Chapter 35
Bunny
Okay, with bathroom breaks. And a stop in Kentucky for bourbon, if she could find a place that was open and if they’d let
her buy it that early in the morning. She never drove through Kentucky without picking up a bottle.
She stopped for her first bathroom break ten minutes after leaving Phelps’s house. She might as well get gas too, while she
was there. And grab a coffee. It was three thirty in the morning, and if she armed herself with enough caffeine and was liberal
with the gas pedal, she could be home in seven hours.
She bundled her scarf around her face before exiting the car. Damn, the pump was freezing. She couldn’t wait to get back to
warmer climes. Just as she was fitting the nozzle into her car, her phone dinged.
Can I crash with u at ur hotel 2nite?
She laughed with disbelief and leaned against the car as it filled.
Why????? Thought you were mad at me??????
Nathan’s response came right away.
maybe because my house is a fucking crime scene
Her thumbs tapped quickly. I’m driving home but good luck!!!!! Mmmm, she loved a nice, stabby set of exclamation points.
Nathan thumbs-upped her text, which, hello, passive aggressive, and she pocketed her phone.
She couldn’t explain it, but she had to get back to Nashville right away, and it wasn’t just to gain distance from the horrific
way the party had played out. It was that the whole night, starting with her arrival at Nathan’s party, had been a road unfurling
in front of her, leading back to the place she’d come from.
Not Nashville, exactly, though also yes Nashville. More like, the place she’d come from creatively. Before Nathan ruined her
confidence. It had started here, in this grimy northern city where it was too damn cold, where once upon a time, she had dreamed
bigger than ribbed dildos and emergency inheritance money.
She was leaving without the money—and it wasn’t like she couldn’t have used it. But she was leaving with something she’d never
expected to find again. Her inspiration. That fire in her belly that had been put out the morning she woke up and found Nathan
gone. Ironically, what inflamed her again was hearing Phelps say she wasn’t as talented as she thought she was. Not as talented?
Bull crap. What did he know? What did anyone know about anything? Tonight, the Nathan she had somehow enthroned despite his betrayal,
the Nathan who held the power to crush her, had been revealed for what he was: old and tired and human and not as fucking
interesting or smart as he thought he was.
Not as talented? Well, guess what, Phelpsy, as his annoying little girlfriend called him, Bunny was going to write a song so good it would make him cry. Cry in general, but also cry specifically for
ever having doubted her for a single fucking second of his sorry existence.
She was humming already, a catchy line she didn’t have words for yet, but she could feel the rest of the song like she used
to, bubbling under the surface of her thoughts, as if it was something already in existence, she just had to pull it to the
surface.
The inheritance was in the rearview mirror. Her brush with death, as she was starting to think of it—since Doug could have
killed any of them, he was obviously psychotic—was also feeling further away. She’d made it out alive, she’d survived both Nathan and his murderous party, and now she couldn’t wait to get her hands on her old guitar. It had been in the closet for too long,
and sure, her apartment was tiny and the kids were chaotic and the cockroaches no doubt were waiting along with Elliott the
Ex and his skeezy lawyers, but none of that mattered.
With a hot coffee in her cupholder and an open pack of Oreos in the passenger seat, she shot back onto the highway.
Already, as if the car engine was a studio musician, she could hear a kind of deep beat in the atmosphere. As she drove, she
let herself remember what it had felt like, seeing the two lines on the pregnancy test all those years ago. What it had felt
like just hours ago to learn that her grandfather and Jenn, neither of whom had actually called to offer any help, had prayed
and judged and cut her out of their moral little worlds. Now they were both dead, but guess what? Bunny was still alive. Bunny
had survived them, and she would not waste the opportunity in front of her. The opportunity Jenn didn’t get: to live this year.
The song would be called “Body of a Woman.” Fuck, that was good. She had chills. She tried out a line in her head.
Well, the body of a woman’s so breakable
Every man sees a thing so take-able . . .
She had come to Michigan City expecting to get Grandpa’s money.
But she’d left with so much more: She had taken herself back. Back from Nathan.
I’m gonna walk this world that was built by you
Looking so damn good in my stiletto shoes
She thought of the baby she couldn’t have, and the fear that had driven Nathan away—the fear that she would fail. How dare you, she thought. How dare you clip my wings with your own fucking insecurities before I had my chance.
She sang quietly now, testing the melody.
So honey, put aside that fear that you’re gonna lose,
’Cause I’m a woman, not a man
It ain’t a secret—it’s a plan
She fumbled with her phone, trying to keep her eyes on the road, and started recording herself so she could get the song down
before it went away.
Here’s an idea: What if she could make more fucking money on this song than Grandpa Max would have left her in his stupid
will? She struck the steering wheel with her palm and sang louder.
And I’ll be making news
By what I’m gonna choose
With this body of mine so breakable
And this heart of mine unshakable
Grandpa Max would be turning in his grave right about now. Jenn too. Let them turn, she thought. Let them fucking turn.
Gonna make them turn in their graves,
Those old men and their mean old ways,
’Cause a woman might be a sight for sure
But in the end, a woman’s body is just for her
It was New Year’s Day, and Bunny was finally in the driver’s seat of her own damn car. She was going places, and for the first
time in a long time, she couldn’t wait to get wherever that was.