23. Jonah #2
Shaking back his hair still, which was still damp from the shower he most certainly did need, he closed his eyes and hoped his sister was right. Also hoped Pepper was still in Destin and hadn’t hightailed it back to New Orleans.
Fact was, he and Atlas were gambling everything tonight.
Mavis was at the front desk in the lobby, with the same white hair and the same delighted face she had given him the last time he had been here.
“Well, hello, handsome,” she cooed—definitely talking to the baby in Jonah’s arms. “Everyone will be so happy to see you again. Margaret has finished a second hat and was devastated you weren’t here today. Go on in and join the fun!”
Yes! She was here.
Atlas thanked her with a raspberry that made her giggle as Jonah walked softly down the hall toward the music. Hearing a ballad from the fifties, he figured Pepper had finished with the waltzing and went back to the era the eighty-five-year-olds favored.
Someone with a baritone was crooning, “I only have eyes for you,” as he got closer, the sound of sneakers squeaking on tile and the buzz of older women chatting and laughing getting louder with each step.
He stopped just outside the door and stayed hidden, inching around the frame until he could see her.
Pepper was in the middle of the room in her black “leo,” as she called her skin-tight leggings and tank top, something pink and crocheted over her shoulders. That looked like a Margaret special.
He scanned the residents around the room, remembering some of the old and weathered faces, so many with light in their eyes for this beloved Saturday activity.
His heart dipped a little at the palpable loneliness they must feel…a room full of widows and widowers, doing their best to remember being teenagers in the fifties with a whole life ahead of them.
His gaze fell on a man in a bowtie. A woman in a floral dress and pink high heels that she was clearly smug about still being able to wear.
There was Margaret in her wheelchair, conducting with her knitting needle.
On her lap was something small the same color pink as the thing on Pepper’s shoulders.
For a long time, Jonah stood in the doorway and watched Pepper spin magic into lives that needed it so badly.
“Left foot, Angelo,” she said to an older man. “Then the right. There you go.” She twirled off, leaving Angelo to dance alone, wrapping her arms around another woman, taking the lead position. “Move with me, Rita. On the beat. That’s right.”
Rita beamed and threw a look at Pink Shoes. “Told you I could do it, Betsy!”
“You can do anything,” Pepper assured her, moving back to Angelo, giving one quick correction, gliding like a leaf on the air, light and wispy and so incredibly beautiful he could cry just looking at her.
Pepper Broussard was so not ordinary. She was the very definition of the word extraordinary.
She had been extraordinary the day he’d met her and handed over Atlas in a moment of panic, and she’d been extraordinary when she’d stepped in to help him get the internship by taking Atlas, and she’d been extraordinary when they’d fallen asleep after a hurricane.
She’d even been extraordinary in a driveway in the pink light telling him she was going to spare him a life she had decided he shouldn’t have to live. She was extraordinary right now leading someone she called Virgil through a turn he was a little too proud of.
And Jonah was not going to spend the rest of his life without her. Period.
The song ended and they all clapped. Pepper, a little breathless, walked to the side of the room and picked up her phone and tapped the screen.
“How about Smoke Gets in Your Eyes?” she called out. “Who loves The Platters?”
A few of them made enough noise that she chose the song and slow, melancholy notes filled the room from invisible speakers, somehow changing the vibe to something sad and sweet.
Every face in the place registered a memory—a lost love, a precious past, a dance they’d once had with a person long gone.
Couples formed—mostly two women—but Virgil was snagged by Pink Shoes and Angelo tapped Rita’s shoulder for the dance.
When Pepper’s back was to him, Jonah stepped into the room, holding Atlas in one arm, the other itching to get around her. Margaret, in the wheelchair, saw him first, her mouth opening. Instantly, he raised one finger to his lips.
She put her hand to her lips and her eyes danced, then she nudged the woman next to her, who gasped like Grandma Maggie when Clark Gable sauntered on to the screen.
Angelo looked over Rita’s shoulder and turned her to see Jonah walking toward Pepper. One by one, they all slowed to a stop and watched what they knew was going to be…something.
The most perfect movie climax ever imagined or…the biggest disaster Jonah ever faced. Something.
All the chatter stopped in the room as Jonah came up behind Pepper. He put his free arm around her, gently, from behind. Atlas made a soft squeal at the realization of who it was, reaching for her hair.
Pepper went totally and completely still except for an audible intake of breath.
He put his mouth next to her ear and whispered, “May we have this dance?”
She stayed frozen in place, then very, very slowly, let Jonah turn her around, dragging her gaze from Atlas’s face up to his.
Her whole expression was wary and happy and as sentimental as the music. “All three of us?” she asked on a whisper.
“We’re a package deal and…we miss you.”
She blinked at him, opening her mouth to say something but Atlas squirmed and leaned toward her making “Ma-ma-ma” sounds.
“I swear I didn’t pay him to say that,” Jonah said on a soft laugh. “But I would have.”
Her eyes flickered in surprise, but he drew her closer and held the three of them together to sway to the music.
“What…are you doing?” she asked haltingly.
“I believe this is called the airport scene.”
She frowned, confused.
“I’ve come to get my girl.”
Pepper started to laugh, but her smile faded. “Jonah, don’t—”
He frowned at her. “And you are going to dance and listen and…and then we’ll see. First, dance. Am I really that bad?”
“Yes,” she said. “On every level.”
He grinned and tried to move to the music, which probably looked as stupid as it felt. He didn’t care, not a bit. He was holding Pepper and Atlas and all the other dancers stepped away until they were alone in the middle of the activity room at Sunset Shores.
They danced until the crescendo of a three-minute song, then he guided the three of them toward Margaret and her cronies on the sidelines. Her lap was open.
“Atlas heard there’s a rumor of a new hat,” he said, slowing in front of her.
The woman picked up the tiny sweater-looking cap. “It was the only yarn I had.”
“Pink is his color.” Jonah eased the baby toward her. “Can you hold him while I persuade this woman to let go of all her reservations and fall as hard for me as I have for her?”
The old ladies hooted loud enough to please Atlas, who settled in on Margaret’s generous bosom like he belonged there.
Taking Pepper’s hand, he led her right back to the middle of the floor, the room filled with silence and the expectations of a very forgiving audience.
In fact, the residents formed, without coordinating, a loose half-circle. Mavis had come in from the front desk and was standing in the doorway with both hands pressed against her mouth.
Pepper shook her head, half-laughing, half-frightened. “Jonah—”
“Hush.”
He twirled her—badly. She went around once under his arm with the involuntary grace of a person who had been twirled by men who knew what they were doing, and she came back to him with a tentative smile.
“Seriously. What are you doing?”
“I’m dancing.”
“There’s no music.”
“I’m dancing around the fact that I don’t know what to say or how to say it.”
“Oh, please,” Angelo said. “Just tell her you love her and get on with it, son.”