Chapter 21 Gigi
It felt like one big game of euchre. Everyone had a partner. But instead of playing cards, they were playing hearts. Gigi
and Ronny. James and Lillian. Eloise and Clyde.
Gigi hadn’t seen when Eloise and Clyde started dancing, but something must have happened to change Eloise’s mind about keeping
her distance. They’d been inseparable for the last six songs, even clowning around as Ronny switched to EDM. It was odd seeing
Eloise with a man. Childhood images burbled like the coffee her dad used to make.
Evenings in the family room with James Taylor records playing. Gigi and Rebecca inventing plots for their doll families (Rebecca
dreamed up weddings, babies, and new houses; Gigi contributed deaths, illnesses, and tornados). Their parents waltzing from
the kitchen to the family room and back again.
Eloise was looking at Clyde like she used to look at Gigi’s dad. Except the expression had a new texture to it—enchantment,
innocence.
Gigi wasn’t sure anymore if she was rooting for Clyde. Some harmless flirting was one thing, but seeing them cozied up like
lovers made Gigi’s stomach flip.
She snapped a few pictures of them on her phone to send to Rebecca. She wanted to text her dad, too, and ask when he was going
to visit this summer. But he still hadn’t replied to her last text, and she refused to double-text any guy, including her
father.
“Want to get out of here?” Gigi asked Ronny.
“We’re on a boat,” Ronny said. His features were glazed from the gummies they’d both had. “Where would we go?”
“There are places.” Gigi felt the high move from her chest to her hips. “But on second thought, maybe it’s more fun to stay
here, out in the open.”
She was into Ronny as much as she was into the guys she usually hooked up with. No more, no less. He was too arrogant, too
vapid, for her to actually fall for, but that was just as well. Gigi had a hard time liking people if she was worried about
loving them.
All she wanted right now was an escape.
Coming back to the island had made her confront old memories, old versions of herself. The fifth grader who strutted around
telling made-up stories about her dad, as if he were some superhero flying all around the world, not just a regular guy who
left because he got bored. The eighth grader who became jealous of her best friend because Lillian had two parents who attended
every single sports match and band concert and awards ceremony and never stopped bragging about her. The twelfth grader who
never even graduated, just threw herself at the governor’s son and begged for him to take her away like she was some damsel
in distress.
Gigi hated who she’d been on this island. She hated the desperate, powerless sides that Mackinac magnified in her. It was
impossible to re-create herself, not in one summer.
And subverting expectations felt too heavy tonight, too hard. She might as well slip back into her old caricature.
She slid right up to Ronny, right into him.
The kiss was sloppy and rough, the kind of thing Gigi associated with college, though she’d never been. She poured herself
into it, knowing it would draw the attention of James, of Eloise, of all the islanders. Knowing it would show them all that
she didn’t give a damn what they thought. If she was going to go up in flames this time, it was going to be because she was
the one lighting the torch, swallowing it whole.
***
“Honestly, Georgiana. Causing a scene in front of all those people. You’d never know you were nearly thirty.” It was later
that night and Gigi was just arriving home. Eloise was waiting up to corner Gigi for the lecture she’d known was coming.
After the cruise docked, Gigi and Ronny had made a getaway on the back of an electric scooter he’d confiscated from a fudgie.
They’d done laps around Main Street, then ridden over to the beach at British Landing. He’d invited her back to his place,
but Gigi headed home, using Eloise as the scapegoat. She’d told Ronny how completely miserable it was to be in her twenties
and living back under her mother’s dictatorship, all the while being glad to have such an easy out. Ronny bequeathed the scooter
to her, under the condition she use it to sneak out to see him.
“Thank you, Mother.” Gigi kicked off her shoes, refusing to line them up with the others on the doormat. “It must be the new
eye cream I’m using.”
“This isn’t LA.”
“I’m aware.”
“You can’t come back and wreak havoc again. I thought we were doing things differently this time.”
“And what exactly is the crime in question? Two adults kissing?”
“It was more than kissing,” Eloise said. “And in front of all those people.”
Gigi tried to distract herself from the part of her that already regretted the spectacle. James must have thought she was
cheap, if he hadn’t already. She went to the kitchen for a Diet Coke. She had the munchies and ripped open an old pack of
M I’m prudent. Ronny’s trouble, and you know it.”
“We’re a good match then. Two wrongs make a right and all that.” Gigi offered an M&M to Eloise, who frowned and pushed it
away. “I think this is a diversion tactic. To avoid talking about what happened between you and Clyde tonight.”
Eloise’s nostrils flared, the same way Rebecca’s did. “Nothing happened. We danced, that’s all.”
“You like him.”
“You’re inebriated,” Eloise said. But her eyes shone, almost like she was glad that Gigi called her out on her feelings so
she wouldn’t have to keep them a secret. Gigi felt disoriented again, like she had while watching Clyde and Eloise together.
The kitchen floor seemed to be swaying, as if she were still on the boat.
“Please wipe down the counter and let’s go to bed.” Eloise handed Gigi a rag to mop up the crumbs. “We have to get up early
for church.”
“ You have to get up early,” Gigi said. “I’m sleeping in.”
At least when she was asleep she didn’t have to face the shit show that was life back on this claustrophobia-inducing island.
“Good night, Georgiana,” Eloise said, looking like she wished she could say more but knew it was too dangerous.
There was something satisfying about knowing her mother was scared of her. There was something sad about it too, but she wasn’t
in the mood to go there.
Gigi swiped a box of granola from the pantry and stomped up the stairs. “Good night, Mother.”
“No eating upstairs,” Eloise called after her.
Gigi ignored her.