Chester was a small town in Georgia about five hours from Atlanta, and when I said small, I mean everybody knew everybody’s middle name and when they had their first kiss—at least the fairy-tale romance story of it, not the actual truth.
In a place like Chester, everyone lived on semi-truths—you know, where one only told the side of the story that made them look like a proper lady or gent.
Everyone knew I was coming back to town because they knew Finn had landed the position at the hospital, but what they didn’t know was that when I came back, I wouldn’t be laying my head right beside his.
I hadn’t made plans for where I’d stay; a silly part of me thought Finn would come back and we’d somehow end up back in love. Even though that wasn’t how it went, I wasn’t too worried about finding a place to lay my head that night. My family would be there for me, always and always.
In Chester, the centerpiece of the whole town was Zion Church, which sat right in the middle of downtown. The church was the heart of the town, and my father, Samuel Harris, was the man who ran it, just as Grandpa James had before him, and Great-Grandpa Joseph had before him. Daddy never said it, but I was certain he was disappointed when he didn’t have a son to take over the church someday after he stepped down.
He had asked me, and I’d respectfully declined. Finn had gotten into medical school in Tennessee, and like the good wife I was, where he led was where I followed. I followed him many different ways throughout his schooling, and I thought Atlanta was the final stop. When he told me he applied for a position in Chester, I had to admit I was surprised.
He used to say he never wanted to return to small-town life, always said it suffocated him.
Dad respected my choice of not wanting to take over the church and said he was proud of me, and Mama respected that I stood by my husband’s side. There was a reason her favorite song was “Stand by Your Man” by Tammy Wynette.
The church was an integral part of my family’s history, and the whole town of Chester gathered in the building more than once a week for sermons, prayer circles, Bible studies, and pretty much any bake sale that took place. Church on Sunday morning was just as common as football on Fridays and whiskey on Saturdays.
In a way, my family was royalty in small-town USA. If you knew the church, you knew our family, and if you knew our family, you knew our wealth.
Daddy claimed the money didn’t matter and that his main purpose was to give back to the community and serve God, but Mama’s red-bottomed shoes and flashy jewelry told a somewhat different story.
She reveled in being small-town royalty. She was Queen Loretta Harris, the pastor’s wife, and boy, did she take that role seriously.
The closer I got to Chester, the tighter my stomach knotted.
It’d been years since I’d packed up my life and relocated with Finn, and the idea of returning home without him terrified me. I hated how loud my insecurities were lately, hated that I cared so much about how the town would judge me.
What would people think?
What would they say?
Worst of all, how would Mama react?
3
Jackson
“Five hundred today, five hundred next week,” I dryly told the woman who kept beating her fake eyelashes toward me. She tried her best to push out her chest in my direction, but it was pointless. I’d already seen what was under that blouse, and there wasn’t much for her to push out.
“But…” She started talking, but I tuned her out. Nothing she could say would interest me. Nothing about small-town USA interested me in the least.
Everything about Chester, Georgia, was a pain in my ass, and I hated that I somehow got trapped there.
It was all so damn annoying, from the small-town gossip to the small-minded folks. The people acted as if they were straight out of a cliché movie with every corny, fictional small-town stereotype, though I supposed the stereotypes had to come from some truth. Maybe Chester was the case study for those shitty films. Either way, I hated the place.
One couldn’t quite call the people of Chester ignorant to the realities of the real world outside of their small quarters because they weren’t unaware of life in the real world. They knew what was happening outside the town.
They knew the current state of the union was a disaster. They understood the poverty sweeping our nation, the drug trafficking stories. They damn well knew about the wildfires, school shootings, marches at the nation’s capital, and rallies for clean drinking water. They knew about our president, both past and present. Yes, the people in Chester, Georgia, knew all about the workings of the real world, they simply much preferred to speak about why Louise Honey wasn’t at Bible study on Thursday night, and why Justine Homemaker was too tired to make homemade cupcakes for the church bake sale on Friday.
They loved to gossip about shit that didn’t matter, which was one of the many reasons I hated living there.
For all the hate I had for the town, it was nice to know the distaste was mutual. Chester’s townspeople hated me just as much as I despised them—maybe even more.
I’d heard people’s whispers about me, but I didn’t give a damn. They called me Satan’s spawn and it had bothered me when I was younger, but the older I got, the more I liked the ring of it. People had harbored an unnecessary fear of my father and me for fifteen or so years. They called us monsters, and after some time, we stepped into on the role.
We were the black sheep of Chester, and I didn’t mind one bit. I couldn’t have cared less if those people hated me or not. I wasn’t losing any sleep over it.
I kept my head down and ran my dad’s auto shop with the help of my uncle. The worst part of the job was dealing with people from town. Sure, they could’ve left Chester to find another auto shop, but alas, to them, venturing into the outside world was even more terrifying than dealing with my father and me.
That was why my current situation was so damn annoying: I had to deal with idiots.
“I’m just sayin’ you owe me five hundred dollars by the end of the day. I take Visa, Mastercard, check, or cash,” I told Louise Honey as she stood in front of me in her pink dress and high heels, tapping her fake nails on my desk.
“I thought we made an agreement last Thursday,” she asked me, confused by my coldness. “When I stopped by to talk…”
By talk, she meant fuck, and we’d happened to do that all night long.
That was why she had missed Bible study—because her small tits were bouncing in my face.
The women of that town had no problem hating me when the sun shone while moaning my name when the shadows of night fell. I was the secret escape from their fake realities. A challenge for their well-behaved Southern souls.
“Was our agreement made before or after you sucked my dick?” I asked dryly.
“During,” she replied in a whisper, her cheeks turning red. She was acting shy, which must’ve been part of her act to get her bill lowered because she hadn’t been so bashful when she’d asked me to tie her up and slap her ass.
“Any deals made with your lips around my cock are null and void,” I stated. “Just leave the payment on my desk. Half today, half next week, all right? Or I’ll just give your boyfriend a call and see if he’ll pay it.”
“You wouldn’t!” she cried. I stayed quiet, and she stood tall and quickly pulled out her checkbook. “You’re a monster, Jackson Emery!”
If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that…
“Thank you for your time. We at Mike’s Auto Shop appreciate your loyalty to our company. Have a blessed day, sweetheart. Now, if you could please let yourself the fuck out of my shop, Louise—”
“My name’s Justine, you jerk!”
Oh. Justine…
Names weren’t something I cared about. They made things personal, and I didn’t do personal.
“As long as your name is right on the check, we’re good,” I replied.
“You’re an awful, awful man, and you’re going to die alone!” she barked, storming out of the shop.