Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Georgie
Ava’s quince is an elegant autumn theme, with deep burgundy, burnt orange, and rich forest green everywhere I look.
There are jeweled pumpkins in the most gorgeous fall shades and countless leaves scattered all over the ground of Alma and Julio’s backyard, which is technically a horse pasture.
String lights run from the old barn out to the fence posts, and hay bales double as benches around the dance floor.
Every so often the breeze carries an earthy hint of hay and horse from the barn, and somehow it fits the whole night better than anything fancier would.
It’s a cool night, and my burgundy dress with the off-the-shoulder straps and flowing, floor-length skirt aren’t quite cutting it.
I showed up early to help set up, in a green wrap dress I thought would do fine for folding napkins and setting tables.
Alma took one look at me and said, “No.”
Before I could ask what that meant, she had my wrist in her hand and was pulling me through the kitchen, up the back stairs of the farmhouse, past a wall of photos spanning what looked like decades of quinceaneras, and straight to a closet in a back bedroom.
It was full of dresses. Nearly a dozen, each zipped into a garment bag and labeled in Alma’s handwriting with a name and a year.
She pulled one out first—a deep green, with sleeves that belonged in a different century—held it up against me, and shook her head. Back on the rack.
Then a blush-pink one, then a navy one with a skirt wide enough to hide a few dozen woodland creatures. She paused on that one a bit longer than the others before shaking her head again.
Then she found the burgundy dress.
She held it up, made a small clicking sound with her tongue, and smiled.
“This one.”
“Whose was it?”
“Rosa’s dama dress,” she says of her daughter. “She wore it to Marta’s quince twenty-five years ago.”
Alma held it against my hips like she was doing alterations in her head.
“It’s too much. I fix it.”
I sat on the edge of the bed while she laid the dress across a desk and took a seam ripper to the lace and to bows all along the back. When she finished, she stood, handed me the dress, and turned her back so I could change.
When I was dressed, she turned around, looked at me for a long moment, and sighed.
“Pareces un angelito bajado del cielo, mija.”
That’s the dress I’m wearing now, and it’s gorgeous. It doesn’t make me feel quite like an angel, but I feel beautiful.
Also cold.
Alma fixes a stray strand of hair and tucks it in the gold clip holding my side ponytail. I’m grateful my hair is at least buffering one shoulder.
“You look pretty. Stop shivering.”
“Gracias, Alma, but next time, can I wear a shawl?”
“No. A shawl would ruin the look. You can shiver.”
I give her a smile. “You told me to stop shivering.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. I’ve always been close with Alma, but this level of talking back is new. She nods, though, like she’s glad to see me finally get some mettle. “You’re right. The problem isn’t the shivering—it’s the moping, and after only a few hours.” She tuts. “Pull yourself together.”
I’m posted near the dessert table when Alma leaves me to watch her son-in-law—Ava’s dad—change out Ava’s flats for heels, symbolizing her transition to womanhood.
I put my hand over my heart as Ava’s dad tears up and then gives her an emotional hug.
The mariachi band strikes up the opening chords of El Vals, and he leads her out into the father-daughter waltz.
I huddle under the outdoor heater and watch wistfully.
Soon, Ava is rotating dance partners, through her mom, grandparents, godparents, and uncles.
The whole evening is enchanting—a kind of magic I can’t relate to, let alone understand. My circle has always been so small. Alma’s made a point of including me as much as I want to be included, but I’ve never felt comfortable to be this included. To Alma, I’m family.
I wish I could reciprocate more.
More dances follow, including the choreographed dance with her damas and chambelanes, and then the rest of Ava’s family and friends take the dance floor, leaving me shivering in spite of the heat lamp.
I haven’t danced many times in my life. Once with my dad at Alma’s son’s wedding. Once or twice at dances in high school.
I know I’ve never glowed during any of those dances the way Ava is glowing now.
Not the glow of true love, but the glow of being seen and cared for.
The glow that can only come from knowing that people care so much about you that they would dress up, learn ornate dances, sacrifice time, money, and energy, all to make you happy.
What would it be like to be loved like this?
I feel a light touch on my shoulder at the same time that a voice says, “Can I have this dance?”
I whip around to see my very own Prince Charming wearing a dark suit with a burgundy tie, his blond hair less styled than the rest of him, his intensely blue eyes sparkling in the string lights.
Logan is here.
I freeze, and my brain freezes with the rest of me, but Logan hasn’t. He takes my hand and spins me, and we start dancing right there, behind the dessert table, under the heat lamp.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper, half convinced I’m dreaming.
Logan takes a deep breath like he hasn’t inhaled since the moment we parted. He answers against my ear. “I missed you, so I canceled my flight and booked a red-eye.” Then he backs up, his eyes taking me in like I’m fine art as we sway. “Besides, I absolutely had to see you in this dress.”
I laugh as he spins and dips me. When I’m upright, he says, “You are beautiful, but where are your dress Chucks?”
“Sorry, all I have are these boring old heels.”
He tuts. “That won’t do, sorry. Wait one second.” He lets go of me and takes a few steps toward a hay bale, where an ornately wrapped box in burgundy and gold is sitting. Logan grabs it and hands it to me. “For my lady.”
Butterflies swirl in my stomach. “What’s this?”
“A present, silly. Open it,” he says.
I start unwrapping the shimmery paper carefully, peeling the tape slowly from one corner.
“Georgie, rip it open. You’re not keeping the paper.”
“Bossy Logan,” I say, but I rip the rest of the paper off, and my heart stutters when I see the iconic star logo. “You got me Converse?”
“Dress Chucks,” he clarifies. “Your old ones were too small.”
“How did you know what size to get?”
“I texted Liv. She got the key from Alma and snuck into your apartment. Or do you prefer sneaked? I’m on the fence.”
I feel like I’m floating as I open the box.
Inside is a gorgeous pair of pale pink platform high-tops.
I trail my fingers across the buttery-soft suede.
I’ve never felt anything so luxe in my life.
And the platform sole is the perfect touch—thick and sturdy under my palm, but with a subtle gold line in the middle of the platform instead of the usual black.
If there were ever dress Chucks …
“Logan, they’re perfect.”
“I hoped you’d like them,” he says. He guides me over to a chair and sits me on it before getting down to his knees and pulling off my heels. “You won’t be needing these,” he says.
He puts them in the box he pulled the new Converse from.
Then he hands me a pair of new socks from another bag and slips them on my feet, his hands strong, careful, and his touch sending waves of tingles through me.
He slides the Converse on me next, one at a time, and I watch him lace them with a slow, methodical confidence that makes my heart pitter a little extra.
When he’s done, he holds on to my bare calf, and it’s only the cold that keeps me from spontaneously combusting.
“How do they feel?” he asks.
I wiggle my toes, rotating my ankles, and bobbing back and forth on the soles of my feet. I haven’t had a new pair of shoes in so long, I forgot that they’re supposed to be comfortable. “Amazing. Logan, thank you.”
Still on his knees, he looks up at me, his eyes glittering in the glow of the pumpkin lanterns strung along the fence line. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he says, putting his hand in his pocket and pulling something out.
Before I know it, he’s pinning a patch carefully to my new shoes.
Recognition jolts through me. “Is that a Meant to Bean patch?”
“Yes.”
The world seems to quiet around me, like someone pulled us from the middle of the music and laughter and cheering and dropped us on a desert island.
“How? We haven’t offered patches in over a decade. Where did you get that?”
“I found it on a concourse at a Spring Training game six months ago.”
My throat catches, halting my breath.
“I was at a game with my family—my dad was the umpire—and I saw you taking Lulabelle up the stairs in the section opposite us. I couldn’t stop thinking about you after we met at the fan event in Phoenix.
You were wearing that white tank top and those jean shorts with your Chucks and all those patches, and you were holding your copy of Narnia and blushing at Lulabelle saying I was your favorite player.
I couldn’t forgive myself for not getting your number after we met.
So when I saw you, I had to find you. Lucas and Coop both ran with me.
We searched high and low. I ran the entire concourse looking for you, but you were gone.
When I finally accepted reality, I was walking back to the last place I saw you, and that’s when I spotted the patch.
You were wearing a patch when we first met, and I knew—I just knew—it had to be yours. ”
I’m breathless and dizzy. “You’ve kept it since then?”
“Yes.”
“You ran for me?”
“I’ll always run for you. I searched for you every day, Georgie. I must have gone to Meant to Bean a hundred times since spring looking for you. If I’d known you were on a truck in Sugar Maple, I’d have crawled there to get to you.”