Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
GABE
This is truly the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in my life.
A crowd of people, adults and kids, a large percentage of them wearing pig ear headbands, is gathered around a twenty-foot tall, semitransparent, round pig.
It’s wrapped in unlit lights and covered in hooks from which a completely uncoordinated collection of decorations dangle.
Aunt Lou is standing behind a podium on a platform near the nose of the pink animal. A polite chuckle runs through the gathering when she cracks a joke about Gerald’s homemade wine being strong enough to power the pig for a week.
Given what I’ve learned about this town in just the last seven days, I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t even the strangest ceremonial activity the mayor has to take part in.
But who am I to talk? I’ve become a man with a fluffy pink stuffed pig shoved inside his jacket because he didn’t want to carry it around.
I look down at Natalie as she tips her head back to scan the sky.
“Beautiful night for it,” she says to the heavens.
A patch of her smooth throat is lifted from under her plaid scarf, and I have to fight the instinct to adjust the fabric so that delicious skin doesn’t get cold.
“No clouds at all,” she adds. “Just stars.”
I lean down and whisper in her ear—partially so no one hears what I’m saying and partially because I just want my lips next to her skin and her sweet flowery scent in my nostrils. “None of them as remarkable as that one though.”
She brings her eyes back to Earth and looks up at me, puzzled.
I nod toward the giant gold star on the pig’s head.
She rolls her eyes and shoves me with her shoulder.
Exasperating Natalie has become my new favorite hobby. At least if I had hobbies, it would be. Being here among a town full of people who volunteer to make costumes for a kids’ play, Aunt Lou being involved in a bunch of community things as mayor, and Natalie helping out with Senior Central activities brings home to me that not only do I not have any interests outside work, I have never had any.
My only hobby was ever hockey. Until it became my job. And since then it’s been my everything.
“And so it is,” Aunt Lou’s voice comes out of the speakers attached to the lampposts around the square, “with the power vested in me as the mayor of Warm Springs, that I declare this year’s pig officially lit.”
She pulls a comically large lever attached to the side of the lectern that clearly has no connection whatsoever to any electrical power. It looks like it’s been constructed from cardboard by someone who makes props for the theater. I can only assume there’s someone somewhere else flipping the actual switch that turns on the?—
My hand flies to my eyes as a giant cheer goes up. “Good God. Got a welder’s mask I can borrow?” I ask Natalie, my eyelids blinking in spasms to try to get my pupils to adjust. “I wasn’t expecting it to be that bright. Or that”—I squint—“pink.”
“What color did you expect a pig to be?” she asks, like duh .
I summon the courage to lift my head and take it all in as everything gradually comes back into focus. “I certainly didn’t expect the star on its head to flash and rotate like it’s a festive emergency response vehicle.”
Holy shit, I just noticed what’s at the other end. “Or for the corkscrew tail to twirl. But it explains why you thought all that crap you covered my house with was no big deal. That was a picture of elegance and subtlety compared to…whatever this is.”
Natalie looks up at me, unsmiling, not finding me even remotely funny. “Look how happy everyone is.”
And I do.
There is not one unsmiling face anywhere to be found.
Oh, apart from that kid who’s just dropped his pig-shaped cake pop.
As the cheers die down, Lou takes to the microphone again. “Once you’ve added any decorations you’ve brought for the pig, Frankie and Sam from the donkey sanctuary are over there to take you on a sleigh ride home.”
She points to the street side of the square where donkeys wearing red coats and antlers—of course they are—are harnessed to a line of two-seater sleighs.
“Well, they’ll take you home if you live within a four-block radius,” Lou continues. “Otherwise you’ll go around the square a couple of times, then make your own way back. And don’t forget to donate generously. The sanctuary needs your support more than ever.”
“Come on.” Natalie tips her pig ears toward the street and the already growing line for the sleigh rides.
“No way.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Haven’t I tolerated enough festive stuff? You’ve flung more Christmas at me than I’ve ever had, even if you put all my twenty-eight Christmases together and strangled them with tinsel.”
“You can’t come to the pig lighting and not have a sleigh ride. It’s tradition.” She turns and starts to move with the flow of people.
“Oh, I think you’ll find I can.”
She stops and looks at me over her shoulder, the playful gleam in her eye heightened by the surrounding plethora of sparkling lights. “Your parents still think you’re at an exclusive rehab retreat for special sportspeople, don’t they?”
I close my eyes and sigh. She’s shaming me. And she’s right. It is shameful that I’m deceiving them.
“It’s just a white lie, Nat. And they’re having the best time on the cruise. Yesterday they took an onshore excursion to Antigua and did a Segway beach tour.”
She furrows her brow. “A what?”
“Yeah, I thought they must have got the words confused until they sent me photos of them on actual Segways on an actual Antiguan beach. But, you know, I’ve also just attended an annual pig lighting ceremony so I’m starting to believe anything is possible.”
“Anything is possible.” She hooks her hand into the crook of my elbow and tugs. “Including you coming on a donkey sleigh ride. If you had your photo taken with one of the donkeys it might help Frankie and her grandpa’s fundraising efforts. Please do it for them.”
The grip of her hand reminds me of the way her fingers dug into my shoulders when I was inside her just three nights ago. And I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that that cannot be the last time that happens.
Anyway, I can do a donkey selfie if it’ll help them raise money. That’s all about doing the right thing for the animals. Nothing to do with wanting to peel off Natalie’s jeans again at all.
“Okay, okay.” I take a step in the same direction as every other Warm Springs resident. “I surrender. You’ve drowned me in so much community spirit that, yes, okay, I’ll have my photo taken with a donkey wearing antlers.”
“That one has a red nose too.” Natalie pulls me toward the beast. “Let’s do that one.”