“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.”
My stomach still in my boots, my heart started beating really hard.
“Since then, again no big surprise, and it’s been years, there’s been no one for him. Every female in Matlock steers clear. Not like he goes out trying to bury his sorrow in every soft spot offered up to him. Just that, the first few who went there in hopes they could mend the broken heart, soothe the savaged soul, got seriously burned.”
Got seriously burned.
I’d just finished being seriously burned but not by a guy like Johnny. By a guy like my dad.
I hadn’t had the experience, but I suspected having it happen from a guy like Johnny would be worse.
By a lot.
“You said it’s been years?” I asked.
“Babe—”
“Maybe he’s—”
“Baby girl, listen to me,” she whispered fiercely. “After what happened with Kent, if you found a guy, I’d be at your back, rooting for you, glad you’re back in the saddle, hoping for the best because you deserve it. I’m not sure I know anyone who deserves it better. So this conversation is not easy to have.”
“Do you think he—?”
“I think you’re sweet as sugar, cute as a button and he’s a man. He gets a load of you, he’s not gonna think, ‘Best be careful I don’t mess with this one. She’s sweet, cute and sensitive as all get out and my ex burned me so bad I’ll never recover, so I should leave well enough alone.’ He’s not gonna know about that sensitive as all get out part. So he’s just gonna go forth to get him some.”
“He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night,” I blurted.
“Say what?”
“He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I’m making him Crock-Pot chicken enchiladas.”
“You’re pulling out the enchiladas, which means you dig him and he’s good in bed.”
He was very good in bed.
I also dug him.
“They’re easy to make, Deanna, they just taste like they aren’t.”
“They’re the kind of thing any normal girl, like you, would make any normal guy she likes so he’ll think, ‘Man, this woman can cook. I get all that sweetness in my bed and before that I get to eat like this? I better grab hold and do it tight.’ But just to say, Izzy, this guy is not a normal guy. This guy is a guy ruined for all other women by a knockout of a redhead with long legs and big boobs who was almost as sweet as your sugar, but I only say that because I know you and I didn’t know her except in passing. A redhead who he’ll be hung up on forever, even when nature calls and forces him to settle down in order to procreate. The next one will be numero dos. Runner up. Second best.”
Runner up.
Second best.
I did not have red hair.
I was blonde. Of a sort. It was dark blonde, like an amber-ish blonde-brown.
But I was not a redhead.
I did have relatively large breasts and long legs though.
“They were that in love?” I asked quietly, my voice tight.
“I love Charlie with all my heart and soul, you know it, baby girl, but any time I saw those two together, they were so happy, so close, so damned sweet, they gave me a toothache I wanted for myself. So yeah, they were that in love. The air turned hazy and pink around them, they were that in love,” she answered gently, her voice kind.
I looked to my boots.
“Izzy?” she called.
“I like him,” I told my boots.
“I only know him in passing too, but I still know he’s that guy. The kind you can’t help but like. He’s solid. Dependable. From good people. His brother took off before Charlie and I got to town and I heard he’s a bit of a wild one. But I knew the man, and Johnny Gamble’s dad was like that too. Those men are men who fix your car even if you can’t afford it and let you make payments that won’t bite too deep. They sponsor Little League and girls’ softball and Pop Warner teams, and even coach those Pop Warner kids. Heard somewhere there was this ex-con, local screwup who no one trusted, but he gave him a job and the man stayed on the straight and narrow, probably doing it just to give loyalty to a man who took a chance on him.”