Oh God. Now someone had seen me. There were witnesses. ‘It’s okay!’ I shouted up to him. ‘Never mind!’
‘This time of day,’ the old man continued, ‘he’ll be over at Bucky’s with his pop.’
I gaped up at him. ‘He’s in New Deal?’
‘Sure is. Saw him about an hour ago. You go down to Bucky’s if you want to find him – he’ll be there.’
‘Okay!’ I called. ‘Thank you!’ I was waving with both arms now. Soon I’d be doing a cartwheel.
The old man had his head half-pulled in when he remembered something. ‘You know where Bucky’s is, right?’
I froze. The man had a good point. ‘No. Where is it?’
‘Up the road, take a right. Look for the neon cowboy boot – you can’t miss it!’
Turns out, Bucky’s was right next to the general store. I’d got it right in the first place.
I sat in my car for a few minutes, heart thudding in time with the blinks of the neon cowboy boot above the door. There wasn’t any other sign, or windows you could see into, or any sign of life other than the faint clack of pool balls clipping each other on their way into the side pocket.
I took a deep breath. I braced myself. I got out of the car.
The first thing that hit me when I walked through the door was the sour fug of stale beer mixed with the sweet scent of cigar smoke. I guess the smoking ban didn’t apply to Bucky. The second thing that hit me was the wall of silence that descended as soon as my feet were over the threshold. It was so quiet, I could hear the man in the corner digesting the burger he’d eaten for lunch. The third thing, which I could only barely discern through the haze of smoke, was that Jackson wasn’t there.
My heart sank. The man in the general store, the old man in the window … they’d led me on this stupid wild goose chase. But really, I’d got myself lost. And now here I was, in an unfriendly bar in the middle of Nowhere, Texas, without so much as a hotel reservation for the night. I was starting to be grateful for the spacious back seat of my SUV-hybrid. I might be sleeping in it that night.
I heard his laugh first. Deep, full-throated, inviting everyone along for the ride. A door in the back of the bar swung open and out walked Jackson, followed by an older, more sinewy version of Jackson. His father, presumably. My knees almost gave out.
He saw me straight away, presumably because he was wondering what everyone was staring at. Our eyes locked and I saw his mouth move. ‘What in the world …’ I tried to move towards him, to close the distance between us, but my feet were rooted to the spot. So he came to me.
Which, considering I’d already traveled 4,894 miles, seemed fair.
‘Jenny.’ It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a statement. It was as though he was reassuring himself that his eyes weren’t fooling him. That I was real.
I pulled out the envelope and handed it to him. ‘All signed,’ I said. ‘We’re officially divorced.’
His eyes trailed down to the envelope and then back up to mine. ‘You came all the way to New Deal to give me these? We do have a post office here, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But there was something else. A question I wanted to ask.’
‘Is that right?’ He took a step towards me, and the familiar smell of him cut through the smoke. ‘Shoot.’
‘Do you want to go out sometime?’
He took another step towards me. I could feel the heat of him now, sense the magnetic pull of it. ‘I thought you were engaged.’
‘Not engaged,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Not engaged or married.’
‘So, you’re saying you’re free?’ Another step closer. His hand brushed against mine and a thrill ran through me.
‘As a bird,’ I murmured. ‘So I thought we could get a coffee or something. Talk.’
He tipped his chin down and frowned. ‘I thought you weren’t all that keen on talking. I waited on that bridge for three hours in the hope of talking to you.’
‘I – I’m sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘I thought I knew what I wanted – Christopher, marriage, the whole thing – but then you turned up and …’ I shook my head. ‘I was scared.’
Silence stretched between us. The whole bar had gone quiet except for the faint twang of a country song on the jukebox, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on us. ‘I’m sorry.’ I felt the hot flush of embarrassment run up my neck. ‘God, I don’t know what I was thinking, turning up here like this. You must think I’m nuts. And you’d be right! It was crazy of me, really. I just thought, maybe, if we could talk for a little while, if I could make you understand …’
He brought a hand to my face, traced my lips with his thumb. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said gruffly, ‘I could talk to you for the rest of my life.’
He leaned down and touched his mouth to mine, and we melted into a kiss.
‘Jenny,’ he grinned when we finally broke apart, ‘allow me to introduce you to the good people of New Deal.’ He threw an arm around me and pulled me towards him. ‘Good people of New Deal,’ he announced, turning to address the room, ‘this is Jenny Sparrow, my ex-wife, and the woman I one day hope to marry.’
The room burst into raucous applause. ‘Bucky,’ Jackson shouted, ‘line them up! We’ve got some celebrating to do.’
Six Months Later
‘Jenny, are you going to get dressed or what?’
I checked the time: 6.00. ‘Shit!’ The dinner started in forty-five minutes, and I was definitely not ready. I scooted off the hotel bed and started frantically pulling a dress over my hips while attempting to simultaneously apply lipstick.
Jackson was leaning against the mini-bar, a wry smile playing on his lips as he watched me try to wrestle my hair into something vaguely resembling a French twist. After two failed attempts, I gave up, tipped my head upside-down, and sprayed my roots with an ungodly amount of hairspray.
‘Do I look like a member of Whitesnake?’ I asked as I studied my reflection in the mirror.
Jackson appeared behind me and slid his hands around my waist. ‘Nah … though you do look a little like the woman in the “Here I Go Again” video, which is nicely fulfilling a teenage fantasy of mine.’
I whacked him on the arm. ‘You were eight when that video came out.’
He ducked out of reach and grinned. ‘What can I say? I’m an old soul. Anyway,’ he said, leaning in for a kiss, ‘you look gorgeous. The prettiest maid of honour I’ve ever seen.’
‘Do you think I’m a matron of honour now? Since I’m a divorcee?’
‘Say that word again,’ he said, pulling me towards him.
‘Which one? Matron?’
‘No. The other one.’
‘Divorcee?’
He kissed my collarbone and then moved up my neck. ‘Man, you make that word sound sexy.’ I felt his hands wander up towards the zipper of my dress. I could smell his cologne, something woodsy and crisp, and underneath it, the smell of his skin. I felt myself weakening. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if we were ten minutes late … He nipped my earlobe with his teeth. Or twenty.
‘Stop!’ I forced myself to pull away. ‘We can’t be late – I’m giving a speech!’
He sighed. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘but I expect you to re-enact that video tonight when we get back here.’
I checked my teeth in the mirror for lipstick. ‘Doesn’t that involve cartwheeling across two Rolls Royces?’ I tossed over my shoulder.
‘I’m pretty sure I saw a Dodge and a Honda parked outside. What do you say?’
I pulled a face. ‘Not quite the same effect.’
‘No imagination,’ he sighed. ‘That’s your problem. Shall we?’ He offered me his elbow and I slid my hand through it.
‘Let’s.’
The venue was predictably bonkers. Usually, rehearsal dinners took place in staid restaurants with linen tablecloths and guttering candles. Isla had chosen an enormous concrete warehouse space in the depths of Queens. The theme, of course, was Up All Night.
I had already laid out a pair
of Advil and a glass of water on the bedside table back at the hotel.
The cab pulled up and the cabbie shook his head. ‘If you think I’m coming back here, you’re nuts,’ he called as he sped off into the night.
Wait, I should probably explain. Yes, Isla was getting married. No, I couldn’t believe it.
She’d met him four months ago at an underground S&M club in the Meatpacking District. ‘It was great, babe,’ she’d said when she called the next morning (or, more accurately, the next afternoon, which is when she woke up). ‘This guy in a mask came up to me and started spanking me with this bamboo cane.’
‘That sounds awful!’
‘No, it was totally hot. And I could tell by the way he was spanking me that he was really caring. You know?’
Not really, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were madly, insanely in love and had spent the past four months shacking up in his TriBeca loft. And now they were getting married.
Isla let out a scream when she spotted us walk through the door. ‘You’re here!’ she cried as she launched herself at the two of us. She was, of course, wearing a silver bodysuit, stilettos and body glitter. ‘You look amazing,’ she said as she squeezed me tightly in her arms. ‘Like one of those video babes from the 80s.’
I shot Jackson a knowing glance, and he laughed. ‘And you!’ Isla said, turning her attention on him. ‘You look like a sexy urban cowboy!’ It was true, he did. He was wearing his battered old cowboy boots, with a dark, slim-cut suit, and one of those bolero ties I’d always made fun of until he put one on, at which point I found it insanely attractive. But then again, I found pretty much everything he put on insanely attractive. It was convenient, that.
‘So,’ I said, ‘how’s it going?’
‘Pretty good,’ Isla beamed. ‘I mean, the space is amazing, and we have the DJ until 6 a.m., and enough MDMA to keep everyone happy until Tuesday.’
I spotted her parents huddled in a corner, her mother wearing a pink feather boa and her father sporting a jaunty top hat. Isla followed my gaze and laughed. ‘Obviously all family members have been told that this thing ends promptly at 10.30,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s a relief. I really didn’t want your father coming up to me and stroking me with a feather duster.’
Isla laughed. ‘I can’t guarantee that won’t happen, but I can promise you it won’t be drug-related. Are you ready for the speech?’
I nodded nervously. Jackson threw a protective arm around me and pulled me towards him. ‘She’s been practising like a lunatic,’ he said. ‘She didn’t want to leave anything to chance.’
Isla reached out and squeezed my hand. ‘Some things never change. I’ve just got to check on the caterer – you guys go get yourselves a drink and mingle, okay? When I get back, I want to hear all about San Francisco.’
Jackson and I had moved to San Francisco a few months ago. After I’d surprised him in New Deal, we agreed that we needed to at least be on the same continent if we were going to make things work. I’d always liked the idea of living on the West Coast – even though it hadn’t been part of my master plan – and the insurance company in London had an office there and agreed to a transfer. For Jackson, it was the perfect base to get to LA or Vancouver for work, so we found a pair of apartments and signed the leases.
That’s right, two separate apartments. We were taking things slow this time. Letting things happen when they happened. It felt good to let go of a timescale. It felt right.
Jackson fetched two glasses of bourbon from the bar and offered one to me. Across the room, I watched Isla wrap her arms around her fiancé and reach up on her toes to kiss him. They glowed with happiness.
We raised our glasses in a toast.
‘To happy endings,’ Jackson said, clinking his glass to mine.
‘To happy endings,’ I said, ‘whatever road it takes to get there.’
Acknowledgements
This book wouldn’t have been possible without the help of three people: Felicity Blunt, my agent and friend, who lobbed ideas at me fast ball-style, and fought my corner when I finally caught one; Simon Robertson, my husband, who listened patiently, offered advice, and took me to the pub when all else failed; and Katie Cunningham, my sister from another mother, who encouraged me to keep digging the clay and supplied me with a constant stream of dog photos as a distraction. You guys are great.
Thanks to Tilda McDonald, my editor at Michael Joseph, for her feedback and guidance, and to Maxine Hitchcock and the whole team at Penguin for their sterling work.
Finally, thanks to my family, both the Pimentels and the Robertsons, for their love and support. I’m a lucky gal to have you all in my life.
THE BEGINNING
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First published in Great Britain in Penguin Books 2017
Text copyright © Melissa Pimentel, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978–0–718–18645–6
Jenny Sparrow Knows the Future Page 29
