Beth felt light and free, like nothing could stop her. Every time a song she loved came over the speakers, she clanked her pint glass against Eli’s or Delaney’s or whoever’s glass she could find, and she sprang out of the booth and onto the dance floor. When Shania’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” came on, that was it. The whole booth joined her…the whole booth other than Eli. But every time she looked in his direction, she found him staring right back at her.
“How many have you had?” Delaney called over the music.
“Three!” Casey answered before Beth had a chance to do so herself, which was fortunate since she didn’t feel much like doing math at the moment.
“Since we got here!” Beth added but still didn’t want to do math. “How long ago was that?”
Casey laughed. “Same number of hours as beers. So hopefully you’re not in too much trouble.”
The three women shook their hips, waved their arms, and dominated the small but respectable dance area.
Despite the lack of choreography, it felt good to dance. Beth never wanted the music to stop. She readied herself for the next party bop, but when Shania finished her last word, the tempo slowed as Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” took over, and Delaney and Casey exhaled with relief.
“I’m out!” Casey declared. She glanced down and cupped each of her own breasts in her hands. “These things are about to explode, which means either Kara is due to wake up screaming, or I’m due for a good old pumping session. Have fun, ladies!”
She kissed both women on the cheek and made a beeline for the back of the bar, which Beth assumed led to the apartment upstairs.
“I need a breather too,” Delaney told her.
Beth deflated but only a little. It wasn’t like they could party it up to Elvis, so she began following her sister back to the booth only to stop short when she found Eli standing just outside the dance area.
Delaney smiled and gave Beth a less than subtle wink, then slinked away.
“Want to step outside for some air?” he asked. “It’s getting kind of warm in here.”
She’d already discarded her sweater after her first trip to the dance floor.
Beth glanced down at the tank she’d been wearing underneath, then over her shoulder at the handful of couples slow dancing as Elvis crooned.
“How about you dance with me instead?”
She’d given him a pass on her time with the girls, but this was different.
Eli smiled and gently grabbed her hand, threading his fingers through hers. “Come on. It’s a clear sky. I bet there are more stars than you’ve ever seen in Vegas or New York.”
She nodded. “And they’ll still be there after this song. But Elvis only has, like, two more minutes left.”
Eli’s smile fell.
Oh no. Did he not know how to dance, and she was basically asking him to humiliate himself in front of the entire town?
Yeah, right. A man as coordinated as him on a horse after not riding for three years had to have some moves—other than the ones he displayed earlier that day in the clearing.
“Mighty Dancer…” he teased. “I’ll make it worth your while.” He gave her a little tug toward the door, but she still hadn’t budged.
Wait.
The song. It had to be the song. “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was the perfect wedding song. Was it his first dance with Tess?
Her stomach sank. Their perfect night—their unofficial announcement that she and Eli were, in fact, whatever—and the King was going to ruin everything.
Beth forced a smile. “Sure. Let’s go see those stars. I’ll meet you out there. I just have to grab my sweater.”
His brows drew together. “Is everything okay?”
She nodded. “Yes! Totes! All good here, Doc. Now get out there and find us a primo stargazing spot, okay?”
She wriggled her hand out of his and practically ran past him and back to the table.
Totes? Primo? She needed to get a grip and accept the fact that being with a man like Eli meant being sensitive to the fact that she was not the only woman in his life.
When she got to the table, she downed what was left of her pint, squared her shoulders, and grabbed her sweater from where it lay in a ball on the booth.
Delaney glared at her, slack-jawed. “What the hell?” she asked. “I barely had one sip of that!”
Beth hiccupped and glanced from the empty glass she’d just set down to her sister’s incredulous stare.
“That was yours?”
“Uh…yeah,” Delaney replied.
“So I’ve had…” Beth started counting on her fingers, but her math skills were even fuzzier than they were before.
“Four. Bethy, is everything okay? I get wanting to let loose after, like, forever. But four pints would put me under the table, and I at least have some semblance of a tolerance. But you’re a sweet little newborn party girl, and I think I need to officially cut you off.”
Beth nodded. She wasn’t about to argue. This fuzzy feeling wasn’t fun.
Fuzzy feeling. Fuzzy feeling.
The more she said the words over and over in her head, the less they sounded like actual words.
“Bethy.”
Beth jolted to attention, eyes locked on Delaney’s.
“Yes, ma’am!” She gave her sister a salute.
Delaney climbed out of the booth. “Okay, honey. I think it’s time to go. Where’s Eli? I need to make sure he’s okay to drive you home.”
Beth sighed. “He’s outside because the slow song reminded him of Tess, so he didn’t want to dance with me.”
“He’s out there already? Shoot. We’d better hurry.” Delaney pulled Beth’s sweater over her head, and after a minor struggle with the sleeves that had her slowly spinning like a cat chasing its tail, Delaney guided each of Beth’s hands into its respective armhole in the garment.
Then Beth’s sister grabbed her by the shoulders and gave each a firm squeeze.
“Whadaryoudoing?” Beth’s question came out as one long word. “Sorry…whadareyoudoing?” She’d meant to separate the words this time, but all she managed to do was string them closer together.
“I’m trying to stand you up straight.” Delaney groaned. “Oh, Bethy. This is what your twenty-first birthday should have been like, not your thirtieth.”
Beth’s eyes widened, and then her lips pursed into a pout. “You haven’t wished me a happy birthday yet.” She poked her sister in the shoulder with her index finger.
This time, her sister rolled her eyes.
“Wud?” Beth asked. “I mean wud? Wud? Wud? Omigod, why can’t I say wud?”
“Because you’re buzzing, honey. Hard.” Delaney threw her hands in the air. “You pounded my beer after downing three of your own. As for the big three-oh, it’s only 10:30. You have to wait another hour and twenty-eight minutes for my birthday wish, but if you want to stay conscious until then, you need to say bye-bye to the brewskies. Eli, however, didn’t want to wait.”
Beth blinked, and her brain decided to take a break from spinning and swimming around her head.
“Eli knows? He didn’t say… I mean, I didn’t tell him.”
Delaney cupped Beth’s cheeks in her palms. “He wanted to surprise you.”
Beth’s expression fell. “But I don’t like surprises.”
Her sister pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t remind me. I still have nightmares about getting pepper sprayed in my actual face.” Delaney opened her eyes and looked at Beth again. “You won’t need pepper spray for this one, okay? But how about a quick glass of water?”
She reached for one of two water glasses on their table.
Beth had the wherewithal to regret not having downed one of those before instead of her sister’s pint.
“Thank you,” Beth told her and grabbed the glass with two hands.
The water was delicious. How was she thirsty after so much imbibing already? Water leaked out of the corners of her mouth as she guzzled until there was nothing left to swallow.
Delaney grabbed the glass back from her and set it down on the table. “Here’s hoping that was evidence of you sweating off some of the alcohol on the dance floor.”
Beth winced. “I overdid it, huh?” Her tongue felt funny, as if it perhaps no longer fit in her mouth like it was supposed to, but her words sort of sounded like words again, and she took that as a good sign.
“Understatement of the century,” her sister replied. “Think you can get it together before I take you outside to Eli?”
Beth squeezed her eyes shut, willing the tavern to stop tilting and right itself. She let out a long, measured exhale before opening her eyes again. Her head still felt fuzzy, but the room stilled. She tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled.
“How do I look?”
Delaney sighed. “Like you had a few too many and danced your heart out. But beautiful, Bethy. Always beautiful. And happy. You look happy.”
Beth waited for her sister to insinuate this happiness was tied to a place, this place, and pressure her to stay. But she didn’t say anything else.
Beth was happy. Happier than she’d been in a long time. But a strange ache in her chest began to quietly pulse. It was as if the alcohol had unlocked something she’d forgotten was there, or maybe it had unleashed something new. Either way, her happiness blurred at the edges, unable to fully come into focus.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Let’s go out there. I promise to act surprised.”
Delaney grabbed her hand. “You’d better,” she warned, “or I’m in big trouble, and I need Eli in a good mood when I tell him on Monday that we just took in a pregnant goat at the shelter who is due any day now.” She tugged her sister toward the door.
“Why do you need him in a good mood for a goat delivery?” Beth asked as they made their way to the front of the bar.
“Because the last one we had bit him right in the—” A gust of wind cut her off as Delaney pushed through the tavern door, and then there was Eli, standing in his navy crewneck sweater, hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans as he rocked back on his heels.
He grinned when he saw her, the biggest, most beautiful smile she’d ever seen on any human. It knocked her off-balance, so much so that her sister had to grab her elbow.
“Someone needs another glass of water,” Delaney said under her breath.
Beth didn’t bother protesting. It wasn’t as if her sister needed to know that something as simple as a smile had the same effect on her as one too many pints.
“I’m fine,” she whispered and yanked her elbow back to her side.
She expected to be accosted by a sky full of stars, but instead of looking up, her eyes were drawn to the word HAPPY written vertically in yellow neon script down the side of a lamp post to her left. The one farther down the sidewalk to her right read BIRTHDAY in blue, and even though it was all the way at the end of the block and her vision wasn’t exactly as crystal clear as it usually was, she knew the last one in pink said BETH. What wasn’t so clear was the figure beneath her name that flashed on and off, seemingly dancing a circle around the post.
Dancing around the post.
Her breath hitched.
“Go ahead,” her sister told her. “I’ll go inside and grab that second glass of water.”
Beth nodded absently and moved a few paces in the direction of the far post, slowly at first but then with increasing speed as she got closer until she was almost running by the time she made it there.
At first, she could only stare at the bright-pink outline of the ballerina as she seemed to pirouette around the post. Then she reached for it, fingers brushing over the tubes of bent plastic that formed each individual outline of the dancer as she spun.
Her throat tightened, and her eyes burned.
“According to your sister, I’m early.” Eli’s voice sounded softly behind her. “But I wanted to be the first to wish you a happy birthday.”
She spun to face him, and there he stood, backlit by the bright windows of the Meadow Valley Inn, the empty porch swing softly swaying as if it had only been vacated moments before so the two of them could have the quiet street to themselves. He looked like something out of the pages of a Meadow Valley guidebook, if such a thing existed.
Come to our town, and all this could be yours…whether you planned on it or not.
Whether you planned on him or not.
“You did this?” she asked him, heart in her throat. “But how? When? I didn’t even tell you…” She couldn’t form a complete sentence, not when she was drowning in feelings she’d never intended to feel.
She rubbed her hands together and blew into her palms. Goose bumps blanketed her flesh beneath the sweater that had only minutes ago been too warm to wear.
Eli wrapped her in his arms and pulled her to his chest, resting his chin on her head.
“I did make you fill out that temporary employee paperwork for the clinic,” he reminded her. “I might have sneaked a peek at your birthday when I photocopied your driver’s license.”
She laughed softly and burrowed into him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Ah, yes,” she replied. “Paperwork is always the start of any epic romance. But the lights? The dancer?” She leaned back and peered up at him. “I still don’t understand. You didn’t know until this afternoon that we were coming here together tonight, and I don’t remember you sneaking off to town before we left.”
He kissed her forehead, his lips lingering for several long moments before he brought his attention back to her observation and the unasked questions within.
“I had some help from Delaney and Casey. I came up with the idea last week but needed them to execute it.” He shrugged. “And if we’d shown up separately like we’d originally planned, then it would have been your gift from them only.”
Her mouth fell open. “You were just going to give them credit for your idea?”
He smiled, then hooked a finger under her chin and gently urged it back into position.
“Do you like it?” Eli asked.
“Of course I do. I love it, but—”
“Does it make you happy?” he interrupted.
“Well, yeah,” Beth added. “But—”
“But what?” He cut her off again.
She slapped a palm over his mouth, his five-o’clock shadow tickling her fingers. His eyes widened, and she waited for him to protest.
“But…” She hesitated. When he made no move to interrupt again, she finally finished her thought. “But I wouldn’t have as much fun thanking them as I will thanking you.” Beth lowered her hand.
Eli’s expression was unreadable. He cleared his throat. “Turn around again…please.”
Beth obliged his request, spinning in his arms and then coming to rest with her back against his chest, his hands clasped around her middle.
The ballerina continued to spin.
“I know your sister likes to lay it on thick about you staying here for her, but she knows where your heart is, and she believes in you.”
She wrapped her hands around his. “And what do you believe?” she asked, pulse pounding, happy she didn’t have to look him in the eye.
She felt his chest expand and contract, expand and contract.
“I believe… Hmm… I believe in lazy mornings outside the chicken coop…”
Beth laughed. “As long as the feral ones stay inside.”
“I believe in doing favors for friends, even if it means a long car ride with a woman who wants nothing more than to tear me a new one.”
She bopped him against the shoulder with the back of her head.
“Hey. You try being duped by your sibling into taking care of your mental health when you’re so not in a place to do so…which is why you have to be duped.”
He responded first by nudging her head with his chin. “I was,” he told her. “This morning.”
She sighed. “Fine. But you were kidnapped for a morning. I was kidnapped indefinitely.” Though she didn’t feel much like a prisoner anymore.
“I believe in long rides to secret places…” he continued.
“You didn’t used to.”
“I didn’t…but I do now.”
Because of her. Beth knew that, yet at the same time she couldn’t believe she had the power to push him forward. She could feel his heart hammering against her, and her own pulse raced to match its rhythm.
He dipped his head and whispered against her ear. “And I think, maybe, I might be starting to believe in second chances.”
A spark of electricity ran down her spine.
Beth’s head swam, and her belly felt like it was full of kindergarten butterflies at recess.
And what do you believe? Why did she have to ask that? Or better yet, why did every single one of his responses have to do with her?
She knew why. It was the same reason why she’d ignored her filter—or maybe she could blame that on the pints—and asked in the first place.
Her stomach flip-flopped again, or maybe it was a cartwheel, or—
Beth’s hands flew over her mouth.
Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, NO.
This was not happening.
“Get my sister!” Beth cried through cupped hands.
“What’s wrong?” He grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to turn her around, but Beth refused to budge other than to violently wave him away with a hand she desperately needed to stay where it was.
“Go!” she pleaded. “Please, Eli. I’m begging you. I don’t want you to see me like—”
Both hands were on her mouth again. Her eyes darted left and right, then across the street where she found the beacon calling her home.
Beth tore away from his grip and sprinted across the street. She grabbed the black steel slats of the receptacle and leaned over the rim, and under the awning of Storyland, Trudy Davis’s thankfully closed bookstore, she emptied the contents of her stomach into the sidewalk trash bin.
She whimpered.
“It’s okay, Bethy,” Delaney’s voice crooned as a hand soothingly rubbed her back.
“Oh good…” Beth’s voice echoed into the mostly—thankfully—empty bin. “Eli didn’t see that.”
Delaney whisper-shouted something to someone, which meant Beth’s sister was not the only person at the upchuck receptacle with her.
“Oh god…” Beth amended, still bent over the dark, gaping hole. Somehow she knew that wasn’t her sister’s hand on her back. “He’s still here? Okay. Great. Fine. This is where I live now, I guess. You wanted me to stay in Meadow Valley, right? Well…welcome to my new home. Please forward all my mail.”