Chapter Twenty-Nine
· Adriana ·
“Asshole,” Brooks hissed as some dick in a massive Jeep cut us off.
“Swear jar,” Skye and I said at the same time, then laughed.
“Yeah, yeah, at this rate, we’ll fund you an entire iguana farm.” Brooks chuckled.
“Iguana?” I asked.
“A Western spiny-tailed iguana,” Skye said and jutted her tablet at me within seconds.
It showed some sort of digital notebook filled with photos of giant greenish-gray lizards and notes on their care, their ideal enclosures, temperatures for heat lamps and everything.
My mom hadn’t even trusted me to keep a hamster alive at that age.
Skye was really preparing for this thing.
“You know, most little girls want fluffy bunnies,” I said as I handed the tablet back. “Why an iguana?”
“’Cause that’s how my mom and dad met.” Skye shrugged as if that was a completely logical answer.
“Candace was the stylist on the ‘Wish You Well’ video,” Brooks explained.
“Oooh, the one where you have an iguana on your shoulder for like half the song. I always wondered what that was about.”
“Mom brought him. His name was Sergeant. He was her roommate’s iguana.
She said that’s how her and Dad started talking, and then they just didn’t stop talking, and then they made me.
So I think it would be really cool to have an iguana, because I wouldn’t exist if Mom hadn’t brought one to the music video. ”
I glanced over at Brooks, who didn’t seem fazed by this explanation.
Obviously, he’d heard it before. But I’d just realized that Skye had known who her dad was for years.
Even before her accident, Candace had been laying the groundwork for Skye to seek him out one day if she wanted to. I gave her props for that.
“Well in that case…” I cleared my throat. Brooks raised his brows but shot me that dimpled smile. “Shit. Damn. Crap. Asshole. Fuck.”
Skye screeched with laughter, and Brooks smiled at her through the rearview mirror. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he slid the other into my lap, giving my thigh a gentle squeeze. Then another one. Double squeeze.
“Pay up, Addie love,” he said.
I sighed and pulled five bucks from my wallet, handing them over my shoulder into Skye’s greedy hands. “For the iguana.”
A couple of iguana facts and one of Brooks’s songs on the radio—to which we all sang along—later, Brooks parked the car outside the Silver Spur Saloon in downtown Nashville.
“Ready?” he asked.
I glanced at the music studio across the street and waited for any kind of panic to surge through me, but my nerves were perfectly calm.
My minefield lay quiet. The last couple of months hadn’t always been easy, but they had given me my voice back.
I’d stood up for myself. To the paparazzi.
To Doyle. Even to Brooks. In front of the world.
And I was ready for my voice to be heard again.
“Yeah,” I said after a moment, “I think I am.”
“Do you want me to come in?”
“No, I’ve got this.”
“That’s my girl.” He gave my thigh another double squeeze, and I leaned over the center console in response. He didn’t hesitate to meet me halfway and kiss me. And when he did, he kissed me like he wished no one was watching.
God, I loved this man and his perfect boundaries.
“Have fun with your grandparents, Skye!” I said and blew her a kiss. “I’ll see you in a week. I’ll miss you. Love you.”
“Addie-ie”—Skye pulled my name over three syllables and rolled her eyes at me—“it’s only a week.”
Wow. Teenage attitude was coming on fast. I chuckled and climbed out of the car, ready to face my potential future.
The Patrons of Music studio was beautiful.
The inside was bright and colorful, filled with flowers and paintings and the cutest knickknacks.
All the studios I’d been in before had felt a little stuck in time, clinging to the great musicians that had recorded there thirty or forty years ago, and the old, stuffy interior design that had come with them.
Kiki Nguyen’s studio felt fresh. Breathable.
The receptionist brought me coffee in a huge mug with a cute flower design all over it. It wasn’t my style at all, but it was unapologetically feminine, and I loved it.
“Adriana!” Kiki was a short middle-aged woman with a spiky black pixie cut and a bright orange power suit, and she offered me a big smile as she click-clacked my way in a pair of killer heels. “I’m so happy you made it. Are you a hugger?” she asked with her arms wide open.
I considered hugging her. I didn’t want to be labeled difficult again. “No, not big on physical contact,” I said after a moment.
“Fair enough.” She dropped her arms, but not her smile.
She started walking and I followed along.
“I see you’ve got coffee. Do you need anything else?
We have plenty of water in the booth. If you run hot or cold, just let me know, we have AC and hot-water bottles galore.
I also have hand warmers. My fingers are always freezing. ”
I had been offered plenty of drinks to keep me warm. Never a hot-water bottle. The latter seemed a much nicer option.
“I think I’m good for now, thank you. And thank you for letting me come in. I know I should have called last time instead of being a no-show. I’m sorry.”
Kiki waved me off. “If I had a penny for every time I had to prioritize my kids and lost out on career opportunities because of it. And you’re new to the whole parenting thing too, right? How’s your daughter?”
Okay, so I had called Skye my stepdaughter when relaying the situation on the phone, leaving out some detail, but giving her enough context to explain my absence. It was still strange to hear someone—practically a stranger—refer to her as my daughter. Strange, but not wrong. Merely novel.
“She’s going to be okay,” I said.
“Amazing. I have three girls, first one’s off to college now, so if you ever need anything, just text me. I’ve been there.” She opened a door with a big strawberry painted on it. “Adriana, this is Ximena, she’ll be in the control room for you today.”
A young woman, probably even younger than me, rose from behind the switchboard. She was in a simple tank and baggy jeans, her faded pink hair held together by a massive claw clip. “Hey, it’s so cool to meet you. I just gotta say, I’m obsessed with your music. You were the first live gig I went to.”
“Oh, wow, thanks. You were at Brooks’s tour?”
“No, no, you played at Checkers,” she said and pointed over her shoulder as if the music bar was just down the street, not halfway across town.
“Holy shit.” I gaped. “That was before I’d even recorded my first album. I mean, I’d just signed with Marble, but I wasn’t…there were like twenty people in that audience.” I turned to Kiki to see her reaction.
“I know people who know people who told me about Ximena,” Kiki said, grinning like the Cheshire cat, “and Ximena knows your music. I want this to sound like you. Not like it’s a Marble Audio, or a Patrons of Music production, you know? I want it to be Adriana Banks.”
“Do you want to talk me through your song?” Ximena asked and tapped a piece of paper taped to her switchboard. I’d sent a quick voice note of what I had in mind, and apparently Ximena had already gone deep. “And I’d love to show you some of the ideas I had.”
“That sounds great,” I said.
“Let’s make some magic, ladies,” Kiki said and dropped onto the velvet sofa in the corner.
Ximena was bubbling with ideas, and none of them were intrusive.
She had great instincts, knowing exactly how to turn my ideas from an outpouring of thoughts and emotions into the kind of song that would play on the radio.
It was hard to believe that she had no production credits under her belt, but apparently, she’d gotten out of a sick cycle of unpaid internships thanks to Kiki.
She was hungry to work. And so was I. We brainstormed and we recorded, and we played around, and we only took a break when Kiki made us order lunch.
At the end of the day, my nerves were buzzing with the ecstasy of creation and collaboration. We’d recorded a song. A new song. One that I was incredibly proud of. And even if Kiki decided not to continue this partnership, I had my music back. And nobody could take this away from me.
Nowhere left to run to
Nowhere but the place where I was born.
Roots I didn’t ask for, birthright I tried to ignore
I let my walls get shrouded in thorns.
Wanted to leave here, I tried to disappear
Took my guitar and didn’t shed a tear.
Walls and miles weren’t a fix
I couldn’t outrun what I didn’t forgive.
Fireworks on Main Street and big Polaroid smiles,
I watched the perfect world from the sidelines.
Thought this place was a lie, just a mask and a show,
Now you show me a life I wasn’t ready to know.
The song wasn’t an apology for my first album. It was a continuation. The girl who had been so desperate to leave her hometown was never going to disappear. She had been me. Every lyric on that first album had come from my heart.
But that girl had grown up.
And present-me had a better understanding of why running away had seemed like the only path to happiness to me back then.
Some girls dreamed of knights and princes to whisk them out of their towers and give them their happy end, but my mom hadn’t raised me to believe that I needed a man to save me.
So I had clung to big dreams and hopes, and the belief that I would do my own whisking.
And in the end, I’d found happiness in all the small ways I’d sworn off. With a man who lived in my tiny hometown, who worked at that silly theme park, who was happy making music in his backyard, and who was as much of a family man as can be.
The very same man who leaned against the side of his car when I walked out of the studio that night and didn’t rush me or crash my conversations as I said my goodbyes.
I knew they saw him. I knew they knew him.
But everyone stayed perfectly polite. Nobody asked for a selfie with the Brooks Monroe/Banks-to-be.
“Hi.” I smiled at him from a few steps away.
“Hi, beautiful.” He reached out a hand and I let him take mine to draw me closer. “How was it? Did you have fun?”
“Yeah, I did. I forgot how exhilarating these sessions are, with all that creative energy pumping through the room.”
“You need somewhere for that to go? Because I can think of at least three karaoke bars in the vicinity.”
I snorted. “Yeah, no, not after what happened the last time you and I took the stage together.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy getting to ride my face as a reward.”
“Brooks!” I clutched my hand over his mouth and laughed.
His mustache tickled the inside of my palm as he grinned, mighty proud of himself.
Nobody was around. Still. Seeing him loosen up a little since the custody appointment had been the funniest adjustment.
It wasn’t much. Just an inappropriate joke here or there.
A hand he slipped into the back pocket of my jeans—not without asking permission first. Or a dirty text.
Actually, more dirty voice notes than texts.
And I could happily spend all day listening to his deep rumbling explanations of all the things he wanted to do to me. “Obviously, I meant the video.”
“We could get one of those private karaoke pods. You can take the mic first.” His words were muffled behind my hand, so I lowered it and flattened it against his chest. He plastered on a wide grin. “I’d love to hear you on Dolby Surround when I go down on you.”
“Oh my god, get in the car. You are full of shameless ideas tonight, huh?”
“I just aim to please my woman,” he chuckled as he opened the car door for me.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Thanks.”
He sank into the driver’s seat and drummed his fingers against his steering wheel. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Can we just grab some pizza and have a night in? I think I need a little quiet.”
“Do you wanna stay in the city overnight?”
“No, let’s go home.”
An hour and a half later, Brooks parked the car by the Wild Fields town square, one side of which was taken up by the food mile—not a mile, but at least a handful of restaurants and cafés.
He took my hand to walk into Pati’s Pizza Palace side by side.
It wasn’t much of a palace. There was a total of five tables, all of them occupied already.
A few people looked up as we walked in, but they all returned to their dinner within seconds.
We got our pizza boxes to go, then stopped by next door, because Wild Grounds had added bubble tea to their menu, and I was curious to see if it was better than their slushies.
Cassie served us with a big smile and told me about the YouTube channel she’d started to document how she was learning to play the guitar, and that she was getting really good at it.
She barely even glanced Brooks’s way. I was pretty sure she had no idea who he was.
Pizza and drinks in hand, we finally settled in the middle of the town square, on the steps of the gazebo.
The string lights around its roof had seen better days, almost half the bulbs dark, but they illuminated the space enough to settle in.
I gave Brooks control on that, and he pulled my legs up, so I sat sideways on the top step, my feet by his hips, close enough for him to wrap a hand around my ankle as he balanced the pizza box on his lap.
A few people were still in the square, out on a walk or playing with their dogs. There was a quiet murmur of voices carrying over from the food mile, where people sat outside the restaurants to have their dinners. The evening wasn’t silent, but it was a comfortable background melody.
I was comfortable, I realized.
Leaning back against one of the gazebo’s pillars, Brooks holding me without holding me down, warm pizza in my lap after a day of making music with some insanely talented people? This was good.
I hadn’t been comfortable in a long time.
“Brooks?” I tapped my toes against the side of his leg.
“Addie?” He smiled and looked at me from the corner of his eyes, half focused on opening the little pot of garlic sauce that came with the pizza.
“Thank you.”
He paused and turned to offer me his full beautiful smile. His dimples cut deep into his cheeks, and his eyes crinkled around the sides, and my heart fluttered in response as if I couldn’t get more of that smile for the rest of my life.
“Anything, Addie love,” he said, “anytime.”