The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil #1)(14)

Free to go back into the city and wander in a mall or down a shopping street, get a lovely lunch or treat myself to a nice dinner.

Free to linger over my Sunday facial, the only thing my mother kept scheduled and ordered for all us girls (if she was off work that was), saying, “If you take care of nothin’, my beautiful queens, take care of your skin.”

Of course, she made our facials back then out of oatmeal, honey, bee pollen and avocados she carefully scrimped and saved to afford.

But we had girls’ night facial nights every Sunday she wasn’t at work, and on the rare occasion Mom was in the black and could also afford a bottle of fingernail polish after we’d run out of the one before, we did manis and pedis too.

This meant when Mom died, instead of doing it at age forty-six and looking forty-six, she did it at forty-six, and until the pain and poison aged and withered her, she’d looked thirty.

Tops.

This was why her boyfriend at the time had been thirty-two.

I wondered how old Johnny was.

Perhaps a question he’d answer tomorrow night.

I hit the stables. The dogs began to roam and sniff the space like they’d never been there before when they were there daily. I was sure to secure the gate behind me before I moved toward Serengeti’s stall in order to let her have some time in her pasture after I hit go to contact Deanna.

“Izzy?” she answered.

“Hey, I’m home,” I told her.

“Okay, well . . . how are you?”

How was I?

Johnny’s behavior explained by the sad fact it was the anniversary of his father’s death, but still explained, and he was coming over for dinner the next night, not to mention, after not being affectionate (at all, unless you counted sitting me on the countertop, which I kind of did) after the last time we’d had sex, he made out with me at the door of my car for a good, long, happy while—I was great.

“I’m great,” I told her, opening Serengeti’s stall and moving in, lifting a hand to pat her jaw while she moved her nose to snuffle my neck and blow at my hair.

“Damn,” Deanna muttered.

My hand arrested on Serengeti and I focused on Deanna.

“What?” I asked.

“Damn,” she repeated.

“Damn what?” I asked.

“Well, just to say, Johnny Gamble is Johnny Gamble.”

A specific area in my chest squeezed at the way she imparted that obvious but still confusing information.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“He’s Johnny Gamble of Gamble Garages. Did he tell you that?”

No he didn’t tell me that.

And suddenly I was embarrassed about something that I hadn’t liked all along.

But it was worse since Deanna knew more about a man I’d slept with than I did.

Serengeti was getting fidgety, so I used my hand on her to lead her out of her stall, and once in the corridor, she trotted out the open bay at the back, directly into her pasture.

I moved to Amaretto as I shared with Deanna, “No, he didn’t tell me that. I mean, we talked but we were also doing other things.” I let that lie. It did, weighty between us on the phone, before I went on, “I don’t know what that means.”

Even though it seemed like I did. Something seemed familiar about that.

“You haven’t lived here long enough,” she murmured while I opened Amaretto’s stall and moved in for some quick pats before I let him loose. Louder, Deanna said, “You know the gas station in town?”

Oh yes.

That was where I’d seen it.

“He owns that?”

“That and seven more of them across three counties. None in the city, just in the counties. Some of them are like mini-mart stores. All of them sell gas and do work on cars.”

Wow.

That was impressive.

“He inherited it from his dad, who inherited it from his dad,” Deanna told me.

No less impressive.

Following Amaretto to the pasture, I stopped at the side of the open bay, leaned on it and watched my horses, reunited, nose each other familiarly.

“I’m not sure why this would earn a ‘damn,’” I shared.

“Because Johnny Gamble is also the Johnny part of Johnny and Shandra.”

I stilled.

Johnny and Shandra.

The bath salts crystalized in my mind, clear to the point it was almost like they shimmered in the air before me.

“Sorry?” I whispered.

“Total movie, romance movie, but one written by a man seeing as it did not have a happy ending.”

Oh God.

“He’s gorgeous. She was a knockout,” Deanna continued. “When they got together, not sure anyone was surprised. He was into her. She was into him. When I say that, he was into her and she was into him. We’re talking Romeo and Juliet. Lancelot and Guinevere. Scarlett and Rhett.”

My stomach sank.

“With the crappy ending to match,” she carried on.

“What happened?” I was still whispering.

“No one knows. One day, it was just over. She was gone, he remained. No one’s seen her since. But we’ll just say everyone freaked. That was not the ending they thought would come of that. Everyone, including me, was sure there’d be mini-Johnnys working in his garage who would grow up to set all the girls’ panties on fire, and mini-Shandras he’d treat like princesses who would grow up to be prom queens and break all the boys’ hearts. When this didn’t happen, I think even Pastor Thomas thought God had dropped the ball.”