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“You sang for me first. It was beautiful.” She hiccupped, twice. “But I waited to cry, till I could get makeup on your shirt.”
He put his hand over hers. His heart was bongo drum crazy. No engineer could get a level on it. “I made you cry again. I made you cry too many times.”
“You made me feel so many things I didn’t know how to cope with. I still don’t.”
“Where does that leave us?”
“We’re hopelessly messed up.”
He took his hand away, but she didn’t. Her other hand went to his hip. He didn’t know whether to step back or bury himself in her warmth and her fresh freesia skin. Had she come all this way to say goodbye?
He stepped away. “Why are you here?” That came out gruffer than he intended, gruff was his new voice default, but everything was in stark relief, the night, the songs, the way she felt in his arms, the uprising going on in his brain.
“Because I gave part of me to you and I don’t function very well without it.”
“Oh, Jesus.” He pushed a hunk of hair off his forehead. “You… This. You’re not saying goodbye.”
“I bought a red dress. You probably don’t have a clue why that’s important to me. I put my hair up in a thousand pins and I imagined you taking them out one by one, while you whispered in my ear, said things that made my organs melt. I wore these stupid dangly earrings and shoes that hurt. And I did it as much for me as for you. I want the fantasy and I want the reality. I was so scared to come here tonight I nearly walked home again. I want to be with you, but it’s worse than that. I don’t want to be without you and I find that terrifying.”
She spoke fast, she sounded frustrated. He didn’t know how to address the terror in his own chest.
“I remember about the red dress. I asked Taylor what you were wearing.”
All he got from her was a choked breath.
“Talk to me.”
“It’s not about the red dress.”
“Okay.”
Click of heels. She walked around him. Headed for the door. He spun to follow her movements. “Don’t go. Don’t fly halfway around the world to walk out because I get the thing about the dress wrong. Please.”
There was a snick sound. “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you this time. There’s a lock on this door now and I used it. It’s just you and me and Mel, and no one can disturb us.”
His mouth was Simpson Desert dry, he got out a sandy sounding, “Okay.”
“Ask me what I’m wearing.”
He was so confused, he already knew what she was wearing and it was everything good and possible, heartache stitched together with his frayed hope, but he’d ask her anything, as long as that door stayed closed, that lock stayed fixed, they stayed in this room.
“What are you wearing?”
She walked towards him. Stood in front of him, but out of reach, because he tried to reach her; nothing was right in the world until he could touch her.
“I’m wearing hope. I’ve got expectation on my feet and optimism on my lips.”
She was short on breath, but her voice was steady. He took a step closer to her. “It looks good on you.”
“It’s missing something. It’s not complete. I need you to help me fix it.”
He tapped his lip, he needed the right words. This was a game and not a game. This was his life. “What am I wearing?” That’d never been part of their play, but he had to hear her answer, to help him make the next move.
“You’re wearing idiot self-sacrifice and such a God-awful lot of lying stupidity, and it looks utterly wrong on you.”
He’d thought he knew where this was going. “Georgia, I don’t—”
“We could both be wearing dreams. We could both be wearing love.”
