Whiskey Girl

by Adriane Leigh

  Even if the sweet honey scent of her left an afterburn I wasn’t yet willing to brave.

  FIFTEEN

  Fallon

  I woke up the next morning, the smell of peaches and honey absent.

  My eyes shot open, and I pulled myself out of the bed, my only thought on finding Augusta.

  I listened for a quiet moment, eyes drawn to the bathroom door when a soft humming came from that area. I walked across the room, grin pulling up my lips when I caught sight of her, hair piled into a messy bun on the top of her head, a notebook propped on one damp knee as she scratched notes with a pencil.

  “Mornin’.” I breathed, stepping a little farther into the room.

  Her gaze lit up when our eyes connected, and she held the notebook to her chest, the papers blotted with soapy wet spots from the bathwater, but she didn’t seem to care. “I’ve been writing.”

  “Oh?” I sat on the edge of the tub. “Can I?”

  She held out the notebook, sinking a little deeper under the soapy bubbles as her cheeks pinked up with the heat in the room.

  My eyes scanned the scribbled notes, stanzas and lines strewn across the page.

  I nodded my head, humming along a melody to a few of the lines before peeking up at her over the spiral pages and grinning. “This is good.”

  “Really?” She smiled with some small sense of disbelief.

  “Really.” I flipped a page, and then another, then three more in a row after that. “How many of these notebooks do you have?”

  “A lot. I kept all of them. I have an entire box at home too. Writing made me feel—” her eyes flicked up to the ceiling as she shrugged “—closer to you.”

  She stole the breath from my lungs with her admission.

  Was it really possible that I’d been on her mind all of the last decade just like she’d been on mine?

  Losing you was the final nail, the last piece of us, buryin’ my coffin…

  I could definitely appreciate her Southern sound, but I didn’t know if she was ready to sing these lyrics every night. And hell if I was ready to hear them.

  “We should put some of them to music.” I found myself saying the exact opposite of what I was thinking, but only because not doing it would be an injustice. I knew better than anyone that makin’ music was a matter of layin’ your soul on the page for all to see. There was somethin’ therapeutic about writin’ things down. No way would I take that away from her.

  “There’s this certain arrangement that I think would sound so good paired with these words.” She leaned farther out of the tub, swiping the notebook and flipping through the pages.

  And that was how I found myself fallin’ for Augusta Belle again.

  Slow and steady, one beat at a time, mostly to the sound of music.

  I don’t know what I was thinking when she proposed later that morning that I needed a haircut.

  She looked so cute sittin’ across from me, notebook on one knee, my guitar perched over the other, I didn’t have the heart to deny her.

  I grunted, shoving a hand through my hair and thinking it was getting on my nerves anyway. “S’pose it’s about time.”

  A wicked grin turned up her cheeks before she set my guitar on the bed and rummaged through her makeup bag, pulling out a pair of scissors and heading back for me.

  “Wait, you’re gonna do it?” I widened my eyes.

  “Bet your sweet ass I am.”

  I was about to steal those scissors right out of her determined little fist, but I burst into a laugh instead.

  She grinned, sidling up close before straddling my lap and plopping down on my thighs.

  I stifled another strangled moan of frustration, the tiny little shorts she wore doing nothing to help me contain my growing need.

  “Just a few inches.” That bewitching smile did something to me, something I didn’t even like to think about.

  “Fine, but don’t forget we’ve got a show tonight. Got to impress the people at Slick Willy’s.”

  She stuck out her tongue, wiggling and shifting around for a second before her fingers stroked through the too-long licks of my dark hair.

  She sucked her lips between her teeth as her gaze focused on the ends, sliding them between her fingers before she snipped off the first bit.

  I had to close my eyes for the rest.

  “Did’ju get a degree in hair-cuttin’ over the last ten by any chance?” I asked when she was still snipping a few minutes later.

  She shook her head, lips still clamped together as she concentrated on each tiny cut.

  Sweet Jesus, I was regretting this decision already.

  A second later, she seemed to be finished, tugging on my beard for a brief moment before she took to trimming that with her little scissors from hell.

  I nearly stopped her, clasped on to her dainty little wrist and everything. “Good girls don’t touch the beard without askin’.”

  Her eyes widened, a devilish glint lighting her eyes before she pursed her lips and purred, “Now who said anything ’bout bein’ good?” Her flirty eyes locked with mine. “Your beard needs a trim, Fallon. Do you mind?”

  I narrowed my eyes, assessing her seriously before lowering my hand in defeat. “Some old guy a few towns ago told me I acted too damn old for my age.”

  She paused, scissors hovering just out of the line of fire. “And you think that may be about the beard?”

  I shrugged, thinking it as possible as anything else.

  “Well, I don’t think it was necessarily the wild thing you’ve been growing on your face that he was talkin’ about. But trimmin’ it up a little would probably be a good start to losing that—” she tipped her head to one side “—hobo thing you’ve got going on.”

  I pushed a hand through my beard, frowning once before deciding to explain its existence a little more. “Started growing the beard the day I left Nashville.” I averted my eyes out the window, rain droplet tracking down the pane. “Figured it was a good way to disguise my face after…everything.”

  “Everything,” she breathed, snipping away at the edges of my beard. “Does everything include that fling you had with Tanner Smith?”

  I couldn’t help the eye roll then, picking Augusta Belle up off my lap and depositing her on her feet before stalking off into the bathroom to wash the whiskers from my face.

  “And?” She cocked her hip against the doorframe, watching me intently in the mirror.

  “You knew about that from…wherever you were?” I attempted to deflect, but she wasn’t having it.

  “When Nashville’s biggest star has a high-profile relationship with Hollywood’s next It Girl, it gets around.”

  My face tilted up at the memory.

  It had looked pretty bad from the outside.

  “You understand where the beard comes in, then?”

  She shook her head, walking slowly to me. “No, not really.”

  “Well, the thing about Tanner and me… The label wanted to put us together on a single. They set up a few meetings, a dinner, and every damn time we were together, the press was always there. Every time. I didn’t think much about it then. I was new, thought it was normal, but then the press started running these headlines about Tanner and me dating. And we weren’t at all. It was strictly business.” I turned, sliding a hand around her shoulders and pulling her a little closer to me. “I was still so hung up on you I couldn’t think straight.” I gnashed my teeth, thinking if she’d never gone away, none of this would have had a chance to happen. “I tried to get the label to squash the rumors, but it wasn’t long before I realized they were flaming them, calling in the fucking paparazzi to make sure we were tomorrow morning’s Page Six news.

  “That’s why I left the industry. Couldn’t stand it anymore. It wasn’t about the music. It was about the money.”

  Augusta Belle wrapped her arms around me in the biggest hug her little arms could manage. “I’m sorry it wasn’t what you wanted it to be.”

  I swallowed the famil
iar old burn of Nashville, pushing the bitterness aside for something brighter. “But I’m happy as hell now. Livin’ on the road is where I’m meant to be. Performin’ small rooms, meetin’ the people who come out to see me.”

  “Yeah, but still, kinda sucks. Everyone wants to make it big in Nashville, and you did, but then you got there…” She shook her head, empathy coloring every feature. “I mean, who needs Nashville at all? You just need a recording studio, a little money put together, and get a band and some equipment.”

  “Not really room for that in the cab of my truck.”

  She threaded her fingers with mine. “Maybe not there. You could do it out of the house in Chickasaw Ridge.” She squeezed my hand, hopeful.

  “Ain’t goin’ back there. Besides, said yourself you want to put it up for sale.”

  “I do,” she said thoughtfully, “but you’ve got options now.”

  We stayed like that, long minutes stretching in silence until she was curled on my lap and we were sitting in front of the windows streaked with rain.

  “Y’know, rainy days aren’t so bad when they’re with you.”

  She wrapped both of her arms around my torso, fingertips itching under the soft denim waistband of my worn blue jeans. “All of my best days have been with you.”

  I rubbed a flat palm over the curves of her spine, wishing things for both of us had been different.

  But they weren’t, and we were left dealing with the consequences.

  The knowledge that Augusta Belle was my salvation wasn’t a new one. The realization that maybe even now I still needed her in my life more than she needed me burned like a cheap rye lighting a trail of fire down my throat.

  We had a lot to atone for, Augusta Belle and me.

  Maybe too much.

  SIXTEEN

  Fallon

  Augusta Belle’s whiskey-brown eyes held mine, her lips turning into a sweet half smile before she sang the same opening lines that’d fired up the same crowd at Slick Willy’s last night, the bar packed to over-capacity tonight.

  It was true what they said. News travels fast in a small town, and apparently, today’s news was the reunion of Fallon Gentry and his whiskey girl.

  People’d asked both of us to pose for pictures as we’d made our way in through the packed crowd, glasses of whiskey offered to each of us from every other outstretched hand.

  I was thankful as fuck I didn’t look like the guy who was smiling weakly on the cover of that single they were thrusting at me. That guy wasn’t me. Never was. The man I was now might be a little rougher around the edges, but he was a helluva lot wiser and a lot more confident than he had been.

  I’d earned this scowl, dammit.

  It wasn’t until Augusta Belle crooned the opening lines of “Jackson” that my scowl lifted at the edges, my instincts to sing kicking in as we fell into a perfect harmony, arguing in lyrics and having fun every word of the way. Something about this song made me happy, everything about Augusta Belle made me me.

  By the time we’d breezed through six more songs together, I finally sat center stage and gave them the one song they’d all come for.

  The one that’d been a thorn in my side, that I’d been dreading as we’d inched closer to it every minute of tonight.

  I started the opening lines, twisting the notes a little to add a quicker tempo, something the crowd didn’t recognize immediately. Not until I began with the opening lines: It’s not easy to forget, the bitter taste lovin’ you left…

  A few women in the room sighed, the crowd hushing as a short gasp spread through the noise.

  I charged on, sticking with the kickier tempo, the one they might not have been used to but the one that felt more like me.

  The me now, anyway.

  The me not soaked in whiskey and hell-bent on bitterness.

  I slowed down a few words of the final chorus, my eyes finally brave enough to chance a glance at Augusta.

  She was standing riveted off stage, both hands clasped over her mouth, eyes wide with tears, but also with something else. Pride, maybe.

  I winked at her once, voice slipping into the last haunting lyric of the song before I let my guitar end on a soft note and stood, ducking into the darkness of backstage as the crowd erupted into a fit of applause.

  Adrenaline charging through my veins, I clasped Augusta’s fingers, guiding her quickly through the back hallway and into the fresh air.

  She squealed, spinning me around and leaping into my arms.

  I yelled into her hair, a smile spreading across my lips, the widest I’d had since I didn’t know when.

  “That was fucking incredible!” Her breath was hot on my neck, lips hovering just out of reach of mine.

  I let her slide down my body, her feet landing on the pavement before we locked fingers and walked off down the sidewalk, getting lost in the crowds of a busy Memphis night.

  “Now will you let me do a few gigs with you? I promise I won’t get in the way.” The moonlight lit her cheekbones, shadows dancing across the soft planes and making me feel some sort of way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  Did I like spending time with Augusta Belle again?

  Sure.

  Did I want to do it every day?

  I worked that thought over in my mind, so many questions still hanging like a cloud over us, lightning and thunder just waitin’ to erupt.

  “Sure that’s what you want?” I asked finally.

  Her shoulder brushed side by side with mine, late summer air still thick with humidity, suffocating us like a blanket charged with electricity.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

  I faltered a step, a bitter taste rising up the back of my throat as I thought about all the things left unsaid. “We still got a lot that needs sayin’ between us, Augusta.”

  She nodded, eyes casting up to the dark sky as emotions tore across the features of her face. “Do you think…” She pressed her fists together, twisting the fingers and looking everywhere but at me in that moment. “Will it ever be possible for us to start over? So much was stolen from us, all of it out of our control. When it was just you and me makin’ the decisions, we were good. We were always so good.” She reached out a hand, brushing my forearm.

  I couldn’t help the hardened pain that’d begun glossing my eyes. “Been through a lot, Augusta Belle, and I’ve been open, like a fucking book, for every question you’ve had. There’s still a big question mark in my head, though. There’s one thing you still haven’t answered, and maybe that’s because you’re not ready, or you think I don’t want to hear it.” I shook my head, jaw working back and forth as so many fucking memories slid in and out of my brain. “It’s been real nice living in this little bubble of sunshine the last few days with you, but that’s not reality. That’s still running away. And now you’re askin’ me if we can start over? If we can just be us again? After everything?” I shook my head, attempting and failing to process all the contradictory feelings running through me. “I don’t think it works like that.”

  Her eyes downcast, she frowned, leaning against the tailgate of my truck, arms crossed as she seemed lost in her own mess of feelings.

  “I don’t wanna stay another night in this shithole,” I said, eyes taking in the run-down three-story hotel we’d been in the last two nights. “I wanna get on the road to Tupelo tonight. Pack up your shit, and we can talk more about it in the truck.” I pushed a hand through my hair. The memory of her perched on my lap, snuggled up against me and invading my space just this morning as she cut my hair and trimmed my beard almost felt like a dream. “Or,” I finally breathed my last offer, “I can get you a ticket home.”

  She swallowed, eyes crossing the expanse separating us. “Last time I was in Mississippi, I was eighteen.”

  Her words hung heavy in the air, pregnant with some hidden meaning.

  I’d been with her for her sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays, but she would have turned eighteen after…

  I cle
ared my throat, stepping closer to her, resting a palm on her arm because not touching her was becoming too much to bear. “You were in Mississippi?”

  She nodded, body beginning to tremble softly as her mind seemed to shift back to a time a decade earlier. “You don’t think I’m ready to face the past? But what if you’re not, Fallon?”

  I screwed my eyes up, surprised by the strength lacing her voice when she looked like a broken little bird in front of me now. “What happened between the time I brought you home and your eighteenth birthday, Augusta Belle?” I held both of her shoulders in my hands, ducking down to her level, desperate for the goddamned closure I’d been denied for so long. “Not knowin’ what happened to you…” I swallowed the painful baseball in my throat. “It about killed me.”

  “You want to know what happened after I climbed through my bedroom window that day?” She narrowed her eyes. “Absolutely nothing. It was so perfectly normal that it almost chills me now. Knowing that they knew.” She shook her head, crossing her arms as if to sink in on herself. “I started getting ready for school. Mama was already up, which should have been my first clue that something was off, and then she made eggs, biscuits, and sausage. The only time anyone made breakfast around our house was Daddy on Sunday mornings, and that’d become more rare over the years anyway.” She paused, and I took the moment to take her fingers in mine. She smiled up at me before continuing. “And then I went to school. Everything was perfectly fine. The thought actually crossed my mind in my first class that morning that maybe Mama had made breakfast because she felt bad for hitting me the night before.” She laughed, uncharacteristic bitterness lacing the sound. “And when I got home from school that day, they were both there, waiting for me. All dressed up next to two small suitcases of what Mama said were the only things I needed for where I was goin’ next.”

  I gnashed my teeth, containing the rage that was pummeling my veins. Thank God her mama and daddy weren’t alive now. I couldn’t be held responsible for what I might do.