Good Time Bad Boy (3 page)

He did, and thank God it was better than that shit he’d had at the motel. They sat in silence while they both drank their coffee. Becky was almost fifteen years older than him. She’d been his manager, best friend, big sister, pain in the ass, and constant champion since the very beginning of his career. She really should have dumped him as a client years ago, but they were family. He hated letting her down, and he’d done so much of that over the years.

“You want me to send some flowers? Maybe a gift?” She spoke in a tentative voice that was unlike her.

Wade nodded. “That’d be nice. It was another girl.”

“I’ll take care of it when I get back to Nashville tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

She gave him another brief respite before going in for the kill. “This doesn’t change how I feel. You need a break.”

“I need to work,” he repeated. Not so much for the money. Mostly so he wouldn’t wind up standing still and staring at the walls, thinking too much. That never worked out well for him. “I can take a few days off if you want, but I don’t need more time off than that.”

“You were fired for being drunk on stage, and it’s not exactly a secret. I couldn’t book you anywhere right now even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.” Becky took a deep breath and shifted her coffee cup between her hands. The tiny lines around her eyes were more pronounced than usual, which meant she was angry. That never worked out well for him, either.

“There were extenuating circumstances.” He wanted to take that back as soon as it was out of his mouth.

Becky seared him with a look that burned all the way down to the soles of his boots. “You’ve been getting worse for a while now. Don’t try to deny it.”

Wade pushed his coffee away and angled his chair so he could look directly at the fountain. He leaned his elbows on his knees and watched the ducks swim laps and play in the water. Better to face the ducks than Becky. She wasn’t wrong, and as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t deny it. “It won’t be like before. I promise I won’t let things get that bad again.”

“That’s right, you’re not. What you’re going to do is take the summer off.”

He came up off his elbows and glared at her. “The whole summer? Come on.”

“You can go to rehab. Visit your folks. Go on a vision quest. I don’t care what you do, as long as it’s something that helps you pull your head out before it gets lodged too far up your ass.”

Wade bit back a scathing reply and focused on the ducks. He had a shotgun back at his vacation house that would make short work of the lot of them. Shooting the shit out of something sounded like a damn fine idea at the moment.

“Take some time to relax. Maybe even try writing some songs. It’s been a while since you did that.”

That stung like buckshot at point-blank range. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried to write. He had, plenty of times in the years since the last album. But the songs never came together and he left them unfinished. As far as the world was concerned, he was an ex-songwriter.

“Think about what you want for your career,” Becky said. “Then call me at the end of summer and we’ll talk.”

“Fine.” The arrival of the waitress spurred him to move his gaze from the ducks. Ignoring his manager, he gave the girl his best smile. “Well, look at that. You must have known I was wanting more coffee.”

She giggled as she refilled his cup. “I did have my eye on you, Mr. Sheppard.”

“Oh, now, I think you need to call me Wade.” He eyed Becky and gave her a look as if to say,
see, I still got fans. Young fans, even
.

“Okay, Wade.” The waitress pulled a napkin with the hotel logo imprinted on it out of her pocket along with a pen. “I was just wondering, um.”

“Were you wanting an autograph, darlin’? I’d be happy to give you one.”

Becky rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her front.

Take the summer off, my ass, Wade thought. He was so glad Becky was here to see this, right after suggesting he put his career on hold. He still had fans, people who wanted to hear his music and get his autograph and do whatever else this pretty little waitress had in mind. This was exactly what his manager needed to see. She needed it almost as much as he did, but he’d never admit that.

The waitress placed the napkin and pen in front of him. “Thank you so much! You are such a nice man.”

Wade picked up the pen. “Thank you for saying that, darlin’. That’s real nice of you. Who should I make this out to?” Her hair was swept over one shoulder and covered her name plate.

“Make it out to Wanda, please. My mom’s gonna be so excited when I give this to her. She’s a big fan of yours from way back.”

It took everything he had but he kept his smile intact and signed the napkin with a flourish.
To Wanda, thanks for being a fan. Wade Sheppard
. Then he handed over the pen and napkin and upped the wattage on his smile. “There you go, darlin’. Tell your momma I wish I could have met her in person.”

“Aaw.” She clutched the autographed napkin to her chest and cocked her head to one side. “Thank you, I will.” Mercifully, she left.

Wade dropped the smile and leaned over, pointing an index finger at Becky. “Say one word and I’ll key your Escalade.” An unpleasant flush of heat spread through his body and turned the coffee sitting in his stomach into a heavy sludge. He wanted to crawl into a hole and only come out to shoot things.

“I don’t need to say anything.” Becky gathered her purse and tucked cash discreetly under the handle of her coffee cup. “
Darlin’
.” She stood and moved to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Do what I said, Wade. Take some time off from the road. Figure out what you want to do.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do all summer?” The prospect of being alone with his thoughts, nothing to do and nowhere to be, terrified him. He was a performer, damn it. If he didn’t perform, then what was he good for?

“You’re two and a half hours from home. Go see your family. Your momma always loves for you to visit.”

That was true. His daddy and youngest brother, not so much. The brother he got along with was currently on the other side of the world. “It’s been a while since I’ve been to the lake house. Guess it wouldn’t hurt to go make sure the place is still standing.”

Becky said nothing to that but it wasn’t hard for him to imagine what she was thinking. When in Nashville, Wade stayed in the guest house of a friend who’d managed to hold on to everything Wade had lost. Otherwise, he lived on the road. The lake house as he called it was a place he’d bought at the height of his career and used as a vacation home. Now it was the only real home he had.

“Take care, hon.” Becky gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze and walked away.

Wade grabbed his hat and swung up out of the chair. He strode slowly to the fountain. The crowd watching the ducks had thinned and he had no problem staking out a spot with a good view. The water gurgled pleasantly. The ducks swam and dipped and quacked at each other. Twice a day there was a big to-do over them: once in the morning as they were led out of an elevator, over a red carpet, and into their fountain showcase, and then in the evening when they were guided back to their penthouse accommodations on the roof. Surely they were the most pampered ducks in all of Tennessee. All they had to do was follow orders and not shit on the tourists.

Wade turned and left before his brain could take that metaphor any further.

D
aisy settled at the kitchen table and looked everything over to make sure she had all she needed. With a steady hand, she lit the single white taper candle. The flame burned bright in the dark room. All the lights were off and curtains drawn to block the afternoon sunshine. She always did this in the dark, no matter what time of day she was able to do it.

“Happy birthday, sweetie.” Tears popped into her eyes with a startling suddenness. She wiped them away and continued. “You’re eight now. Getting to be a big girl.”

Daisy was seventeen when she got pregnant, eighteen when she gave birth just before dawn on an early summer day eight years ago. The boy she’d been dating was a year older and convinced by his parents to transfer to an out of state college. It didn’t matter, he didn’t want anything to do with their baby, anyway. The last time she saw him, he stuffed a sweaty wad of cash in her hand and told her to
take care of it
. It was nowhere near enough money and too late in the pregnancy for her to be comfortable considering abortion. She’d heard the baby’s heartbeat, strong and rabbit fast.

“I never know what to say to you. Guess this year’s no different.” A bead of wax dripped down the side of the candle and pooled on the glass holder.

Her mother Alice couldn’t be bothered to crawl out of a bottle long enough to help Daisy. Her sister Deanna had her own problems, including a child of her own and no reliable man in her life. Deanna at least had offered advice. Other friends did, too. How to apply for aid, mostly. WIC, TANF, EBT – an alphabet soup of programs available to help women like her. Single mothers. State insurance and shots at the Health Department instead of a doctor’s office. Daisy knew about all of it, though, even without her friends and her sister and their helpful tips.

She also knew she couldn’t keep so much as a plant alive. The thought of a baby terrified her. So she did the one thing that no one talked about, that horrified her mother and even gave her sister pause. Daisy found an adoption agency in Nashville.

Megan went with her, behind the wheel and fighting traffic so Daisy wouldn’t have to. Megan was there for the birth, too. She’d been the only one to support Daisy’s decision.

“So I was wondering what kind of music an eight year old likes. Taylor Swift? One Direction? I don’t know. Whatever you like, I hope you have a lot of it. I hope your iPod’s full.”

Daisy never doubted she did the right thing for the tiny girl with a fast-beating heart and strong legs. She didn’t know the names of the family who adopted her, but she knew the husband was a dentist and the wife was some sort of technical writer who planned to work from home after the baby was theirs. They lived in Tullahoma and Daisy always imagined it was a beautiful house with a big yard.

She drew the vase full of flowers close, resting her hands at the base. Her next words were addressed to the woman she thought of as her little girl’s real mother. “Thank you so much for giving her all the things I couldn’t. Thank you for being what I couldn’t be back then. Thank you for helping our girl break a really shitty family tradition.” Daisy laughed then clapped her hand over her mouth in horror.

Just because the truth hurt didn’t make it any less truthful.

All through Daisy’s childhood, Alice had bounced from man to man, job to job, one run-down house or trailer or apartment after another. Light bills went unpaid so she could have her cigarettes. Cavities went unfilled because she couldn’t remember to keep the appointments. Breakfast went unmade because she was too hung over. Sometimes dinner, too. She’d been married to Deanna’s father the longest, nearly five years. Her marriage to their brother Donny’s father lasted just under two years. She didn’t bother to marry Daisy’s father. Deanna had a teen daughter she raised alone. Donny had a couple of kids by two different women and couldn’t hold down a job.

And Daisy had been a fucking mess at seventeen and eighteen. The only smart thing she did back then was find that adoption agency and go through with it. She was a different person now, though. A hell of a lot more grown up. She’d made peace with her decision a long time ago, but she still liked to mark her child’s birthday with good wishes and gratitude.

“I have this image of you in my head, the both of you. Doing something special together today. I hope that it’s a perfect day for you both.”

This was the closest Daisy got to prayer anymore. She closed her eyes briefly, picturing a smiling, happy mother and child, then blew out the candle. She sat in the dark for a while, her hands folded in her lap and thinking of nothing and everything.

***

A
fter a bad moment of not being able to remember the alarm code, Wade finally made it into his house. The place had a musty smell from being closed up for too long. He brought his bags and his guitar inside. The first order of business was getting the curtains open. Light streamed through the windows and lifted the gloom immediately. He stood at the bay window in the living room for several minutes, taking in the view. The house was far from a mansion and he liked that just fine. It had three bedrooms, a decent kitchen, one full bath upstairs as part of the master suite and a half bath downstairs. The living room was large and roomy and the bay windows looked out over a beautiful view of Kentucky Lake.

That view was why he’d bought the house. Wade grew up fishing and swimming and boating in that lake. Every summer he and his brothers went to the lake as often as possible. In the winters, they’d duck hunt on the shores and deer hunt in the surrounding forests. At the height of his fame, when he’d realized he had enough money for a vacation home, Kentucky Lake was the only place he considered. The house was situated on a hill a few miles from the highway that led to Brittain, a fifteen minute drive away. The property was surrounded by trees, giving it an air of seclusion at the front and sides. To the right of the living room and its spectacular view was a deck that sat partly over the garage and just outside the kitchen. No telling how much time he’d spent out on that deck, playing his guitar and watching the light reflect off the water. He’d be doing that again soon, and the thought of it almost made him glad to be home.

Then he thought of how long he’d be here and his enthusiasm waned. He’d give Becky a week, maybe two, before he started hounding her for work.

In the meantime he had plenty to do in the house. He stepped away from the view with reluctance and started gathering up the white sheets that covered the furnishings. Dust thickened the musty air further. He wadded up several of the sheets, carried them to the laundry room and dumped them in an empty basket. Leaving the windows open for a while would air the place out, and he turned on ceiling fans as he went from room to room. When he saw his mother, he’d ask if she knew of anyone who cleaned houses. Some groceries, a new fishing rod, and he’d be all set.