Chapter 25 #2
Deacon pulled up in front of the lobby and turned off the engine. “Wait here,” he said, as if she were likely to bolt, but she nodded and watched him jog through the downpour, head lowered against the wind, shoulders squared as if daring the elements to try him.
He returned after a few minutes, hair wild and dripping, holding a key card and a battered takeout menu. “Room’s ready. Restaurant’s open. You want to eat or—?” He paused, then handed her the menu. “The special is locally famous for being not immediately fatal.”
Jenna laughed, grateful for the flicker of humor. “I’ll roll the dice. I’m starving.”
He opened her door and held his jacket over her head as they splashed through puddles to the lobby, which was mostly plastic plants and a bowl of saltwater taffy on the counter.
The woman at reception gave them a once-over and winked at Jenna, as if she could read every line of their history on her face.
Or maybe she was projecting and the woman just thought Deacon was hot.
The restaurant was attached to the hotel by a short breezeway that was all nautical kitsch, model ships, photos of famous anglers, and a case of trophy fish mounted with dates and lengths.
When they walked into the eatery itself, Jenna felt like she was in Punk’d or The Twilight Zone.
If she didn’t know better, she would have thought this was a joke, that the storm was planned and Deacon had set it up so that they had to stop there.
“Everything okay?” he asked when she stood, frozen in place.
“Great, yeah.” She nodded as she took it all in.
The restaurant was an exact replica of The Icehouse from the show Dawson’s Creek, which gave the entire day an even more surreal atmosphere.
She felt like she’d just walked onto the set.
The bar in the center, the tables, the outside deck surrounding it, the windows that looked out on the water, and the dock that led up to the public entrance, where the storm had churned the bay into whitecaps.
There were only two other diners, both absorbed in their phones, neither interested in the strangers who had blown in with the weather. A waitress walked by and instructed them to sit where they liked.
Deacon led her to a booth in the back, where the view of the bay was best, and shrugged off the jacket he’d used to shield them from the elements, which gave Jenna a glimpse of how the rain had plastered his thermal to his chest, the darkened fabric clinging to muscle and bone, and she felt a sudden, unaccountable wave of hunger that had nothing to do with food.
“Thank you for today.”
Jenna blinked, caught off guard by the earnest gravity in Deacon’s voice. He said it with a kind of quiet finality, as if he were closing the door on some decades-long chapter of his life.
“Thank you,” she said, quietly, feeling a little guilty for lusting over him when he was clearly having a moment. “I mean it. That was… I’m really happy you let me be there. That I got to witness your reunion, or I don’t know what to call it—but it was beautiful.”
“I don’t think I would have been able to do it,” he said, his voice hoarse, “to even go up to the door, if you hadn’t been there.”
“Yes, you would have,” she assured him, and it wasn’t a platitude. “You would have.”
A sail caught her attention out of the window, and she glanced out half expecting it to be the True Love docked. It wasn’t.
“Is something wrong?” Deacon leaned forward and lowered his voice, despite no one being around. “You’ve been acting weird since we got here. We can go somewhere else for dinner.”
“No! I love it. I seriously love it,” she rushed out.
He stared at her as if she were protesting too much.
“No, I do, seriously, this restaurant looks exactly like The Icehouse, which is a restaurant on my favorite TV show, Dawson’s Creek.
Like exactly the same.” She pressed her fingers to the glass, squinting through the beads of rain.
“And that pier even looks the same. I was just thinking the True Love was going to be docked out there.”
“The True Love?”
“It was a boat that Pacey and Joey sailed on at the end of season three. He fixed it up and named it the True Love for her.”
“Oh.”
Deacon was not appropriately impressed, for Jenna’s liking.
“You didn’t watch Dawson’s Creek?” she asked, teasing him.
He shook his head.
Jenna grinned. “It was a cultural touchstone for an entire generation, and it’s my comfort show.”
“Oh.” His eyes widened. “You still watch it?”
“Yes.”
His brow furrowed. “Isn’t it a teen drama?”
“I’m sorry.” She tilted her head. “Did we not agree this was a judgment-free day?”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “That was a reaction.”
Before she could have a reaction to his reaction, the waitress arrived to take their orders.
Once she left, Deacon leaned his forearms on the table. “So, let me guess, you were in looove with one of the characters? Pacey or Joey, I’m guessing.”
“Okay, don’t cheapen it. And I felt seen by Jen actually, who was played by Michelle Williams. And I did love Joey, but not in that way.
She was smart, and had a shitty family and had to scrape by, and never quite fit in, which I related to.
She also had a big heart. And Pacey was the perfect boyfriend, okay.
He saw Joey. He loved her for all of her flaws, and parts of her life she was embarrassed about.
He made her feel safe and proud of herself.
So yes, I did love him, but not for me, I loved the way he loved her. ”
Deacon nodded, as if committing the information to some internal database. “But it’s a teen drama, right?”
Jenna picked up a napkin, crumpled it, and threw it at him. He ducked as he laughed.