CHAPTER NINE
Though she was helping Shannon out with weddings and stuff, the B&B got quiet during the week. When summer really kicked in, it would be busy most of the time, but until then, on weekdays, it was normally just a big, empty house. Badger, though, was always busy, either with the animals at the B&B or with club business. Left to her own devices a lot of the time, Adrienne drove around the countryside, taking pictures. Eventually, she began to tire of nature shots of the same kind of nature all the time. She had some great shots, it was true, and she was beginning to think of putting together a digital portfolio and submitting it to a few places.
But for now, as April became May, she was just killing time, trying not to stress about her life. Then she got an idea for a project. She’d noticed a kind of schizophrenia about Signal Bend, and she decided to try to capture it in pictures.
In some ways, Signal Bend was almost a ghost town. On the outskirts all around town, and in some places fairly deep into the town proper, there’d be a strand of abandoned houses and mobile homes, boarded up or not, yards overgrown with new spring weeds, rusted husks of cars and trucks parked alongside, tractors rotting out in the middle of small fields, as if the farmers had just given up right in the middle of their daily work and abandoned the whole enterprise in a fit of pique. These places were eerie and sad.
Along the edges of Main Street, it was the same: businesses that had gone dark so many years ago that the boards over their windows and doors had turned a washed-out grey, the plywood splitting and curled. Gravel lots so overgrown that actual trees, albeit scrubby ones, were growing up where customers had once parked. A boot shop. A video store. A gas station. A butcher. The police station. All gone but for their skeletons, becoming brittle and crumbling.
But then, a few hundred feet toward the town square, Signal Bend shook off its caul of decline and began to sparkle. The Chop House had just gotten new awnings and a new sign. Marie’s had a new roof, and they’d recently re-graveled the lot with white quartz, so it sparkled in the spring sun. Valhalla Vin, the wine bar owned by the Horde, looked positively elegant, and would not have been out of place in the swankiest Connecticut suburb. Tasha’s clinic was bright and gleaming. The Main Street shops, only a few blocks on either side of the street, had all been remodeled not long before Adrienne had first come to town, and they all had freshly painted signs on gleaming new windows. They bustled on the weekends, their stock looking fresh—though most of it was antique (the real kind or the ‘junque’ kind, depending on the shop).
The town square itself looked like something out of a Frank Capra movie—the town hall and the library bookending a park with a gazebo in the center, and benches and roses scattered quaintly, all of it looking bright and shiny. And the neighborhoods surrounding the core of the town were reviving. Houses that had been derelict when she’d started visiting were now restored and inhabited. People had moved to Signal Bend, despite its out-of-the-way-ness or because of it, and were giving it energy.
But still that death around its edges. It creeped Adrienne out; even as she recognized that the growth and development was new, it was hard not to think that it was the decay that was taking over. At a minimum, there seemed to be a battle between the new and the old, being waged just under the surface. Sometimes, looking through her lens and catching the uncomfortable juxtaposition in a tiny detail, she literally got the shivers.
One midweek afternoon about two weeks or so since she’d moved into the manager’s suite, Adrienne was strolling along the wooden walk in front of some of the Main Street shops, her camera in her hand, looking for images worthy of her lens. When she walked through this area, she always paid particular attention to the shop windows. Some shops had random mishmashes of goods up front, as if the display window was nothing more than a storage shelf. Others made conscious displays and refreshed them frequently. She found she liked the random windows best; there was always some kind of pattern she could discern, and the pattern she saw changed from time to time, even if the goods themselves did not.
Fosse’s Finds, one of the larger shops, full mostly of real antiques, was one that had a neat display in the window, and it changed weekly, from what Adrienne could tell in the few weeks she’d been in town. Adrienne was less interested in that window, and she was almost past it when her brain processed something she’d seen at the corner of her eye. A smallish red square. A ‘Help Wanted’ sign, the kind sold at office supply stores, red with white letters, a white field under the word ‘Wanted.” Neatly printed in black Sharpie in that white field was the word Afternoons.
Adrienne stood and stared at that sign for a long time. She felt a pull forward, into the store. But if she applied for a job, then she was making a choice about her life. Was she ready to do that? She’d spent the last few weeks taking something of a mental vacation, always pushing her worries about her life to the side, unwilling to contemplate the kind of plans her father was constantly reminding her she needed to make. She’d been content to just be, hanging out with Badger as much as possible, seeing Shannon and Show, wandering around town and in the countryside. Getting better at riding horses.
She spoke to or texted her father every day; if she hadn’t, he would have been on the next flight out. But she’d been noncommittal, giving him vague answers and evasions, telling him she wasn’t ready to take the next step. He asked every day whether she was safe, and he wanted details, sure that the longer she stayed in Signal Bend, connected to the Horde, the more likely she would get hurt—or maybe go bad somehow. He was getting frustrated with her, she could tell, but she hadn’t been ready to be specific.
What if she was ready to be specific but the answer she gave him meant that she stayed away from home? Made a new home? How would she tell him that? What would he do?
She stepped back from the shop and continued down the boardwalk. Two shops down, she stopped again. She’d already made a choice, hadn’t she? She wouldn’t leave Badger. Even if she were inclined to try a long distance thing with him, she wouldn’t leave him now, when he was still struggling with his demons. She loved him. He loved her. He needed her. She wasn’t going anywhere.
She turned around and went into Fosse’s Finds.
~oOo~
“A phone call! To what do I owe such a great honor, dove?” Charles Renard’s rich bass voice, a faint Jamaican lilt still noticeable even after forty years in the U.S., rolled into his daughter’s ear.
Adrienne resisted sighing audibly. Starting right off with the guilt trip, he was. “Papa, don’t be dramatic. We text every day, and we spoke a few days ago.”
“Yes, but I called you. I believe this is the third time only that you’ve called me since you left. Is everything all right?”
Well, yes. Everything was good. She was excited, but she was fairly certain that her excitement was about to take a hit. “Yes, Papa. Everything’s great. I have some things to tell you.”
“Good things, I hope?”
“I think they’re very good things. I have a boyfriend.”
“Excuse?”
“Badger. You know—I’ve told you about him. You’ve seen his picture.”
“Badger. One of the bikers, yes?”
“Yes, one of the bikers. He’s been my friend for as long as I’ve known Shannon. Now we’re more. It’s a good thing, Papa. He makes me happy.”
“You have a boyfriend in Missouri? This seems rash, Adrienne. Why get serious with someone for such a short time? You’re too young to tie yourself down to someone so far away.”
Her stomach and her heart flipped places, and she felt a little dizzy, but she pressed on. “That’s the other part of my news. He won’t be far away. I got a job today. I’m going to stay here. Move here.”
The silence on the line stretched until she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Papa? Please say something.”
“No, dove. You come home now. Enough with this absurdity. Time to come home and start your life. The life you worked so hard for. The life that your maman wanted for you. Enough. I’ll book your flight.”
“I drove here, Papa, remember? And I’m not leaving. This is where my life starts.”
Her father was a preternaturally calm man. He did not yell. He did not get excited. When they went back to his hometown in Jamaica and he fell smoothly into a patois that Adrienne barely understood, he became much more animated. But her father, the man she knew, was a stereotypically tweedy academic who smoked a pipe, thought big thoughts and spoke big words, and did not ruffle. So when he shouted, “NO! YOU COME HOME NOW!” Adrienne jumped and almost dropped her phone.
“This is an offense! You dishonor your mother! Adrienne Marie Celeste Renard, you will leave for home at once! Tonight! This is not a request!”
“No, Papa.” Her voice shook, but she said it.
Another long silence. Then, his voice quiet and strained, he said the worst thing he could ever say to her. “If you are not home in two days, then you do not have a home here any longer.”
And the line went dead.
Adrienne sat hard on the floor in the middle of her nearly-empty, borrowed suite and stared at the words “Call Ended” on her screen. She stared until her phone went to sleep. And then she wept.
~oOo~
She’d stopped crying but was still sitting on the floor when Badger came in some time later. He’d stopped knocking within a few days of her taking the suite, and he had spent almost every night with her since their first night together.
She looked up when he came in. When he saw her sitting on the floor, her phone still in her hands, his expression shifted swiftly from tired but happy to deeply concerned.
“Babe?” He sat down next to her and tucked her under his arm, against his chest. Drawing comfort from his touch, she nestled into his embrace and felt tears rising.
He kissed her head, then laid his cheek where his lips had been. “Adrienne, what’s wrong?”
She sighed heavily, using the breath to relax her throat and calm her tears. “I got a job today.”
“What? Where?” He shifted and looked down at her.
“At Fosse’s Finds. Just weekday afternoons and every other Saturday. But it’ll help keep me away from the money my mom left me. There’s not that much left after Columbia, anyway. I should keep it for something big.”
Happiness and worry played tug-of-war with his face. “So you’re staying, then? But that makes you sad?”
“No, it makes me happy. I want to stay. I want to be here, with you. But…I talked to my dad. I told him about us. And that I was staying. He’s really mad. He…he…” She couldn’t say it out loud.
When she felt Badger’s hand sliding gently over her neck and jaw, his thumb lifting her chin, she closed her eyes and tried to let his touch calm her. “What did he say, babe? You can tell me.”
“That if I don’t go home right now, I won’t have a home at all.” Saying the words out loud made them real in a way they had not yet been, and she could no longer hold back her tears. She began to sob, and Badger held her tightly again and let her. Then, after she’d run out of tears, he helped her up and led her to bed.
They still didn’t have a bed they could share, but they both liked the little nest they’d made. A bed was going to have to happen at some point, but now, as Badger laid her down and took care of her, she was glad that all they had was this bundle of blankets and pillows on the floor. A safe place, from which she could not fall.
He pulled her boots off and her socks, and then slipped the bracelets off her wrists and rings off her hands. She watched him, feeling cared for. Her heart still hurt, but Badger made her feel safe nonetheless.
His hands moved to the waist of her little flowered skirt, and he paused. “I’m not trying to start something, babe. Just getting you comfortable.”
But she wanted more than comfort—or she wanted more comfort—and when she lifted her hips to let him pull her skirt off, she flexed and shimmied a little. Her skirt still at her knees, he looked up, into her eyes.
“Please,” she whispered.
He was still for a few seconds, simply looking at her. Then he nodded and stood, pulling her skirt with him. He stripped to his skin before joining her among their blankets. She liked that he’d gotten naked before she was, and she liked that he no longer hesitated before baring his chest, or flinched at all when she touched it—as she did now, putting her hand over his heart.
He put his hand over hers. “You have a home, Adrienne. Here. With me.” As her eyes filled again with tears, he leaned over her and laid his mouth on hers.
She deepened the kiss herself, right away, needing him to be heavy and hard in a way he hadn’t been since she’d asked for a break. Since that day, he’d only been gentle with her, and careful, and it was lovely. Always sexy and sweet and loving. But now she wanted more from him. She wanted him to make her feel as much as she could that was good, to make her heart forget for a minute what her father had said. Thinking that perhaps she understood a little of the need that sometimes rode him, she took his hand and pushed it into her panties.
When she pressed his fingers between her legs, on her clit, they both grunted, and he pulled away to look down at her. Feeling too shy to say what she wanted, she pushed harder on his fingers and flexed, her eyes not leaving his. His eyes flared, and then his hand moved on her, roughly, and she wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes, letting him make her feel good.
~oOo~
After, Adrienne lay on her stomach, Badger resting half on her back, kissing her shoulder, brushing his beard lightly over her skin. Their legs were entwined, and she could feel him, now soft, lying along her butt and lower back. She felt better, relaxed and comfortably sleepy, like she could set her worries about her dad aside until daylight. She even made a little purring sound when Badger ran his hand up and down her arm.
“Your dad loves you, babe. He didn’t mean it. People say shit they don’t mean all the time when they’re mad.”
She scowled, feeling resentful of the intrusion of that thought into this cozy moment. “I don’t want to talk about it, Badge. Not now.”
“Okay. I’m just sayin’. I can’t believe anybody would ever turn away from you.”
Well, now she did want to talk about it. Because that was a pretty hypocritical thing for him to say. “You did.”
He stopped caressing her. “That was different.”
She rolled under him until she was on her back and they were chest to chest. “How?”
“I was trying to keep you away from my shit.”
“So’s he.”
He pushed away from her and sat up. “Are you trying to start a fight?”
She realized that was exactly what she was doing, and she wasn’t sure why. But she couldn’t stop. Pulling the covers up over her naked body and tucking them snugly under her arms, she said, “I hate getting set aside. It hurts. I don’t understand how you can just do something like that. Seems like I’m not that important in the first place if you can just decide you don’t want me around.”
Where was all that coming from? She had no idea, and she could tell that Badger was as shocked as she was to hear what she suddenly had to say. But shock turned to anger, and his face went dark.
“That’s not true, and it’s not fair.”
“Sure it is. My own father just told me I couldn’t go home at all if I didn’t go home right now. You threw me away. Literally. To the floor.”
He flinched hard. “Adrienne, don’t do that.”
“I didn’t do it. You did.”
He got up and grabbed his jeans, shoving his legs into them as he stalked across the room. “Fuck. I thought you forgave me. I don’t know how to be sorrier than I already am for that. It won’t happen again. I was fucked up. I’m clean now. I need you to forgive me.” He came back and dropped to his knees in front of her. “Please, babe.”
Why was she trying to rip apart what she had that was good? She didn’t want to fight. She wanted him close. She wanted him to hold her. Closing her eyes, she took a breath. “I do. I did. I’m sorry. I don’t know what…why I said any of that. I’m sorry.” She crawled to him, onto his lap, and sighed again, this time with relief, when his arms went around her. “I love you, Badge. I just want to be close to you.”
“I love you, too. I love you so much.” He kissed her temple. “Do we need to talk?”
“No. I don’t want to talk. I just want to be close.” Her head was a muddle, the restorative benefits of their sex evaporated. So she wrapped herself around him and let him lay her down again.