Whiskey Girl

by Adriane Leigh

  “Augusta, I don’t have a condom.”

  Her fingertips worked against the nape of my neck.

  “I don’t care.” She arched, the hot seam of her core scalding my flesh. She pressed her lips and her hips rapidly against mine, lining herself up at precisely the right angle to ease the tip of me just inside her body.

  I sucked in a ragged breath, one palm clutching at her thigh as every single moment that didn’t include her before this one ceased to exist.

  My world tipped, upended itself, and was righted again, spinning at a new rhythm, one that matched her succinctly.

  I clamped down my eyelids, burying myself in the wild halo of waves that drowned me in her.

  I wouldn’t survive this.

  I knew it.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but if I thought kinda sorta saving her on the Whiskey River Bridge that summer day was one meaningful blip in a slow succession of mindless days, then this moment…this was all of it.

  Everything good and right in my world culminating right here, in her and me.

  Augusta Belle’s warm mouth met mine, our tongues igniting in raw desire, our bodies creating chemistry as we connected on a deeper level for the first time.

  “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.” She gulped in a breath of air.

  Her words whispering down my neck sent violent pulsations echoing through every nerve.

  Buried in her body, everything was heightened, we were so connected.

  “I’ve been waiting all of my life for you.”

  She clung to me, our bodies swaying together before I pulled her onto the bed, caging her between my arms and tasting every morsel of her sweet existence, losing myself and finding the very best part of me all at once.

  There would definitely be no coming back from Augusta Belle Branson. My life from this moment onward could only get sweeter as long as she was in it.

  * * *

  I woke Augusta Belle in the early morning hours of August fourth. The predawn light just grazing her flushed cheeks as she stirred to life, eyes still drunk with sleep and pleasure. She looked like a woman now, something about her way more grown-up, something that made me proud to call her mine.

  I stroked the soft bow of her bottom lip when she finally breathed a quiet good morning. “I never want to leave your arms.”

  I pulled her to a seated position, bare body clinging to my chest as I worked her shirt over her head and down her arms. “Someday, Augusta Belle. Not today, but soon.”

  She sighed, stretching each leg out and allowing me to pull the discarded denim up her thighs. “Someday we’ll roam the open road like gypsies. You can sing music, and I’ll be your dedicated groupie.” Her cherub cheeks and innocence were sweet enough to make my jaded heart crack.

  “We’ll get on that just as soon as you graduate high school.” I plopped a chaste kiss on her nose once I’d bundled her up sufficiently.

  “That’s too long.” She scrunched her nose, eyes watering at the edges.

  “It’ll be over before you know it.” I locked our fingers. “In the meantime, I’ll keep writing music, you’ll keep swimming and breaking records.” I pulled the ancient door open and pushed a finger to my lips. “Old man’s probably passed out on the couch, but he’s a light sleeper some nights.”

  Two front teeth punctured her bottom lip, and she nodded, eyes trained on me.

  I smiled, pulling her a little closer to me and mouthing the words “I love you.”

  She used sign language to repeat my sentiment, then I pulled her quietly down the hallway and out into the cool morning air.

  Our footsteps sped up as the morning light bathed the far-off horizon in a warm glow, dew burning off the tall grass and wetting my sneakers with every step.

  We rounded the bend and angled up the steep hill to the top of the ridge.

  We’d definitely gotten a late start this morning. She was usually safely tucked in bed by this time of morning, her parents none the wiser that she’d spent the night out. I paused as we reached the first giant hemlock that flanked her driveway.

  Her eyes finally locked with mine, and I whispered a kiss across her cheek.

  “I may have kinda sorta saved you the first day we met, but…” I breathed another kiss along her temple. “You’ve been saving me every day since then.”

  One lonely tear dampened the cotton at my throat, making my own eyes burn with something too strong for either of us to swallow.

  “I wish I didn’t have to go back there,” she finally squeaked.

  I pulled away, squinting away my own tears from the warm dawn light and focusing on the soft skin at her throat. “Where’s your necklace?”

  Her hand moved to her throat on instinct, searching for the little golden cameo she’d been wearing every moment since I’d given it to her. “It’s in my room somewhere. I took it off a few nights ago for a shower and just misplaced it.” A frown slid across her face.

  “Well, as soon as you find it, put it back on.” I pushed a lip between my teeth. “I’d save you again if I could, Augusta Belle.” I meant it, every word.

  She nodded, trying to control more tears, I could tell.

  My eyes glanced up to the still, silent windows of the house at 101 River Ridge Drive.

  A bright golden ray cracked through the dappled leaves and kissed the soft waves of her hair.

  Her hands finally broke from my grip, and she backed away, moving into the bright sunlight before throwing me an air kiss and a reluctant half smile and then turning to run away with my heart.

  I watched her sprint all the way up the driveway before darting around the side of the house where I knew she’d scramble up the old trellis and onto her roof, before sneaking back in through her window and getting ready for her day as if she’d never been gone.

  I lingered for a few minutes longer, waiting for what, I wasn’t sure, before I turned and headed back the way I’d come. I retraced my steps back down the ridge and home to my tiny single bed and the worn old quilt that’d kept me warm since I was a kid. Except this time, it smelled like Augusta Belle.

  My footsteps sped up as I rounded the last corner and darted across the small yard and through the front door of my home.

  “Up early this morning, son.” Dad’s whiskey-clogged voice rang in my ears.

  “Went for a jog. It’s gonna be a beautiful day.” I clapped the old man on the back, glad to see he was at least up and off the couch, a rarity this time of day.

  Nerve pain usually kept his body so buckled and bent he could hardly make it off the couch. That’d been part of the reason I’d moved to Chickasaw Ridge. To help him. The other because my mama had found herself doing another ninety-day stint in rehab, and I just couldn’t make the bills on our small rental alone.

  “Sure is a beautiful day, son. Sure is.” He took a long drink of water as he stood at the kitchen sink that overlooked the field and ridge beyond. One of his hands clutched at the chipped countertop, hip twisted to one side as he favored some painful ache.

  “Don’t forget to take your vitamins this morning. ’Kay, dad?”

  He nodded once, an indulgent grin spreading his thin lips.

  “I’m gonna hop in the shower then take the Jeep into town. I have a friend I think might be able to fix that radiator for cheap…” My words hung heavy in the air when I noticed something else had caught the old man’s attention, and he was shuffling back to his semi-permanent placement on the couch.

  I shook my head, vowing to stop by the VFW on my way into town and see if any of the old guys would be willing to come out and visit my dad a few times a week. I also wanted to ask if any of them had a lead on some construction jobs. The few gigs I was getting in town weren’t near enough to pay for dinner, much less anything else.

  It was hard for me to keep regular hours when I was helping my dad so much of the day, but my sister had promised to start stopping after work a few days a week to check on him if I found regular work.

&nbs
p; If I was going to make a life with Augusta, I’d have to start lining up my cards early.

  I had less than a year to make sure my dad could and would be good on his own in this place if I had any chance of getting Augusta Belle out of hers. I didn’t have much saved, but between what I did have and a full-time job, plus singing for tips on weekends, I figured I could afford to keep a roof over our heads while she went to college. I’d already decided wherever she wanted to go, I was game. From LA to New York, and anywhere in between.

  I was stepping out of the shower not much later when the idling of a car engine caught my attention.

  I cracked the old crank window in the bathroom, wincing when the rusted hinges protested, before a flaming orange ball of light crossed my vision.

  The sound of shattering glass splintered my senses a moment later, a little dark car spinning off around the corner and up the hill.

  Adrenaline pummeled my body as I pulled on my dirty clothes and launched out the door and down the hallway.

  Fire engulfed the kitchen, a bottle with a heavy white rag still rocking on the linoleum floor as pieces of the faded flower tile melted around it.

  My muscles tensed as I saw my father cast sideways on a couch that was already quickly becoming swallowed in flames.

  I breathed into my T-shirt and tried to remember where Dad kept the fire extinguisher.

  I gnashed down on my teeth, realizing I didn’t have time for that before I launched across the living room and pulled the heavy weight of my father through the front door.

  I heaved in fresh lungfuls of air as his face turned a worrisome ashen color.

  I looked back up at the house, seeing flames lick out the window now, realizing I could either start CPR on my father, or run back into that trailer and hope to find my phone in my bedroom to call the fire department.

  I didn’t have time for both.

  I looked up at the sky, eyes watering from the smoke now cascading out of every window of our trailer.

  If I thought I knew devastation before, it was dim in comparison to what was about to come next.

  The darkest days of my life, creeping by one agonizing instant at a time as we tried to recover, as I tried to rebuild. Just when everything was fallin’ apart.

  THIRTEEN

  Fallon

  “I didn’t disappear.” Her eyes welled up with tears, one salted track trailing over the arch of her cheekbone. “That’s not…” More tears started to flow, her voice choked with emotion. “If you only knew what happened when you left me on the road that day.”

  Her words battered my heart with their raw pain. “Christ, don’t cry, Augusta Belle.”

  I groaned, pulling over into the first parking lot I found, a hotel chain I’d stayed with a few times in the past. “Could never stand it when you started crying. And I didn’t just leave you on the road.”

  I slid her over the seat toward me, her tears growing stronger as I enveloped her quaking form in my arms. “I wish I was there for you that night, Fallon, more than anything, but I can’t go back in time and change it. And trust me when I say I’d rather be with you any day than where I was…”

  I shook my head, not even giving a shit anymore about the years of hardship that had fallen on my shoulders, all beginning with that night.

  I’d moved to Chickasaw Ridge to help my dad. The irony was that by the time I left, he was already in the ground, that little burned trailer hauled off to the junkyard, every piece of evidence of my life in Chickasaw along with it.

  “If I would have known that happened… Well, if I could have come back, I would have. You know that, right, Fallon?” Her brandy eyes gazed up at me, pleading for some sort of absolution I didn’t know I had it in me to give.

  “That was a long time ago.” I pushed a hand through my too-long hair, breathing a sigh of relief when she scooted back across the bench seat and took to gazin’ out the window.

  The miles of open road rolled by in silence after that. Hours of thoughts hanging heavy between us, neither one of us brave enough to bring a voice to the things we’d been waiting a decade to say.

  I’d had different words on the tip of my tongue a dozen times, and then I’d sneak a glance at her, looking all lonely and lost in her thoughts. And for the first time in nearly a fucking decade, I wondered what in the hell it’d been that I was chasing out here.

  For so long, I’d run from town to town following some lofty idea that I might find her again.

  And then I’d resigned myself to the fact that she was gone forever.

  And then finally, I’d decided that everything she’d done, she’d done with the sole purpose of tearing my fucking heart out and burying it in the cold country clay under her feet.

  Truth be told, none of those estimations was quite right, and havin’ her here turned every damn thing I thought I was thinking upside down.

  We were passing the “Welcome to Memphis” sign a dozen miles later when I punched the address of the little dive bar into my navigation system and followed the route to Slick Willy’s.

  I grinned when we pulled up alongside the little establishment, so small they probably couldn’t pack in more than a hundred folks at a time. I could smell the burn of cheap whiskey already.

  “Looks like this is home the next few nights,” I said aloud before realizing she was with me and I had promised to boot her once we got to Memphis.

  And now here we were. Only thing was, she was huddled up over there looking so sad and broken.

  I suppressed a groan before I took in our surroundings. A chain hotel perched just down the street looked clean enough for my needs.

  I steered the truck in that direction, then shifted into park and paused, lingering at the door handle as I wondered whether or not to say anything before I went to the reservation desk.

  I shook my head silently, opting to leave her to her thoughts.

  I’d had a damn decade to get used to the fact that my life had changed irreparably that night, that I’d soon found myself as the sole caregiver for a man in rapidly failing health, that the girl I’d sworn my whole heart to had vanished without a trace. That the fire that’d taken so much away from me may have been an act of arson.

  The fact that Augusta Belle wasn’t there for any of it was inconsequential to me at this point.

  I’d had to get along regardless, and I hadn’t done a half-bad job, whiskey bottle aside.

  I stepped out of the hotel’s main office fifteen minutes later with two keycards in hand, a healthy drizzle now coating my windshield, and Augusta Belle still curled peacefully in the passenger seat, just like I’d left her.

  My eyes quickly registered an Italian pizzeria joint across the street, with a liquor store right beside it.

  Memphis catered to all my essentials.

  I frowned. The familiar warmth of that smoky aroma curling around my nostrils as I opened a bottle of Jack for the first time had me fightin’ to keep myself in line. Cravings tore through my veins as the need to soak myself in liquor reared it’s ugly head.

  I swallowed the memory of warmth washing my insides, heart ratcheting up to a gallop as the neon lights across the street called to me.

  I chomped down on my bottom lip, struggling for any sense of control to keep me planted in the present, when a clap of thunder echoed across the sky.

  My eyes cut across the lot to Augusta.

  The only thing stopping me from walking through that liquor store’s swingin’ door was the little girl perched in my front seat, not a soul left on this earth to love her but me.

  I grunted to myself, uncomfortable with the idea of anyone at all relyin’ on me and leaving a pit of something like dread deep in my stomach. But I didn’t think about that, just trudged on across the street, eyes trained on the homemade pizza that would soon be in my future.

  I was walking back across the street a handful of minutes later with a warm pie in my hands when I approached my truck to find Augusta Belle perched on the seat, passenger door
open and a bottle of booze between her thighs.

  “Christ,” I muttered under my breath as she took a slow swig with her lips, throat contracting in numerous swallows.

  The way she was hugging my best stuff made me think she’d been doin’ this a lot of nights, but that wasn’t any of my business. In fact, nothin’ about her was. I was just doing my duty to humanity, making sure she was fed and had a roof over her head.

  “Pizza, party for two?” I flipped her the keycards in my palm, and she snagged one, pulling her backpack over one shoulder and tucking the whiskey bottle under her armpit before we pushed through the double doors of the hotel and headed for the third-floor room.

  “I told them two beds,” I said when she was pushing in the door of the room a minute later.

  She didn’t say a word, only threw her black backpack on the bed, flopping down onto it herself before uncapping the whiskey and taking another swig.

  “That’s bad ya, know. Some old-timer gave it to me after a show once. Called it white lightnin’.” I tossed the pizza on the counter and kicked off my boots by the front door. “Can’t promise you’re safe drinkin’ it.”

  She only shrugged, pushing the whiskey bottle on the faux-wood tabletop, eyes dragging across the room before landing on mine.

  That look didn’t promise anything good.

  “Y’know, you think you’re so innocent in this, just walking away like you did. Turnin’ into a big star in Nashville, dating those pop star twits.” She pushed a hand through the air as if to wave away the irritating flies. “I was all alone.”

  She hiccupped, frustrated tears hovering at her eyelashes.

  I wanted nothing more than to lick away her pain, take it all from her until the only thing left standing was her and me and that special thing we had together.

  “We’ve gotta be at the gig in two hours. Think you’re gonna be ready, champ? Or you sittin’ this one out?”

  Her eyes shot open but refused to focus. “I’m totally fine. Besides, m’not going to your show anyway. I’m just gonna take a shower then find the nearest bus station and head back to the Ridge.” She stood from the bed, pulling her shirt over her head and stumbling slowly to the bathroom.