Chapter 12
You found man. Is soul mate. Love of life.
Jenna turned into JT’s Roadhouse, the sole social hub for all of Hope Falls, and still could not get the conversation she’d had with Yaya on Saturday morning out of her head. She truly hoped the woman hadn’t put a curse on her. Or was it a blessing? At this point she was leaning toward curse.
A man she’d already met? The only man from her past she had any interest in was one-night-stand man, and that wasn’t going to happen.
It was a year and a half later, and she was still fiending for him. Her behavior with him reminded her of a person she promised herself she would never be. The person who raised her.
If not him, who? She had love for Asher, but he was happily married and she’d never actually been in love with him, just like she doubted he’d ever been in love with her. He hadn’t even fought for her when she said she was leaving. He hadn’t even been in their marriage the last four years.
There was no way in hell she was running things back with James. No way. So that left absolutely no one. Her romantic history was a measly three men.
“Yaya’s not a psychic,” Jenna reminded herself aloud as she parked. “She doesn’t have mystical powers, just a thick Greek accent and a very strong personality.”
She cut the engine and glanced in the mirror.
Besides her signature Velvet Teddy MAC lipstick, she didn’t have a drop of makeup on.
Part of her wished she’d put some effort into her appearance, another part of her was glad she hadn’t.
If she had, there was a better chance that men would view it as an invitation to approach, and that was the last thing she wanted.
It was sad that any effort she put in was viewed by the opposite sex as being on display for the male gaze, at least that was Blake’s take on things.
Jenna learned about the ‘male gaze’ pretty much overnight when she went from a training bra to a C cup a month before she turned thirteen.
It was a harsh reality and one she’d had to navigate without the guidance of her mother, who wanted her to lean into the attention to get everything she could out of it.
Instead, Jenna had done everything she could to disguise the changes in her body when she got home from school.
It bothered Jenna then, but now, as an adult and mother of a teenage girl, it sickened her.
Jenna used to wonder what her mom would have been like if she weren’t an addict, if she hadn’t had always needed her next fix either from a man or a substance or a shopping trip or a vacation, how different would her life have been…
As she stepped out into the crisp winter night, she shook off that thought, pulled her jacket tighter, and headed into trivia night.
They’d stumbled upon a the pub quiz. Robbie and Kiki, who worked at her shop, and Tiana, who’d moved to town around the same time she had and opened up a yoga studio downtown, went out for a girl’s night, and it happened to be trivia going on.
They signed up for fun and placed third.
Since then, it has become a regular thing.
Jenna was so close to not coming tonight, she’d felt that out of sorts.
She’d forced herself to because it would be her last trivia night.
She wasn’t going to let Yaya’s woo-woo prediction or her pathetic obsession steal her final Trivia Night.
Especially since they’d yet to dethrone The Quizney Princesses, the reigning champions.
She walked in and glanced around the bar.
It was packed. All the usual suspects were there, but she didn’t see any of her teammates.
It was strange, because typically, Robbie and Kiki were the first to arrive.
Jenna checked her phone to make sure she hadn’t received any messages cancelling tonight’s festivities.
There were none. Kiki had the day off, but Robbie had been in.
They lived together, were roommates, but she hadn’t heard anything from either of them.
JT’s Roadhouse was an institution in Hope Falls.
If Main Street had a beating heart, JT’s was the left ventricle, pumping light, noise, and whiskey through the town.
The blueprint for every “authentic” small-town mountain bar Jenna had ever seen in a movie or TV show, a fever dream of burnished wood, neon beer signs, and the smell of fried food clinging to every surface like an existential truth.
It was a barn-sized rectangle on the edge of the highway, a place where the parking lot filled with mud-streaked trucks and ancient sedans even on weeknights, where the air always vibrated with the echo of last night’s karaoke and the low hum of chronic heartbreak.
Jenna paused inside the vestibule, letting the wave of warmth and sound roll over her, the heated rush of old jokes and half-fueled arguments, the clang of pool balls, and arguing with someone about the Niners’ playoff chances.
There were several couples on the dance floor enjoying Niall Horan’s “Slow Hands” playing from the juke box that lined the back wall.
The dining tables were crowded with trivia teams, some in coordinated outfits, with themes ranging from matching bowling shirts, tiaras and boas, to Inspector Gadget cosplay looks.
Her team was not that organized, which was nice since she was going to be quitting and would have felt guilty if anyone had invested money or time into it and then she let them down.
Without much else to do but wait, she signed in her team, grabbed a table, shrugged out of her jacket, and let herself slouch, feeling the tension in her shoulders start to uncoil, onto a chair.
The server tonight was Libby, a sweet college student with the face of an angel, purple-tipped hair, an eyebrow and lip piercing, and an edge that told everyone she came in contact with she would just as easily stab you with a fork as serve you if you crossed her.
Jenna loved that energy. She wished she’d been born with more of it, then she might have been able to pass it down to Blake.
Jenna ordered a Dr. Pepper a large order of sweet potato fries and continued to go through the mental Rolodex of every man she’d ever met from her past to try and suss out which one was her soul mate because what if Yaya was psychic?
She knew she should let it go, but that conversation was the most action her personal life had gotten in the past eighteen months.
As she waited for her order and for her team to arrive, her phone vibrated. She glanced down, sure it was going to be Tiana, Robbie, or Kiki cancelling, and saw a message from Blake.
Every time she got a call or message from her, she couldn’t help but smile.
Her daughter randomly changed her contact in her phone one day when she asked to borrow it to look up directions to where a boutique they were going to in Sacramento was because her phone was “dead.” When they got to said boutique, and Jenna saw that she’d changed her contact from Blake to Peanut (BDITW), she knew what Peanut was, that’s what she always called her, but she asked what the initialism stood for.
Blake looked at her like it was obvious and said, “Best Daughter in the World.”
Of course, why hadn’t she thought of that?
Jenna then asked her daughter what she was saved under in her phone, and Blake quickly showed her, on her phone, that was not dead after all. She was saved as Wonder Woman (BMITW), and because Blake knew how much Jenna hated photos of herself, her icon was Wonder Woman.
Having a teenage daughter was like being strapped to a rocket-boosted emotional roller coaster with no brakes.
In the span of an hour Jenna could be accused of ruining her daughter’s life and, within less time than it took to do a load of laundry, could be credited with saving the world.
It was difficult not to get whiplash from the constant flip-flopping.
Peanut (BDITW)
mom where is my charger?! I left it on the counter!!!
Jenna sighed. Whenever she started a text with mom, she knew she was in trouble. And three exclamation points was an accusation that she had moved her daughter’s charger. Which she had, but only out of necessity.
Jenna quickly replied.
Wonder Woman (BMITW)
you left your charger in your gym bag. again. I had to unravel it from your dirty clothes so it didn’t get washed. again. it’s above the dryer.
About thirty seconds later Jenna got another text.
Peanut (BDITW)
tysm ly
Thank you so much, love you, was not exactly sorry for accusing you of moving my charger, but Jenna would take it. She messaged back to her daughter that she loved her more and waited.
And waited. Once the food and her drink arrived and none of her team had, she sent out a group text asking where everyone was.
Within fifteen seconds she got a text back from Tiana saying she was on her way.
She took a drink of her Dr. Pepper and ate a few sweet potato fries when she spotted Shelby Dorsey getting accosted in a darkened corner of the hallway, that only she had the angle to see from her seat, by her husband, Levi, who owned the bar.
He couldn’t keep his hands off of her, he was grinding up on her and grabbing her ass like he was at a ’90s middle school dance and a Jodeci song just started playing.
Shelby was the Trivia Night MC, and although Jenna couldn’t hear them or read lips, she would put money on the current situation being Levi trying to talk Shelby into going in the office for a quickie and her telling him no, that she needed to get ready for the Trivia Night.
Oh boy, he was really putting in work. Jenna could see he was wearing her down. The way his hands were roaming her back, he was nuzzling her neck. Shelby was shaking her head no, but the look in her eye was saying yes.