Playlist
“The Night We Met”—Lord Huron
“Power”—Isak Danielson
“bad guy”—Billie Eilish
“Castle”—Halsey
“Power over Me”—Dermot Kennedy
“9 Crimes”—Damien Rice
“Put It On Me”—Matt Maeson
“Feel Again”—Kina, Au/Ra
“Out of the Darkness”—Sleep Thieves
“Violent”—carolesdaughter
“Let Me Down Slowly”—Alec Benjamin
“He Don’t Love Me”—Winona Oak
“Go Fuck Yourself”—Two Feet
“Lips On You”—Maroon 5
“Body”—SYML
“Feels”—WATTS, Khalid
“To Build A Home”—Cinematic Orchestra
“Splintered”—Aisha Badru
“Start A War”—Klergy & Valerie Broussard
Bad Dream
If you already read BAD DREAM separately, you can skip ahead to DANGEROUS TEMPTATION. If you’re new to Tiernan’s story, turn the page to start reading.
CHAPTER ONE
Bianca
There was noreason to suspect that my life would change that hot, southern night with the arrival of yet another man on my mother’s doorstep.
It started the same as any other Friday night in the Belcante household. My mother, Aida, was in her bathroom with her hair up in fat pink rollers doing her face in the reflection of the old-school Hollywood-style vanity we’d been able to salvage from our old house. Frank Sinatra crooned loudly from the rickety record player perched on the edge of her pink bathtub. I knew all the words to all his songs by heart, and I was sick of them.
As sick of her favorite love songs as I was sick of her countless rotation of lovers.
It had been exactly one month since she kicked the last one to the curb, but she was already dating a new man.
Even at forty-five years old, my mother was unusually striking. The combination of her deeply tanned olive-toned skin, a gift from her Italian father, with her pale cloud of curled blonde hair, and dark blue eyes was instantly arresting. And then there was her body. Curved like Venus in Botticelli’s famous painting, Aida Belcante had been dressing to highlight her lush form since she was just a girl and middle age had only perfected her style.
I sat beside the record player on the rim of the bathtub and watched her apply powder to her cheeks with a fluffy brush, wondering how many hours in her life she must have spent beautifying herself for men, but I was too lazy to do the math.