“Hold up, bro,” Connor said, hand on Atlas. “Let him finish eating. Go take a shower. You smell like fish. It’ll ruin everything.”
He looked from one to the other, suddenly seeing them—maybe the whole world—in a bright, hopeful light.
“You two belong together, you know that?”
They looked at each other and smiled, making Jonah think that just like everything else in life, Meredith had this all figured out.
Jonah turnedonto the palm-lined drive of Sunset Shores and parked in the visitor lot, rolled up the windows, and took a deep breath. He’d been here once before, not that long ago, when Pepper had brought Atlas here so he could do the Driftwood kitchen test.
He’d asked her to be his nanny that day.
He’d ask her to be his girlfriend today.
And, someday, maybe he’d get on one knee in this place. Who knew? Maybe Sunset Shores was magic.
Shaking back his hair still, which was still damp from the shower he most certainly did need, he closed his eyes and hoped his sister was right. Also hoped Pepper was still in Destin and hadn’t hightailed it back to New Orleans.
Fact was, he and Atlas were gambling everything tonight.
Mavis was at the front desk in the lobby, with the same white hair and the same delighted face she had given him the last time he had been here.
“Well, hello, handsome,” she cooed—definitely talking to the baby in Jonah’s arms. “Everyone will be so happy to see you again. Margaret has finished a second hat and was devastated you weren’t here today. Go on in and join the fun!”
Yes! She was here.
Atlas thanked her with a raspberry that made her giggle as Jonah walked softly down the hall toward the music. Hearing a ballad from the fifties, he figured Pepper had finished with the waltzing and went back to the era the eighty-five-year-olds favored.
Someone with a baritone was crooning, “I only have eyes for you,” as he got closer, the sound of sneakers squeaking on tile and the buzz of older women chatting and laughing getting louder with each step.
He stopped just outside the door and stayed hidden, inching around the frame until he could see her.
Pepper was in the middle of the room in her black “leo,” as she called her skin-tight leggings and tank top, something pink and crocheted over her shoulders. That looked like a Margaret special.
He scanned the residents around the room, remembering some of the old and weathered faces, so many with light in their eyes for this beloved Saturday activity.
His heart dipped a little at the palpable loneliness they must feel…a room full of widows and widowers, doing their best to remember being teenagers in the fifties with a whole life ahead of them.
His gaze fell on a man in a bowtie. A woman in a floral dress and pink high heels that she was clearly smug about still being able to wear. There was Margaret in her wheelchair, conducting with her knitting needle. On her lap was something small the same color pink as the thing on Pepper’s shoulders.
For a long time, Jonah stood in the doorway and watched Pepper spin magic into lives that needed it so badly.
“Left foot, Angelo,” she said to an older man. “Then the right. There you go.” She twirled off, leaving Angelo to dance alone, wrapping her arms around another woman, taking the lead position. “Move with me, Rita. On the beat. That’s right.”
Rita beamed and threw a look at Pink Shoes. “Told you I could do it, Betsy!”
“You can do anything,” Pepper assured her, moving back to Angelo, giving one quick correction, gliding like a leaf on the air, light and wispy and so incredibly beautiful he could cry just looking at her.
Pepper Broussard was so not ordinary. She was the very definition of the wordextraordinary. She had been extraordinary the day he’d met her and handed over Atlas in a moment of panic, and she’d been extraordinary when she’d stepped in to help him get the internship by taking Atlas, and she’d been extraordinary when they’d fallen asleep after a hurricane.
She’d even been extraordinary in a driveway in the pink light telling him she was going to spare him a life she had decided he shouldn’t have to live. She was extraordinary right now leading someone she called Virgil through a turn he was a little too proud of.
And Jonah was not going to spend the rest of his life without her. Period.
The song ended and they all clapped. Pepper, a little breathless, walked to the side of the room and picked up her phone and tapped the screen.
“How aboutSmoke Gets in Your Eyes?” she called out. “Who loves The Platters?”
A few of them made enough noise that she chose the song and slow, melancholy notes filled the room from invisiblespeakers, somehow changing the vibe to something sad and sweet.
