And that’s how I ended up meeting the girl Hyena called Doc. She turned out to be a thin med student with a pair of A-cups. And she claimed to have no idea where Red had gone. Not that first time or any other time I’d asked after her while visiting the roadhouse.
But just because it was a boring name didn’t mean we weren’t talking about the same person. I mean, ask Dave Evans, Saul Hudson, and Shawn Carter why they prefer to be called the Edge, Slash, and Jay-Z.
And Kyra’s name isn’t Kiki, but that cabin story sounds too familiar to just be a coincidence. Plus, the way Kyra’s squinting at me…it reminds me of the suspicious way Red used to regard me—like she could see straight through all of my bullshit.
“This Bernice…does she have cherry-red hair. Like, what do you call it? Red weave? All the way down her back?”
Nitra Mello, Wood’s reality star girlfriend, snorts. “Are you talking about Kyra’s cousin Bernice—the one who stays rocking that Brandy box braid bob like it’s the nineties and we’re still watching Moesha every Tuesday on UPN?”
“What?” I ask.
Nitra just busts into some song I’ve never heard of, but the other woman must have some idea what she’s talking about because they join in.
“Hold on. Hold on!” I leap up from to table to yell over their singing. “Do you have a picture of this Bernice? I need to see what she looks like.”
All the Fairgood wives cut off like I’ve peed in their Thanksgiving dinner, and an awkward silence descends.
Everybody’s looking at me like I’m a psycho, including Waylon, who actually is an unrepentant psycho.
“Um…I don’t know what’s going on here, but my cousin is a hard-working single mom nurse who hates country music,” Kyra says carefully. “I really don’t think you know her. And I get that you’re bored, but this line of questioning isn’t cool.”
Fuck, a single mother. So not my Red.
I feel like a fool.
Especially when Waylon pulls me aside after dinner to ask, “What the hell was that?”
I rub at my forehead. “Man, I don’t know. I upended my whole life for her, and she just disappeared on me without ever telling me why. I guess I’m just grasping at straws.”
Waylon dips his head down and gives me a halfway sympathetic look. “Yeah, you are. Red clean disappeared years ago, and it’s obvious she don’t want to be found. Plus, you’ve got no idea what she was into. You lied about who you were, and maybe she did too. Woman who looks like that? For all you know, she had a husband stashed away someplace who was real pissed off about her disappearing for two weeks with some rap fucker. But she, for damn sure, isn’t some single mom cousin of Kyra’s named Bernice.”
“Country trap,” I remind him. But then I have to admit. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He claps me on the shoulder. “No judgment here. Believe me. I get it. You know I get it better than anybody else in this place. When a woman haunts you like that, it’s hard to shake. But I think it’s time you got over her.”
Right again. And that’s not even the craziest thing that happens that weekend.
Less than thirty-six hours later, I get a chance to see firsthand how duplicitous females can be when Hades’s woman, Persy, disappears on him without a trace.
To say Hades goes ballistic is an understatement. He literally flips one of the banquet tables at the roadhouse. He promises to find her. Then he threatens to kill anybody who touches her before he does. Then he guzzles a bottle of Buffalo Trace Sazerac Rye like it’s a can of Pepsi.
He doesn’t stop until he collapses onto the roadhouse floor blackout drunk.
And that’s when I see my future if I continue down this path.
Persy’s gone, disappeared into the wind, just like Red.
And it doesn’t matter how much Hades wants her. That’s not going to bring her back.
I look over at Doc, pulling beers behind the bar.
I always ask her if she’s heard from Red when I stop in, but this time I don’t. I just don’t. Instead, I leave without saying a word to her.
I head back to Vegas, and I throw myself into my job as head of A&R for AudioNation. I work to impress my father and manage to tolerate Geoff—barely. And when I need a release, I find some woman to fuck. Then I leave as soon as it’s done.
That dead inside feeling is dependable now. Unlike Red. It shows up when it’s supposed to. Every time.
CHAPTER 21
BERNICE
KIKI: Missed you today. Hope O2 is feeling better. Poor thing.
I receive my cousin’s message on my ancient Apple Watch just as I finish helping O2 wash her face and brush her teeth in the bathroom at the hotel I booked for us last minute.