Always You: A Lilac Bay Novel (Friends with Benefits)

by Rachel Schurig

  “What are the songs?” David asked, and he too sounded more than a little freaked out. “Should we just pick the shortest one?”

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” Mayor Jones said, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his face.

  “You?” Rose snapped. “You know how to dance. You give lessons! You should be all over this!”

  “That’s too much pressure,” he moaned.

  This isn’t good, I thought to myself. We’re falling apart. You have to do something, get everyone on task.

  “Excuse me,” a familiar voice behind me said, and I spun in place to see Chase standing there, two girls at his side. “I just wanted to offer our help,” he said. “This is Julia, and this is Angie. Julia teaches dance up at the hotel, and Angie is one of our fitness instructors. They both have experience with choreography.”

  I met Libby’s eyes, and I knew she was thinking the same thing as I was. Taking help from employees from the Big Hotel felt entirely wrong. But we were in a jam, and if they could help—

  “Thank you,” I said, making a split second decision. “We can use your help.”

  Chase nodded, looking pleased, and I turned back to the committee. “We need to get organized first,” I said. “Let’s get all the people that have dance experience together, okay? Then we can assign them teams of dancers. There’s no way we’re going to get anywhere if we try to teach something to this whole crowd at once.”

  “Good thinking,” David said, looking a lot calmer now. “I’ll grab Tina and see who else from her studio can help.”

  “Posey can dance, can’t she?” Libby asked Rose. “Didn’t she do tap in high school?”

  “Everyone fan out,” I said. “Go through the crowd and find people with experience. There are tourists here too, remember, we have no idea how much talent we might have out there. Bring the leaders back here.”

  I turned to Mayor Jones and grabbed his shirt before he could disappear into the crowd. “You’re one of our team leaders, buddy.”

  “Oh, but Riley,” he said, his eyes wide, but I wouldn’t let him finish.

  “No way are you getting out of this. We need you, Mayor Jones. This is your chance to shine.”

  He nodded, wiping his forehead one more time.

  “Good. I have total faith in you. Now go start asking for help.”

  I watched as he headed out into the crowd with the others. Okay. So we had a plan now, at least. That alone made me feel better. Maybe I couldn’t help with the dancing itself, but I could get these people organized.

  As I turned to the crowd, I caught Gina’s eye. She winked at me, and I couldn’t help but think that she looked a little bit proud.

  “Are those the songs?” I looked up to Chase still standing there.

  “Yeah.” I held up the paper. “I’ve never even heard of half of these.”

  “Can I see?”

  I handed him the paper and he scanned it. “Some of these are pretty old. I bet they were going for cheap licenses.”

  “Great. So not only do we have to plan this thing, we have to do it to crap music.”

  “Not necessarily crap,” he insisted. “Some of this is classic. I bet you could find most of them on YouTube if you wanted to listen to them.”

  “Thanks, Chase. I’ll do that.”

  He grinned at me, and I did my best to stay immune to his charms. There was too much to do. “Can I help at all?”

  “You could go around and try to find more people with dance experience.”

  He nodded. “Got it.”

  I decided to take Chase’s advice and get to work checking out the music. I was holding my phone up to my ear, trying to hear over the noise of the crowd, when Jenny found me a few minutes later.

  “I’m no help at this,” she announced. “I’m too shy and quiet, no on is listening to me. What are you doing?”

  I handed her the sheet of songs. “Trying to figure out what half of these even are.”

  She scanned the list. “Hmm, these are pretty old. Oh, I know this one. You do too, I bet. It’s in movies and commercials and stuff.”

  “What is it?”

  She pointed at the list. “Sing, Sing, Sing. Benny Goodman. It’s jazzy. It’s a good song for swing dancing.” Suddenly she gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God, I have the best idea!”

  “What?” I cried, grabbing her hand.

  “That could be our theme!”

  “Swing dancing?”

  “No, the roaring twenties! It fits perfectly, Riley! That was the heyday of this island, all the auto barons coming up here on vacation. The glamor and the romance of it!” She was actually jumping up and down. “I mean, the Ottawa is completely steeped in that exact style!”

  She definitely had a point. I wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to identifying fashion of the varying decades, but even I knew that a lot of the history of our island was established in the teens and twenties.

  “I think you’re onto something, Jenny.”

  But she was barely listening. Instead she grabbed my arm, her eyes huge in her face. “You’re not going to like this, but hear me out. We should have the flashmob at the Big Hotel.”

  She was right. I didn’t like it. Yes, the hotel was an icon of this island. But doing an entire televised event up there felt like rewarding them in a way I wasn’t comfortable with. I just couldn’t get the image out of my mind of that ferry full of employees heading out every night.

  “Riley, I know,” she said, her voice pleading. “I know what you’re thinking. But just picture it, okay? The big stairs coming down into the foyer. The front porch! All of that old paneling and the chandeliers. The lawn! It would be perfect.”

  It would be perfect. I could see it clearly. We had at our fingertips a truly gorgeous space that would fit this theme perfectly. Was I going to refuse out of pride?

  “Let’s get the rest of the committee together,” I told her, excitement rising in my chest.

  “Yeah?” She threw her arms around me, squealing, and released me before I had a chance to hug her back. “Sorry, I just got really excited.”

  I laughed. “Get everyone over here.”

  A few minutes later the rest of the team gathered around me.

  “Jenny just had an amazing idea,” I said, then explained the whole concept of the roaring twenties at the Big Hotel and the Benny Goodman song.

  “Ooh,” Libby murmured. “That would be so cool!”

  “Like Gatsby,” Donovan said, nodding. “I like it.”

  Only Rose was frowning. “Wasn’t Benny Goodman in the thirties?”

  Jenny and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. Had we based this entire plan on the wrong decade? “It doesn’t matter,” I said firmly. “It’s jazzy. It will work.”

  And that was that. We had a theme and a song and now all that was left was to do the actual work of making it come together.

  The next several hours passed in a blur. More than two hundred people volunteered to dance, while a good fifty more were on hand to help get the square set up. Once we had everyone divided up into teams, we assigned dance captains to each one. While their teams worked on the steps, the captains meet at the foot of the gazebo to plan the rest of the dance. Meanwhile, David and I divided the non-dancing volunteers into three groups—one to concentrate on decorations, one to come up with costumes, and one to worry about food and drink. I had decided that if we were going to all of this trouble to plan a single dance, we were damn well going to enjoy it. And what was an event on Lilac Bay without a party? Besides, Gina had said they wanted us to go all out. So we would have the flash mob, and then we would celebrate with a dance party on the great lawn of the Ottawa. If that wasn’t going all out, I didn’t know what was.

  “What’s next?” Andrew asked, appearing at my side. David had taken the food committee off to plan a menu, leaving me with those that were going to help me decorate.

  “We need to brainstorm ideas,” I said. “Our theme is the roa
ring twenties, so we need everything to reflect that.” I looked out over the group sitting in front of me on the grass.

  “We have all the decorations from the Fish Fry in the storage room at the senior center,” Andrew said.

  I shook my head. That wasn’t good enough. Sure, the square had looked great all done up in lanterns and fairy lights for the first feature, but this needed to be more than that. We needed to step up our game. Besides, the Big Hotel was way too glamorous for crèpe paper and lanterns.

  “The roaring twenties, huh?” Andrew asked, rubbing his chin. “What if I built one of those lighted signs? You know, the ones with the bulbs that stick through.” He pulled out his phone to show me what he had in mind.

  “You think you can do that?”

  “Sure, it’s an easy enough project if I have some help.”

  I gestured at our group, which contained his cousin Greg and his father. “Take whoever you need.”

  “Okay. What do you think about a tent? For the lawn? We can fill it up with tons of lights. Maybe you could get these guys to cut out a bunch of paper stars. That would be glamorous, right?”

  I could have kissed him. “Andrew, that’s perfect!”

  He looked pleased with himself. “I know a guy on the mainland, I can get us a tent.”

  “And have it set up by tomorrow?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  Before he left to get started, he grabbed my elbow and pulled me a few feet away. “Put someone else in charge of the decorations,” he said.

  “Why? I need a job and I sure don’t want to dance—”

  “You have a job,” he said, speaking slowly as if I was very dense. “You’re the boss.”

  I must have looked confused because he rolled his eyes.

  “Look around, Riley.” He gestured around the square. The dance groups had divided up and were going over simple steps, while the captains ran around back and forth conversing with each other. David’s team was a few feet away, talking about the menu. The people on costumes had their phones out, looking at pictures. Only the decor group was sitting still, not working. “You need to run this whole show, Riley. There has to be someone keeping it all organized and answering questions. That’s you.”

  “But who’s going to handle this?” I asked, pointing at the people in the grass.

  “Leave it to me.”

  “You want to be in charge of decorations?” I asked, my eyebrows high on my forehead. Andrew didn’t like to be in charge of anything.

  “Just get out of here before I change my mind.”

  “But what are you going to—”

  “Riley!” he snapped, grabbing my shoulders and turning me away from the group on the grass. “Go. Stop worrying. Stop micromanaging. Trust me.”

  If it was just about anyone else, I might not have. But I did trust Andrew. If anyone could get this shit done so I could concentrate on the big picture, it was him.

  Looking back on those two days, I’ll never know how we got through it. For hours and hours the square felt like a chaotic mess as everyone worked on different pieces of the final puzzle. But somewhere around noon the second day, it started to come together. We had moved most of the operation up to the hotel. The tent was up, Andrew’s signs were taking shape. The décor team had cut out hundreds and hundreds of paper stars to be strung around the tent along with all the white Christmas lights they could find, and it already looked amazing. Inside the hotel didn’t need much décor at all—it was already basically perfect.

  The dance captains had started to put their groups together to practice larger chunks of the choreography. The Mayor no longer looked like he wanted to throw up. In fact, he was doing great. He was engaging and encouraging with his dancers. Plus, the man could really dance. All barrel-chested, six-foot-four-inches of him.

  The costume team had scoured the Island School drama department, Tina’s dance studio, and put out the word to the locals that they were looking for shift dresses for the girls and black vests for the guys. Luckily, black vests made up the uniform for the staff at the Big Hotel, and Jenny gave us permission to raid the storage closet. Now they were sitting in a circle on the grand lawn, gluing single feathers to headbands for the girls to wear.

  By five that afternoon the dancers were all together, practicing the entire thing from start to finish. To my shock, it looked really good. Who knew we had so many decent dancers in Lilac Bay? Somehow it seemed like we were going to pull it all together.

  At six thirty I made everyone stop what they were doing to come and stand on the porch.

  “You guys are amazing,” I said into the megaphone.

  “Hell yeah we are,” Cora called back, and everyone laughed.

  “I’m so proud of the work you put into this,” I continued, vaguely aware that the cameras were on me. I couldn’t worry about that. “You’ve worked so hard and I know you’re getting tired. But I also know you have a few more hours in you. And then we celebrate!”

  There was an eruption of cheers at that.

  “This is what I need you to do now,” I said. “Go home. Take a half hour. Put on your costumes. Wash your faces. Have some water. Sit.” There was some laughing at that. “Be back here at seven fifteen for dress rehearsal. We’ve got this.”

  There was some cheering and then everyone started to break up, heading in their separate directions.

  “Take your own advice,” Rebecca said, appearing from the crowd, coming to stand at my side.

  I shook my head. “Too much to do.”

  “You gonna be on TV in that, when everyone else is in nice clothes?” she asked, looking skeptically down at my jeans and tennis shoes.

  “I’ll run home to change before eight,” I assured her.

  She looked like she wanted to argue but in the end she reached out and gave me a quick hug.

  “What was that for?”

  “For doing such a good job today.”

  “It’s not over yet.”

  My little sister shook her head. “You got this entire thing organized in less than ten minutes. You kept everyone from going crazy.” She met my gaze directly. “We don’t get to hear enough that we made someone proud, Riley.” I swallowed, thinking of our mom, currently God knew where. “So I’m telling you now. I’m proud of you.”

  I cleared my throat, determined not to cry. “Thanks,” I muttered, not meeting her eye.

  When eight o’clock finally rolled around, we were ready. There was food and drinks waiting on long tables in the tents, out of the way of where the dancers would be doing their thing. The stars and lights were hung in the tent, though it wasn’t quite dark out yet. Andrew’s lighted signs were finished, flashing the words “Just Dance” across the lawn. Every person in the hotel was wearing some approximation of twenties garb. I’d even had time to run home and put on a dress. And the dancers were in position.

  “Dance captains,” I said feeling a flash of pure terror. “Everyone ready?”

  They assured me that they were and I glanced around at the group. Should I say something? Give some inspirational speech? I felt like I was going to throw up. In the end I gave the captains a weak thumbs up and headed over to watch on the monitors with Gina.

  The choreography called for the dance to start in three different places—the main staircase in the foyer, the grand ballroom, and the front porch. Each group would dance their way down towards the front doors until eventually they all joined up and spilled out onto the grand lawn for the finale. It was complicated and required not only the dancers but also the camera crew to be in the right places at the right times. I was sure that something, somewhere was going to get messed up, and the fear actually took my breath away as the music started.

  But then the best thing happened—my neighbors started to dance, and all my nerves disappeared. I was too busy laughing to feel anything but happiness. It’s not that they were bad—they were really good! It was just hilarious and amazing to see them this way.

  To see Rose Powell
dancing like a flapper girl right next to her granddaughter. To see Zane and Eddie getting down in a fairly good approximation of a tap dance. To see the mayor in his vest and tie, leading the way. Everything about it made me laugh.

  I couldn’t remember ever enjoying anything more.

  When it was done, we all burst into cheers, the dancers jumping up and down, hugging each other. And those of us that weren’t on camera ran out into the crowd as well, laughing and cheering. It was awesome—there was no other way to put it.

  “Now I think you all deserve to party!” Mayor Jones called out, and everyone cheered again before the crowds descended on the food tables.

  The DJ started up on the porch, a few couples taking to the makeshift dance floor on the lawn, everyone eager to go over the flash mob detail by detail. And all the while the cameras rolled, capturing the people that I loved most in the world as they enjoyed their celebration.

  “I have to tell you, Riley,” Gina said, coming up to stand beside me. “That was really something.”

  “It was amazing,” I said, not caring in the slightest about being professional. “They were freaking fantastic.”

  “You all were,” she said, gesturing around at the lawn. “This is so much more than a flash mob.”

  “That was the goal,” I said, laughing.

  “In all seriousness,” she said, leaning in a little closer. “You should be proud of this. I spent a lot of time watching you today, and you have a knack for this kind of thing.”

  “For flash mobs?” I asked, and she laughed.

  “No. For putting on events. For organizing large groups of people. You know, that’s half the battle when it comes to producing. I spend most of my time getting things organized.”

  My heart was beating a little faster. “Well, you’re definitely good at it.”

  “So are you, Riley. I saw your resume, you know. When we were going through all the paper work. You went to school for broadcasting?”

  “I switched majors my senior year,” I told her, praying that she wouldn’t ask why.

  “Well, if you’re ever interested in revisiting it, let me know. You could have a future in this.”

  I gaped at her. “Seriously?”