She’d been very deliberate about all this.
And she was not unaware of Pepper’s past, and the important aspect of Juno being in that mix.
I’d been so deep in all the things I was dealing with, it hadn’t occurred to me to look more closely at what Pepper’s day-to-day life would be like.
And my friend really needed someone in her corner.
And not just her girls.
So, to communicate I agreed, I repeated myself again.
This time with feeling.
“Totally.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
She Was Mine Before
HATTIE
Having left the club, on the way to my studio, I called Axl.
I was kinda bummed because, after that scene with Pepper, I wasn’t thinking about the piece I was working on.
I was thinking about my friend and that maybe I needed to spend more time in her corner.
Like, say, after we inadvertently upset her (a lot) and she’d gone off on her own, instead of going to my studio to work on my art, find her and share I was in her corner. Also admit I might not have been real good at doing that in the past. But now I was all in.
So, yeah.
I was bummed I wasn’t in a work-at-the-studio mood.
But more bummed that my friend was in a bad place.
And I decided, once I got to the studio, I’d text her. See if she wanted to meet for a coffee.
Or something.
On this thought, Axl picked up.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey, uh, heading to the studio,” I told him.
“Cool,” he replied.
Okay, now …
Um …
Where to begin?
“You good?” he asked.
“Well …”
In truth, I knew where to begin.
I just didn’t know if I should begin there.
That being, feel him out about what to do about Pepper and Auggie.
And by feel him out, I meant enlist his services to get Auggie to get the lead out in going for Pepper.
“Hattie,” Axl prompted.
“Okay, well, the meeting was about Smithie’s closing for three weeks,” I told him. “They’re doing some renovations. VIP seating and putting in a kitchen because they’re going to start serving food. It’s all good, including for us. We’ll keep getting paid. And Smithie covers tips. Truth, I can have better nights than he covers, but I won’t be hurting.”
“Right, then yeah. All good,” he said. “And that gives you free time to be in the studio.”
I hadn’t said anything outright, but he sensed I was jonesing to get back to it.
My guy.
Such a good guy and so tuned to me.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
I said no more.
Axl waited.
Until he was done waiting.
“Babe,” he pushed, knowing there was more to say.
“Okay, we had a blowup with Pepper when we pushed her about getting together with Auggie.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
And the way he did, I knew now he had more to say.
“What?” I asked.
“I take it she was resistant to going there with Aug?” he asked back.
“Very,” I answered.
“Right, well, not too long ago, I got up in Auggie’s shit about this same thing. And, babe, prepare. Because she’s not giving him anything and he gets why she isn’t. He digs her and wants to go there, but you don’t push a woman with a kid. So my guess, he’s going to be moving on if he isn’t in that zone already.”
That wasn’t good news.
But I was stuck on something else.
“You don’t push a woman with a kid?” I asked.
“There’s more going on there,” he said as answer.
“I know, but she’s still a woman, even if she has a kid,” I said.
Axl had no reply.
Thus, I kept talking.
“I mean, yes, if something happened with them, he’d be getting both of them in his life. And I see that’d be daunting, because he doesn’t just have to win Pepper, he has to win Juno. But those are two different things. Because they’re two different people. And a man should approach them as two different things. But he can’t get either if he doesn’t start with one.”
There was a long pause before Axl inquired, “What’s her gig?”
“Trust,” I told him. “Her ex cheated on her and I don’t mean he strayed. I mean he was sleeping with another woman their entire relationship.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Unh-hunh,” I agreed. “And that doesn’t get into her family, who are very, very Christian. Like, her mom and sister don’t wear pants, they wear skirts and dresses, because women should not only not wear men’s clothes, they shouldn’t highlight certain parts of their bodies. They go to revivals. And she told us that her father contends God spoke through him once. He was talking in tongues. She was there to see, said it was lunacy and scared the crap out of her. It happened when she was twelve or thirteen. That’s pretty crazy, but I still could go on.”
“So her family’s not in her life,” he deduced.
“She’d like that, them not being in her life. But every so often, they show up, intent to get her back into the fold. Once, she said she wouldn’t put it past them to kidnap her or Juno and try to brainwash them into compliance.”