Chapter 46 Gigi
A few days after the engagement, Gigi went down to the beach at British Landing for a late-afternoon suntan.
She was napping, deep in a recurring dream where she was riding a motorcycle. She was always strapped to the back with a guy
whose face she couldn’t see. She thought it was her dad, but the dream never let her take off his helmet to verify. This time,
though, she didn’t have her arms around a man. She was the driver, the sole rider. She had a police escort too, on horseback.
It was clear Gigi was a very important figure, though before she could find out why, a voice stirred her awake.
“Gigi?”
Groggily, she lifted her head. She could feel sand still smeared to her cheeks. Some had dribbled into her mouth too; she
seemed to have slept with it half open.
It was James. He was standing there shirtless in a bathing suit. It was an abrupt, though not unpleasant, sight to wake up
to. Gigi found herself squinting, whether from the sun or the shine of his abs, it was hard to discern.
This was the first Gigi had really seen of James since finding out the nature of his relationship with Lillian. She’d wanted
to talk to him, but there had been so much commotion with Eloise’s engagement. Besides, James could reach out. If he wasn’t
with Lillian and still wasn’t trying to get to know her, Gigi figured there was little point in putting in effort herself.
“What’s wrong?” Gigi asked. “Is my mom okay?” She never used to worry like this—that was Rebecca’s job—but she couldn’t help it now.
“Everything’s fine.” James was smiling. His gray eyes were calm but not cool. “I got off work early today. Eloise said I might
find you here.”
That was when Gigi noticed the dandelions. A big bundle of them, all different shapes and sizes. He was holding them like
a bouquet.
“I picked these on the way here,” James said, handing them to her. “I couldn’t help but see your dandelion tattoo on our first
date. I wasn’t trying to look.” He blushed. It softened his strong cheekbones.
Gigi hoped she wasn’t still sleeping. She much preferred this to the dream she’d been having, police escort and all.
Sitting up straighter, Gigi took off her sunglasses to look James in the eye. She didn’t think her mom would have put him
up to this, but there were other suspects. “Is Lillian behind this?”
James’s face colored further. “No. I mean, sort of.”
Gigi’s hopes dropped. She was annoyed at herself for thinking he might have come here of his own volition.
“All Lillian did was tell me to stop being a coward about it and tell you how I feel,” James said. “So I guess I have her
to thank. Or blame, if this blows up in my face.”
Gigi wanted to ask him what he meant. But all she said was, “You picked me weeds?”
She sniffed the dandelions. They smelled like her childhood: the sunny days, and the stormy ones too. How beautiful and strange
it was to breathe in the good and the bad of her past and not try to sneeze it out. She just exhaled slowly.
“Dandelions aren’t weeds,” James said. “They’re flowers. At least that’s what my mom used to say.”
Gigi felt a warmth spreading within. This was what she had always seen in them too. “Your mom sounds like a very wise woman.”
“She was.” James’s expression snagged on the sunlight. “We lost her when I was in college.”
“Shit.” Gigi felt like an idiot for not knowing this huge piece of information about him. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“I don’t tell many people,” James said.
It made Gigi feel good that he trusted her, though she didn’t feel she’d earned it yet.
“She had cancer when I was a kid. Beat it twice. That’s when I decided I wanted to be a doctor.”
James sat down and joined her in the sand. Gigi extended her beach towel for him to sit on with her.
“It came back a third time. Three years ago, when I was in residency. She couldn’t quite kick it that time,” he went on. “Felt
like I lost my dad too. It’s taken him a while to recover. Both of us, I guess.”
His voice was tender but not fragile. He kept his gaze out on the horizon, where the sky was squeezing the last juice out
of the lemony sun.
It explained something about James—the way his edges were so carefully tied, as if he were aware that everything might unravel
at any moment.
“Is that why you came to Mackinac for the summer?” Gigi recalled how James had told her a little of his story on their first
date. But that was all it had been, one small slice. She wanted the whole thing. “To get away from all that?”
“I thought of it more as a respite,” James said. Gigi related strongly. “I needed a break. I was overworking myself as a distraction
so I wouldn’t have to actually process how I felt about losing my mom.”
“Processing emotions is overrated,” Gigi said to lighten the mood. “I prefer to project them onto other people.”
James laughed, and Gigi felt like she’d won a thousand dollars. He was letting his guard down.
“I thought slowing down might be what I needed,” he said.
“And was it?” Gigi asked. “What you needed?”
“And more. Though in a town so small, I felt tempted to hide a little.”
Gigi made a sympathetic face. “I know the feeling.”
“I was always the shy kid growing up,” James said. “The one who was scared to raise my hand in class even when I knew the
answer. And that’s what I’ve been doing this summer. I’m sorry if I came off as rude.”
Gigi felt elated. Her intuition had been correct. James had liked her all along. She just had next to no experience with shy guys, so she didn’t know how to read him. The extroverted,
smooth-talking charmers who fizzled out faster than a Diet Coke were her usual type. But it was time for something new. Something
deeper, something steadier.
“Well, I’m sorry if I came off as too hot,” Gigi said.
They both laughed at that, the sounds layered like music on top of the lake.
“How about a swim?” James suggested.
Gigi agreed. She set down her bouquet of dandelions on her towel. Tugging it farther up on the shore, she made sure there
was no chance of it getting washed away in the waves. This was her new favorite bouquet, surpassing the expensive one from
Clyde.
“Race you to the water,” Gigi said, feeling like a little kid again, yet a full-blown adult too. The best of both worlds.
She started bolting toward the water. James was on her heels. He was faster, but she was craftier.
“My ankle!” she yelped as he overtook her. Mere inches from the water’s edge, he stopped in his tracks and came back to check
on her.
Gigi took advantage of his momentum shift. She bolted into the lake, sealing her victory.
“No fair,” James complained good-naturedly. “That’s cheating.”
“It’s my island. I get to make the rules.” Gigi felt a surge of affection for Mackinac as she said it. “You haven’t learned
my tricks yet.”
They were standing in the lake, the water up to their waists. The sand felt spongy beneath Gigi’s feet.
“I hope I’ll get the chance to,” James said.
Something about the earnest way he said it made Gigi think about what Eloise had mentioned.
“There are rumors you might be taking over the medical clinic from Fred. Is there any truth to them?” She let the question
hang there like a limp sail, trying not to care if it caught wind.
Seagulls squawked to fill the beat of silence.
“He did ask me,” James said. “But I declined.”
Gigi told herself she didn’t have a right to feel let down by this, but the disappointment flooded anyway. “Right,” she said.
“I figured it was just gossip.”
“It’s so much responsibility being the only doctor on the island,” James went on.
“But you’re good at responsibility.” Gigi’s instinct was to persuade him to take the job. And rather than fight that instinct
or fear that it would make her seem like she cared too much, she followed it to see where it would take her. “Just think about
how you saved my life from those pistachios.”
James grinned. He looked so good without his doctor’s coat on. Just his bronze skin free to breathe in the late summer air.
“And Mackinac is pretty far from my dad. He’s back in Detroit,” James elaborated. “We’re trying to rebuild our relationship
since things got rocky when Mom died.”
Gigi nodded. She thought about her dad and realized how much she wanted to tell James about her own jagged past.
“I know your dad stopped by the island this summer,” James said. “He actually came into the clinic. Said his knee was hurting,
but it seemed fine to me. I got the sense he’d heard some rumors about us and was scoping me out.”
This news was the last thing Gigi had expected. Did Gus have a protective father instinct after all? She loved the thought of it, the feel of it. Especially with how abruptly he’d left this summer. This felt like evidence that he did care about her, even if he would never really change. “He did?”
James nodded. He looked like he was going to ask more about her dad but seemed reluctant, like there was a wall blocking his
movement toward her. It was the same wall Gigi felt, the one reminding both of them that there was little point in going too
deep because it was all coming to an end regardless.
“Can I ask you why it matters to you if I take over the clinic?” James’s tone wasn’t aggressive, just curious. “You’re leaving
after Labor Day, aren’t you?”
“That’s the plan.” Gigi’s headache mounted again as it often did when she thought about how much she still had to figure out.
James took half a step toward her, and she took half a step toward him. One whole step divided the two, yet multiplied too.
“I wish I could get to know you more,” James told her. “I wish we had more time.”
They stood there in the lake, wading in deeper. Usually Gigi sprinted in and out of the water, scared away by the cold. But
she had no desire to run out now. The water had had time to warm by this point in the season. The air had too.
James was looking impossibly handsome. His wet hair slicked back, his svelte body standing tall. They were just about the