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 theverysmall 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…”
