Chapter 62 Gigi
“Am I making a morning person out of you, Gigi Jenkins?” James asked.
It was the third day in a row that she was out riding with him at sunrise. This as much as anything showed her that try as
she might to deny it, her feelings for James were not of the friendship variety.
“I’m not just getting up for you,” Gigi said. “I have a packed agenda these days. The election is only sixty-eight days away,
as Rebecca reminded me on yesterday’s strategy call.”
Gigi liked starting her day with James and Noelle and Willow. She liked trotting around the lakeshore path with them before
the island woke up. She liked the way the fresh air lined her lungs.
And rather than sleeping the day away, waking up early gave her a new sense of accomplishment. Gigi was campaigning, meeting
with community leaders, and recording her videos. Yesterday she even had coffee with Principal Reid, who had led the school
since Gigi had been a student. Though Gigi had been sweating going into it—What must he think of her? And why did she still
care?—it had been surprisingly pleasant and productive. It seemed most people were as ready to move on as she was.
“I’m honored that you’re making time to give me horseback riding lessons,” James told Gigi as Willow and Noelle kept pace
beside each other. “Especially with how much of a public figure you’ve become.”
Gigi continued to rack up social media stardom, and the perks were more than political.
The Main Street shops were sending boxes and boxes of freebies to Thistle Dew in hopes Gigi would post about them. And as
a thank-you for the positive PR from the viral campaign video that Gigi filmed at their stables, the Grand Hotel had gifted
Gigi a free stall for Noelle. Gigi had negotiated a second stall for Willow, so both horses had gotten to upgrade from Fred
and Deirdre’s barn. They would be wintering downstate, but they had a few more weeks before saying goodbye for the off-season.
“You’re a quick learner,” Gigi said, noting how much more easily James held the reins now, not the tight grip of before. “You’re
nearly skilled enough for that outfit you wore to our first date. You know, the nineteenth-century polo player one?”
“How could I forget?” James said. “You hated me that day.”
“I never hated you. I just buried my positive emotions under negative ones. It’s a party trick I’ve been doing my whole life.”
Gigi had known this for a while, but this was the first time she had actually voiced it to anyone. She felt quite mature,
not in a boring way, but in a brave one.
“Maybe we can break the habit?” James said.
“I think I already have. I’ve been very nice to you recently, haven’t I?”
“You have been. Very nice.”
The way he said it implied he might be hoping for something a little more than nice one of these days.
Gigi still hadn’t answered him about whether they could move beyond friendship. It continued to be the elephant in the room.
With both of them staying, there was no longer a good reason for them not to be together. James had put himself out there.
Now it was Gigi’s turn.
Beyond the fear of messing up their friendship, something else was holding her back. The fear that James might feel stuck
or trapped on the island, and during a fight—because fights would happen if they were dating—he’d fling it on her that he’d given up a big job in a big city to be here in this isolated town with nothing to do.
“You’re not just staying on the island because of me, right?” she asked James now.
James glanced over at her. “What if I said yes?”
Gigi felt a thrill, but fear too. “It’s too much pressure. We haven’t even ever kissed.”
“We almost kissed,” James said. “In the lake.”
Her body heat shot up at the memory, though it was still cool and dewy this morning. “But we didn’t.”
“You can relax,” James said. “I’m not staying just because of you.” He told her how he loved the islanders, how he’d bonded
with his patients, how he didn’t want to go back to the pace of big-city life where everything felt impersonal and he had
to commute half an hour to work on a busy highway. “But yes, you were a factor. One of several.”
“One of several,” Gigi repeated. She appreciated his transparency. Still, she found herself wanting him to say she was one
of one. She realized she was asking for the impossible, especially when she hadn’t validated James much herself. It was a
no-win game. She wanted to have her fudge and eat it too.
“Was that the wrong answer?” James said. “I’m not a mind reader, Gigi.”
“They didn’t teach you that in medical school?” Gigi quipped.
“Neuroscience and psychology, yes. The inner workings of a woman’s brain, no. That would’ve taken an extra ten years of schooling
at least.”
Gigi felt her smile slip on and her fears slide off. She was glad they were out riding. There was something about moving and
having their eyes on the path ahead that made it easier to have deep conversations. And Noelle had such a steadying presence.
She couldn’t expect James to know exactly how she felt.
She couldn’t expect him to be her knight in shining armor (despite the uncanny resemblance as he rode horseback) and do all the work for her.
It was time for Gigi to step up and break the damsel-in-distress cliché, shatter the glass slipper and turn its shards into glitter.
“I’ve thought about your proposal. I mean, not proposal proposal,” Gigi said, flustered. “But the suggestion to amend our friendship rules. And I agree with you,” she went on. “I
think we should be more than friends.”
She kept her gaze straight ahead as she said it, but she stole a glance right after.
James was smiling ear to ear. “Do you, now?” he said. “And what might the details of ‘more than friends’ be, exactly?”
Gigi resisted the tug to back down from her feelings, back away from her body. “I think you should be my boyfriend.”
“Oh?” James seemed more than interested. “But as you pointed out, we haven’t kissed yet. What if I’m not a good kisser?”
“You’ll be a good kisser.”
“Why don’t you test it out first?” James said. “So you don’t have buyer’s remorse.”
She loved how James could give her a hard time. He had so much more zest to him than Gigi had first thought.
“I can’t kiss you right now. I’m in the saddle.” As she said it, she felt the metaphor of her words. How she was back in the
saddle on this island, holding the reins of her own horse, her own life.
“Race you to the stable then,” James said. He tugged at Willow and they took off in a tear.
“Hey!” Gigi called, feeling her own trick used against her.
It made her even more confident in her choice of a man. Here was someone she still got to race with, still got to explore
with. But instead of running away, this time Gigi was running toward.
Toward the man who showed her that consistency wasn’t the antithesis of excitement but rather the underpinning of it.
Toward the stables where she’d had her first job mucking stalls and now visited every day to brush out her horse and film
videos to help her land her next job, a bigger one than she’d ever had.
And toward herself, especially the parts she’d tried to drown in the Great Lakes when she’d left this island as a teenager. The parts she’d deemed small or ordinary, when really, they were just that, parts. Pieces that had floated in the water like driftwood, waiting for her all this time.
Gigi brought Noelle to a full gallop, egging her on affectionately.
They closed the gap on James and passed him on the home stretch. Gigi whooped, the wind blowing through her partially grown-out
hair, all her grounded hopes back in the air.
***
“I’m only staying over with James tonight because I have my meeting with small business owners at the Pink Pony tomorrow morning,”
Gigi told Eloise one evening a couple weeks later as they ambled along the lakeshore, taking turns holding the flashlight
that lit their way. “And his place is closer, so it just makes sense, practically speaking.”
It had become their routine, an evening walk after cooking together. They were bundled in fleeces and headbands, late September
having descended with a blustery chill. The tourists had largely cleared out and the trees were shedding too, amber leaves
nearing their peak, oranges and reds just around the corner. The sun set earlier now, swaddling the island in a dark and silky
cocoon that would only thicken come winter.
“Right, because ‘practical’ has always been the top adjective to describe you,” Eloise noted.
“Exactly,” Gigi dished back. “I’m glad you understand.”
“I just want to make sure you’re not rushing things,” Eloise cautioned.
“Says the woman who got engaged to someone after two months,” Gigi said. “Sorry. Too soon.”
“It’s a fair rebuttal.”
The crescendo of heartbreak had dipped into something mellower, something malleable.
Eloise seemed just about back to her old self, though some differences remained.
She was quicker to laugh and poke fun at herself, less rigid in her schedule.
She had emptied out Gus’s side of the closet completely, down to the tattered golf tees and ragged handkerchiefs he’d left.
Freeing up space, that was what Gigi saw her mom doing these days.
Gigi tried to take credit for the progress whenever she could, then shoved it back in Eloise’s face whenever her mom tried to hand it over in earnest.
“You’re not a teenager anymore,” Eloise said. “You can make your own decisions. Lord knows you’ll be leading this whole island
soon enough.”
“Let the Jenkins dynasty begin.”
The leaves crunched under their feet. Gigi was borrowing a pair of Eloise’s walking shoes. The laces were tightly tied. Gigi
no longer just slipped shoes on and off.
“I’m glad it’s going so well with James,” Eloise said. “But I don’t want you thinking you’ll be letting me down if it doesn’t
work out.”
“This might come as a shock,” Gigi said, “but letting my parents down has never been my highest concern.”