Chapter 7
Seven
Girl’s got coffee, no plan, and a preacher in a tight spot
Dixie
I have zero clue what I’m gonna do. Taking Jack up on his offer might buy me time to get my shit together, or at least make him stop hovering over me with those puppy dog eyes. Faced with all that bearded remorse, I can’t think clearly.
Shoving his key into my bag, I bolt out of Sweetgum Auto like my ass is on fire.
Shockingly, Wickham Hollow hasn’t grown larger overnight.
Main Street’s still a miserly three blocks long, although the end down by Southern Comforts has grown a Saturday farmers market where you can probably buy things like vegetables and homemade soaps.
Organic goat milk caramels in recycled Mason jars.
It’ll be disgustingly wholesome and entirely boring.
Since every storefront I pass has CLOSED signs in their windows, the market’s my only option.
Coffee’s a dire necessity. At this point, I’d even drink herbal tea.
Plus, I need to find some free Wi-Fi and come up with alternatives to throwing myself on Jack’s mercy while I wait for Deacon and his grumpy-ass sibling to fix my van.
At least the walk helps with my morning stiffness.
Despite the breeze that seems to be coming straight from Alaska, I’m slightly warmer.
And given the delicious smells wafting from the various stands, I figure I can lay my hands on coffee.
I just hope they take Apple Pay out here in the middle of nowhere.
The coffee van has its pop-up side flung open like a wave hello.
Painted in bold black-and-white cow print, it looks less like a caffeine station and more like a Holstein on wheels—udderly (pun fully intended) unmissable.
A hand-painted chalkboard hung from the open hatch lists drinks with names like “Moo Brew” and “Udderly Delicious Cold Brew.”
A brunette barista with a pixie cut has her back to me, doing something to the coffee machine. She waves a hand without turning around when I walk up. “Order away!”
“Black coffee with oat milk. Thank you.”
“Honey, this is Wickham Hollow. We have three dairy farms. That means real milk, straight from the cows. You know—moooo?”
She makes an exaggerated cow impression that includes jazz hands as she turns around, eyes twinkling. Great liquid eyeliner, lots of freckles, and enough enthusiasm to power a small city.
“I’m gonna have to moo-ve right past that offer.” I tap my phone to pay, hoping it won’t be declined. “Black coffee.”
“Coming right up! I’m Deirdre. Call me Dee!
I make the coffee. And half the sweet stuff.
Owner, baker, and caffeine dealer! Welcome to Wickham Hollow!
” She bounces from one sentence to the next like a kitten chasing a bug, examining me with unabashed curiosity.
“You visiting? You have the look of someone who needs something iced, sugared, or smothered in cinnamon. Or all three. I’m not judging but oof, black coffee’s a stare-down kind of order. You okay?”
The flood of questions makes me freeze. Shit. My previous coffee-buying experiences involved fewer words, more cash. This woman thinks we should exchange names. Possibly addresses, likes, dislikes, and our astrological signs. She’s total Aries energy.
“I’m fine.” I take the coffee cup she hands me.
“That song you sang at karaoke last night was amazing. Did you make it up? Because I didn’t recognize the words at all. Deacon says you’re a professional singer and travel around the country singing? Or was it country singing like the noun? Either way, I need to hear all about it, please.”
She hands me a Danish in a bag—that I have very much not paid for—and points to a wrought iron table and chairs beside her cart.
“I borrowed the music, improvised the lyrics.” Willing to be bribed with delicious pastry, I sit. “Consider them copyrighted.”
“Are you famous famous? Like, have-you-met-Beyoncé famous or just the kind where people scream in Cracker Barrel?”
“Famous?” I laugh. “Dee, I’m lucky if I get fifty people at a show. I’m nobody.”
Dee closes her eyes dramatically. “Let me imagine that for a moment.” Then she snaps them open and gulps her coffee. “Okay. I have the mental picture. Next question—have you ever dated a professor-prince like the guy from American Royalty?”
Blue eyes twinkle as she thumps a dog-eared paperback down on the table. A hottie in a military uniform with lots of gold braid is sniffing the hair of a gorgeous woman in a red dress. To be fair, her hair is amazing. To be less fair, Dee apparently thinks fiction’s a blueprint for real life.
“Sadly, no. There’s an aristocrat shortage in the South, although I’ve met a lot of super-entitled men.
” The Danish is almost delicious enough to compensate for this interrogation.
“Closest I’ve come is a drummer who lived in his mom’s basement and claimed to be descended from the guy who invented Pop-Tarts. ”
“Not the same vibe at all.”
“No, but he did try to tattoo my name on his calf with a needle he bought at a gas station, so romance is alive.”
Dee snorts her coffee. “You’re hilarious. You’re hereby invited to Dirty Girls.”
Say. What?
“Garden club!” she clarifies. “We meet weekly. Mostly we plant things and yell about men, fictional or otherwise.”
“Fictional men are vastly superior to real ones.”
“Amen, sister.” Dee taps her cup against mine. “Except maybe Reverend Jack?”
“Off-limits.” I give her a look. “Don’t start.”
Dee grins, undaunted. “Too late! He’s like if a lumberjack and a rescue golden retriever had a baby. And you are clearly having a Time.”
I ignore that. “This coffee’s actually good.”
“Duh. Wickham Hollow may be tiny, but we know how to bake and eavesdrop like champions. You’re gonna be fine. You just need coffee, a plan, and probably one more Danish.”
“I never say no to Danish, but I’m not sticking around for long. You Dirty Girls will have to meet without me.”
She shrugs. “I’ll save you a seat anyway.”
To my surprise, Slate strides up to the coffee cart.
Dee makes a face and launches herself off the chair to go and take his order.
He doesn’t bother studying the ridiculous menu, ordering black coffee (shocker).
Unexpectedly, however, they get into it about a brioche.
Slate has thoughts and can speak in full paragraphs when motivated.
I watch their exchange while my mind wanders back to last night. Back to Jack.
I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Except, in this case, it’s a broken-down van and some really impressive dick. The kind that makes a girl see God and bless the Devil.
My options suck. I check on rideshares, but even if I can find a driver willing to drive four hours one way, it’s out of my price range.
Which gives me plenty of time to notice that my Instagram notifications are lighting up like a Christmas tree.
The song I posted earlier this morning—the throwaway track I recorded in a stupid moment of post-hookup angst—has jumped from my usual two likes to over two thousand.
What the hell? I scroll through comments ranging from fire emojis to “WHERE IS THIS PREACHER?” to “Girl, you really said ‘Just gonna kiss him good and go’ and thought we wouldn’t LOSE OUR MINDS.”
My phone buzzes with a text from my agent: Let’s talk Monday.
I stare at the screen, heart hammering. My agent never texts me. Ever. The last time we spoke was three months ago when she instructed me by email to “keep grinding” after yet another venue passed on booking me.
I consult Mrs. Google, who informs me that if I start walking now and don’t stop, I’ll reach Nashville on Tuesday. Pass. The Greyhound bus also connects nowhere near Wickham Hollow and it turns out that Amtrak has a single route to Memphis that’s also far, far away from me.
The nuclear plan is texting my dad. He’d come, or more probably transfer money into my account. I’d have to say yes to singing “Jingle Bell Dash” because no one gives you something for nothing. But it’s an option. It’ll just cost me the hit to my pride and my dignity.
Except I can’t. Not again. I crawled back to him twice last year, and I’m pretty sure there’s a three-strike rule on pathetic daughter bailouts.
So that leaves me with the last-ditch option: I’m going to have to give serious consideration to moving in with a judgmental preacher. Not that he’s offered his opinion on my life choices, but I know his type. He believes in rules that some guy wrote down on a stone tablet.
I get up without having made a decision and head down the street. Dee’s finally finishing up her argu-versation with Slate and I’d prefer to figure my life out without accepting anyone’s help. Help’s never free.
It doesn’t take long to walk to the edge of town.
Wickham Hollow just stops. A block of pretty, Southern homes with front porches, ferns, and rocking chairs, then BOOM.
Nothing but train tracks the grass has grown over.
From the bird’s nest in the crossing guards, I can eliminate hopping a train from my list of escape options.
By the time I drag my sorry self back to the rectory, I have a golf-ball-sized knot in my back and the straps of my bag have dug a furrow into my skin. My bag knocks against my knee with every step and I’m one step away from ditching everything in the street.
“Dixie?” Big, firm hands pry the bag off my shoulder.
Those strong hands shouldn’t feel so good skating over my shoulder, not after our disastrous meetup this morning and his patronizing offer to shelter an unhoused stranger. But they do.
A wave of heat sweeps through me—and not the fun kind.
Well, okay, there’s definitely some sexy heat mixed in there because the man’s got those hands.
But mostly it’s pure aggravation. Irritation.
All the shittiest-tion words you can think of.
There might be relief buried in there, too, but I’m taking that little secret to my grave.