed every now and again. Scrolling up in the text thread, past the night she asked me to play here, there were a handful of messages every few weeks.
Our conversations started and ended within a few texts and voice notes, and then weeks would pass before the pattern repeated.
Even the occasional phone call popped up on screen as I scrolled up and up.
Most people probably didn’t even consider this a friendship.
Adriana was always going to be one of my closest friends, whether she realized it or not.
She’d been there the night I found out about Skye.
She was one of a few very select people who knew almost everything, who I didn’t have to walk on eggshells around.
Time and distance didn’t change that. Not to me, at least.
That’s why I hadn’t even hesitated when she’d asked me to play a show here. I’d always help a friend.
As far as Adriana was concerned, however, she’d called in a favor. You didn’t have to be friends for that.
My thumbs hovered over the keyboard long enough for the screen to go dark.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say—or how to say it.
I rubbed my hand over my chest, trying to ease the sudden stifling tension from my lungs.
Even if I considered Addie a friend, I had fucked up three years ago and we hadn’t actually faced each other since.
I wanted to make things right. Seeing her in person would be my chance. So I pocketed the phone without replying.
A text message seemed like the wrong way to apologize for ruining her career.