Chapter 34 Gigi
“You want me to third wheel?” Gigi said the following week when Eloise and Clyde asked if she’d like to join them for dinner
at the Grand Hotel. Rebecca and Tom were back in Traverse City.
“I’ll be the third wheel,” Clyde volunteered.
Gigi considered it. “Okay. So long as I don’t need to dress up.”
“It’s the Grand Hotel,” Eloise said. “Of course you’ll dress up.”
“Wear whatever you’re most comfortable in,” Clyde said.
This ended up being a striped cotton dress, basically a nightgown. Eloise hardly even insulted it, which was one indicator
that she was fully consumed by Clyde these days.
As Gigi sat across from Eloise and Clyde, both dressed to the nines, she wished she’d put in a little more effort. For her
sake, not theirs.
Gigi used to dream about being Queen of the Grand Hotel. It was one of the alter egos she conjured up after her dad left,
when fantasy was her favorite refuge.
Being princess never appealed. Gigi wanted to be the ruler, the one with the power. Golden-tasseled carpets and chocolate
muffins delivered to her turret suite. Beanie Babies and battery-powered toy cars overflowing from the playroom. A four-poster
bed with purple curtains. A whole staff waiting on her and townspeople lining up on the streets in hopes of glimpsing even
her hat (which would be outlandishly stylish).
A private helicopter featured in the vision too, so Gigi could collect her dad. She’d felt intuitively that a helicopter would be the surest way to bring him back home.
Once in her teens, Gigi started to reject those dreams. No point being tempted by something that could never come true. So
she mocked that life instead. Ridiculed it. Especially once she’d started dating Xander.
After he’d bailed, Gigi stayed in Florida for another year. She quit the bicycle shop and got a job at the take-out window
of a regional fast-food chain called Swift it’s my passion.”
“Hopefully you have a little more passion in your life than that ,” Gigi said without thinking.
A pause stretched, charged with something—chemistry or concern, one of the two. Something about the way James took half a
step back told her he felt something too. Or maybe that was just her ego wanting it to be true.
“Just for future reference,” James said, “if you were trying to get my attention, there are easier ways.”
Gigi realized she was smiling. She didn’t try to stop. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s exactly what I was trying to do.”
Then she dashed over to join Eloise and Clyde in the back of the golf cart.
***
“We’ll have to have a do-over dinner with Clyde soon,” Eloise said when they got back to Thistle Dew. “So you can get to know
him better.”
“That’s okay,” Gigi said, cocooning under blankets on the couch. “I think I have a pretty good sense of him already.”
“You don’t like him?” Eloise said, face falling. She brought Gigi a Diet Coke from the fridge and cracked one for herself
too.
“I do like him,” Gigi said. “He’ll just have to pass more of my tests first.”
Eloise looked touched by this. “I know it must be strange seeing me with someone other than your father.”
“Why would it be strange?” Gigi said, trying harder than usual not to make this about herself. The allergy scare had shaken her up, though she was reluctant to admit it, and she wanted to try a little harder to be nice to her mom. “You’ve been divorced twenty years.”
Eloise fiddled with the blankets. “I was worried about you tonight,” she said, sitting adjacent to Gigi on the couch. “I know
I don’t tell you enough, but—”
“Don’t, Mother,” Gigi cut in. “No need for us to get all sappy just because I nearly died. Let’s go back to our normal state.”
“Where we judge each other’s dating behaviors?”
Gigi grinned. “And you make annoying comments about how great James is and I say he’s really nothing special.”
“He is a pretty amazing doctor,” Eloise said. “Pours so much of himself into his job.”
“He needs better boundaries. Classic workaholic habits.”
“He has plenty of time for Lillian, it seems.”
“Good,” Gigi said. “They deserve each other.”
“You deserve someone too,” Eloise said. “Someone special.”
“I’m aware of that. But for now I guess I’m stuck with you.” Gigi wagged her tongue affectionately.
“Such a sense of humor you have.”
“I’m glad you appreciate it.”
Gigi turned on a show that neither of them liked but both of them didn’t hate. It was the kind of compromise that had once
felt too big and now seemed just small enough, like it could fit in the space between their shoulders as they watched from
different couch cushions, feet tucked under the same blanket.