"Easy and…"
When polymer hits pine, it's easy to forget that they're currently floating along the coast of Croatia with people who make more money in an hour than she makes in an entire year. It's easy to forget that Scott Tracy, actual legacy to the Tracy Industries empire, is the same Scott that's currently wrapped up around her, hand on her hip, his guiding arm along her own. There's just something about the sturdy cluck of a bowling ball that brings with it the smell of old shoes and the taste of cheap nachos. Billion-dollar yacht or not—you can take the bowling alley out of Kansas, but apparently Kansas will stick to the bowling alley like day-old spilled cola.
The pins clatter. "See?" he says, and his hands linger. He stands at her back like a shadow, smiling down at her. "Not so hard. Try it."
He takes those crucial steps back, warmth leaving her. She can't help but think that he's missed the point. "Little old me?" she says, turning to retrieve her ball from the return. "Well, I sure will try my hardest."
"It takes some practice," he says. "Don't get frustrated if you—"
He's cut off by the sound of pins, specifically ten of them, as they go down in a single, effortless strike. She turns slowly, so as to get the full effect of seeing Scott staring at her, jaw halfway to the floor. "You said you were bad at this," he reminds her. "Worst bowler I've ever seen—remember?"
"I'm a little bit of a liar."
"You're a lotta bit of a liar."
"Well I had to get your arms around me somehow, didn't I?" she says. Then, to herself, "God knows you weren't going to do it on your own."
He doesn't know much about her yet, but he has learned that Jane has these moments. She's a lot like Gordon in that, even when she tries, she can't quite manage the idea of quiet. Or maybe she isn't trying very hard at all, because more and more it's beginning to seem like Jane only speaks when she intends to be heard. Evidently, he's still got a lot to learn about the woman who bowls perfect strikes, but one thing has been made clear from the start: she's not just some dumb blonde.
Scott, on the other hand. "Oh," he says, realization rolling over him. "Oh. Oh god, I'm an idiot."
"Well, I didn't say it."
"Listen, Jane. Can we—?" He stumbles over his words, takes a few steps closer. "I'm just going to talk at you for a minute. Is that okay? Can I just talk?"
She reaches out for his tie, cool sleek grey atop rosy pink, and guides him over that invisible threshold he's seemed to have placed between them. "Scott, I've been trying to get you to talk to me all night," she says, and she has to look up at him. There's a moment when she wonders if he's grown taller than the maximum 77 inches since his days as a Captain, or if he's always sat right on the edge. "So hit me. Talk away. What's the best you've got?"
His smile is an uncertain thing, met with a huff that doesn't seem to have been entirely conscious. There's this nervous sort of stage fright about him as he watches her, like he's forgotten whatever line he's supposed to say next and he's frantically trying to remember. Then, finally, there's a deep breath in. "Jane," he says. "There's this—there's this thing I think about sometimes. About people and places and… um. Well, it's, I mean. It's where the truest version of a person comes from and—god, the more I talk the dumber it sounds. This sounded better when I said it to Lady Penelope." His eyes flash back at her, wide. "Not that I was—I mean—she's a good friend of mine and I—"
"It's okay," she says. "Gordon asked me to marry him. I get it."
Scott blinks. "Come again?"
"Don't worry, I said no," she tells him, leaving two pats on his side. Meanwhile Scott's brain hasn't quite figured out that his body is this close to her, leaving him with his hands out to his sides, trying to piece his sentences together. "Anyways, you were saying? Truest version?"
"Yeah" he says. "Well, I mean, we were talking about Gordon—Lady Penelope and I—and I told her how, obviously, Gordon is California, right?"
"Obviously," says Jane.
"Right," Scott agrees. "That's just… where he fits in the world. They match. It's like that kids toy, with the pegs and the holes. Gordon fits in the California hole. And Virgil—you've met Virgil, right? Virgil fits in the Colorado hole. I was explaining to Lady Penelope that, well, everyone has these places that really represent the truest self—at least, in my head anyways. I really only ever half-think about it, usually when I'm lost in flight. It doesn't really make sense in black and white—"
"No, I get it," she says, and she does. Every pilot has their thing—that thought they have every time their heads get lost in the clouds. Jane's got one of her own, something about the colors of the sunset and all the ways they keep showing up. "I like it. What did Lady Penelope say about it?"
He trips over his tongue, looks at her like she's exactly the last person he wants to see. There's a split second when Jane hears Lady Penelope's voice in her head, talking about these Tracy boys and how much it takes to leave them speechless. "Well," he says. "She asked me what place you were."
"Oooh," she says, wrapping her arms around his waist. This, finally, seems to clue him in on the fact that he's supposed to have a hand on her hip. "The plot thickens. Please, go on. Tell me all about me."
He rolls his eyes, but affectionately, and with good amount of the roll aimed at himself as well as her. "Kansas," he says, and she imagines that if he were the sort of person who blushed, he would be doing it now. "I mean, you're—I dunno. You're Kansas, to me."
And now it's Jane's turn to be speechless.
Not that she isn't flattered—except that Kansas is a pretty big answer, right? It's her home, sure, but more importantly it's his home. She had been expecting the cafe they first met up at, maybe the cliff that they had, at one point, been hanging from by an industrial strength thread. "Oh."
He panics. "Yeah, it's dumb. Forget I said anything. It's just a stupid—"
"No," she says. "No, it's not dumb. It's just that"—she laughs—"Kansas, wow. I mean, people always tell me that I move too fast, but you, Scott Tracy…"
"Too much?"
She smiles. Studies him. "Nah," she says. "You can't help yourself. You're the Wizard."
"… How many shots did you take, exactly?"
"Unimportant," she tells him. "I was just thinking about something Gordon said."
"You have to be careful doing that," Scott warns. "Most of the time Gordon doesn't even think about what Gordon says."
"Be nice to your brother," she says. "I'd kill to have a brother. Or a sister. You big family kids don't know how good you've got it. And besides, I think he's onto something."
"We are talking about the same Gordon, right?"
"Where do you fit into all of this?" she wonders, but she's pretty sure she already knows the answer. "What place have you got yourself pegged for, when you're way up in the sky looking down at mountains grey and oceans blue?"
He doesn't hesitate, looks as confident as ever when he answers, "Tracy Island. Just like Dad."
And suddenly she understands why Gordon spends all that time thinking about the Wizard and his balloon. She's looking at Scott and she knows he believes himself, but the truth is that he's got the broad shoulders of a boy who grew up on the farm. His entire personality is the wind that doesn't stop blowing. She's got this image of him as a kid with his brothers, in the woods of someone's backyard, hunting frogs in the creek, picking flowers for their mother, racing each other until the sun sets and waiting until dawn to do it all over again. It's so easy, to imagine him back home. "I think you're stuck in Oz, Scott," she says. "The Great and Powerful Wizard. It's got a nice ring to it, but I think you might be on the wrong side of the rainbow."
He laughs, light. "I haven't seen that movie in ages."
"You should give it another watch," she tells him, pulling away once more, slow, certain, and with a wink that's sure to send him melting. "It's the one where Dorothy realizes she always belonged in Kansas."
She doesn't need the sound of pins to tell her that she's bowled another strike. The look on Scott's face is proof enough as her words land right where they're supposed to. With that, she retrieves her ball from the return and looks back up at him with those big blue eyes. "Now then," she says. "Are you gonna help me with this, or are you just going to stand there wishing you still had your arms around me?"
His smile is the sort of thing that belongs in the back of a pickup truck. "You really think I'm Kansas?" he asks.
"Yeah," she says. "You really think I am?"
"Yeah." And she feels his eyes on her, from bowling shoes to bobbi pins. "Hey, do you wanna get outta here?"
"I was going to see if I could bowl a perfect game—"
"Jane," he tries, and this time he's the one to close that gap. To hold her hand, to look down at her and wonder if she always sat on the edge of the required 64 inches, or if she had to fight her way there. "Let's get outta here."
She can't stop the smile as it spreads across her lips. As it turns out, Jane Carter is the type of person who blushes, so she looks down before he can see, would rather die than let him know just how pretty she feels in a dress off the rack with only seventy-seven dollars in her purse. "Does it really cost a billion dollars to run this yacht?"
"Twenty billion," he says. "Isn't that the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?"
She laughs, because of course it is. "If we leave now, I bet we can still make the sunset in Kansas."
"Well then," he says, holding his arm out for her to hold. "We'd better get going."