The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (33 page)

‘Isn't Sara here yet?' she asked. ‘Say what you like about her, but that woman sure makes things happen.'

‘You don't say,' Tom said drily.

Andy and Jen exchanged a brief glance.

‘Tough woman, that Sara.' Grace shook her head and laughed as though at a funny joke. ‘Not to mention Idgie. Offering drinks to hobos, huh, before lunch. And elephants and I don't know what else.'

She continued, oblivious to the confused looks from the others. ‘The other woman becomes really tough too, when she finally starts fantasising about killing men. Towanda, right?'

They were still staring at her and she flung her arms wide. ‘
Fried Green Tomatoes
! A book about this country's strong women. She knows her books, that Sara. There probably hasn't been a tougher woman than Idgie Threadgoode. Maybe with the exception of my grandmother.' Then she added, in the name of fairness: ‘Though even my grandmother had nothing to do with an elephant. As far as I know.'

That brought a vague memory to life for Andy. ‘Wasn't that a movie?' he asked.

Grace shook her head. ‘A movie. Well, I thank you. I guess not everyone can be as educated as Sara and I.'

For some reason Tom couldn't quite understand, all their conversations kept returning to Sara. As though they couldn't make it through one evening without talking about her.

Though there was something touching in the way that everyone seemed to be waiting for her. Each time the door opened, someone would glance over to it, and each time it was someone other than Sara, their eyes would flit back to the others.

She had been in town for a month and a half but they were acting as though she had always been there. As though she always would be. With her bookstore. Among people who, if they ever actually picked up a book, would rather hit someone else on the head with it than read.

He smiled in spite of himself.

He already found it difficult to imagine Main Street without the bookstore, but he told himself that was just habit. With time, she would move on and everything would go back to normal.

He took a swig of beer and forced himself to smile at Jen, who was talking away next to him. He didn't bother trying to work out what she was saying. Something about elephants.

The best thing would be if he could just avoid her until she went home. He knew it had been a mistake talking to her at the market, but how was he meant to avoid it when she turned up dressed as a book?

As long as she didn't mention her naked body again he should just be able to greet her briefly to show he had been raised properly and stay away from her the rest of the evening. He turned his back resolutely to the door, and continued to exchange meaningless chit-chat with Jen.

But when Sara finally arrived, he looked.

She looked more grown up, and surprisingly beautiful. She was wearing a simple, sleeveless dress with a square neckline that was cut low enough for a party but not so low as to be too much. It flared out slightly at the hips, and stopped just above her knees. The deep burnt-yellow colour made her hair seem darker, almost black, and even her eyes seemed bigger than he remembered. The cut of the dress emphasised her slim body, and when she moved, she seemed lithe and self-confident, and irritatingly sexy. The dimmed lighting caught the dress, making her bare arms and pale skin glow.

Just avoid her, he told himself, unable to tear his eyes away. She would be going back to Sweden soon, he thought. He counted in his head. Two weeks, max. Then everything would go back to normal.

The warmth and kindness of the people in Broken Wheel struck her the moment she entered the room. They smiled welcomingly at her, waving her over as though they had been waiting for her. As though they actually would have noticed if she hadn't turned up. It was a completely new experience.

Eventually, her gaze instinctively sought out Tom. When their eyes met, he looked away immediately. She could have sworn he actually grimaced. That told her more than she wanted to know. Her smile faltered, but she allowed herself to be dragged over to the bar by Jen and Grace, saying a faint hello to Josh on the other side of it. People were surrounding her, greeting her and laughing with her as though she had lived in the town for years.

Apart from Tom, who nodded coolly at her and then moved in the complete opposite direction, laughing at something Claire had said.

She forced herself not to look at him. Almost as if to taunt her, he was wearing a white shirt, frustratingly well ironed, which emphasised his broad shoulders and which hung against his flat stomach and down over his muscular thighs, barely hidden by his jeans … She looked away again.

She started thinking of that time on the sofa, but then snapped back to reality. She longed for a time when he would have forgotten the whole thing, so that he wouldn't have to avoid her any longer.

The music and dancing had begun in earnest. Most of the inhabitants of Broken Wheel were still around the bar, but beyond them was a crowd of people from the market, along with a large number of the cowboy-hat women from before. They hadn't bothered coming to the market, but they were certainly here now. Andy and Jen were constantly glancing at one another, but Sara had so much else on her mind that she noticed it only in passing.

Of course she wasn't in love with Tom.

She just wanted his friendship, as it had been. The friendship which had made him visit the bookshop every now and then, and laugh at her reading.

And so she consciously ignored the part of her – now relegated to somewhere in the region of her solar plexus – which was, yet again, constantly aware of exactly where he was in the room.

It was just a … kiss. These things happen. Even between friends. You find yourselves sitting on a sofa together, lose concentration, and then suddenly you're lying there with them on top of you.

An accident, Sara thought. Nothing they needed to take seriously. They would move past it, forget it had ever happened, or else laugh about it together. Ha ha, how crazy, to think that you ended up on top of me like that. And then they could be friends again.

Simple.

She wouldn't ever say a thing about that evening, she thought, and she hoped that Tom wouldn't either. Things would eventually go back to the way they had been.

And yet, only a few minutes later, she was the one who came dangerously close to bringing it up.

She had just left Grace to go and talk to George, and had relaxed so much that she didn't notice that Tom was, at that very moment, on his way over to Claire. They ended up together in an awkward quartet. Sara looked demonstratively at George, but not before she detected wry amusement in Tom's eyes.

It was just too much. She hadn't talked to him all evening. She hadn't even
seen
him for the past hour. And now she had cast one – one! – unconscious glance at him, just to make sure she didn't bump into him, and he had the nerve to smile at it, as though he thought she had deliberately gone over to be near to him.

Her eyes flashed. She turned towards him, ready to …

The music fell silent.

She suddenly found herself standing under a spotlight. A banner appeared from nowhere behind the bar. It covered the entire length of it.

On an old white sheet, in big, red, hand-painted letters, it said, utterly incomprehensibly: ‘MARRY US!'

SHE WAS LIKE
a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Caroline involuntarily gripped her pink drink and she heard Andy attempting to explain their madcap idea. For a second, it seemed as though the whole thing would work. Sara smiled, uncertain and hesitant at first, but then increasingly dazzlingly. Her eyes glittered with something which genuinely looked like gratitude. She turned around so that she could include everyone in her smile.

There was a look of such pure, open joy in both her smile and her eyes that Caroline found herself blinking, disconcerted, barely able to smile back.

Andy and Jen were still talking in the background, but Caroline knew that no one was really listening to what they said, Sara's gaze was so strong. At least that was something, she managed to think before everything went wrong; the fact that they had been the cause of such a look, and such a smile, in another person.

It was true that Sara was happy. It was such a mad, strange idea that she couldn't help but laugh, and she was also moved. It was a way of showing that they liked her, she knew that, some kind of grand farewell gesture. Regardless of what happened next, the banner was a sign that she had belonged here.

Andy and Jen continued. ‘Of course, towns can't get married per se,' said Jen, and Sara laughed. ‘So we've decided to appoint a, well, a representative.'

‘A representative,' Andy agreed approvingly. ‘And we've decided to sacri— appoint Tom.'

‘Strictly a marriage of convenience, of course,' said Jen, and Sara nodded. Of course. She cast a quick glance at Tom, full of the moment's humour and laughter, all thoughts of ignoring him temporarily forgotten in her need to share this crazy moment with someone. It was only then that she saw his face.

He seemed completely expressionless, aside from a stiff, forced smile. Two fierce red patches had flared up on his neck and were spreading slowly upwards over his cheeks. Since he was smiling, no one other than Caroline and Sara noticed the cool, almost angry look in his eyes. She swallowed.

Then the spotlight disappeared, the music came back on, and everyone gathered around her. She scanned the crowd for Tom to see whether she had merely imagined his expression, but people kept appearing next to her, cutting her off from him. She replied mechanically to whatever it was they were saying to her. When she finally caught sight of him again, he was over by the bar, where Carl poured him a whiskey. He drank it improperly quickly.

She told herself that she didn't care. This was her proposal. They liked her.

They liked her enough to have come up with this crazy idea of a marriage of convenience, and she was planning on enjoying it.

And so she laughed and smiled and made sure to hold her head high as she moved slowly through the room. People she barely knew and people she had never met were patting her on the back, and more than one woman wearing a cowboy hat pulled her into a bear hug.

‘Does this mean the guy at the bar is free now?' one of them asked, but Sara didn't need to come up with an answer. Another woman who had pushed her way over to congratulate Sara had managed to hit her so hard on the back that she temporarily lost the ability to speak.

She ignored Tom's rigid figure by the bar.

Damn Tom.

When she couldn't avoid it any longer, she finally went over to him. ‘What a mad plan,' she said pleasantly. That would surely make him relax a little, she thought.

He looked around, presumably to make sure that no one was listening. Carl was busy at the other end of the bar and the music was so loud that they couldn't hear what anyone near them was saying, but still he lowered his voice. ‘I guess I should congratulate you. Or us, rather.'

His voice was so overtly disapproving that she couldn't fight the temptation to say: ‘I see you're clearly the happiest man in town.'

There was still lightness in her voice but he didn't seem to appreciate it. ‘Christ, Sara,' he said. ‘What are you thinking?' He glanced about. ‘We need to talk. I'm going to drive you home,' he said coldly. She realised he already had her jacket in his hand.

Around them, the party was in full swing and everyone else seemed to be in a fantastic mood. The majority of people were gathered in a big crowd in the middle of the room, some of them dancing. There was even a band playing on an improvised stage at the front; a guitar, a woman singing, a violin and some drums. Sara looked longingly at the dancing.

You hardly ever get the chance to dance, she thought, and it was still so early. He held out her jacket and she took it with a quiet sigh.

There would be other occasions, she told herself.

She paused.

There wouldn't be other occasions, no more dances or improvised proposals. She would be going back to Sweden and this evening would fade away, along with everything else she had experienced here. Tom was already halfway to the door. What did she have to lose?

‘Don't you fancy a dance before we go?' she asked.

‘Jesus,' he said, tearing open the door. He almost pushed her out.

‘Guess not,' Sara muttered to herself. She took a last, sentimental glance at all the others. They were the first to leave. Even Caroline was still there.

She knew what was coming. There could only be one reason for him to have dragged her out of there in such a fashion.

Sure enough.

‘What the hell do you think you're doing?' he exploded the moment they'd stepped outside. They were standing there in the huge parking lot, alone except for the dark and silent cars around them. Even when only faintly illuminated by the few working street lights, she could still make out the disapproving look on his face, and the tense posture of his body.

She smiled knowingly at how predictable he was, which may not have been especially diplomatic.

‘I'm serious, Sara.'

He was still stupidly attractive. His white shirt was barely crinkled. He had rolled up the sleeves and hadn't bothered to put on his jacket.

‘I don't know the exact rules, but if you get arrested you'll never be allowed back in the country, and you'll definitely be fined. It's a crime, for God's sake.'

She was hugging her jacket and shuddered in the cold evening. She would be getting back to Sweden in November. It was an awful month to return to, she thought.

‘Are you even listening?'

‘Crime – fines – terrible consequences,' she repeated obediently without looking at him.

‘This isn't a joke.'

He was standing by the car, his keys ready in his hand, but still talking, as if he had to get it all out of his system. She tried desperately to keep her eyes directed at anything but his face.