Chapter Nine
· Adriana ·
There was a voice note from Mom on my phone that I had yet to listen to.
I probably should have been the one to break the news to her.
At least, so far, the public only speculated about my exact relationship status.
The breathtaking ring had been spotted, but since it was a green diamond, and I tended to wear enough jewelry to rival a Christmas tree, people weren’t exactly sure what to make of it.
While my old social media profiles remained untouched—and I was perfectly happy only logging in to my friends-only profiles—I had gotten some texts from people whose numbers I hadn’t even saved anymore.
Brooks and I were supposed to sit down with his PR manager tomorrow, so I didn’t post about it, and I didn’t text anyone back. But I didn’t mind showing off my new baby in public.
“Damn, girl.” Lucas whistled, hunched over the bar to stare at my ring up close.
“That thing could sink the Titanic,” Esra mused.
“You can’t walk around with that.” Lucas plopped back into his seat.
“Why?” I laughed. “Who’s gonna rob me in Wild Fields?”
“Not because of that. If the girls see you with that on your hand, their expectations will skyrocket. I can’t compete with that. I can barely afford to take them to dinner.”
Esra choked on her cocktail and wheezed, “Who are you taking to dinner, Lucky?”
“You know…”
“Enlighten us,” I said, because Lucas was not the take-you-to-dinner kind of guy. He was the guy girls hooked up with at a party.
“Her.” He nodded toward Esra’s understudy, the girl who had subbed in as Annie Lou in the big showdown a couple of times.
When Esra had been on sick leave, her understudy had been the one getting abducted by bandits instead.
At the end of the show, she was saved by Lucas, who played the sheriff.
So he’d gotten up close with her a couple of times—even if only fictitiously.
Now she sat at a table near the edge of the balcony next to Vivi, Renee’s daughter.
Even though our moms were tight, Vivi was a few years younger than me, so we’d been more distant cousins than close friends growing up.
“What’s her name then?” Esra asked.
Lucas grimaced, searching my face for help. I’d briefly met the subject of his affections. She’d introduced herself as Melly. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. I’d never witnessed him have an actual speechless-rendering crush, and I was too entertained to intervene.
“I don’t think my ring is your problem,” I said.
“It’s really no fun when you two gang up on me,” he huffed.
The saloon lights dimmed, and “The Final Countdown” started playing. Eardrum-shattering shrieking erupted from the crowd—downstairs and on the balcony.
“That’s my cue.” Lucas hopped off the barstool. “Enjoy your night, ladies.”
Like a game of revolving doors, Lucky breezed off and Noah sidled up behind Esra, kissed her shoulder, and she turned her head to kiss him on the cheek in return. “That’s how you know he’s not serious about that girl,” he said.
“Because he won’t watch cowboy strippers with her?” Esra asked.
“Mm-hmm,” Noah mumbled, burying his face in the crook of her neck.
“Burlesque dancers. Technically,” I said.
“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.” Noah shrugged. “She’s here. I’m here.”
“Maybe you just have an unhealthy obsession with your girlfriend. A lot of the women here are in committed relationships and none of their men are here.” I pointed around the room.
Noah zeroed in on my hand. Instead of questioning the massive ring, he looked at Esra. The two of them had some strange lovey-dovey wordless eye contact conversation. He may have been a man of few words, but I had a feeling the two of them would discuss my engagement at length later.
“All right, I’m not done talking to you about this,” Esra said and pointed at the ring, “but I’m going to go watch men in body glitter now.”
“It’s kind of weird that you two watch this together,” I laughed.
Esra flipped me off, then blew me a kiss before disappearing to watch the show.
Part of the fun of the Stallions was that their act was actually good.
Yes, it was a group of hot guys wearing nothing but ripped jeans and cowboy hats.
And yes, a portion of the show consisted of them humping the floor Magic Mike–style.
But they interspersed it with some comedy, some impressive dances, and a couple of audience participation numbers.
They came here once a month to heat up the Rattlesnake Saloon, but their Nashville bar was usually booked out weeks in advance.
I was closing out the cash register, every light in the building on full blast to get the last stragglers out, when a familiar Stallion slipped through the staff door and leaned on my bar.
He still had body glitter up his neck and on his cheekbones, but he had changed into a simple tee and loose, non-ripped jeans.
“Looking gorgeous as ever, Miss Banks,” he cooed, helping himself to a glass of water from the tap.
“Thank you,” I said and waited for the register to signal it had backed up today’s numbers to the cloud. Park staff charged everything to their employee IDs, so at least I didn’t have to do math. “You’re not getting in my pants tonight, Sam.”
“You know I don’t mind steering my ship through the red sea.”
“Nope, not that,” I snorted and lifted my hand with the ring on it. “I’m afraid our ship has officially sailed, actually.”
“Wait, wait, wait. No way.” He set his water down and reached for my hand.
“Way.”
“Since when?”
“It’s brand-new.”
“Shit, dude. Congratulations!” He let go of my hand, only to raise his in a high five.
He wasn’t exactly a fine English gentleman, but he stuck to a “ladies first” rule that I could appreciate.
So I high-fived him. Technically he was the first person to properly congratulate me.
I should probably not dwell on that…“Let me buy you a drink! Wait.” He paused to look around.
“Can you drink? Is it a shotgun wedding?”
“I’m not pregnant, but I just closed the register. No more drinks. I’d rather get home anyway.”
“Sure, sure, sure, okay. Let me walk you to your car. Oh man, that was real quick, huh?”
“Yeah, well, kind of.” The register finally did its thing and powered down, giving me the green light to get out of here. “We’ve known each other for four years. So when things changed, they changed fast.”
Sam trailed beside me as I picked up my bag in the back room before we took the back stairs to the parking lot. “Tell you what, I’ll dance your bachelorette for free. That’s my engagement gift for you.”
“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.” I laughed when I pushed out the door, a welcome breeze of fresh air greeting me, alongside a familiar tall figure, clad in his signature white shirt and blue jeans.
Brooks creeping in the parking lot at night was not on my bingo card tonight.
Sam only stopped in his tracks when I did. “What are you doing here?”
“I knew you were working late, so I wanted to make sure you got home safe,” Brooks said, his eyes jumping back and forth between me and the blond guy covered in glitter specks.
“That’s so sweet. Uhm, this is Sam. He’s one of the Stallions.
I was just telling him about you, actually.
He offered to take his clothes off at my bachelorette party.
” Oh god, I was cringing inwardly. Brooks was kind and serious and committed to his family—and here I was, walking out of the bar with a stripper. Well. Burlesque dancer.
“It’s nice to meet you, Sam,” Brooks said, perfectly civil, offering his hand.
“Oh, I see, I see. Bet. Nice to meet you.” Sam took the handshake, then twirled, wiggling two finger guns at me. “Well, I guess you don’t need me to walk you to your car.”
“I think I’m good, thank you.”
“See you next month, Banks. Nice to meet you, man.” He gave Brooks a quick salute, then broke off in the direction of a beat-up Volkswagen.
Gravel crunched under our feet, each step louder than the one before in my ears. Why wasn’t he talking? He was clearly drawing his own conclusions about what he’d just witnessed, when he could just get his answers from me.
“You can ask,” I finally said when we got to my car.
“Could you not entertain other relationships until the court hearing?”
“What?” I stared at him, but he was actually serious. “I wasn’t going to sleep with him, Brooks. He really was just walking me to my car.”
“So he just goes around offering to strip for engaged women?”
Was he upset? Did he seriously think I would jeopardize his custody case just to get laid?
“I actually don’t know. Possibly. I mean, it’s his job.
Bachelorette parties could be networking events.
” My words came out snippy, so I sucked in a deep breath, and reframed the conversation in my mind.
This wasn’t personal. This was just his anxiety over the court hearing.
“We’ve hooked up a couple of times. I told him it wasn’t going to happen again. He was actually super happy for me.”
“When I asked you to do this, I didn’t realize you were seeing someone.” He worked his jaw. “I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t. He comes to town once a month. That’s all it ever was. You have no reason to be sorry, and no reason to be worried.” His touchy-feeliness had to be rubbing off on me, because I reached for him and gave his hand a short squeeze. He gave my hand a little double squeeze in return.
“I want to walk you to your car when you’re working late.”
“I can walk to my car alone. It’s brightly lit, lots of cameras, and Bravetown security guards over there.” I nodded toward the park entrance.
“I’m serious. This is already a compromise because if I had it my way, I’d drive you home and make sure you get through your front door safe and sound.
” His brows were drawn deep. He wasn’t joking.
Apparently fiancé-Brooks was a little overprotective.
Something softened in my chest, weirdly warm and fluffy.
Probably just my stomach telling me to get home and eat—nothing to do with too much experience finding my tires slashed and not having anyone to call.
“Send me your shift plan. Please,” Brooks said after I stayed silent a little too long.
“Okay.”
“Is that why he decided to swoop in and snap up our park?”
“Mom, he didn’t swoop and snap. A lot of things just clicked into place. His daughter loves Bravetown and when we reconnected, it just…worked.”
I had lied to my mother plenty of times.
Yes, of course I did my homework.
No, I wasn’t drinking at Sarah P’s party.
Absolutely no clue where her green lace skirt went.
That dent in the car must have been someone in the parking lot at the movie theater.
But this engagement was a big lie. And she wasn’t buying it. In retrospect, I wasn’t sure she’d ever bought a single one of my lies.
“Do you love him?” she asked and moved to cross her arms in front of her chest, but thought better of it when she realized her garden gloves were covered in dirt.
I’d figured if we had this conversation while she was digging through her veggie patch, she might just be relaxed enough not to get upset.
I’d been wrong. Now she was upset and holding a sharp metal claw thingy.
“Do I love him? Seriously, Mom?” Maybe deflecting was better than lying…
“What? It’s a reasonable question. If you’re going to marry this man, you should love him.
And he should love you. How long has this been going on?
Don’t tell me he tried anything when you were on his tour.
He was kind of like your boss, right? He’s so much older than you, Adriana.
” She slammed the little rake into the soil again and again.
“I don’t even—” I groaned, very tempted to slam my head against a wall. “Nothing happened on tour. I may have had a teeny tiny crush because he’s, well, he’s who he is. But it was a completely platonic friendship. We never even kissed.”
We came close though. That night, before his life was upended by news of Skye’s existence.
“How exactly does one go from being completely platonic friends to getting married in the blink of an eye? Is that some celebrity thing? These people get married and divorced more often than normal people get their oil changed.”
“It just happened. I’m just doing what feels right.
It’s not exactly like I had a good example of the whole marriage and kids thing, okay?
” I hated myself the second the words were over my tongue.
Deflecting was not better than lying. My grandparents had cut off my mother for refusing to have an abortion, give me up for adoption, or get married to some young guy that went to their church.
Mom had never bowed to those conventions.
Okay, so she hadn’t exactly been motherhood personified, randomly switching back and forth between trying to be a parent and acting like my best friend—but she had raised me to forge my own path.
Throwing that in her face as anything other than brave and admirable was wrong on so many levels.
She pretended to lock her mouth and threw up her hands though. She wasn’t arguing anymore.
Short-term goal achieved, but at what long-term cost?
Ugh.
Sometimes I hated my own tendency to lash out without thinking my words through.
“Sorry,” I mumbled and dusted off my jeans as I got back to my feet. “I have to go to work.”