Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
T heir food arrived soon after and conversation turned to the winter festival.
“It was my favorite thing, when I was a kid,” Cotton admitted. “I was secretly sad when they stopped doing it.”
“They stopped?” Elyse asked. She’d moved away from Maine soon after high school and hadn’t returned until recently. “Why?”
“Money,” Georgie said. “It got to be too much expense for the town. This year I proposed a scaled back version, funded by some local businesses.” Herself, for instance. Providing the desserts for the festival was going to kick her budget straight in the teeth, but it felt important, maybe even vital for some reason she didn’t understand. She didn’t want to believe she was attempting to buy love and acceptance from the town, as Burke had hinted, but maybe that was what it was. Or maybe it was simply nostalgia. Like Cotton, the winter festival had been her favorite thing, too. After all the tourists went home for the season, it had felt like their own special thing, something that belonged only to their town. It reminded her of her parents, who had also loved it. All in all, there were a lot of reasons to bring it back.
“Georgie, I’ve seen how much work you’ve put into this thing already. How is this in any way a scaled back version?” Burke asked.
“Because it wasn’t just the inns that were involved, it was the entire town. They basically closed the downtown, strung lights, set up an ice skating rink, had ice sculpting, ice fishing, a dance. It was epic,” Georgie gushed, while Elyse and Cotton nodded their agreement.
“Like something from a movie,” Elyse said. “I remember my first one, when I moved here. I couldn’t believe this place was for real.”
“I remember your first one here,” Cotton said, eyeing Elyse. “I watched Standish pluck up the courage to ask you to dance, and I don’t think I’ve ever been that jealous.”
Georgie watched Elyse’s eyes go soft as Cotton leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose and she fought her own wave of gooey softness. The fact that Cotton had carried a secret torch for her all these years had taken everyone by surprise, but no one more than Elyse herself, who had often been the victim of his perceived cruelty.
“I guess I don’t get it,” Burke said.
“Which part?” Elyse asked. Her head tipped, tapping Cotton’s shoulder with her temple, and he smiled. Georgie took it all in, wondering how she’d never noticed all the little signals and touches that passed between them, signifying them as a couple. While she was happy for them, it made her feel lonely on such a visceral level that it felt almost like a stomach ache.
“The town thing. Why would you want to be with so many strangers? Why would you care about them, about what they think or do?” Burke asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.
“It’s how it is, how it’s always been,” Cotton said.
“But why? It doesn’t make sense. You don’t know them. Who cares?” Burke said.
“I understand what you’re saying, and I get it,” Elyse said. “But I can tell you from experience that this cynicism is because you’re outside the circle looking in. When you’re part of the circle, you begin to understand, because you found something you didn’t know you needed.”
“What?” he demanded, still sounding baffled.
“Acceptance, I guess. Belonging, community. It feels like when you’re on a mission with your team and everything goes perfectly according to plan, like you’re all in sync. It’s like that.”
“Hmm,” he said, now sounding thoughtful. “Interesting.”
Georgie looked between them. “Do you have some sort of translation manual I can borrow to explain things to him?” she asked Elyse.
“No, because then you would have to know the things we know, in order to understand,” Elyse said.
“Elyse is right, you don’t want that,” Burke said. To her surprise, he rested his hand on her leg, a sign of his earnest supplication.
“Maybe I don’t want to know all the things you know, but I do want to understand you,” Georgie said, now resting her hand on his leg, her tone matching his earnest one.
“It’s fairly simple, Georgette,” he said, but that was all and she was left to wonder what he meant, or what she might be missing, because so far she hadn’t figured him out in the slightest.
Music must have started to play because Elyse’s attention drifted to the makeshift dance floor in the center of the room. Dancing was a common occurrence at the bar, so much that all the tables had been pushed to the edges of the room to keep the center clear. Georgie heard that at night it often devolved to rowdy line dancing, sometimes with fights between the drunken revelers. During family hours it was occasionally the spot for couples to sway or, in rare cases, show off their actual dance talent.
Elyse nodded her head toward it. “Do you want to make up for that lost dance all those years ago?” she asked Cotton, who grinned like the love-soaked idiot he was now.
“Why not?” he said, the besotted ninny.
Georgette suppressed an inward eye roll as they scooted out of the booth and made their way onto the floor. Maybe love was in the air because there were a handful of couples there now, swaying gently, and it made the pain in her stomach increase. She eyed Burke.
“Want to give it a go?” she asked. She tried to say it in an amused, offhand tone, as if it didn’t really matter to her, but suddenly she wanted to be out there, wanted to be one of the people who danced in public for once.
Burke looked mildly horrified. “I don’t have any idea how to dance.”
Georgie pointed to her ears. “I can’t hear the music or the beat, so you’d be in pretty good company. But how hard can it be?” Her eyes must have given away how badly she wanted it, or maybe Burke was merely curious because he set down his drink and gave a decisive nod.
“Sure, okay.”
“Really?” she blurted, certain she’d have to work a lot harder to convince him.
In answer, he nudged her toward the booth’s exit.
Georgette slid out, Burke following, and they made their way to the dance floor. She felt conspicuous and uncomfortable, as if everyone was probably watching her. Did Burke feel the same? Doubtful, and when they faced each other she read no discomfort in his eyes. Then again it was hard to read anything in his eyes because he was fairly good at keeping his emotions hidden.
Georgette maintained a very long list of things she’d never done. Most of her life had been lived on the outside looking in. Perhaps first on that list was dancing with a man. She’d never been to a dance before. Certainly no one had asked her, and she had never gone stag, pretending instead that it didn’t bother her to stay home, that she eschewed dances and parties and would rather stay home. The truth was that she’d cried every homecoming and prom night she didn’t attend, cried when she looked at pictures online, cried after she heard kids’ stories from the night. Somehow she maintained the hope that someone would ask her after her parents died, if only out of pity. Certainly some mother somewhere would make their son ask the deaf orphan to the dance, but it never happened. Until now, when her attic hobo put his hands on her waist and eased closer, woodenly swaying her back and forth.
This wasn’t how it was done, she was certain. Even without being able to hear the music or the beat, she knew they weren’t doing it right. But she wouldn’t, couldn’t say anything to hurt Burke’s feelings or embarrass him; it wasn’t as if he had any experience in this arena, either. Instead she eased a little closer, rested her hands on his chest, and began to sway in a more relaxed manner, without clunking her feet back and forth like a windup toy robot.
Burke was a quick study. He stopped stumping his feet and began swaying the upper part of his body instead and it was nice, cozy and familiar and warm and fun and all the good things she’d always thought dancing would be.
“Is this everything you thought it would be?” Burke asked her.
“It’s pretty great,” Georgie said, smiling. “Aren’t you having fun?”
“Do I enjoy dancing with you? Yes. But I think different things make us tick. I don’t need the things that you need.”
“What do you think I need?” she asked.
“Acceptance. Approval. Community.”
“And what do you need?” she asked, not arguing with his assessment. She did need those things, and she wanted them, too.
“Purpose,” he said. “I need to feel like what I’m doing in the world matters.”
“And do you have that?” she asked, remembering his lackluster life in her attic, as her handyman.
“I used to, or so I believed. Now I guess I’m reconfiguring some things,” he said thoughtfully.
“I don’t disagree with you that we need and want different things, but I would argue that we both need community, we both need people.”
He grimaced and shook his head.
“You’ll see,” she said, giving his biceps a little squeeze. “You’ll get plugged in here, and it will happen to you, you’ll start caring about other people, about their lives and their opinions. It sneaks up on you.”
“Most things that sneak up on me don’t end well,” he noted.
She laughed. “Please don’t kill my neighbors.”
“No promises,” he said.
They continued to sway, staring at each other. Georgette wondered what he thought as he gazed down at her. He gave nothing away, whereas she felt like her face was an open book. Right now Burke probably read curiosity, and maybe a bit of delight, because this was it; she was finally one of the people on the dance floor, in the moment having fun.
“What do we do when the music stops?” Burke asked.
“I have no idea,” Georgette said. “I guess we figure it out.”
His eyes turned heavenward, where the music was being piped in. “That would be now; the music stopped.”
They paused dancing and regarded each other. “Do you want to sit down or do you want to keep dancing?” Georgette asked. She knew what she wanted, but she didn’t want to pressure Burke, who was even more unaccustomed to dancing than she was.
He gazed around them, at the other couples continuing to sway. “I guess we could keep going awhile, if you want.”
She nodded, not bothering to tell him how very much she wanted. Something told her he already knew.
They started to sway again, becoming more comfortable as the night wore on. At the end, when the music finished, Georgette thought maybe she wasn’t the only one reluctant to stop and walk away.