Page 30 of Risking it for the Cowboy

After years of wishing she could fall silent, fall invisible, their praise had felt so good! Until she’d clicked on older videos, related videos, of shows from the band’s early days, of a younger, grittier, wilder Thaddeus…

Like a train wreck, she hadn’t been able to look away.

She’d scrolled video after video of him playing to local crowds, flirting with women and letting them kiss him, touch him, on stage, when some random girl had posted a link to a social media fan page, and God, she shouldn’t have clicked it! An entire page dedicated to him called McClintock’s Alumni, solely for those who’d scored with him, posting photos of him over the years, draped around one girl or another, and she’d felt sick.

Sick because she’d liked him!

Sick because she’d called him, believing his whole genuine act.

Sick because that was his MO, calling a girl up on stage knowing he’d score with them later.

Sick because Jason had been … right.

Sick because she’d been gullible enough to fall yet again for a cute boy in a band.

She’d shared her deepest parts with him, about Uncle Johnny and her daisies and how lonely she’d been as a girl, when she was nothing but a night’s pastime under the lure of a proposition.

All the guilt churning in her soul undammed and flooded her mind and heart. If only she hadn’t flirted with that cute guy in that band who’d grown so jealous of her ambition he’d humiliated her on stage and forbidden her to ever play with him again. If only she hadn’t ended up a pregnant eighteen-year old—a statistic.

If only she hadn’t listened to her momma and vied to marry him in a whirlwind courthouse wedding. Debbie-Sue had cared about appearances, and her daughter who’d spent a childhood dolled up for pageants, couldn’t embarrass her by being knocked up out of wedlock. But if Charlie were honest, she’d been desperate to keep her scholarship—her only ticket to pay for college and go to Nashville, never to look back on that old farmhouse filled with photos of a five-year-old Charlie dolled up like a twenty-five-year-old model in pageant after pageant.

If only she’d had the courage to get out sooner, instead of hiding the increasing toxicity festering between her and Jason until it finally broke her.

She’d once loved music, but after Jason’s public humiliations … she loved Daisy more. And she was smart. So, she’d gotten creative.

Jason might have come back into her life, demanding rights he’d abandoned, but Charlie couldn’t subject Daisy to another weekend of sitting by the window looking for a man who wasn’t showing up, or worse, being forced to go with him when he did.

Judge Mitchell said she couldn’t withhold Daisy, period. Why? Why was Jason getting a pass when Daisy was the one suffering for it?

She exhaled. It was Saturday night. At least tomorrow was Sunday, and Jason would probably be held until at least Monday when most judges held bail hearings. Hopefully he’d vanish without a trace for another year like he’d done before, giving them a blessed reprieve from the constant tumult, constant looking over her shoulder, constant walking on eggshells.

She looked back at her little girl, let down once again by a dad who couldn’t pull his shit together, growing up before her eyes. These years were fleeting. Daisy longed for a daddy she could count on, could take to those Daddy-daughter dances … Jason had flaked on that, too, the past two years, forgetting all about his little girl waiting by the door in her sparkly dress, calls to his landline unanswered. Texts to his cell undeliverable—his burner phone du jour out of minutes.

Last year, Daisy hadn’t even wanted to go.

Any day now, Charlie expected that invite to arrive in the mailbox. She almost didn’t have the heart to let Daisy see it this time.

“Do you, uh, wanna go with me instead?” Charlie hedged. “To the carnival? I know what happened tonight isn’t really about the carnival. But, you know. Could be fun?”

Daisy looked up at her. Shrugged. Looked back out the window.

“I thought you didn’t like public things.”

“Negative, babe. Artex and I would love to go with you.”

She reached back and scratched the dog’s ear who turned and slobbered over her hand. They rumbled over train tracks. Coming to the intersection toward downtown.

“What d’you say, chica? Should I turn right? Or head straight?”

She pulled up to the T. Glanced back at Daisy.

“Cotton candy? Carnie rides?”

“I thought those things were petri dishes that grow the kind of flora you don’t want to study,” the girl snarked, though a hint of something that wasn’t quite a frown teased her mouth as Artex flopped his head on her lap.

“Guess who went to Bargain Barn, babe.”

Charlie held up the massive pump of hand sanitizer she kept in the door, shaking it with a waggle of the eyebrow. “Let’s go get elbow deep in that petri dish.” Her teasing finally earned a reluctant smile from the girl’s lips. “That’s right, girlie. Your momma’s got all the moves.”