Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
ROB
What the hell is Jonah doing here?
Wait a minute…
He’s obviously struck out with Hannah and Briar. Is he here to make a play on GingerBeerBabe?
What a total douche.
The old rage fills me, more self-righteous in flavor, because it’s not just for myself this time.
“It’s a free country, Jonah . I have every right to be here,” Hannah tells him as I stop dead. Sophie runs into my back and then wraps her arms around my middle to avoid falling over.
Sensation strums through me as her hands grip my sides, her chest pressed to my back. The heat of her radiates through my T-shirt.
Does she think a penny foretold or did this?
She feels small, and maybe that’s why I’m suddenly consumed by protectiveness. I want to turn around, sweep her up into my arms, and carry her away from this mess. But I don’t want to help her avoid the ugly things in life. Like I said, it’s the ugly parts that make the biggest impression. The bad luck pennies. The sadness. The wild grief and anger. Wipe those away, and what do you have left?
A fake smile, probably.
Jonah’s back is to us, but he’ll see us before long. Especially since Hannah is going to give us away with her overly dramatic get the hell out of here eyes.
“Why are you here with him ?” Jonah asks, nodding toward Otis, who’s sitting on his stool as if frozen, nursing his drink.
“We’re on a date, you pompous prick,” Hannah snaps. “I haven’t been sitting at home crying over you. Otis is a real man. He realizes that a tongue should be used sparingly and women don’t enjoy being slobbered on.”
Otis drops the ginger beer he’d had halfway to his mouth. It was mostly empty, but his eyes shift into panic mode as the liquid spreads across the bar, and he pulls a tissue of dubious cleanliness out of his pocket to sop it up. Everyone’s watching him, and he must feel it, because his cheeks are red.
Hannah sniffs primly “Now, if you don’t mind, we’re going home to make sweet, passionate love to each other.”
Otis’s face gets redder as Jonah shakes his head in disbelief. “No way. There’s no way you randomly met this kid. Or that you wanted to date him. Have you been stalking my fiancée?”
Yup, that settles it. I have to get Sophie out of here, now. I start to turn, ready to hustle her out, when she surprises the hell out of me by pushing past me, her hands pressing to my chest to both reassure me and move me out of the way.
She was tipsy earlier, but there’s no sign of it now as she stalks toward Jonah in her wedding dress.
It’s the only time he’ll ever get to see her wear it, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take pleasure from that, because she is a fucking sight to see. As she slips past me, I take in the resolve burning in her big blue eyes and the firm line of her mouth. She’s a force of nature barreling toward Jonah, who still doesn’t sense her.
Hannah’s eyes are widening, but a pleased smile forms on her mouth as she watches Sophie coming.
“This woman’s using you to get to Sophie,” Jonah says, turning toward Otis on his stool.
“That’s okay,” Otis tells him. “I’m content with being used. More women can use me if they like.” He looks around almost hopefully.
Just then, Sophie reaches Jonah and taps him on the shoulder as officiously as a Karen with a complaint.
He turns and lays eyes on her. I’m only about ten feet behind her, but he doesn’t seem to notice me.
How could he?
He’s staring at his ex-fiancée, who looks fine as hell in the dress she was supposed to marry him in. A sight like that would be enough to break most men. I’m not surprised when his mouth gapes open like a fish’s, gasping for air. Someone pushes past me to make their way to the bar, business continuing as usual despite the entertaining scene playing out.
I consider moving in and intervening and decide I’ll only do it if Sophie needs me. It’s important for her to have this moment. To take her stand. To accept the parts of her that aren’t as soft and accommodating as the Sophie I nicknamed Pollyanna.
“Sophie,” Jonah finally manages. “Your dress…”
The look on his face…
I’m not too proud to admit I’m more tempted to drink his rage than I am by any form of alcohol.
“I’m not wearing it for you,” she says, holding herself stiffly upright. “I paid for this dress, and I love it. I’m wearing it for me. Because I didn’t want to hide it away in a drawer forever as if I’d done something to be ashamed of. And Hannah is here because we’ve become friends. Briar too. If anyone’s a stalker, it’s you . You tracked me down with your Find My Friend app, didn’t you?”
Or maybe my GingerBeerBabe theory is right. There’s no way of knowing, and he certainly isn’t going to be honest about it.
It only takes him half a second to recover. His gaze darts back to Hannah, who gives him a wave that would make Queen Elizabeth proud. Swearing, he shifts his gaze to Sophie. “She’s just using you to get to me.”
Hannah snorts. “Yeah, ego much?”
His eyes alight on me, widening in surprise and recognition, just as a little girl comes running out of the restroom with one of the Jonah flyers crumpled in her hand. “Mommy, what’s an STD?” she asks as she hurries over to a woman seated with a group of other women in some armchairs arranged beside the bar. “Can I have one?”
The woman’s eyes widen in horror, Hannah’s gleam with glee, and Jonah, gaping at me, demands, “What are you doing here?”
I give him one of those Queen of England waves that Hannah pulled off. It feels good. Giving him the finger would feel better, but there’s that kid to think about.
“I’ve decided to make friends too,” I say with a smirk that’ll hopefully piss him off further. “Looks like it’s going better for me, and for Otis, than for you, bud.”
He clearly would like nothing better than to storm toward me and list off threats, or possibly choke me, but the kid’s mother stands and points at him. Her mouth forms an “O” like one of the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers .
“That man’s a pervert!” she shouts, shaking the crumpled flyer.
Honest-to-God laughter spouts out of me, because it’s so ridiculous, and also because I like this expression on my brother’s face.
“What?” Jonah asks in confusion as a large, burly man with a shaved head approaches us from the back of the tasting room.
“What seems to be the problem, ma’am?” he asks the woman, before catching sight of Jonah. “You,” he says in distaste. “You’re not supposed to come around here anymore.”
“Is this why?” the woman asks, waving the flyer. She covers her daughter’s ears. “He’s a p-e-r-v-e-r-t.” I’m not sure why she bothered covering the kid’s ears and spelling it out, especially since she’s already said it out loud, but hey, maybe she’s had some drinks herself. The other women in her party get to their feet, all of them looking aggrieved, like they’d enjoy taking their pound of flesh too.
“He’s a what?” the bald guy says, scratching his head.
“He’s a pervert,” she says more loudly. “He…”
She trails off, clearly confused, just as Hannah slides off of her stool and grabs Otis’s hand to get him up. She gestures furiously for Sophie and me to join them, but Sophie seems to have become a statue, staring fixedly at the man she almost married. A pang of fierce emotion unleashes inside of me.
I don’t like that he hurt her. I like it even less that she still has the ability to be hurt by him. I press my hand to the small of her back and urge her in Hannah’s direction as the bald guy gets closer, Jonah lifting his hands out, palms up.
“Hey,” Jonah says, “no big deal. It was all a misunderstanding.” He gives the woman a confused glance. His gaze narrows when he sees what’s on the flyer. “Hannah did this,” he barks heatedly, looking over at her as she leaves through the front, giving him a toodles wave. “She did it, she?—”
I push past him with Sophie. He makes a grab at her, and a sound like a growl rumbles out of me as I lift her up and set her down out of his reach. I don’t fully understand my reaction. All I know is that I won’t let him touch her. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if he laid a single finger on her.
The big guy grabs Jonah by the arm. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
Good for them. I hope it takes hours.
Sophie gives me a surprised look over her shoulder, and I wonder if I crossed a line, touching her like that. But then she reaches back for me, and I take her hand. It’s more of a we’re in this together gesture than anything romantic, but I feel a surge of energy when she touches me. Enough to get us out of there quickly, even as I feel my brother staring daggers at my back. Swearing at me.
It’s only when we get outside, where Hannah is laughing, doubled over, and Otis still looks like a shell-shocked zoo animal, that I realize I’m probably in for it. Jonah hated me before all of this. Now I’ve punched him in the face and participated in his public humiliation. No way he’s going to let that go.
Still, at the moment, it’s hard to care. I laugh along with Hannah, who declares, very seriously, that she’s going to pee her pants.
“We should go,” Sophie says, casting a worried glance at the door. Is she worried for him? Or about what he might do?
She knows him well enough to understand he’s a man who likes paying his debts back with interest.
“Yeah, we should,” I say. Our eyes meet, and I feel a surge of…
Magic , Dottie would call it. The night does feel magical. Like the air is thick with possibility. It’s not often I have a night like this. A lot of the time, I get bogged down in sadness and regret, but right now I feel like a helium balloon whose string has been cut.
On impulse, I reach for Sophie’s hand and squeeze it on the way to the car. Her fingers wrap around mine, her hand soft but strong. “You were something else back there,” I say.
Amusement warms her gaze, her blue eyes sparkling. She’s beautiful like this. It’s okay to think it, because it’s true, and also because I don’t intend to do anything about it. “I certainly wasn’t a Pollyanna.”
“The look on his face…” Hannah says between wheezes.
We get to the car and all pile in, me behind the wheel.
As I’m driving out of the lot, I see Jonah coming out the front door, a look of white-hot rage on his face.
“Soooo,” Otis says from the back seat. I glance in the rearview and see he’s looking at Hannah. “Did you just ask me out? Because I have to respectfully decline. I realize that Briar may never see me the way I see her, but my heart is spoken for, man.”
She shoves his arm fondly.
“One drop-off or multiple?” I ask as we approach Sophie’s place.
“One,” Hannah says. Glancing at Otis, she says, “Don’t worry, Otis, I don’t have designs on you, but if this isn’t an occasion to stay up all night watching rom-coms and drinking, I don’t know what is.”
She leans forward in her seat. “Hey, did you guys catch what the bouncer dude said before everything went to hell? He said Jonah isn’t welcome around there anymore. Do you think it’s because of GingerBeerBabe?”
“Huh, probably,” I say. “Or he just pissed them off by being himself.”
“I think it does have something to do with her,” Sophie contributes with a sigh. “But we may never know what.”
“We should have thrown a handful of flyers through the door on our way out.”
“But then we probably wouldn’t be welcomed back,” I say, “and Sophie and I like wishing on stars in the back, don’t we, Soph?”
She gives me an exasperated look that’s at least partially fond. I’ll take it.
I park in the driveway, feeling a pulse of regret that the night’s over. Mind, I don’t want to sit in front of rom-coms all night and watch these guys get drunk, but I was a part of something, and now I’m on the outside. That feeling of exclusion is an old one, baked into my bones.
Before they pile out, I say, “That was fun. We should do it again sometime.”
Hannah laughs and starts to leave the car, but I ask her for some of the Jonah flyers first, and she comes through, bless her. Otis follows her out, mumbling to himself, but Sophie turns in her seat and grins at me. “Thank you, Rob. I’m sorry about earlier. I…you bring it out in me.”
I don’t know what possesses me, but I say, “I’m glad. And thank you for letting me stay. Dottie’s right, I’ll always remember it.”
She smiles and then leans forward and presses her lips to my cheek. Shock roils through me at the press of her warm mouth to my face, her lips soft and giving. Generous. I’m hit with a whiff of the scent she always wears, gardenias. I used to think it smelled like old ladies, and it was something I’d smile to myself about after my visits with the happy couple, but now it fills me with warm affection.
I watch, still in shock, as she walks away, then look in the mirror and see the red imprint of her mouth on my cheek. It’s like she branded me. The weight of the penny is still there in my pocket—almost nothing but not quite.
My hands grip the wheel, but I can’t squeeze it hard enough to shake the feeling that what just happened will change my life.