Page 97 of Finding Jack
I threw a look at him over my shoulder. I hadn’t. “No, I meant as…” I leaned closer and whispered loudly, “as a male dancer for bachelorette parties. He was the guest of honor for my sorority sister’s party a few months ago, and we just had a special connection. He gave me back one of my dollar bills I…you know…” I mimed tucking dollar bills, “at the end of the night with his phone number scrawled on it.”
“That’s not true, Marie.” I would have expected Jack’s tone to be the same one my dad used with my mom any time she tried to converse with him after more than two glasses of wine. Instead, Jack sounded like he was choking back laughter. “Excuse me, I think I need to take Emily here back to the clinic and adjust her meds.”
“I know it’s not true, but I can tell this woman is exactly what you need,” Marie said, handing me the box with a grin. “Keep him hopping, girl. It’s good for him.”
“I will,” I said around the truffle I’d already popped into my mouth. “Oh, dear heavens, I think I’m going to die.”
“Yeah, we have that effect on people. Guess it’ll be up to Jack to resuscitate you with some mouth—”
“Bye, Marie!” he called over his shoulder as he pushed me out of the door. “You happy with yourself?” he asked once we were on the sidewalk.
“Oh, yeah.” I finished off the truffle. “This is the first time I’ve ever felt like I balanced the scales after those Photoshops. We’re finally on even footing.”
He pulled me against him and wrapped his arms around me, resting them easily at my waist. “What are you talking about? You’ve had the upper hand since the start.”
“No way.” I plucked out another truffle and took a bite. “Caramel,” I said, my eyes closing. I savored it for another minute, but more than that, I gave myself over to the happiness of him holding me without any hesitation or worry about who might pass by and see. I opened them to find him staring at me, watching me, like he was assessing and diagnosing. “What?”
“Do you really not see it? That you’ve always been the one with all the power here?”
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry as his eyes bored into mine. “That doesn’t sound even a little bit correct. You were the one who set all the rules about what we could talk about, who decided what we did on our dates.”
“That’s because from the minute you made that joke about my man bun, I knew I was a goner. I was trying to put the brakes on an avalanche.”
My smile faded as he handed me the words, plain and true, no hiding. “What are we going to do?” I whispered.
He knew what I meant. I knew he did, but he deliberately misunderstood me and stepped back to take my hand. “We’ve got a few more businesses for you to embarrass me in.”
I let him misdirect. I didn’t want to have a conversation about what would happen between us after this weekend. I just wanted to be right here, right now, doing nothing and everything with Jack.
We wandered into a real estate office where the agent also sold handknit goods and used books. I left with a beanie for Ranée and a vintage edition of fairy tales. “I’ve been collecting these since I was a kid,” I said, showing him the watercolor illustrations. “You can tell by the colors that this is one of the ones where they sanitize all the endings and nothing too bad happens to anyone.”
“Do they make any other kind?”
“Sure,” but I didn’t want to talk about those, the ones where the heroes learned tragic lessons and the young beauties died too young. So I pulled him down the street to the next business. We popped into the grocery/bait shop and the post office. I checked to make sure Jack wasn’t on the FBI’s Most Wanted list posted on the bulletin board among the index cards filled with handwritten requests for people to come work the fields. But as we stepped out of the post office, the novelty was wearing off.
“Next business is the last business,” I declared.
He glanced at it. “Linda’s Beauty Parlor?”
“Yes,” I said, following his gaze. I hadn’t known that was next door, but the second I saw the sign, a plan formed in my mind. “It’s perfect.”
A woman with a shade of red hair someone in the beauty parlor had helped her achieve looked up when we walked in. “Hey, Doc. What can we do you for?”
He held up his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture and pointed at me. “Hey, Linda. I have no idea.”
“Do you guys offer manicures here?”
“Sure. Let me see if Cheryl is free to run over and do that for you. Otherwise we’ll have to make an appointment.”
“Oh, and can we get Jack a blowout?”
“Excuse me?” he said, looking alarmed.
“Wash and a blow dry,” I explained. “It’s about the best thing ever. Every long-haired person should have this done professionally once in a while.”
“That I can do,” Linda said. “Hang on.” She disappeared through an office door in the back for a couple of minutes before she returned and reported with a smile, “I called Cheryl. She’s free for your manicure. Come on back, Dr. Hazlett.”
She had just gotten him settled with a towel around his neck in front of the sole wash basin when the door opened and a woman dressed like a Thanksgiving place setting walked in. She wore her long gray hair in two braids, no makeup, and different layers of linen and cotton in shades of brown and orange. I thought maybe it was a tunic and skirt, but I wasn’t totally sure.
