“Anyway.” She tapped my cheek with her finger and then sighed. “That’s what I do now, to make the evil necessity—money, I mean: I do ceramics on the side, and I sell my work through Craig and Marvin’s antique store. I also run my own cleaning business. It’s not much, but I can do those things without much of a fuss.”
“Maggie Beautiful,” I whispered. “If your life had been different, what would you have done?”
Her eyes popped open. “I would have been a showgirl, of course! In Las Vegas. Or I would have gone to Hollywood, to try my hand at being a movie star. Or New York, to star in a hit Broadway show! All of that seems so scintillating.”
I smiled, feeling a rush of positive energy race through me. “Well, after we’re done, all those maps that can direct you to those places will be at your beck and call. You’ll be able to get there with no trouble.”
She put her elbow on the table, in an arm wrestling move, and then stuck her little finger out. “Pinky promise?”
I copied her stance and twisted my pinky around hers. “Pinky promise.”
She kissed our entwined fingers to seal the deal.
Chapter Twenty
Scarlett
A warm smile came to my lips. A smile that I hadn’t felt in this place since…Elliott died. I stood in front of the window to the dance studio, looking out at a world cheered by festive lights. The rim of the glass was painted with sparkling plum trees, a ribbon connecting each one.
My class had long gone home (we had a successful silly class dancing to “Frosty The Snowman”). My teachers had left too, and I had stayed to dance for me. Classical music pleased others; performing to whatever music moved my soul pleased me.
Maggie Beautiful had been playing a good bit of Jimmy Durante during our lessons, and he stuck. She had decided that if I was going to teach her, she was going to teach me by widening my music tastes with all of her music tastes, which ranged from oldies to present.
No matter how hard I tried, I could never get a good hold on her. But I enjoyed her diverse whims. They gave me a chance to discover music that I never would have otherwise.
The glass was chilled from outside, a fog appearing around my palm as I pressed it against the pane. My cheeks were hot with blood, all those champagne bubbles bursting at once, and my body was as light as a drifting feather—close to the feeling I got when Maggie Beautiful’s special hot chocolate made it to the pit of my stomach. Goosebumps prickled my skin.
He was out there, watching me.
The urge to run to him became strong, but I controlled the impulse in favor of dancing for him—just for a bit. My movements came in time to the whimsical music. I danced like he was the last audience I would ever dance for—no regrets if he was. When the song came to an end, a different one picked up. His absence from the other side of the window could be felt, but his presence just moved, this time into the studio.
The rush I felt when I saw him started in my head and rushed to my toes, making me feel dizzy. Our time together had been scarce of late, and seeing him felt like the first time, but even better.
His smiles should’ve come with a warning. He did the most dangerous thing then: he smiled at me, and the breath caught in my throat. “Ballerina Girl.”
On impulse, not thought, I ran to him, throwing myself into his arms. Running my fingers through his hair, cold from being outside, I gripped, pulling his mouth to mine. His tongue tasted like raspberry sucker and mint. He broke the kiss, both of us short on breath.
“You missed me.”
I pinched my fingers together, only leaving a slight margin to let light through. “A little.”
He smiled and then kissed me again. He missed me too.
“I love when you surprise me,” I whispered against his lips.
A shiver ran through his body and another warm rush spread through mine.
“Yeah.” He wrapped his arms around my body, picking me up off the floor, keeping me pressed against his chest. My hands rested on his wide shoulders. “It’s never a sure thing. Not when you feel me before I can surprise you.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “you do come as a surprise. That’s why I love it so much. It’s rare.”
He stared at me, face unreadable. I wondered what had caused me not to feel him when he had first arrived. It wasn’t until some time after he arrived that his presence in my blood started to rise like champagne bubbles. The connection between us stood strong, but there were times when my attention would be so focused on one thing that I didn’t feel him until after his force field had plowed over all others. I assumed this was because the connection became background noise, and if I didn’t sense anything wrong, it settled into the natural noise of my beating heart.
Or…had he figured out a way to hide from me?
I laughed at how ridiculous that sounded and looked down at him. He narrowed his eyes but said nothing. “I thought you had to work?”
“I took off. I needed to see you.”
