“Goodness,” says Eleanor once he’s gone. “What did you do to him?”
Inside the auditorium, they find a row of seats toward the back. Greta goes in first, then Eleanor, then Mary, then Davis, who takes the aisle since his legs are so long. A minute later, Todd appears with his field guide tucked under one arm.
“Ah, go on,” Eleanor says, rolling her eyes at him as Greta shifts over to make room. “You brought a book?”
He shrugs. “Just in case.”
“In case of what? A mystery bird decides to join us?”
“You never know,” he says with a grin.
Around them, people chatter excitedly. There’s another show at ten, so this one is filled with the early-to-bed crowd. In the back, there’s a fleet of walkers and wheelchairs, and about two seconds after sitting down, the man directly in front of Greta pops up and tells his wife that he needs to use the bathroom one more time before the show starts. This spurs three others around him to do the same.
Just before the lights dim, Greta spots Ben. He’s sitting a couple rows in front of her but off to the side, so that when he turns to scan the audience, their eyes meet. He looks away again immediately, but she can see the effort it takes in the tensing of his shoulders, and something about that lifts her spirits.
“Here we go,” Eleanor whispers as the first notes of music begin to play, and Greta has a sudden memory of seeing The Nutcracker with the three of them—her mom and Mary and Eleanor—when she was about twelve. The Blooms’ daughter, Brigid, was old enough to more convincingly refuse, and the rest of the kids—Asher, Jason, and Jason’s two older brothers—would never be caught dead at the ballet. So it was only Greta who sat glumly at the end of the row, tugging at the collar of the dress she hadn’t wanted to wear.
When the lights went down, her mom leaned close. “Just you wait,” she whispered. “It’ll be magical.”
It wasn’t. At least not for Greta. The music was pretty and the dancing was fine, but by the start of the second act, Greta’s knee was bobbing impatiently and she was wishing she were anywhere else.
The moment the lights came up, the audience burst into applause, and to her surprise, she looked over to see that her mom was crying. And not just a few tears. Her cheeks were wet and her eyes were red; she looked completely undone by the performance.
“Are you okay?” Greta asked, half mortified and half incredulous.
Her mom smiled as she dug through her purse for a tissue. “I’m wonderful,” she said with such emotion that Greta couldn’t help puzzling over what she’d missed. It wasn’t that she’d never thought of her mother as having feelings. She’d seen her cry over other things, too many things to count: holiday commercials and tragedies on the news and even the birds that came to the feeder she put up in their backyard. But something about the ballet had peeled her back in the way certain songs sometimes did to Greta, leaving her raw and exposed. The music might’ve been different—“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” instead of “Smells like Teen Spirit”—but the expression on her face was the same, and this struck Greta as strange and revelatory, that they could be so similar and so different all at once.
Now the first few dancers come rocketing onto the stage with all the force of a cannon, a blur of sequins and tap shoes and too-bright smiles. Already, the whole thing is slightly ridiculous. The costumes are over-the-top, and of the six performers, at least two are immediately off-key. But there’s a lot of enthusiasm on that stage—a lot of enthusiasm—and Greta appreciates the effort that requires, so she decides to keep an open mind.
That is, until one of the guys takes a spill.
It isn’t entirely his fault. The ship pulls hard to one side with a rolling motion that seems to ripple through the audience. But the dancers are in the middle of a number involving a complicated bit of footwork, so it hits them even harder. The first guy—an energetic man in some sort of satin tux—careens into the second guy, who barely manages to stay upright. It’s too late, however, for his friend, who—wobbly-legged as a baby deer—takes a tumble.
The audience gasps, but the other dancers keep up their furious pace. On the floor, the guy in the tux—uninjured and unbowed—struggles to his feet again, and the crowd goes wild.
This is when Greta notices that Ben is watching her.
And this time, when she looks back at him, he doesn’t look away.
She waits for him to grin or nod or give a sheepish shrug, something to acknowledge the bet she offered him. But he doesn’t.
Even in the dark, there’s something magnetic about his gaze. Just like that, she forgets all about the shaky dancers and the performance that’s continuing gamely up onstage. Just like that, the rest of the audience disappears, and it’s only the two of them.
There’s the kind of magic her mom was talking about at The Nutcracker, and the kind her dad was talking about last night. And then there’s this: two people in the dark, watching each other like there’s a string pulled taut between them.
She’s not surprised when he stands up to leave. She’s already doing the same.
To get out of the row, she has to squeeze past Eleanor and Todd, then Mary and finally Davis. The two women give her quizzical looks, but the one Davis shoots her is plainly jealous.
By the time she gets up the aisle and pushes open the double doors at the back, Ben is already waiting in the empty hallway. When he steps toward her, she’s still not entirely sure what will happen, and there’s a thrill to this that makes her heart beat fast. Later, she’ll try to remember who kissed who, but it’s impossible to tell. One second there’s a space between them, and then suddenly there’s not; suddenly his arms are around her and her hands are on the back of his neck and their bodies are pressed close together. His beard is rough against her face but his lips are soft, and he tastes of whisky, and whatever this is—this current running between them—it’s electric enough to make her forget where they are, floating on this strange, overstuffed ship in the gathering dark of a cold Alaskan night.
When they pull back again, Greta feels a little dizzy. She glances up at Ben, who is looking at her with wonder, his brown eyes full of warmth.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since last night,” she tells him, and he smiles.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since the first moment I saw you.”
Then he takes her hand, and together, they hurry down the long hallway.
Chapter Seventeen
They’re still awake at three a.m. when light starts to filter in around the edges of the curtains.
“I feel kind of cheated,” Ben says, turning onto his side so that his face is only inches from Greta’s. “When you finally get to stay up all night talking to a girl you like, the night isn’t supposed to end this early.”