The Day the Jerk Started Falling (Jerk #2) Read online

  Sweaty and nervous, I pull into a gas station and call Allie.

  “I can’t get ahold of him,” she says by way of greeting. “I’ve called him no less than fifty times, and it just keeps going straight to voice mail.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I mutter.

  “How long is it going to take you to get there?”

  “I don’t know…five and a half hours, I think.”

  That’s if everything goes smoothly, mind you.

  “So, it’s six now,” she says. “That’ll have you there by eleven thirty.”

  I groan. “I feel like that’s way, way too late.”

  This whole plan of getting to Paris is starting to feel like an impossible, crazy task.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “It’s going to be fine. You just keep driving, and I’ll keep trying to get ahold of him. I’ll try to call Zoe right now. Maybe she can help us.”

  “Am I crazy, Allie?” I ask. “I mean, is this crazy? What I’m doing right now?”

  “Of course it’s crazy,” she says through a giggle. “But it’s so fucking romantic.”

  I sigh again.

  “Just keep driving. I’ll handle the calls, okay?”

  “Okay,” I respond. “Also, you should probably know, I had to rent a stick shift so I can’t exactly call you back unless I pull over somewhere.”

  “Why in the hell did you rent a stick shift?”

  “Because it was the only thing they had available.”

  “Bloody hell,” she mutters, and I nod.

  “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

  We hang up the phone a few moments later, and I get back on the road after stalling out the damn car five more times.

  Good God, this little clown car will be lucky if its engine is still intact by the time I get to Paris. Hell, I’ll be lucky if I manage to get both of us to Paris intact.

  Eventually, though, I’m cruising. In fifth gear, down the highway, French pop music blaring from the radio, windows down, and warm breeze blowing in my hair.

  Things are looking up.

  I managed to cross the Swiss-French border without too much hassle.

  I’m making good time.

  I glance at the clock and note it’s just after eight in the evening, and according to the robot lady on Google Maps, I have a little over three hours left in my drive.

  That will put me in Paris at like eleven.

  Will I be too late?

  Will he still be there, waiting for me under the stars at the Eiffel Tower?

  I don’t know the answers to any of it.

  All I can do is focus on getting there.

  Allie is supposed to be handling the rest since I’m otherwise occupied with operating a vehicle I most certainly shouldn’t have been allowed to rent in the first place.

  Fuck, I hope she was able to reach him.

  I drive and I drive and all is well, until well, it’s not well.

  The loudest pop I’ve heard in my whole life goes off, and instantly, the left side of the car jolts and the steering wheel becomes nearly impossible to maneuver.

  Holy fucking shit! Did I lose something?

  Did the engine finally give up and just dive out of the fucking car?

  I know next to nothing about cars, but I know that sound I just heard isn’t a good one.

  I pull off to the side of the highway, and when I walk around the car, that’s when I spot it. The back, passenger-side tire, flat as my prepubescent chest before I started to get boobs.

  “Fuck!” I shout toward the sky and start to stomp around the concrete in my flip-flops. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  Now what am I going to do?

  I don’t know how to fix a flat tire!

  I barely know how to fucking drive!

  “Shit. Okay. Get it together,” I mutter to myself. “You can do this. It can’t be that hard, right?”

  Wrong.

  It is hard. It takes me a good ten minutes to find the fucking spare, located in the trunk.

  And it takes me another fifteen minutes just to get the damn thing out of the trunk and set it down beside the flat one.

  Tires are fucking heavy, even clown car tires, and at this point, sweat is literally dripping down my face and between my boobs.

  I search for the car manual, but when I find it, I can’t read shit because it’s only translated in French, German, and Italian.

  So, I grab my phone off the middle console, offer a thanks to God and Verizon for the fact that I still have cell service, and pull up YouTube to find an instructional video on how to change a tire.

  I find one, and within ten minutes, I feel like I kind of, sort of know what to do.

  Thank you, Frank the Mechanic, for your expert advice!

  I start to put good old Frank’s words of advice into action.

  First, I use the jackhammer thingy to lift the car.

  And just as I start to use the wrench-thingy to remove the circle thingies holding the flat tire onto the car, the skies open up and decide now is the most perfect time for a nice late-summer thunderstorm.

  Why not, right?

  Why fucking not add rain into this mix!

  The sky is growing darker with night.

  It’s now raining like a motherfucker.

  And even though I’ve got the flat tire off, the new tire is only partially on.

  The words what else could go wrong try to filter into my brain, but I push them out because I don’t want to jinx myself. Lord knows, I’ve already had my fair share of bad things thus far.

  I get the tire on and decide it’s a grand idea to kick the thing a few times to ensure it’s on tight. But kicking a tire in flip-flops is the very last thing you want to do.

  I scream out in pain when my toes make contact with the rubber, and I curse myself out for being so fucking stupid.

  Kick the fucking tire? Really, Lucky?

  Fuck. I just need to get back on the road.

  With the rain still pelting down on me, I toss all the random shit into the trunk, and I hobble back toward the driver’s door and hop inside.

  With a quick glance at my phone, I see three missed calls and four texts from Allie.

  Allie: I can’t get ahold of him. And I’m still trying to reach Zoe.

  Allie: Where are you?

  Allie: Are you getting close?

  Allie: Text me back when you can so I know you’re, like, alive and shit.

  I type out a quick response.

  Me: I’m alive. I had a fucking flat tire, but it’s fixed. And I’m two hours away. Please just keep trying to reach him and Zoe.

  The time on the dashboard clock says nine thirty, and according to the Google Maps robot lady, I still have two hours left in my drive.

  Fucking hell.

  All I can do is get back on the road and keep driving.

  Just keep fucking driving and pray to the heavens above that Allie can get ahold of him while I’m on my way.

  * * *

  Ollie

  My heart is beating…I think.

  My palms are sweaty…I know.

  It’s nearing dark…I’m freaking the fuck out.

  For the first two hours after arriving at the Eiffel Tower, the vintage copy of Pride and Prejudice tucked safely into the breast pocket of my blimey expensive suit, I was relatively calm.

  I was in the car, windows tinted, and I watched as the crowds grew.

  Paparazzi.

  Tourists.

  Random French passersby intending to celebrate the lights of the tower like any other night.

  But now…now that I’m out of the car, under the impressive tower with the flicker of candles around me and a violist playing a song meant for lovers, I’m a little closer to a breakdown.

  Waiting for the woman of your dreams is never easy, of that I’m sure, but waiting without knowing if she’ll actually show up or not?

  It’s bloody awful.

  Rose petals form a circle around me, and by the grace of God and Zoe’s
wedding planner, that’s it.

  The paps are still contained by the ropes and the police, and everyone is kept at a distance thanks to a permit I don’t want to know the cost of.

  Apparently, pulling something like this off comes at a high price and a high level of paperwork, and I’m a fucking idiot for choosing it as the location for our love story.

  Sure, it’s all romantic and shit, but when you broadcast the location over the airwaves of a podcast that, as it turns out, has been heard nearly one million times around the world, doing something like this becomes a little more complicated than just hanging out and waiting.

  Apparently, that’s only possible with anonymity.

  Something which the wedding planner—Lila, as it were—assures me I do not have.

  “Doing all right?” she asks, leaning over one of seventy billion candles and winking.

  I try not to cringe, but I know my smile looks like something akin to Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

  “Yeah.” I laugh. “Just…uh…waiting.”

  She smiles. “Well, it’s almost showtime. We’ve got people looking out for her, so she’ll be able to make it past all of the mayhem when she makes it here.”

  I laugh sardonically. “If. If she makes it here. Hell, I don’t even know if she’s coming.”

  “Relax,” she coaches. “I’ve been doing this kind of thing for years, and no woman in her right mind is going to miss out on a romantic grand gesture of this magnitude.” She laughs. “It’s the dream, don’t you know?”

  I shrug and try to turn my frown into a smile, but the weight of my stress is just too much for the corners of my mouth to combat.

  I guess I’ll have to save the smiles for Lucky’s arrival.

  Good job with the positive thinking, mate, my subconscious flatters. At least you’re getting better at personal pep talks.

  A glance at my watch shows the time dwindling toward the sunset, but the truth is, I didn’t need a fancy piece of hardware to tell me that. The sun’s been on its way out for a good half hour now, and dusk is about to be upon us.

  The quartet can feel the angst, upping the tempo and volume of their cheeriness to counter.

  I bounce on my toes and scan the crowd around me, careful not to stop on any one person long enough to make eye contact.

  The candles flicker around me, and even though I completely exaggerated the number of them, I’m convinced I could heat an entire house with the output of temperature they’re producing.

  Without prompting or planning, the crowd breaks out into a countdown of the final minute to dark, and my heart takes on an agenda of its own that I’m pretty sure is focused around beating directly out of my chest.

  I feel sick, and anticipation lurches inside my gut as they round the bend into the final thirty seconds.

  Thirty.

  Twenty-Nine.

  Twenty-Eight.

  A sick thud pounds in my stomach, and renewed clarity of just how much I’ve staked on this makes me feel woozy.

  Heart on the line, pride laid out and abandoned, I am an empty man just begging to be filled.

  Please, God… Please, Lucky.

  Seven.

  Six.

  Five.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Manic, my eyes scan the area for absolution. I cling to pairs of heels and tight skirts. I focus on every flash of red hair. I feel my breathing speed up…and then I feel it slow.

  No one steps out from the crowd as the lights of the tower start to flash above me, sparkling with love and lust and the energy of miracles.

  The crowd thrives on it, waiting for Lucky to make a late entrance, and for a couple of minutes, so do I.

  But when the noise settles, so does my balloon of hope.

  She’s not coming.

  There is no happy ending.

  And I am but an empty man, left now even worse than before thanks to the fall.

  Because, as I’ve said:

  Without the heartache, I wouldn’t know.

  Without the mistakes, I wouldn’t know what to miss.

  But now, with both, I’m left to miss her forever.

  Flashes blaze as I take off for the car and yells follow me wildly, but I don’t notice.

  All I know is the pain in my chest and the desperate, agonizing need…

  To get the fuck out of Paris.

  * * *

  Lucky

  I arrive in Paris, the city of fucking love, at exactly eleven o’clock. I don’t know how I manage it without the turbo boosters in Mario Kart, but I’m going to chalk it up to desperation and love and be done with it.

  Because at the moment, I have bigger fish to fry.

  Like parallel parking this goddamn clown car and getting my ass to Ollie.

  The problem is, of course, I have zero idea how to parallel park, and I spend a good ten minutes driving around in circles before I finally just pull off to the side of the road, in what is most likely an illegal spot, and bring up the last text messages Allie sent me while I was driving.

  Allie: Bloody hell, Lucky. I still can’t get ahold of him, but I was finally able to talk to Zoe. She also can’t reach Ollie, but figured out he just booked a red-eye flight out of Paris. What’s your ETA? Are you close? His flight is supposed to leave at one a.m.

  Several more texts follow, all of them revolving around her freaking the fuck out and trying to tell me to drive to Charles de Gaulle airport instead of the goddamn Eiffel Tower, and my stomach drops to my feet.

  Coming in at a little after nine, according to the time stamp, those texts were two hours ago.

  I look up toward the sky and spot the sparkling lights of the Eiffel Tower in the distance, and I sigh, just to keep myself from crying. Fuck.

  He’s gone.

  He’s probably already at the airport now, getting ready to head to Bordeaux with the messed-up idea that I never showed up.

  Thinking I don’t want this—thinking I don’t want us.

  Frantically, I grab my phone and start demon-dialing him, but every time I call his number, it goes straight to voice mail.

  “Fucking hell!” I shout and slam my palms down on the steering wheel.

  Tears prick my eyes as the adrenaline that’s been running through my veins since I landed in Zurich bottoms out and takes its toll.

  I sob for a good minute in the quiet space of my clown car, full-on self-pity and baby mode—until I realize I still have two hours.

  I have two hours to get to him.

  Sure, it’s not as romantic as the Eiffel Tower and I’m a terrible driver, but who gives a fuck? I’ve made it this far, and if there’s still a chance to get to Ollie, wherever in the hell he might be, I have to take it.

  I have to tell him how I feel…show him that I came…or the rest of the tour and life as I know it is going to be a whole lot less pleasant.

  I don’t bother calling Allie back, but instead, tap Charles de Gaulle into Google Maps and find out it will take me twenty-five minutes to get there.

  I step on the gas and the clutch and stall the fucking car out again, making it backfire with the sound of a gunshot that makes at least three people dive to the concrete before I finally get the wheels rolling.

  I’m driving like a madwoman, weaving in and out of traffic and completely ignoring the other drivers’ honks and middle fingers, adding to the already plentiful pile of trauma I’ve produced for the world population at large within the last twenty-four hours, and I don’t care.

  They can get over my shitty driving, but I can never get this opportunity back.

  I’ve survived what feel like the absolute worst-case scenarios over and over again since I heard his last episode on my flight to Zurich, and I will get to him, goddammit, if it’s the last fucking thing I achieve today.

  I pull into the airport at eleven thirty and ignore the fact that I’m supposed to park my rental in the parking garage. Instead, I pull up to the departures sec
tion, hop out of the car, grab my purse and carry-on and proceed to head through the doors without a second thought.

  If I make it through this thing without acquiring a “basement-level apartment” courtesy of Europe’s version of Homeland Security, it’ll be a goddamn miracle. But I set consequences aside and promise to apologize profusely later.

  I stop at the first ticket counter I see and tell the lady behind the desk I need a ticket on the late-night flight to Bordeaux.

  “I’m sorry, but that flight is sold out,” she responds, her thick French accent curling around polite words.

  Of course it fucking is.

  “Okay…um…what late-night flights do you have available?”

  “For France?” she asks, and I shake my head.

  “For anywhere.”

  Her eyes go wide for a brief moment, but when I explain, “I need to get to someone who is going to board that flight to Bordeaux, and I’m assuming this is the only way I’ll be able to get past security.”

  She nods in understanding—not knowing enough about my very questionable history with airport protocol to hold it against me, thank God—and after a few clicks of her computer mouse, tells me, “I have a one-thirty flight to Rome that has a few seats available.”

  “I’ll take it,” I say without bothering with questions. This isn’t the time to be cheap. I have no choice but to promptly hand her my credit card.

  “It will be eight hundred euros.”

  I grimace, wishing not for the first time in my life that I were an heiress of some sort, but nod for her to swipe the damn thing anyway.

  So I’ll have to eat ramen for a month when I get home. It’ll be just like college.

  A minute later, I have a ticket to Rome in my hands, and I’m all but sprinting toward security and customs.

  I glance at my phone and see it’s already ten after midnight, and panic really starts to set in.

  No doubt his flight will start to board in thirty minutes or less, and I still haven’t managed to get through security.