Chapter 4

FOUR

For years Jon’s relationship with Dorothea and all it’s ups and downs had given him more than enough material to write about. Good times, bad times, hopeful and desperate times. But they grew older and over time so did their problems. His girl  gave birth to four beautiful children who were growing up really fast and everything in his love life was stable and calm. And he loved it that way, which was something his younger version never thought he would ever say. The urge to write never left, so for inspiration he started to look around. He listened to what people told him, ideas came up when he watched the news and read the papers. Big social and economic issues had always had his attention and it had also given him one of his biggest successes,  but the world had changed and so had people.

He also adapted another trick to find inspiration. Wherever he went he put names to faces he didn’t know. He gave them a job, a family, dreams, successes and secrets. He believed he was getting quite good at it. But when he looked at Georgia he had no idea what to do with her. He obviously knew she was a ballerina but he still found that hard to rhyme with her looks. And her behaviour. He was in the lobby, waiting for the car to drive them to the stadium for the first show in Chicago, when she came back from wherever she went that morning. She didn’t see him straight away and it gave him a good chance to observe her while she wasn’t aware of his presence. Compared to the other girls in the company, she was the only one that looked like an actual woman. The other girls were pretty, they all had bodies of twelve year old girls while he knew that Georgia had to be one of the youngest girls in the group. Sure Georgia was slim as well but she was not flat. She, unlike the others, had generous breasts and wide hips to accentuate her tiny waist. If he would have tried to guess her profession he would have imagined her to be a Victoria’s Secret Angel at least. Every man’s dream, he thought bitterly. And at that moment he allowed himself to wonder whether she had a boyfriend for the first time. He hadn’t thought about it before, but why wouldn’t she? He hadn’t asked her. And even if he did, he knew she wasn’t going to tell him.

She didn’t allow him to think about it any longer either. Because right at that moment she saw him, and he couldn’t believe his eyes when she walked right towards him. In front of her fellow dancers and the staff. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at him.

“Are you stalking me?”

He chuckled. “Right now?”

“Yeah and this morning?”

“I wasn’t, but since I now know where your room is, I might change my mind.” He leaned back lazily and made a gesture towards the dancers who were staring at them with big eyes and open mouths.

“What are you going to tell them? They all look like they are going crazy.”

Georgia quickly looked over her shoulder and then back at him. “That you are stalking me,” she simply said. He saw amusement in her eyes for the first time.

To make it even more complicated, his brother Matt texted him right at that moment to let him know the car was ready at the front of the hotel. He stood up and she took a step backwards.

“Don’t keep your hopes up, Georgia…” he said while he started to walk away. If she wanted him to play this game, then he could, just as long as she realised she wasn’t going to win.

When he was sure the others still couldn’t hear him he turned around at her one last time before he disappeared through the doors: “and I see you tonight.”

Again he left Georgia wondering what his words were supposed to mean. See you tonight? Who the hell did he think he was anyway?

He barely disappeared through the doors when literally everyone from the company who had been there to witness her encounter with Jon threw themselves at her.

“What was that all about? Do you know him? What did you say to him?”

So many questions, so little she could say to them. Or wanted to say to them anyway. She shook her head angrily as she realised she had not thought this through when she decided to talk to him in a crowded hotel lobby. “I don’t know him any better than you do, there was just something about the fundraiser he had to know, that is all.”

At that point she was glad Yasmin wasn’t around because she would have known this wasn’t the whole truth, but these girls bought it. She found it amazing how people always seemed to take her weirdest excuses for granted. She knew how most people thought of her as weird, or at least dreamy and out of their reach, but to see that confirmed in front of her was still interesting. It frustrated her at the same time that nobody ever really felt the need to figure her out, but sometimes it was easier to always be misunderstood.

When she finally escaped to the silence of her room on the second floor of the hotel, she sighed. She kicked off her flats and let the thick fluffy carpet caress her pained feet while she walked to the minibar to get a bottle of water out. With her free hand she pulled her hair loose and headed to the bedroom to change into something more comfortable. She was looking forward to taking a long bath and spend the rest of her night in bed, away from everyone. And that was when she saw it, the NYC ballet envelop on her bed. She frowned as she put the bottle of water down on the nightstand and pulled a thick piece of paper out of the envelop. She couldn’t believe her eyes when she read the short letter, that was signed by Lodinski.

In her hands she held an invitation to tonight’s Bon Jovi concert at the United Center. It turned out the company arranged for the band to give every single person on this trip a ticket to the show, as a thank you for picking the Soul Foundation for the benefit. For a second Georgia feared that it was one of Jon’s sick ideas to get her there, but then she realised that was a paranoid and rather arrogant thought. She didn’t know Bon Jovi very well, but she knew enough about them to realise that they did not have a hundred seats spare to give away on the day of the show. This was something that was planned a very long time ago, as a surprise for them all. Georgia didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

At least you now know what he meant, she thought. “And I see you tonight.”