Chapter Twenty-Three
· Adriana ·
I had my feet drawn up on the seat, knees on the steering wheel, tapping my pen against the page in front of me.
I’d been scribbling a line here and there since the night of the fireworks.
I wasn’t the kind of songwriter who could do profound and poetic lyrics.
That wasn’t me. I didn’t read Shakespeare for fun.
I’d forgotten what a dactylic hexameter was the second I’d passed my SATs.
But I tried to paint vivid pictures with my words, invite people to live my stories with me.
Maybe it didn’t look as artistically valuable from the outside, at least not to certain people, but since the video from open mic night went online, I’d been getting more and more DMs every day.
Every single one reminded me of what Oscar at the record store had said to me when he’d asked me to sign my album.
A lot of young women still came in looking for it.
Probably the same ones who were messaging me.
The first one that had shocked me was a young actress I’d seen all over the internet, leading a show on a streaming platform, who had told me Now/Here had given her the push she’d needed to go to her first audition.
More than a handful of young women had told me they were the first ones in their families who had gone to college.
A few had started their own businesses and were thriving.
Some left behind abusive families to start fresh on their own.
Yes, the album was about leaving Wild Fields behind because it had stifled me, and the people here hadn’t been happy about that.
But at its core, the album had been about me, about gathering the courage to forge my own path when all the cards had been stacked against me, and defeating the odds. It was an album about courage.
So I couldn’t give a flying fuck about poetic genius.
I wrote music for girls like me.
My car door was torn open. Skye threw herself into the passenger seat and punched her backpack to the space at her feet.
“Jeez, did someone give you coffee? Slow down.”
“Sorry, my fault,” Brooks said and braced his arms against the top of the car, leaning down to look inside. God, he should be forbidden from flexing his biceps like that. “I didn’t tell her until now that I was staying here, and you were going to have a girls’ day.”
“Are we going to get slushies?” Her eyes were big as saucers.
“Uhm…I don’t know if anywhere in town sells slushies. We have them in the saloon though.”
“Mom and I always got slushies on girls’ days.
And donuts, but that’s okay, I already had a donut at the hotel’s breakfast buffet.
” She buckled herself in, and I glanced up from her giddy form to Brooks’s frozen smile.
“I like shopping girls’ days more than haircut girls’ days.
But on haircut days, Mom also let me get a new book. ”
“Okay.” I nodded slowly. Brooks must have thrown the term around without a second thought, but Skye and her mom had cemented their own rituals.
“Girls’ day. We’ll find some slushies. And we can check the bookstore, too.
I mean, we’re on a mission to find things for your new room, and that includes bookshelves and whatever goes on them, right? ”
“Yiiisss.” Skye clapped her hands, excitement bubbling so hard, her whole body was buzzing.
“If you need anything,” Brooks started, looking at me, “or something comes up…”
I subtly shook my head and reassured him with a genuine smile. “We’re going to have a great day. Go and do boring boys’ stuff.”
“Yeah, Dad, bye. Go.”
I laughed at Skye’s eagerness to get rid of her father.
Brooks’s boring boy stuff was another meeting with his lawyers.
It included discussion of the concept of family summers in North Carolina.
I’d been included in one legal meeting and had barely been able to keep my eyes open.
Brooks was so much stronger than me. But with the custody hearing only two weeks away, we’d agreed to keep Skye distracted, while he had to focus on getting everything right.
Even if Theresa Green had been playing nice at my birthday party, their lawyers were still sharks, and we couldn’t give them even a droplet of blood.
“Okay,” Brooks sighed, “have fun. I’ll see you tonight. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I chirped, key half turned in the ignition, only to freeze. The words had slipped out. I hadn’t even thought about it. Brooks had clearly said them to his daughter. Fuck. What the hell was wrong with me?
Blood shot to my cheeks and I turned.
Brooks smiled, his eyes crinkling, his dimples dimpling.
“Love you, too,” he said, perfectly calm, not freaking out like a complete idiot.
I forgot to breathe. My chest seized. Oh god, I was in so much trouble.
“Yes, we all love each other. Awesome. Can we go? Chop-chop.” Skye snapped her fingers at me.
“Hey,” I warned her, “I’m not your pony. Snap at me again and the bookshop is off the table.”
Skye groaned and collapsed back against her seat.
“I’ll see you tonight, Addie love,” Brooks said, adding extra weight to the last word.
He’d called me that so much, I had barely paid attention to it. Maybe I should have. Had he used that nickname interchangeably with Addie baby the whole time?
Before any of the questions swirling through my mind had the chance to cross my tongue, Brooks shut the passenger door, and Skye made a high-pitched impatient sound that had me starting the car and leaving her dad in the rearview mirror.
“Okay, how does it work? Slushies first and then go shopping?”
“No, slushies are middle of shopping break. Mom called it slush and hush because I can put my headphones on, and we can sit in silence to recharge.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “But if you feel like you need your headphones at any point today, you just put them on, okay? You don’t need to wait for a slush and hush break. I won’t think it’s rude or anything.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Okay, thank you.”
Despite her apparent nonchalance, Skye dug around in her bag and pulled her headphones out, slotting them around the back of her neck.
It reminded me of what Brooks had said the other day.
How Candace had tried to find ways to accommodate her daughter but had never fully gotten it.
I didn’t want to replace Candace. I wanted Skye to have her girls’ days in a way that honored the traditions she had with her mom, but I wasn’t going to reinforce any rules that didn’t work for her.
Wild Fields didn’t have a lot of retailers. Most tourists spent their money in Bravetown, and the actual population was too small to warrant many shops. Whenever we walked into one that had music playing, however, Skye immediately slipped her headphones over her ears.
Communicating wasn’t that hard. Thumbs up, thumbs down, a little shoulder wiggle, pulling a face, sticking my tongue out.
I had that kid cracking up without a single word.
Didn’t even take long to figure out she had the same tastes as senior citizens or tourists.
Old stuff. Or stuff that looked old. No fun colors, no glitter, and definitely no minimalism.
As someone whose entire furniture collection was bought secondhand, I could get on board with that.
“Have you ever been to a thrift shop?” I asked as we sat down on the steps of the gazebo in the town square.
I had a bright red slushy in my hands, Skye an electric-green one.
They were truly sad versions of the ones we sold at the park, but in all the cafés and restaurants in town, there had only been one slushy machine, so we settled for runny, sugary ice water.
Skye didn’t seem to mind, slurping it at record speed.
“Mm-mm,” she murmured and shook her head. She let her straw pop out with a lip smack. “No, Mom said there’s bedbugs in thrift shops.”
“There’s no bedbugs in thrift shops,” I scoffed.
Knowing how much money the Greens had, I wasn’t surprised that their granddaughter had been raised to believe shopping secondhand was dirty.
“It’s actually really good for the planet to buy things in thrift shops.
You just have to wash or steam stuff before using it yourself. ”
“Is it like vintage shops?”
“Yes, exactly. Just a little cheaper. I’ll take you to my favorite one.
It’s a twenty-minute drive, but they always have really cool old furniture and deco—” My voice cut off at the old familiar sound of a camera.
It wasn’t particularly loud. There was no flash.
It was just the little mechanical whirring of a zoom lens focusing and the metallic click that followed.
I jumped up and tore the newspaper out of Jake Benson’s hands as he walked past. He yelled at me, but I shoved the paper in front of Skye’s face. “Hold that there, kiddo. Stay exactly like that.”
“Young lady,” Jake’s wife, Sheila, started, but she was cut off from lecturing me by a gruff voice.
“Lose the newspaper, honey!”
All three of us turned to find the middle-aged man with his camera at chin height. He was halfway across the town square, chest puffed out, face red from an obvious lack of sunscreen.
“She’s a minor. She’s going to keep the newspaper exactly where it is,” I replied with my voice raised just enough to be heard across the distance.
“One quick photo, sweetie.”
“No,” I called back and turned my back on the man.
I knew how these sleazeballs operated. Boundaries didn’t exist for them.
I wouldn’t let myself be goaded into becoming a headline about “deranged country starlet screaming in town square.” These leeches drove people off roads, jumped in front of cars, and got all up in your face, just to get a few scandalous pictures.
I’d made my peace with that a long time ago. But hell would freeze over before I’d let Skye become collateral damage.
I stood right in front of the kid, my hands propped up on my hips, elbows out, legs wide. Taking up as much space as I could to shield Skye from the camera.