Dirty Billionaire(41)
I took refuge in music—putting my headphones on and turning up the volume to drown it all out. One of the least loser-ish of the losers gave me a hand-me-down iPod loaded with tons of country music. Living in Kentucky, that’s about all I heard anyway, but he had the classics too. Loretta Lynn, old Reba, the Man in Black—I soaked up their words and eventually started writing my own.
When I was fourteen, my mama hooked up with a man who had enough money to buy her a Cadillac Eldorado, but didn’t want to have anything to do with a kid. She clutched the keys to her new Eldo in her hand as she told me to pack my bags, because I was moving in with my gran.
Doing what I’ve done so many times before, I loaded everything I owned into a garbage bag and stuffed it in the trunk of the Eldo. My one and only ride in that car was across the river, where she dropped me off like a litter of unwanted kittens. I suppose I should be lucky she didn’t stop at the bridge and attempt to drown me. Gran lived a half mile from the happening hot spot in town: Pints and Pins, affectionately known as Brews and Balls by the locals.
But I couldn’t tell him most any of that. I decide on the streamlined version.
“I’m from a one-stoplight town. My gran raised me after my mama decided to do some exploring. It was better that way, because Mama bounced us around a lot, depending on what guy she was . . . dating at the time. I worked at a bowling alley to help make extra money.”
My gran and Brews and Balls were both my salvation in different ways. Gran because she welcomed me with open arms and gave me the unconditional love and stability I lacked for the first fourteen years of my life. Birthday cakes, Christmas presents—those things became expected instead of the hit-or-miss mess they were with my mama.
When he doesn’t speak, I continue to fill the silence. “Gran lived on Social Security, so every extra dollar helped.”
To myself I add, Because my mama sure didn’t send any home. Nope, after she packed up her Eldo and hooked it to the back of the rich man’s motorhome and rode out of town, we didn’t hear from her for years.
Shaking off the bitterness, I kept going. “Brews and Balls was the first stage I ever stood on to sing in front of people. One karaoke night, the crowd wasn’t getting into it, so Benny, the owner, decided to take matters into his own hands. He’d heard me singing to myself in the kitchen while I was frying up onion rings and hot wings and chicken fingers, and decided that I’d do just fine. He pushed me out of the kitchen and into the bar, not even giving me time to drop my apron. The song was ‘Born to Fly’ by Sara Evans. When I finished, there was dead silence . . . and then the crowd went crazy.”
I close my eyes, the memory still vivid in my head. When I stepped off the stage, Benny had tears in his eyes. “You surely were born to fly, Holly.” He was the first and only man ever to believe in me.
And wouldn’t he just be proud of me now? Mostly naked with a butt plug up my ass, sitting on this man’s lap who I married after spending a single night with him.
I push the thought away. I’m going back to Tennessee in less than forty-eight hours. Back to normal. Which was a crazy thought all by itself—that my normal is life on a tour bus, heading out to sing in front of crowds of thousands in stadiums across the country. That’s what I need to focus on, not the man whose chest I’m pressed against and the awkward silence I’m just now realizing has overtaken the room.
“How’d you go from karaoke in a bar to touring?”
“Benny pushed me to try out for Country Dreams, and when I got past the initial audition, I decided I couldn’t go because Gran’s health was getting rocky. I couldn’t leave her, and we couldn’t afford in-home care. But somehow, through the grapevine, my mama heard about the show and that I was going to turn it down, and she showed up on Gran’s doorstep the day before I needed to report to Nashville for filming. She promised she’d take care of Gran if I’d only just take this shot.”
I swallow, the lump in my throat growing. The last part of this story is the hardest, and the reason for the guilt that tugs at my soul on a regular basis.
“When the finals came around and I made the cut, my mama decided Gran could take care of herself, so she left her. She just wanted to be on TV when they showed my family in the audience, and meet some famous people.” I pause, my heart clenching at the memory. “But Gran fell and hit her head, and never woke up again. She died before I could make it home to even sit by her bedside.”
“I’m so sorry,” he starts, but all the emotions and memories are bursting through my walls, and I can’t stop.