Chapter 8
EIGHT
Men in power sucked.
Every day, I had to talk myself out of punching Ronnie, the newspaper chief editor, in the mouth. Hell, I really wanted to kick him in the balls.
At first, he seemed nice and charming. You know, the kind of charming that was a tad bit slimy, and it just felt icky whenever he was nice to you? No one else was talking about his vibe, so I kept my mouth shut because I was probably being paranoid.
Besides Ronnie being a guy, things have been settling nicely. I mean, it’s not like I gave life the option to screw me over. I slept, got ready, came to work, and did it all over again.
Not running into anyone in a small town was surprisingly easy if you didn’t go out and had no life.
It’s not like I was just sitting at home resting on my laurels.
To succeed in journalism, one needed to have good research skills, but most of all, one needed sources.
I had yet to embrace my town, so on that end, I was screwed.
Lucky for me, my parents worked at the Dunnetts’ factory along with a lot of people from the surrounding towns, so it was a hub of information—information my parents liked to discuss over dinner.
I loved small talk.
Old people loved their online neighborhood groups. They posted the most random things there, and I had my mom join on my behalf. Every night after dinner, I would go over posts and comments for a good twenty minutes. It sounded creepy, but I was gathering information.
The last thing that took a hit on my savings was buying a doorbell camera and joining their subscription.
Not everyone around had one, but the people who did liked to post about random things their cameras caught or noises they heard.
All of that information on its own seemed random and inconsequential, but man, having all the pieces was like putting a puzzle together.
Most of it was innocent, like someone a few blocks down complaining they heard weird noises around three a.m., and then the next day, someone said they lost their kitty—said kitty would be caught on tape.
Twice now, there has been a car caught driving down a road really fast—too fast for the camera to show us any real info. The journalist in me was dying to know who it was and why they were doing that.
I stared at the blank page in my Word document when the chair in the cubby next to mine moved. Oriana, my newest friend, had just walked in.
Because of the few people who had Ring doorbell cameras, police cars were captured heading down the main road toward the outskirts of Sunny Pines, paired with my daddy hearing that the stripper’s joint had gotten raided, it was hard not to put together.
Especially not when Ori was going after the mayor of this town.
“Girl,” I smiled at her, “please tell me that you caused all that commotion the other day in Sunny Pines.”
Her face blanched, and for a reporter, she needed to work better on her poker face.
I knew most of my coworkers thought they were better than me just because I was currently stuck reporting on what was essentially a gossip column.
I didn’t care what they thought, a job was a job, and in this economy, I would gladly report on fucking cattle if it meant getting my bills paid.
“What?” she squeaked.
I waved my hand dismissingly at her. “I just know because I have sources.”
She didn’t look like she believed me, but Ronnie started to call after her, and she needed him to stay off her back if she wanted to break a juicy story.
When she came back, she looked deflated.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ronnie wants me to back off from Mayor Callahan.”
I just raised my brow at her.
She looked back at me like her hopes and dreams were crashing around her.
“What Ronnie doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” I shrugged.
She didn’t answer, and I didn’t take it personally.
Instead of trying to write, I opened up the email account I created when I started working on my column.
People loved gossip—especially when it was about people they knew.
Even more than that, they loved encrypted gossip they could sink their meaty little hands into and figure out themselves.
Well, it wasn’t too encrypted either because everyone had a short span of attention nowadays.
I might have felt a bit bad for using some of the information my mom gave me from work, like how they believed one of her coworkers was cheating on his wife.
Cheating scandals were like catnip to people. And I mean, the wife deserved to know, and if my veiled post in my column had sent her in the right direction, then I would have done the sisterhood a great service.
All it took was one anonymous post in the back of the newspaper, and I was getting emails from people wanting to expose more secrets.
In the span of three weeks, my column went from “A little bit of heart,” a quirky little column that highlighted feel-good stories around town, to being a local gossip girl.
My feel-good stories were still there, but no one cared about them.
All everyone wanted was that last little box with a blind item.
That last paragraph had overtaken anything else I was writing about.
Animosity was my best friend at the moment.
If I cared what people thought of me, I would have never returned to town, and if I thought people had forgotten about little old me or the fact that I was back, all I had to do was look at an email I had gotten detailing the events that led me to leave town in the first place.
Did people not pay attention? I mean, did they forget I worked for the newspaper?
The confessions were posted anonymously, and even if they didn’t think I was the one posting, they had to know my coworkers would tell me if someone was talking shit about me.
All that aside, my little Gossip Girl moment was keeping me afloat and with a job.
It’s not like I wanted to do this forever.
I had been playing around with an idea, but it required me to get off my ass and go out and about our county.
I wanted to highlight some of the stores in Oakhill Creek and Willow Grove.
Especially now that there was talk about a township being formed with Sunny Pines.
The only thing that stopped me from moving forward with that idea was sooner or later, I would end up at Kanes’ Auto. I wasn’t ready to go back there.
When I looked at Orianna she looked as defeated as she had when she left Ronnie’s office.
I had offered my help, but she denied it.
Instead, I clicked another email, which contained a picture of my new neighbor, Rachel, and the mayor’s son.
I liked Rachel, and if I wanted to be invited over for coffee in the mornings, I needed to protect her, so there was no way in hell I was going to unleash rumors about her.
A girl had to have her priorities straight.
It was Saturday night, and I was feeling sorry for myself. How many weeks in a row had I spent with my parents now? It was too depressing to keep count.
My daddy took us out for breakfast earlier in the morning.
They knew I was avoiding mingling in town, so we ended up going to a cool brunch place forty minutes away from Oakhill.
This gave me a chance to dress up. Brunch practically screamed ruffles.
I wore a cropped baby blue shirt that had ruffled short sleeves and a pair of high-waisted jeans.
They were a little on the tighter side, and that would cause conflict with the unlimited mimosas the brunch place had going on, but my ass looked phat in them, and I’d do just about anything to have a phat ass—just not working out daily.
I had my priorities, and working out daily was not one of them.
One day, I would be a gym girly—or so I gaslighted myself.
I washed my hair and gave myself a blowout. I loved a good blowout. If I had the money, I would be at the salon weekly and have a stylist deal with washing and drying my hair. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t replicate the feeling of a salon blowout.
It was all the things I now did that separated me from the girl I used to be. Old me would have called now me high maintenance. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to take care of the skin and body you are in.
With my hair, cute outfit, and winged eyeliner coming out evenly on both sides, I felt like I could take on the world. All that brunch goodness, plus the unlimited mimosas, was good for my soul.
This brought me back to now. I was lying in bed after taking a food comma-induced nap.
My hair was being played with. I would have protested because, hello, I just did it this morning, but I loved having my hair played with.
That should have been my first clue that I was going to love having my hair pulled at during sex, but that wasn’t important now.
I snuggled closer to whom I assumed was my mother playing with my hair.
Except the more I defrosted from my nap, the more aware I became of my surroundings.
First, it was the smell. It wasn’t bad, but it was cologne—really nice cologne.
My mother wore body mist, she wasn’t a cologne type of lady, and my daddy thought deodorant was more than enough self-care.
The second thing was I could hear my parents talking in the backyard. My room was in the back of the house, facing the patio. I knew it was them because I had opened my window before I laid down to nap.
In all my life, only one other person used to play with my hair other than my mom. It was a habit that started when we were six years old and we had our first sleepover.
“How the fuck does your hair always smell so good?”
Those words gave me my first taste of vagina flutters.
By then, Ty and I were sixteen, and the feelings I had developed for him were confusing. Even years later, they still caused me trouble. I couldn’t help but look at myself as a pick- me girl, and there was a bit of humiliation laced with that feeling.
“I’m going to open my eyes, and I’m going to be alone in my room,” I mumbled.
The hand on my hair stilled for a second, and my heart thumped with anticipation. He would get up and leave any second now.
“Your hair is still as soft as I remember,” he said as he resumed his ministrations.
I let go of the breath I seemed to be holding.
His words caused my stomach to drop, and I didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing. I would stay in delulu land just a little bit longer.