Songbird Series Book 1: Songbird
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Daisy Danielle
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1,3M
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53
Where I Come From
LENNIE
âLen, baby, come on. It was an accident.â
I clenched my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger. âNo, Brad, forgetting to pay the cable bill is an accident. Impregnating my best friend is a string of definite choices.â
âWhat am I supposed to do, Lennie?! I canât handle this rent by myself! You know that! You wanted this place, not me!â
âMaybe you shouldâve thought of that before YOUR DICK ENTERED MY BEST FRIEND!â
Shout out to the old lady across the street who definitely heard me. Not a good first day back home, Len. Not a good first day.
I was definitely going to have to readjust to small-town Georgia life.
âI canât believe you just left, after all weâve been throughâŚâ
âI didnât just LEAVE, Brad. I told you I was helping Maggie with the bedandbreakfast this summer, just like I always do. Then I found you in bed with EllieâŚso I moved out. Do you perhaps see the correlation there?â
âLennieâŚâ
âBrad, I have to go. I haveâŚâ Quick, Lennie! Think of something! âA job interviewâŚâ
What? I shook my head at my panicked answer. Good one, Len.
âWhat happened to the bed-and-breakfast? Why would you need another job?â
âNone of your business. Goodbye, Brad, good luck with the baby andâŚall that shit.â
âLenore, donât hang up on me.â
âWhat? Sorry, canât hear you. Cutting out. Damn small town. Byeeeeeee!â
Okay, so maybe I didnât have a job interview, but my ex didnât need to know that. I, Lennie Tyler, was officially single and ready toâŚgo into the nearest country bar and drown my sorrows in a bucket of whiskey. Or whatever it was of-age people did here.
Iâd left when I was eighteen. I had no idea.
Weird part? I wasnât even that sad about Brad. More annoyed than anything else. The rose-colored glasses of dumb love had come off a long time ago.
Bradley Richards was not my forever. I knew it, he knew it. If Iâm honest, we moved in together more out of convenience than anything else.
Weâd been âtogetherâ five years. I was thirty-three. Not like I was getting any younger, soâŚmight as well try, right?
Wrong. So very wrong.
Ladies: Donât push these thingsâŚand donât settle. Itâs not worth it. Youâll end up miserable and then come home from a songwriting session to find him in bed with your so-called best friend, and all those warning bells in your brain that told you he wasnât the one will become deafening.
Honestly, the only reason he was upset was because it meant paying rent on the new two-bedroom, ritzy apartment in Nashville that weâd literally just re-signed the lease on.
Oh shit. That was under my name. Mental note to call my lawyer ASAP.
I know what youâre thinking, but donât worry. I wasnât the girl who ran back home because her ex is a cheating douchebag. It actually was a happy accident.
My Aunt Maggie was the woman in charge of our familyâs long-running bed-and-breakfast here in Snyder, Georgia. Snyder wasnât a tiny town, but it wasnât real big either.
We were large enough for three stoplights on Main Street and a few restaurants and, of course, some hole-in-the-wall country bars, and we were just close enough to the bigger Georgia cities that the bed-and-breakfast had been a lucrative family business for years.
My parents ran it for a while, before opening their own place in some Florida retirement town. I couldnât even tell you the name. My parents and I werenât really close. Never had been. Even when I was a child, it had always been a constant battle of trying to get their attention. Iâd been left to my own devices the second I could pour my own cereal.
My Aunt Maggie was my motherâs littlest sister, a good twenty years younger. She was the âOops!â baby for my grandparents and was a mere twelve years older than I was.
She was more like my older sister than my aunt, and every summer I came back to help out during the busy seasonsâplus it was a great excuse to leave city life and be home for a while.
I mightâve moved, but Iâd always be the small-town Georgia girl at heart. Take the girl out of the country but not the country out of the girl and all that.
Maggieâs daughter, my cousin Makayla, had just graduated high school and was gearing up to move to Nashville like I had done over fifteen years ago now, so it seemed like an even better idea to be here this summer.
Hopefully, I could help Makayla make a few fewer mistakes than I had. Lord knows I had made a laundry list of them.
I had moved to the country music capital of the world with big dreams and no real idea how to accomplish them. I knew I wanted to sing, but more than that, I knew I wanted to write songs, and I knew Nashville was the best place for me to do so.
I got a job as a server at the infamous Bluebird CafĂŠ, stood onstage, and played my little heart out one open mic night, and no less than three weeks later, had a songwriting deal at a major label. Compared to some, Iâd put very little effort into getting âseenâ by the music bigwigs, but all that did was cement it for me. Songwriting was my calling. It was what I was meant to be doing.
I had hit songs all over country radio for the last ten years, won myself a few awards, and made a pretty penny doing it. I liked life behind the scenes, though I did take to a stage every once in a while.
My personal band, The Chasers, had never really made it big. We did a few tours as opening acts, had a few mild hits, but mostly we just played in Nashville and the surrounding towns. It was fine. I wasnât necessarily sad about it.
I realized after signing my writing deal that writing was where I really stood out anyway. And the best part was I could write from anywhere, even a little bed and breakfast in Snyder, Georgia.
This afternoon, I was meeting my childhood best friend, Cora, at Snyderâs most popular bar, Culprits. Her family owned it, and even when we were kids, it was where we hung out. Cora was a schoolteacher, but since summer vacation had begun the past week, she was mostly free, aside from when she was helping with the bar. Though Iâd guessed they werenât going to be real busy at two oâclock on a Tuesday afternoon.
It was exactly the dirty kind of hole in the wall that youâre imagining, and that was part of its appeal. You didnât have to dress up, and you didnât have to be anything but what you were.
It welcomed you, no matter what. They hosted karaoke at least two nights a week, and you could buy a bucket of Bud Light for ten dollars. Didnât get much better than that in the South.
I walked in, immediately relieved by the feel of the air conditioning blasting against my sticky skin. It was already hot in Georgia, and it was only mid-May. There were a few people, scattered throughout the place and one behind the bar, but from one glance I could tell Cora hadnât arrived yet, so I found my favorite bar feature, a jukebox, and headed toward it.
I could feel the eyes on me like I was some sort of mythical beast. I knew from experience not many new faces just wandered into Snyder, and to these people, I was new. Even if I had known some of them in childhood, they likely wouldnât recognize me. But I was used to looks, so I did my best to just smile and ignore them.
âCan I get you something, sugar?â the pretty, dark-haired lady behind the bar asked.
I beamed. âJust a water for now. Iâm waiting for someone.â
âComing right up.â
I listened to the light chatter as I perused the song choices. There was the usual small-town talk, the weather, farming, when it was going to rain. All the things youâd hear walking into any homey bar anywhere. It immediately brought a smile to my face. It was so different from Nashville. So different, and to be honest, I kind of missed the simplicity of it all when I wasnât around.
Within seconds, a glass of water and ice already sweating with condensation was sitting on the small table next to me.
âCareful,â the bartender warned with a wink. âThey can be pretty picky about the music around here.â
I chuckled. âDonât worry. I like the crowd pleasers.â
âJust donât go playing any of that pop radio stuff, and they might let you live.â
I laughed brightly. âYouâre safe from that, scoutâs honor.â
The second the sounds of Randy Travisâs twangy timbre started floating through the air, every occupant of the bar groaned. I glanced around with my confused eyes narrowed.
âGot something against Randy Travis?â
The bartender smirked in my direction as if she knew something I did not. âIt ainât us, sugar.â
As if summoned, I heard stomping boots getting closer. The next second, a tall, dark-haired, truly angry-looking man appeared, and without sparing me a glance, he stormed right up and yanked the cord of the jukebox right from the wall.
âJesus Christ. For the last time! NO. RANDY.â
