Chapter 16 #2
Nick considered. ‘I just don’t have the head shape to rock a mohawk.’
Zoey grinned. ‘Not with that attitude you don’t.’
‘Is there a good spot to pee?’ asked Berry, waggling an enormous empty Dr Pepper bottle. ‘I drank this whole thing and it’s gone straight through.’
Nick pointed to a thicket of trees. ‘Nature has you covered.’
‘Need a funnel, hon?’ asked Reba. ‘I pioneered the ones they used at music festivals, you know. I’m a pro at peeing standing up.’
‘I bet,’ said Nick, sounding entirely sincere.
Gracie, meanwhile, was wandering around with her camera, snapping shots of the daisy fields and the one extremely persistent woodpecker who had it in for the power pole by the house.
‘I’m just here to document,’ she said. ‘We all have our strengths, and trust me, working backstage in off-off-off-Broadway is as close as I get to manual labour.’
‘I understand entirely,’ said Zoey, who would rather do manual labour than anything in the vicinity of off-off-off-Broadway.
Kenard hauled an auger out from the van, his rings clacking against it as he did. Zoey made a mental note to give a rousing speech about how all jewellery should be removed before beginning work to avoid degloving or strangulation incidents.
‘So, when does this vicious coyote or whatever make an appearance?’ asked Kenard.
Nick shrugged. ‘Dusk, usually. But who knows if we’re even dealing with a coyote. It could be something far more menacing.’
‘Ooh, I love the sound of that,’ said Reba. ‘Who said country life was boring?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nick with a grin. ‘Who did?’
‘Not me.’ Zoey hid her face behind her hands.
‘Not me, ’cos where else can I use a tool like this?’ Kenard gave the device a rev. The massive drill bit on the end twirled angrily.
‘Bloody hell, would you take a look at that,’ said Reba, awed. ‘Celeste, I reckon you could use one of those in your next show. Give it a bit of the old pyrotechnics razzle-dazzle.’
Celeste glanced over from where she’d been chatting with Ainsley – happily, it seemed like, and without any scratching or screaming.
A bit of fresh country air really did work wonders. Well, country air, and the air inside Reba’s van.
The crew set to work on the fencing job, which was astonishingly harder work than Zoey was expecting. Why was the ground so hard? How were there so many rocks? Why hadn’t they just paid a guy? Was that a snake?
They’d managed the tiniest section of fencing before dusk started to dust the horizon.
Zoey wasn’t even sure it counted as fencing, really.
There were some upright posts, a few artistically stacked rocks, and some precarious wire that might ward off an intruder or two. Most likely by garrotting them.
‘It’s the thought that counts, right?’ asked Zoey, as a duck waddled straight through the fence and towards the marshy field.
Reba chuckled. ‘Pretty sure it’s the fence that counts. And the weed. The weed definitely counts.’
‘I’ll toast to that,’ said Kenard, who was sheened with sweat and grime from all the holes he’d bored along the edge of Nick’s property. Well, part of Nick’s property. The Punk Broc team were going to have to clear their calendar for weeks to come if they were going to make any actual headway here.
‘I kind of thought we’d be further along after a full day’s work,’ admitted Zoey, wincing at her blistered palms.
Nick chuckled. ‘I respect the vision. But a van full of reformed punks and another van full of irredeemable punks are no match for this property’s fencing needs.’
‘Sorry. I did try the Fencing Academy, but they had the wrong type of fencers.’ She turned to him, swiping dirt from her forehead as she tried to find the words she needed.
‘I actually am sorry, though. I wanted this to be a sort of olive branch. To show you that … I’m in as well.
In on this thing between us. Tattoo or not. ’
Nick’s dark eyes were luminous as he stared down at her. He touched a hand to her cheek, then kissed her gently, ever so gently.
‘Well, good,’ he said. His eyes crinkled as he added, ‘Because Alice would be heartbroken if not.’
‘I am mostly in it for Alice.’
All right, just a bit. But a man who loved a dog the way Nick loved Alice was absolutely a keeper.
The mismatched group of punks and others were starting to return now, shrugging out their shoulders and comparing blisters and scratches.
Ouch – Zoey was going to have to run back to the house for some antiseptic and Band-Aids.
She probably should have confirmed that everyone was up-to-date on their tetanus shots as well.
‘All right, crew.’ Nick shielded his eyes against the evening sun as he addressed them. ‘Who’s up for dinner?’
A rumble of assent went around.
‘He’s a really good cook.’ A bit of pride had edged into Zoey’s voice. That’s right, this man of hers was a good cook! She would’ve shouted it from the hilltop, but she didn’t want to get bogged again on the way back down.
‘Can we do s’mores?’ Reba rubbed her hands together. ‘I love a good triple-marshmallow stack.’
‘I brought some ugly-looking but delicious veg,’ called Kenard. ‘It’s in the cooler in the van. We can have kebabs.’
Nick checked the fire-danger rating on his phone, then nodded. ‘All right, it looks like we’re good to do a campfire. Is anyone here a safe person to light a campfire? Because I’m going to run back to the house and grab some supplies. And maybe some tents.’
‘Ooh, tents!’ Reba wrapped Gracie in a tie-dyed hug.
‘You should have seen the tents we did for this wedding last year. I can’t say too much – NDA – but they were astonishing.
Each one enough to house an entire road crew.
Tie-dyed, with Moroccan lanterns and cushions everywhere.
And the debauchery baskets! Shame the wedding didn’t go ahead. ’
‘Reebs,’ warned Gracie. Zoey suspected that Gracie spent a lot of her time around Reba being the voice of reason.
‘Hang on, that rings a bell,’ said Ainsley, inspecting a blister on her heel. ‘You don’t mean Venus Cargill, the toothpaste magnate, do you? The one who runs VOOP as a competitor to GOOP?’
Reba made a lip-zipping motion. ‘I’ll never tell. Although I am glad that I offloaded my shares before that whole debacle. My Frank would never have forgiven me if I’d blown our life savings on bad toothpaste intel.’ She patted the necklace that contained poor Frank’s ashes.
‘I read all about it in Us Weekly,’ said Kenard excitedly. ‘What happened was …’
Kenard, who apparently spent a lot of time at the supermarket checkout reading glossy magazines, led the group through an in-depth discussion of the toothpaste-empire merger that wasn’t, followed by a boisterous accounting of Venus’s recent travel habits and the small island she’d recently acquired for her new wellness retreat business/tax write-off.
By the time Nick came back dragging a battered wheeled cooler, Kenard was seated on a flat rock, thoroughly cataloguing the celebrity-owned wellness retreats that he’d had the pleasure of reading about.
Zoey hadn’t realised that so many punk rockers owned such retreats, but she supposed that even punks needed some quietude.
Probably more quietude than anyone else, actually.
‘This is some quality journalism,’ said Ainsley, impressed. ‘Someone should get this man on 60 Minutes.’
Celeste raised an eyebrow. ‘I think that’s how long he’s been talking.’
Zoey was intrigued by their banter. Apparently Ainsley and Celeste had been mending fences in both senses of the phrase.
And while Zoey would always be loyal to Ainsley, she couldn’t help but feel a tad delighted that the two, whom she’d always thought made a great couple, might just be back on the road to romance.
‘How’s the fire going?’ asked Nick, when Kenard paused for air, although anyone could see that the fire was not going.
‘Piss-poor,’ said Reba. ‘But the conversation’s chugging along. Here, let me do the honours …’
Producing a pocket bottle of Baileys, she poured it over a pile of wooden detritus they’d gathered as part of their fencing endeavours. Then she pulled out a rainbow lighter, touching it to the wood. The whole lot went up with a whoosh that sparked a collective shriek from the crowd of onlookers.
‘Nice work, Reba,’ called Zoey, flushing as she realised that she’d stepped back into Nick, and that his arms had looped around her waist.
‘Nice work, you.’ Reba gave a salacious wink behind her cat’s-eye glasses. The old hippie was incorrigible. ‘And you as well,’ Reba added, with a nod at Celeste and Ainsley, who’d also found their way to each other and were looking quite happy about the whole situation.
‘I knew it,’ whispered Nick.
‘Right?’ said Zoey, delighted that they were on the same matchmaking wavelength, and fully aware that love was most certainly in the pine-scented air.
The group chitchatted and laughed as they roasted veggie skewers and nibbled on packages of tin-foil nachos and flame-grilled mushrooms. Kenard waxed lyrical about how vegetables were nature’s punks, and Reba managed a five-marshmallow s’more so impressive that it required Gracie to change out the lens on her camera.
Alice happily caught morsels of cheese that were thrown her way in ever-more-complicated trajectories.
‘She’s such a good girl,’ said the purple-haired Berry.
‘The best girl,’ agreed Nick and Zoey simultaneously.
Grinning, Nick squeezed Zoey’s hand. She scooted closer to him, pretending that the chill in the evening air was greater than it was, because all she wanted to do was be right next to him, enjoying the strength of his arms around her and the comfort of his chin on her head.
How close could she get before Ainsley made a rude comment about their bodily proximity?
Not much closer, it turned out.
‘So what’s the plan after this?’ asked Ainsley, upon whom Zoey’s snuggling efforts hadn’t been lost. ‘I’ve had way too much of Reba’s Baileys to drive back. And Reba has also had too much of Reba’s Baileys.’