Best-laid Plans
They had wended their way close enough to the back of the refreshment tent for snippets of conversation, the odd shout of laughter, and the muted strains of a waltz to reach their ears. Bonnie slowed her steps, and, spotting a garden bench a few feet off, cast an inquiring glance at Trev before moving tentatively in its direction. He followed her lead, and soon they were settled side by side on the comfortless wrought-iron seat. Bonnie pulled Trev's jacket more snugly about her, and prompted, "You had a pretty bad night of it, I imagine."
"The worst, and I don't even have the consolation of telling you I finally got a grip on myself, and honestly worked through my feelings. I went straight off the deep end like before, only this time, instead of overreacting to a danger that was all in my head, I tried downplaying the very real danger in front of me. I told myself that my feelings for Vanna were still only friendly, and, if I'd been reckless enough to let them get a bit out of hand, they were still weak enough to be nipped in the bud. All it would take was dialing things with her back to a professional level, and, though I'd regret the necessity, keeping her at arm's length after that."
"I'm guessing," Bonnie said, when he didn't immediately go on, "that it wasn't as easy as you thought."
A quiet sigh escaped him. "No. I tried to follow through. I gave headquarters a wide berth — for a few days. When I did go in, and Vanna brought up that karaoke party, I was good; at first. I would've like to go, but I knew you wouldn't, and that made turning her down and refusing to budge an especially good test of my resolution. But she kept after me so sweetly to change my mind — it seemed to mean so much to her — I eventually backed down enough to promise I'd show if I could talk you into coming with me.
"And that's when she had the brilliant notion — her words — that I could use the party setting to really sweep you off your feet."
Bonnie regarded him dubiously. "By trying to make me jealous?"
"No, by pulling out all the romantic stops, and serenading you from the stage."
"She didn't!" Bonnie burst out in horror, then, added ruefully, "What am I saying? Of course she did. It's just the kind of bold move she'd lobby for. You shut that down, I take it. Thank you!"
"I knew you'd hate it, and I told her so, emphatically. That should've been the end of it, but Vanna was too excited by the potential for impressing you to give up easily. She argued that a really great performance would get you to sit up and take notice, that it was a golden opportunity for me to shine in your eyes, and it would be a shame to waste it." He flicked her a penitent glance. "I should've shot that down, too, thanked her for her advice and moved on, but… she was so sincere about wanting to help me, and I was so touched that she cared, I gave in, and agreed, in principle, to give it a go."
"In principle," Bonnie repeated carefully. "You didn't really mean to follow through?"
"I didn't mean it, or not mean it. I wasn't thinking, just reacting, buying time, I guess. I didn't want to go through with it, that's for sure. For starters, I'm not one for making a spectacle of myself to get attention, even yours, but, more to the point, I didn't want any part of a scheme that called for coaxing — or, worse, tricking — you into going to a party you wouldn't otherwise have wanted to attend, and in no better cause than surprising you with a performance that might, or might not, be dazzling. The end didn't justify the means in my book, and that, alone, should've been reason enough for me to reject her proposal again, but I didn't, and things went rapidly downhill from there."
A handsome couple, looking the very image of love's young dream with their heads close together and arms twined about each other, ambled into view, so lost in each other they might've been the only persons, not only in the gardens, but on the planet. When they were safely past, Trev resumed, "What I didn't anticipate — and should've — was that, once I'd made the commitment, Vanna was going to insist on seeing to it, personally, that I knocked whatever song we settled on out of the park. Notice the 'we.' She just took it for granted she'd be in on every step of the process, from choosing the song to working it up and getting it down perfectly, all of which was going to involve our spending hours and hours together. You see the problem?"
Bonnie nodded. "If you accepted her help, you wouldn't only be breaking your resolution to see less of her, you'd actually be seeing her more."
"With all that implied about not putting our relationship first. I'd already given ground twice, and I owed it to you, and myself, not to surrender any more. Refusing her help was, maybe, my last chance to put my foot down, but… she was so gung-ho, so happy to think she was helping me win you, I didn't have the heart to turn her down."
"I imagine," Bonnie said, neutrally, "that the prospect of spending those hours very pleasantly engaged in conspiring and rehearsing with her had something to do with it, too."
"Yeah," he said, slanting her a suitably sheepish look. "There was that, as well, but being with her wasn't an unalloyed pleasure. As fun — and gratifying — as all the planning and practicing was, my conscience was always in the back of my mind, giving me what for."
He paused to draw a heavy breath and let it out. "Finally, it got to the point where I'd gone along with the plan too long to back out. I'd dragged my feet some, and been less than enthusiastic enough for Vanna to sense I wasn't one hundred percent on board, but she put it down, I think, to a perfectly natural case of the jitters, and left it at that. Meanwhile, I was getting more uncomfortable by the day with the thought of actually going through with the charade, but stuck for a way to pull the plug without disappointing Vanna and making it seem like I didn't value the real friendship behind her misguided attempt to help me."
"You were in a tight spot," Bonnie allowed.
"And what I needed, pretty desperately, was an escape hatch of some kind, a get-out-of-jail-free card that'd spring me loose, and, one day, out of the blue, I saw it: a way out. We were sitting around, talking about songs we'd performed in the past, and I was telling her about my star turn as Danny in Grease, when suddenly I knew — don't ask me how — that I'd found just the ticket: You're the One that I Want."
Bonnie stared at him a few long, wordless seconds. At last, she managed, "You're joking."
"No. It was this eureka-like moment, and I was so excited — and relieved — I must've lit up like a light bulb, because Vanna noticed. I told her I'd had a brainstorm, that I wanted to switch things up, do You're the One that I Want instead of the song we'd been working on. She gave me the same dumbstruck look you just did, so I hurried to explain that I'd be so much more comfortable doing that song because I'd already been a hit with it in high school, and was confident I could do it up right. I realized that meant ditching the solo for a duet, and relying more than ever on her help, but I'd be so much less nervous if I didn't have to go it alone, I was bound to do a better job."
"And she bought all that?"
"Not hook, line and sinker, no. She kept looking at me as if I'd suddenly grown a second head, and then, very deliberately — the way you'd talk to a crazy person or a child — she asked me if I didn't see how that particular song might send the wrong message, might lead you to think we were using it to try to make you jealous. I assured her that you wouldn't misunderstand, that the song held a lot of sentimental value and pleasant associations for us, that it would remind you of our good, old days, and long history together."
Bonnie felt her heart twist a bit with disappointment. "So, you lied to her."
"Did I?"
His challenge caught her off guard. "You…" she began, but, on review, she couldn't find fault with any of his claims except… "You told her I wouldn't misunderstand."
"And, did you? Think back, Bonnie: did you really suspect, that night, that Vanna and I were trying to scare you into thinking you could lose me? Didn't you tell me, at Ashby, that you'd been so confused by what you'd seen on stage, your grandfather'd had to make sense of it for you?"
She frowned thoughtfully as that breakfast conversation by the pool came back to her. "He couldn't even convince me, at first," she admitted. "I told him it was absurd to think you'd try to make me jealous with Vanna, of all people! She'd gone out of her way only a few weeks before to assure me there was nothing romantic going on between the two of you. Did she tell you that?"
He shook his head. "It's the first I've heard of it, but I'm not surprised. She was always ultra careful of your feelings. We both were, which is one of the reasons my suggesting You're the One that I Want, of all songs, was so unfathomable. I'd either become an insensitive jerk overnight, or I was lying about my true motivation, and what reason could there be for that other than I wasn't proud of it? But that didn't fit, either, with my open excitement — unless I had the talent of an Academy-Award-winning actor, which I'd never shown any signs of having before. Anyway she looked at it, proposing that song didn't add up."
"And, until it did, she was in a quandary as to whether to keep helping you, or not."
"Right. She couldn't, in good conscience, get behind that song, but she still wanted to move forward with the plan, so she tried offering various alternatives: a different duet, if nerves were really a problem, or, if it had to be a song from Grease, then one of Danny's solos…"
"Oh," Bonnie said, with a wince. "I don't think I could've taken your massacring that first-act ballad again. What was it called?"
"Sandy. Sappy song, anyway. Greased Lightning, now…" He half-smiled at Bonnie's indelicate snort. "No? Well, it's fortunate, then, that I finally found the gumption to take a stand and not compromise. She was going to have to reconcile herself either to going ahead on my terms, or not at all."
They fell silent a moment, Bonnie, for her part, reflecting on the unenviable position Vanna'd found herself in. At length, she said, "You know, don't you, that you got out of your tight spot by putting her in it?"
He met her gaze, but couldn't hold it. "I saw she was struggling with the decision, how torn she was, and it was painful to watch, but I told myself it was necessary, that, in the end, she wouldn't be able to justify trying to grab your attention in a way that was reckless at best and, at worst, deliberately hurtful. I counted on her being unwilling to run the risk — or letting me run it — of upsetting you."
And yet, against all expectations, against, certainly, what Bonnie'd thought she knew of her character, that's exactly what Vanna had done. She remembered pretending to accept Vanna's improbable defense of Trev as wanting only to win her admiration, a defense she'd wondered, at the time, if Vanna was possibly gullible enough to believe, herself. "That day at Ashby," she mused out loud, "when you said you'd had to twist Vanna's arm to get her to sing with you, I couldn't figure out what you meant, what kind of pressure you might've applied. I couldn't picture you doing it — not you, Trev — and, now, it looks to me like you didn't. You backed her into a corner, yes, and that wasn't kind, but you didn't lean on her. She was free to accept or reject your terms, and yet, in the face of some very serious reservations, she gave you her support. Why did she do that? Do you know?"
Trev shifted uneasily beside her, and then, having cleared his throat, said, "I don't, not for sure. We never talked about it. I think, though, it's fair to say she decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, to have faith that, whether I was telling her the whole truth or only some small portion of it, my intentions towards you were honorable and loving. I think she recognized, too, that she was on the outside of our relationship, looking in, and, ipso facto, of the two of us, she wasn't the better judge of how to go about wooing you. It was always possible that provoking you with a display of obviously phony unfaithfulness was precisely the shock to the system our relationship needed in that moment. She didn't like it, but she trusted me to know what I was doing."
And that was her mistake. The words, unspoken, hung between them on the air no less clearly for having gone unsaid…