EIGHTEEN
Fallon
“I cried myself to sleep for months,” she whispered, eyes trained on the lines of the freeway blurring out the windshield. “It was unreal. I didn’t think I had so many tears.”
I couldn’t even begin to form words, her story far more fucked-up than I’d thought.
“And then I wrote you a million letters. Three a day for the first few weeks.” She shook her head as if she was embarrassed by the silly girl she’d been.
“I wish like hell I’d gotten those letters.” My eyes met hers across the cab of my truck. “I woulda come for you. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.” I gripped the wheel, so much regret flooding my body. “Your parents were gone for months, out on their boat, I heard later. Everyone wondered where you went. It was the talk of the town for so fucking long. And then whenever I walked into the corner store, the bar, my goddamn cousin’s auto shop, everyone in the room would hush, eyes following my every move as if I knew where you were. As if I’d done something to you.” I took a quiet breath. “They looked at me like they wondered if I’d killed you.”
She bundled herself up a little tighter in my heavy flannel jacket, sucking in a ragged breath before unbuckling her seat belt and sliding across the bench seat until our thighs were touching.
I breathed a little easier then, havin’ her close.
Like the slow burn of warm whiskey down the back of my throat, tingles left on my lips, and surrender in my tired muscles, touching Augusta Belle Branson had been the only crutch I’d needed to get through some of the hardest revelations of my life.
I’d constructed some sort of story in my head about what’d happened the day she left, but it hadn’t been anything like what’d really transpired.
I slung my arm around her shoulders, hugging her a little closer to me as we drove on toward Tupelo, leaving our pasts behind and confronting something new every mile along the way.
“Hell, Augusta Belle,” I breathed her sweet name from my lips, the sensation it left an intoxicating one. “There was a time I wondered if you were dead.” I shook my head, remembering so many sleepless nights, her on my mind. “Those letters woulda been a game changer.”
She snuggled into the crook of my arm, one of her little hands resting on the rough denim of my thigh. “I kept them for a long time. Years. I didn’t throw them away until I left college. I used to read them on the bad days, but at some point, it was all just too much. I couldn’t keep reliving it.”
I nodded slowly, for the first time wishing I hadn’t been so hard to find. If I woulda parked my ass in Nashville and kept on with the high-profile life, it woulda been easier for her to find me. But that life… I just couldn’t keep fakin’ it anymore.
“So what was it like there? Your senior year at a school for rich kids who sneak out and kiss kids from the wrong side of the tracks?”
Her grin split her face. “It was an all-girls’ school, for starters, with a heavy emphasis on daily routine and discipline. And you weren’t there, so that’s three strikes.”
I laughed, easing the tension inside the cab for the first time in the two hours since we’d left Memphis and hit Highway 22.
Augusta Belle kept working the worn denim of my jeans, a melancholy frown playing across her features.
“Still the saddest girl I’ve ever known,” I breathed into the quiet air.
Her grin tipped up her lips. “Some days lyin’ in bed and waitin’ for the sadness to pass was all I could do without fallin’ apart.”
I knew all too goddamn well what she meant.
Except on those days, I’d had whiskey.
It occurred to me again that I thought a fuck of a lot less about whiskey since she’d come around. There was a time my body would shut down into violent shakes I’d been hittin’ the bottle so hard, but detoxin’ off the hard shit had never come so easy as when I had her to distract me.
Truth was, life in general seemed a helluva lot easier when she was around.
And then I wondered if this was what it would be like to love her.
Let her into my life again.
Let her into my heart.
My palms began to prickle with an unfamiliar ache before I shifted in my seat, eye catching the sign that said we were only five miles outside of Tupelo. I couldn’t believe after all these years her first time back in the state was with me, listening to her tell the story of the first time she was here. I liked the idea of being on the road with Augusta Belle, but no way would I ask her to do this with me full time. This was my life.
This road, my truck, the music.
I couldn’t walk away from the music; it’d saved me probably even more than whiskey had.
I would be a selfish fool to think asking her to live like a nomad with me, guitar in hand, would be anything but awful for her. But the plain truth was, the road was the only place that’d been my home for a long time now, long before I’d even met Augusta Belle up top of the Whiskey River Bridge.
I was born with gypsy blood running through my veins. I would never be the type to settle down behind a white picket fence, and all the good things in life were what Augusta Belle was born into. What she deserved.
I never thought the day would come that I could make Augusta Belle deserve me. But she did make me a better man, and that was the most a guy like me could hope for. In fact, if her daddy had had one thing right, it was that she was too good for me. I couldn’t give her the things she was used to. At least, not then. Now, was a different ball game.
I’d burned through a lot of my cash living on the road, but I’d also managed to stow a fair bit of it away for rainy days ahead. Bein’ a part of Augusta Belle’s father’s estate wasn’t somethin’ I’d ever expected, but I didn’t need nor want it. That all belonged to Augusta Belle, some small retribution for the hell she’d had to endure in their household, born to be their scapegoat.
If my dad had taught me anything, it was that sometimes a whole life could consist of rainy days. If you got a chance to plan for them, a person ought to.
“Did your parents come down for your graduation?” I asked, as if that were the most important part of this story. But it was, somehow.
She shook her head, sweet lips turning down as it looked like she might dissolve into tears. “Nah, they skipped it.”
I nodded, no words I could give her to soothe that kind of pain.
“It was better that way,” she offered bravely with a shrug. “I probably would have been so nervous seeing them for the first time. At least I was able to focus. Graduated top of the very small class that year, and it earned me a few extra scholarships.” She pulled on the bottom of her lip, eyes focused out the windshield at the horizon. “Didn’t see Mama again until…” She swallowed. “Well, the first time I went back home was after she was diagnosed.”
Old wounds bled between us in the cab, but for the first time, they weren’t ours.
“Sometimes I wish I would have had more moments with her, maybe we could have had the conversations we needed to. But I have to say, Fallon…” She pressed her lips together, holding back tears. “She never really seemed like…she never had that mom moment for me, y’know?” Her eyes met mine, seeking understanding.
“I know.” I understood perfectly. I’d had the same sort of experience with my own parents. My mom, to this day, still in and out of rehab, struggling with her own demons. And my dad so racked with pain and bitterness the duration of his life he could never see outside of it long enough to spend a real moment with his kids, much less hold a job. Even in the end, he only asked for help, never a single moment between us beyond what I could do for him physically.
I swallowed down that old familiar burn.
“Did you ever talk to them about…” I struggled to find the right words. “That night?”
“Not really.” She sighed. “It all happened so fast. I did what I could to help her, and then after… Well, after, Dad just wasn’t the same. It was weird. The last time I was in that house, it was so much chaos, so much fighting. Fast-forward a few years and all of a sudden everything’s changed. Dad had to adjust to Mom being gone, and I had to adjust to the man I thought I knew.”
I nodded, thinking it was probably pretty similar to what she’d had to do with me.
“It wasn’t much long after Mama was gone that I noticed he was starting to slip. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. Just one day, it was one thing. A month later, a few more. So I came home to help him over the winter. Really, I think just the thought of him alone in that big old house…” Soft tears wet her eyelashes. “I wasn’t even home a year, and we found out his immune system was compromised. His lungs weren’t in good shape from smoking all the Dunhills, and the vodka, well…”
I remembered the faint smell of cloved smoke that usually lingered around her front porch where her dad often sat, puffing in the corner with a glass of his favorite Russian formula.
It was weird, spendin’ so much time with a family without them even realizin’ I was there. In a lot of ways, I was a ghost to the Bransons, someone who haunted the periphery, never quite important enough to make it all the way into their world.
It’d struck me a lot of nights how lucky I was that Augusta Belle wasn’t anything like either of her parents. She was kind and sweet, full of compassion and a supercharged sense of adventure. A smile still turned up my lips when I thought of the countless nights of fun we’d had, just her and me, my guitar and the moonlight.
If Augusta Belle had been anything like her parents, she probably would have looked through me that first day up on the bridge. I wouldn’t have been a blip on her radar.
I couldn’t imagine the endless dark days and nights I would have had without her sunshine.
A man couldn’t live without the sunshine. I knew; I’d been doin’ it day in and day out for too many years now. “Wish I woulda been around to help you then.”
Her face was soft, reflective. “I’m glad I had that time with him. Spent my whole life resenting the life they’d brought me into, and then all of a sudden…” She shrugged, finally catching my eyes. “Life.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” I slid my palm over her knee, giving it a soft squeeze along with a smile.
“Stayed up late so many nights, lyin’ on the roof outside of my room and watchin’ the stars. Writing music and wondering if we were both watchin’ the same moon turn into the same dawn light every mornin’.” She smiled up at me, the first genuine slice of happiness I’d seen on her face since we’d left Memphis. “Made me feel grounded, looking up at how big the universe is and knowin’ you could see it too. It was the only connection I had.”
I swallowed, the vulnerable side of her something I wasn’t used to. “We’re only a few miles from the hotel. I know it’s late, but I thought we could get something a little nicer tonight. Been so used to being by myself, I didn’t really think about what that last place might have been like from a lady’s perspective.”
“A lady’s perspective?” She giggled, tucking her arm under my elbow and smiling. “Since when have you ever treated me like a lady, Gentry?”
I grinned, shaking my head when I thought of all the times I’d held the door, held her hand, helped her out of the car, sang her to sleep… “You may be a lady now, Augusta Belle, but you’ll always be my whiskey girl.”
She paused, smile faltering for an instant before she recovered. “It’s weird, knowin’ I’m…her.”
I thought about the woman I sang of who’d left my heart sliced open on the floor. A rousing third chorus line I’d added to a lot of bootleg performances in the earlier days. I winced, wondering if she’d heard any of those versions.
“You’re not, not really. That was my perception of things at the time, but I’m not that kid anymore either.” I tapped my fingertips on the wheel as I mused out loud. “The person I am on the stage, the one they think they’re getting, the one they paid money for, I have to give them at least some of that even if that’s not entirely the man I am. Working in the public eye, it’s a weird thing.”
She yawned, leaning her head on my shoulder.
“Rest your eyes. I’ll wake you up when we get there. And if you’re lucky, maybe I’ll even carry you upstairs so you don’t have to use your legs.”
She laughed. “That sounds so ladylike.”
“Doin’ the best I can here, baby.” I gave her my best sideways Elvis impersonation. “Welcome to Tupelo.”
“Think you’re cute?” We both erupted into a laugh when the “Welcome to Tupelo” and “Elvis Presley Birthplace” signs were illuminated by my headlights a moment later.
Augusta Belle made everything about being on the road better; there was no doubt about that.
I wasn’t sure what in the hell the future held for us—not a damn thing was most likely—but right then, I made a point not to give a shit and live in every moment, enjoyin’ the sunshine and smiles of Augusta Belle Branson while I had ’em.