Page 9 of A Country Kind Of Love

“Three, but he’s had twenty-six number one songs on the Billboard charts.” Jesse smirks.

“Dolly’s had twenty-five, and forty-two top ten country albums.” Peyton doesn’t lose when it comes to music trivia. When she was thirteen, she made her own board game calledCountry Bumpkin Trivia.Her mom played with her religiously after dinner every Sunday night. Peyton likes to think of herself as the encyclopaedia of all things country.

“She’s released forty-two albums? Surely not.” Jesse reaches for his cell phone. Within seconds he has his answer. “Wow. Okay, you win.”

Peyton is able to list all of Dolly’s achievements from memory; she didn’t have a lot of friendsgrowing up.

“You said on the ad that you have a pet named, Bugsy?”

Jesse removes a sheet from a glass tank in the corner of the room. “This is Bugsy.”

Peyton takes one quick glance at the tarantula and slowly backs away. “Woah, woah, no need to get thatthing out.”

“You don’t like spiders?”Jesse asks.

“There are nice little spiders with tiny thin legs, and then there’s that. It could probablyeat my cat.”

“Youhave a cat?”

“Don’t worry, he lives at home with my dad.”

The ad specifically said no pets.

“Okay, well I can keep him in my room if you decideto move in.”

Thank god. Peyton sighs.

“What do you think?”Jesse asks.

Peyton scans the room. She’s confident she’s seen all she needs to see. There’s frat boy furniture, a tarantula, and a six foot five half-naked tattooed man asking her to move in and drink tequila cocktails all day whilst sitting comfortably in the egg chair ofcreativity.

This could be the place to write the next Grammy award winning song and earn a genuine gold-plated trophy, not the eBay version. It was ano-brainer.

“I’ll take it.”

?

The scheduled Goodwill collection removed all the large items of furniture from her new abode. The possibility of Nashville’s version of Bonnie and Clyde returning to reclaim her stuff wasslim, right?

Peyton’s belongings turned up the next day, and the subsequent ten hours was spent unpacking, eating hot wings from a takeaway carton, and drinking tequila, provided by Jesse. She thinks there is every possibility he has some form of shares in a tequila company. The room required some serious re-organising and a storage unit sacrifice for her to slot her upright digital piano in the corner, thank God her dad hadn’t given in when she requested a Kawai Grand for her twenty-first birthday.

“Are you settling in okay?” Her dad asks. Today is her dad’s turn to call. One of the three men in her life calls her every day, sometimestwice a day.

“Yeah, I’ve just unpacked. I’ll send some pictures once I’ve hung the fairy lights and got my shelves up on the wall.”

“Are you going to be okay installing the shelves?” If there is so much as a hesitation in her voice she knows her dad will drive the thirty-two-hour trip with his drill in tow. She can almost hear the sound of hiscar engine.

“Jesse saidhe’ll help.”

“Does he have the right tools?” Andrew Harris has a garage full of tools. She still regrets the day she asked him what a band saw was used for—nothing to dowith music.

“The shelves in the hallway are fairly straight; I think we can manage it, Dad.”

She slides the box containing hermisc.items towards the piano. The shelving unit for her picture frames and music memorabilia slants to the right. The floor is uneven. It turns out the three pieces of art on the walls covered holes. Maybe that’s where Bonnie 2.0 stored her stolen money. Unfortunately for Peyton she’d taken it with her on her midnight flit. Nothing a bit of DIY plasterboard can’t fix.

“Are you sure about this guy?”Andrew asks.

“I don’t really know him well enough tojudge, Dad.”