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You’d think Grandmother was a casino employee. She wasn’t. She was a VIP with an inordinate amount of influence, and that was somehow worse.
Today was not my day. I’d spun the wheel and landed on a truly perfect storm: Barbara Ann’s dark lips, cold machines, and stress stutters.
I met her dark gaze briefly before watching her ominously painted lips as she parted them to deliver her sentencing.
“You’re almost twenty-two now, young lady. I have clearly been much too lenient with you and will not allow you to wallow anymore. No granddaughter of mine will throw her legacy away because of any man. Perhaps it is time you learned about true responsibility. And I know just the thing.”
2
BREE
“She did what?!” Cody yelled and threw his hands in the air while holding a pair of crumpled board shorts in one hand and a ratty flip-flop in the other as I recapped my conversation with Grandmother.
He’d rented this little converted apartment above a townie’s garage for the last three years and had been haphazardly cramming the contents of his closet into suitcases and boxes strewn around his bedroom—last minute as always—when I’d dropped by.
I thanked the stars, the moon, and the rest of the universe every day that Cody decided to stay on the Coast after our high school graduation and not move back to Louisiana.
His dad was still a host at Fortuna, and he could’ve easily gotten a more prestigious—or more permanent—job there, but he never wanted to. Just like he never wanted to live with his dad.
Cody claimed that the jobs he chose to work at the casino fulfilled him on every level that mattered. He worked valet for access to fast cars, crafted bougie coffee drinks to hone his flirtation skills with every manner of customer, and maintained his year-round tan by lifeguarding. He took a few online college classes here and there too, which placated his dad.
“Yep. She said that I had not been acting myself lately and that it was probably because I’ve been too spoiled by her generosity.”
Cody choked on air, taking a beat to recover before he spluttered, “She deadass looked you in the face and said you were spoiled?”
I threw a wad of old Hollister V-necks into a random box, trusting in Cody’s lack of a system. “Not in those exact words, no. But I don’t know where she was looking…. I was looking at her lips,” I replied dryly.
A split second later, recognition transformed Cody’s face, and he burst into song, his voice low and rhythmic:
“Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Barbara Ann
Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Barbara Ann….”
He threw his hands in the air and started thrusting just as his voice reached a piercing falsetto with: “Barbara Aaaaaaaann!”
A hysterical laugh escaped my soul, and I had to take a minute to wrestle it into submission before I could speak again. “Yup. Barbara Ann delivered the news, but it was definitely Grandmother’s doing. I will now be living in a repurposed FEMA trailer on the back end of her property. I am to move my things out of the Big House as soon as possible and should provide her a check for renting on her land by the fifteenth of each month.” I grimaced at that last part and looked at Cody, who was now star-fished across his bed. I rolled my eyes as he stretched out like a lazy cat and knocked over a few boxes, spilling their contents onto the floor.
“God, it’s good to hear you laugh. It’s so fucking loud, my ears are still ringing.”
I pushed that comment aside and continued as I reached down to right the fallen boxes. “Thankfully it’s still much less than I’d pay to rent anywhere else. Not that I’d feel comfortable renting on my own right now anyway, but still. The real question is where she even got a FEMA trailer—especially after all these years. I don’t think I even want to know.”
“Leave it to good ol’ Barb to use someone else’s extreme misfortune to ‘teach a lesson,’” he said, raising his arms above his head to emphasize with air quotes before letting them fall again. “She has always been crafty that way.”
The Coast had seen its fair share of hurricanes, but we hadn’t had an especially bad hurricane season in several years, which was the last time anyone needed government-provided temporary housing. Unless she had the trailer brought in from New Orleans? Again, yeah—I didn’t want to know.
“Wait….” He lifted his head off the bed. “Why the fifteenth of each month?” His head plopped back down.
I shrugged even though he couldn’t see it. “Another mystery I will not be solving today, or maybe any day.”
No answer could be worth that quest. It was best to just let it go. And to that end, I took a deep breath and visualized releasing my questions on the exhale, but my composure still wavered as I said, and processed, my next words.
“I guess we’re both moving now.”
The hitch in my voice alarmed Cody enough that he sat up on a crunch and threw his hair into a bun with one of the ever-present hair ties from his wrist. He was my person and always saw what no one else even knew to look for—or would even care to. True to form, he got up and zigzagged around a few boxes to administer my course of treatment: therapy in the form of a full-body hug paired with the spiritual tonic of a well-loved phrase.
“Don’t worry, Lady Cher.” He thickened his otherwise-extinct Cajun accent as he delivered the first part of our mantra—making the endearment sound like Layydee Shaaa—before delivering the second part. “It’ll all work out.” He moved his hands to my shoulders and leaned down to catch my gaze with his warm, familiar hazel eyes. “And do you know why?”
I rolled my lips inward and nodded, vision cloudy with unshed tears, and answered. “Because it has to.”
