Chapter 20
Jenna felt like she was living in the Twilight Zone.
Usually Fridays were busy days in the salon, but because of the gala the night before, it was dead.
Everyone must have had a really good time last night.
She’d had six cancellations so far, including her favorite client. Yaya missed her standing appointment.
She’d been both dreading and looking forward to seeing her Greek fortune teller.
She was feeling very much at loose ends, and whenever that was the case, just being in Yaya’s presence made her feel better.
She was her personal equivalent of Cher’s “snap out of it” slap.
Nothing ever seemed as bad after a few minutes around Yaya.
And right now, Jenna was feeling very overwhelmed.
After telling Deacon there was no us, the night before, he left without saying a word. She thought that was it. Stick a fork in it. Done. Over.
She waited for a call to pick Blake up, like they’d planned. But instead, he’d used the driver he hired for her to take her daughter home, so she hadn’t had to go out again, because of course he did.
Blake arrived home fifteen minutes later, very amped about everything that had happened at the gala, they debriefed until about ten-thirty and then Jenna insisted they go to bed.
She’d tried to sleep but she couldn’t shut off her brain.
At eleven thirty she got a text from Deacon.
It was one instruction. One very simple instruction.
Deacon
go shut your bedroom door and lock it
At first, she’d been so shocked, she’d just stared at the message.
But then, sixty seconds later, another instruction came in, this one telling her to remove a piece of clothing, and she found herself complying.
Sixty seconds, another instruction. Thirty minutes and thirty texts later, she’d had one very quiet, very hot, orgasm, and the final text read now go to sleep, and the crazy thing was, she did.
She woke up to a text that morning at six a.m. with instructions waiting for what she needed to do in the shower, not only what to do but also what to think about while she was doing the things he told her to do. She’d followed those instructions as well.
As she sat alone in her salon scrolling through her sexts, she knew she should delete them. The problem was, as she read them, it was like he was there with her. She could hear his voice in her ear, she could feel his hands on her.
Maybe they didn’t have to be together/together to have a secret sexting relationship. Could she have a satisfying sext-a-tionship? Was that a thing? Would he be down for that?
A bell dinged, intruding into her fantasy.
Jenna’s eyes flew up, and so did the phone.
She saw her bestie Tiana walking towards her as her phone tumbled in slow motion in an arch away from her.
She scrambled to catch it as Tiana lifted her hand defensively, trying to avoid being beamed in the face with Jenna’s iPhone.
Her bestie’s George Kittle moves served to block her face as well as intercept Jenna’s phone.
Oh no, no, no, no, no. Tiana absolutely could not see just how high Jenna’s freak flag flew. The second Tiana’s fingers wrapped around the device, Jenna snatched it away faster than she could say Hot Potato.
“Sorry,” Jenna apologized automatically, not exactly sure what she was expressing remorse for.
Tiana looked confused, which was totally understandable. “Oh, it’s okay. What was—who was that?”
“Nothing,” Jenna lied. “It’s just my um…financials.”
Financials? Why would Jenna care if Tiana saw her financials? Jenna had actually asked Tiana to look at her financials before. This is what being dickmotized did to her. It made her dumb.
“I was looking for you to say goodbye last night, but I couldn’t find you,” she lied. Again. Why did she keep lying?!
Tiana looked equally guilty as she fumbled out a stuttered, “Oh, yeah, I had to, um… I left.”
Okay, good. Jenna could work with this. It was Niko’s fundraiser, so hearing that Tiana left was something she could work with.
“You left?”
“Yeah.”
Clearly, Tiana didn’t know about the whole Jim Vargas of it all—which Jenna now knew was his name because Blake, Rayna, and Angel found out who he was, and his company and were boycotting him—or she would have said something by now, and she was stumbling over words, so she must be hiding something, too. This was good.
“I was just going to ask what happened last night. You looked, I don’t know…stressed. Upset.”
Shit, maybe she did know. “Last night?”
"I saw you in the hall with Deac—”
“Oh, no! That was, um…” If Tiana saw the videos, she would want to talk about Deacon’s expression of murder and ask what was going on between them, and she’d be able to tell if Jenna was lying.
“That was a misunderstanding.” Not wanting the focus on her, she played a conversation Uno Reverse card.
“What about you? Did you talk to Niko? You sat with him, right?” She’d seen her bestie at Niko’s table seated beside him.
“We did more than talk,” Tiana admitted.
Thank you, Kevin Williamson. Any good plot twist in life she attributed to Kevin Williamson, writer/creator of the best comfort show on earth, Dawson’s Creek.
“I like the sound of that.” Jenna figured if she got her friend talking about her life, they could skip whatever freaky textual Fifty Shades shit she was contemplating.
She checked her watch, hopped off the stool, rushed to the front door, locked it, and turned the Back in Ten sign.
“I have fifteen minutes before Eleanor comes in for root touchups.” She hooked her arm through Tiana’s, dragging her into the back breakroom and flopping down onto the loveseat. “Tell me everything.”
Tiana took a deep breath and looked like she was about to throw up. “Niko told me he loved me last night.”
Jenna wanted to stand up and do a backflip.
She loved Tiana. There weren’t many people she knew who had childhood’s harder than hers, but Tiana’s was.
And now to have Niko Costas, who, despite being wealthy, was a very good man, declare his love for her, Jenna wanted to cry, throw a party, and declare today a national holiday.
“Tell me everything. I want every last detail. Don’t leave anything out. ”
Tiana got a very strange expression on her face, then said simply, “Basically he just said that he loved me, that he wanted to grow old with me and have grandbabies.”
Jenna placed both hands on her stomach. “I think my ovaries are aching.”
“Do you want to have more kids?” Tiana asked.
Flashes of Blake, Tabitha, Deacon, her, and a baby played in her mind like a movie. Holidays, birthdays, dinners, school runs, playing at the park. It was a lifetime in an instant. She blinked, and it was gone.
“No.” Jenna was not going to allow herself to indulge in fantasies. She held her arms up and crossed her forearms in the shape of an X to ward off any pregnancy fairies and told her friend, “No deflecting allowed.”
“Fine, okay, so he told me all that, that was at the fundraiser—”
“At the fundraiser?!” Niko was declaring his love for her at the fundraiser?
“Yes.”
“Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have left early.” The one time Jenna played hooky and she missed her friend, her best friend in Hope Falls getting love declared,
“And then when we got home—”
“Wait!” Jenna raised her hand. “Did you say it back?”
“No.”
“Got it, you lied.” Jenna took out a pretend notepad and pretended to write. Jenna wasn’t the only one with suppressed issues. It was probably why the two of them got along so well. “Lied. Noted.”
“I didn’t lie,” Tiana defended herself.
“By omission, but it’s still a lie,” Jenna stated flatly.
Tiana was so in love with Niko Costas it was ridiculous. She was just in denial. It was painfully obvious. Another thing they had in common, but at least she was self-aware enough to know she was in denial.
“Anyway, when we got home, he told me that he’d spoken to Pops about me.”
“Oh, okay.”
Tiana grew up in foster homes, but she was close to Pops, a man who ran a liquor store nearby.
He wasn’t technically family, but he was the only family she had.
She was abandoned as a baby, so she never knew any blood relatives.
He was her family. The fact that Niko spoke to him meant he was serious about Tiana.
“I don’t know the entire conversation, but he did say that Pops showed him pictures I used to draw.”
Jenna’s face scrunched up. “Pictures you used to draw?”
“Yeah, there was this bridge by my first group home, and the day I arrived there I saw someone get engaged. I thought it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. So I used to draw that all the time, for years. I always thought that was my gold standard for my happily ever after.”
“Why did he show those to Niko?” Jenna was gently trying to prepare Tiana for the fact that Niko was clearly going to propose, but she could see her friend was not getting it.
“I think Pops thinks that I’m closed off because of Brock, and he wanted Niko to know that I used to believe in love or something, I don’t know.
I was a kid. That’s not real. It’s a fairy tale.
He also said that Pops basically told him that it will be difficult for me to accept love and to trust someone. ”
“No cap.” Blake was always saying no cap, and Tiana thought it was funny when Jenna used teen slang, so she wanted her friend to have a little comedic reprieve.
Tiana grinned. “Part of me is happy that Pops trusted Niko to speak to him about me like that, but then another part of me didn’t understand why Pops spoke to him about it. If he thinks I have all these issues, why not come speak to me about them?”
Aww, Tiana was jealous of Pops and Niko bonding.
Jenna wanted to pull her friend into her arms and tell her that she understood.
She got it. She hated hearing Blake going on about how cool Ava and Viv were, what great advice Ava gave (which, btw, was her job since she was a therapist), what great style Viv had, and shopping for prom dresses with Ava and Viv, but ultimately, the more people that loved Blake the better.
Just like Jenna knew, Tiana would come to the realization that the more people who loved Pops the better. But she had to get there on her own.
“Have you asked Pops about it?”
“No, I just found out last night.”
There was pain in Tiana’s eyes, real pain, and Jenna decided to help her friend in real time, to take a different approach altogether. “Maybe the talk, even though it was about you, wasn’t about you.”
“What?” Tiana looked more confused than when she’d apologized for taking back her own phone after almost hitting her in the face with it.
“I’m just saying, as a parent, I think…” Jenna took a breath and exhaled, trying to find the best way to understand the concept she was trying to explain. “Okay, so Blake is very emotional. That’s not a good or bad thing, it’s just the truth. If she were going to be marrying someone—”
“Who said anything about marriage?!” Tiana practically took her head off.
Thankfully, Jenna lived with a teenage girl, so it didn’t faze her at all. “Niko did, last night. He said he wanted to marry you and have babies with you and grand—”
Tiana blinked. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. Sorry, go ahead.”
“Wow. Defensive much?”
“Sorry.” Tiana smiled sheepishly.
Jenna couldn’t help herself, she had to give her friend a little bit of a hard time. “Yeah, it’s so weird that Pops didn’t talk to you when clearly you are so open for and calm and—”
“Okay, point taken.”
Jenna continued, “Anyway, if she was serious with someone, and I knew she was emotional a lot, someone who was going to be with her would need to know that. They would need to be patient and know that it was not going to be a smooth ride, there would be highs and lows, and they would just need to be there and love her. I wouldn’t go to Blake and tell her that.
I would go to the person who wanted to be with Blake.
I would want to look in their eyes and tell them what a beautiful, big-feelings girl she was.
I would want to see for myself if they really knew who she was and if they could handle that.
I couldn’t find that out in a conversation with Blake. ”
“I feel like I should pay you for these therapy sessions.” Tiana stood, indicating she’d gotten what she needed from Jenna.
Jenna hugged her. “Are you kidding me? I am fueled by tea and drama, and lately, you, my love, are a Bridgerton-level supply of both.”
If that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black, Jenna didn’t know what was. She walked Tiana to the door, and after she let her out, she looked back down at her phone, slid the text messages to the side, and pressed the red trash button, deleting her naughty thread.
Every time she thought she could walk on the wild side, she ended up getting too close to the edge and that, that was too close.