Page 68 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

“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—”

“Youhavea 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.”