She became obsessed. Embarrassingly obsessed. She stalked O’Grady’s Pub. Every day for two weeks she sat in her white Kia Sportage across the street in case he came back so she could “accidentally” run into him. But he never had. Which made sense. He wasn’t from there. Rented car. Comped room.
Then she moved to California, so she stopped. If she hadn’t relocated across the country, who knows if shewould have continued sitting outside O’Grady’s. The only reason she didn’t go inside and ask the guy who worked there about his friend was because she did have some self-respect. Not a lot, at that point, but a little.
She dreamt about him almost every night still. Which she had zero control over, but she did have control over her decision to sit in her car like a psycho.
Jenna could never decide if it was the sex or the conversation that hooked her. He’d let her unspool her ugliest self, her real self, the self she thought would make a person run screaming, and instead of looking traumatized, he’d seemed to get it. He’d looked at her like she was a survivor, not a punchline. He’d made her laugh, made her think, made her whole body light up, and then left her with a standard she was almost certain no other man would ever meet.
So yeah…that was fun.
Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t freaked out and left. Maybe he would have asked for her number. Maybe he would have asked her on a date.
But then she remembered that life wasnota Netflix romcom series. Men like D didn’t date women like her. That wasn’t self-pity, it was math. She knew her type: “damaged goods,” the kind of woman whose emotional baggage carried a surcharge. And D was the kind of man who could have anyone, the kind of man who always chose the right words and the right wine and the right hotel. Jenna had been a reckless one-night deviation on a very emotional day for him, and to expect anything else was to be willfully naive.
Still, she missed him. Sometimes at the oddest times, like when she was folding laundry or driving to work or standing in the line at the grocery store. Sometimes latelyshe even still felt his presence. The other day when she went into Sue Ann’s Café, she could haveswornon her life that shesmelledhim, and shefelthim. It was so real, so visceral, she had goosebumps, she looked around, and got flushed, but no. He wasn’t there. Of course, he wasn’t.
For the briefest moment she thought maybe he’d died, and he was haunting her like she was Demi Moore and he was Patrick Swayze inGhost. The saddest part about that crazy thought was, that it made her happy to think it. That was how lonely she was.
Three more years, she told herself as she pulled up to Frankie and Liam’s house, where Frankie’s ninety-year-old grandma would be walking down the aisle today. Three more years and then it will be her turn on the happily-ever-after train.
9
“Close your eyes,”Jenna instructed the bride, Yaya, aka Lydia Costas, as they sat in her granddaughter Frankie’s sunroom trying to keep her sitting still, which was a much more difficult task than one would think for a ninety year old.
The woman was Jenna’s hero. She wanted to be Yaya when she grew up. Yaya had a standing appointment at The Beauty Shop every Friday morning at nine for a wash and style, and it was honestly Jenna’s favorite hour of the week.
She could listen to Yaya’s stories for hours, for days, for weeks, or just sit and be in her presence in silence, not that Yaya was silent that often. But if she were, Jenna wouldn’t care. She just wanted to be near her. She had an instantaneous soothing effect on her, which was probably not how most people would describe Lydia Costas. But for some reason, when Yaya was around, Jenna felt like everything would be okay, that it would be taken care of. Thatshewould be taken care of and okay. Jenna never had that feeling from a woman who was older than her before.She guessed it was the first maternal figure she’d ever had in her life.
After losing her husband of sixty-plus years, who was, by all accounts, the love of her life, Yaya was saying I do again, this time to the official town badass, who was also ninety.
Arthur Santino was infamous in Hope Falls. He’d moved to town over thirty years earlier and had been a recluse most of that time. He was the exact opposite of Yaya. Never spoke, lived in the woods, and wanted to be left alone. He did not wantanyattention. It worked for a while until, over the years, he started performing heroic feats, which, much to his chagrin, drew both public attention and praise.
He saved the now-pastor when he was a boy, after he was bitten by a snake in the middle of the woods. If not for Mr. Santino’s quick action, Caleb Harrison would never have lived to become the viral sensation “Hot Pastor.” After Karina Black, who grew up in Hope Falls but went on to become a huge pop star, tweeted comparing him toFleabag’s“Hot Priest” andNobody Wants This’“Hot Rabbi.” It was an international viral moment that Blake and her friends hada lotof fun with.
A few years after that, when Mr. Santino was in his eighties himself, saved the life of his eighty-eight-year-old “neighbor, Mrs. Samson, who was a smoker, fell asleep in bed smoking, and the cigarette fell from her mouth next to her bed onto a pile of tissues. He woke up, smelled the smoke, ran to her house, pulled her out of bed and out of the house seconds before the entire thing went up in flames.
She spent a few weeks in the hospital for smoke inhalation, but the fire department said if he had been even a minute or two later, she would have been gone.
Then, just a few months ago, he’d been out on a walk and intervened when an abusive ex showed up to abduct a single mom who lived next door to the senior home he currently lived at. He not only took a bullet for her, he disarmed the man and held him there until police arrived while he had a slug in his shoulder.
But if anyone ever brought any of those incidents up, he shut it down, changed the subject, or would just walk away. Literally. While someone was speaking to him, mid-sentence, he would turn and walk away. Jenna guessed after ninety years on the planet and those heroic acts, if he didn’t want to discuss them, he had that right.
There were all sorts of rumors and speculation about Mr. Santino’s past. Everything from him being a hitman for the mob, to being a spy, to him being a Hollywood fixer like Ray Donovon.
What most people in town didn’t know was the truth, that before moving to Hope Falls, Arthur Santino worked for the CIA in Black Ops for thirty years. He was pretty much an assassin. In fact, when the showHomelandwas being developed, they asked him to be a consultant for Peter Quinn’s character, played by Rupert Friend, which was loosely based on exactly what his job was.
Jenna knew that information because, well, she asked him. And he told her becauseheknew therule. Hairdressers, like bartenders, therapists, lawyers, doctors, or priests, are all legally and ethically bound by client privilege confidentiality and the sacramental seal of confessional gossip.
Thatorno one ever asked him, and she had when they were alone in the salon and he liked her, so he told her. But she never told anyone, not even Blake, who was constantly theorizing with her friends, even though she knew she’d get major ‘Cool Mom’ points for knowing, because of theclient privilege confidentiality, and sacramental seal of confessional gossip.
Which was why she’d been so upset when her Hot Bartender turned out to be Hot Not-a-Bartender.
She wondered if she would ever go an hour without thinking of that night, of thinking about him. It had been a year and a half, and so far, it hadn’t happened. Something always reminded her of him.
Trying to push him out of her brain, she focused on Yaya and her makeup.
“Are you excited?” Jenna asked as she swiped a base coat of cream on Yaya’s upper lid.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Yaya clapped her hands. “Arthur finally know what is good for him!”
