“Already here. I was calling to see where I should meet you, but I see you,” his voice echoes.
I turn around and—sweet love of Peter Noone! Jack looms only a few steps away. Water droplets fall from his hair like he’s freshly showered. A curious look and a crooked grin sit on his face as he regards me with the phone still up to his ear.
“I’m hanging up now,” I say, trying to draw oxygen to my lungs and settle my wildly beating heart. “Hi.”
“Hello.” He slides his phone into his pocket, stuffing both hands in his jeans immediately after. His grey t-shirt billows in the wind, highlighting his chest and revealing a bit of his chiseled abdominal muscles. “That’s not the type of oldies I’m used to you listening to.”
My eyes fixate on the swirling ink on his arm. He’s been in long sleeves most of his visit, so I missed a few new tattoos. A vine full of thorns twists from his forearm, around his elbow, and up to the image hiding under his sleeves of him skating with his dad on a cranberry bog.
I’ve studied the ink on his arms and chest more than I’d like to admit. I love every piece. His hockey number nestled among the thorns on his forearm. The Jean-Jacques Rousseau quote that was his dad’s favorite sits below it, “Teach him to live rather than to avoid death; life is not breath, but action.” And of course there’s the mysterious black scroll of script on his chest that I’ll someday work up the courage to about.
“Dessy? You awake?” Jack snaps his fingers, and I blink alive, settling on his crooked grin again.
Oh, that thing is almost as dangerous as his tattoos.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here.” I laugh awkwardly. “What did you ask me again?”
“I didn’t know you liked that song… whatever it was, it’s not very rom-comy.”
“Oh! ‘Centerfold!’ Yes.” I wince. Admitting the title was not the best way to start this. Actually, it may have been the absolute worst. “It’s a prank. Emy set it as my ringtone, for, um, no particular reason. Hi! How are you?” A cheesy, forced grin spreads across my face.
“Great.” His brow furrows as he searches my face for something, but he shakes his head. “Do you need help with those?” He nods to the boxes in the trunk.
“If you don’t mind, that would be great.”
There are only a few boxes left. We pull them in relative silence. I haven’t seen Jack since we ate subs at the ice rink on Thursday. We invited him to Sunday dinner yesterday, but he told Gus he was going on an uncle adventure with his niece and nephews, which only slightly increased the recent pulse between my thighs when I thought of him.
“How was your weekend?” I finally ask.
He snorts, pulling the last box out of the trunk and following me back into the white tent one last time. “Mine was fine, but I doubt the people playing Peter Pan and Tinkerbell at StoryLand would say the same.”
My heart skips. StoryLand is an adorable amusement park in New Hampshire that my Memere used to take us to once a year. There are princesses, princes, pirates, and everything else you could want in a magic fairy tale world, and it’s one reason this fair exists today.
That first summer Jack returned home to Chawton Falls we took Lucy to StoryLand to celebrate his signing. As a literary nerd, it reinvigorated me to see the park through adult eyes. Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, Captain Hook’s pirate ship, and the swan boats helped create a magical storybook feel. And then I thought,Why does this feeling have to stop as a child? Why can’t we feel like we’ve stepped inside a book as adults?
I’d always had a personal connection to Jane Austen, and being from Chawton Falls, New Hampshire, New England, the leap to the regency fair seemed natural since dear Jane wrote most of her works in Chawton, Hampshire, England.
“What did Coby and Grant do?” I ask, wincing internally. He doesn’t need to say they were the problem. I’ve never met greater terrors than those two. They’re twin tornados.
“Well, Amy signed them up for the pirate classes. That was our first mistake.” He runs his hand through his hair and shudders. “And then—uhm—they somehow found rope. I don’t even know where it came from because the class was just Peter and Tink teaching the kids to talk like pirates. I swear I only looked away for two seconds—”
“They tied Peter and Tinkerbell up, didn’t they?”
He nods. “And commandeered the ship. Which was, fun fact, actually fully functioning and improperly docked.”
“Dear god. You may want to set some of your salary aside for bond money as they age.”
“Not a bad idea.” He stretches from side to side. “Coby kicked me when I picked him up to end their coup, and I swear his feet are made of lead or something. I don’t remember having that much power in my legs at that age.”
His hand goes to the folds of his shirt, pulling up on the left side and slowly revealing his black-and-blue ribcage.
I gasp. “Oh my god, did you make sure he didn’t break something?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, I’ve had a busted rib before, and it doesn’t feel like that. But still, I don’t know if I should be impressed or terrified that he marked my body better than some pro hockey players do. Kid’s going to be an enforcer for sure.”
Closing my trunk, I wipe my hands on my leggings. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay. Finding another Wickham at this hour would have been terribly inconvenient.”Especially because I liked last Wednesday at the bar a little too much.
“Wouldn’t want anyone filling my space, either.” He smiles, nudging me playfully with his shoulder.
