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It's bitterly cold outside. Three straight weeks of temperatures in the 60s, and now, the week before Christmas, it gets cold. Judy reminds herself that in Florida, she'd been looking forward to the snow, which meant this kind of cold. She grimly hugs her arms closer, wishes she'd worn a heavier sweater, and walks more quickly away from the house. Bob Wallace and his acid tongue might have left the farm, but she's still stinging, and doesn't particularly want to see anyone right now --
"Judy?"
-- especially Phil. Judy stops, forces a smile, and turns around.
Phil holds out a heavy brown coat - not hers, but there's a lot of women's coats around the place, and she wouldn't put it past Phil to have just grabbed a coat off the hooks by the door. Judy's pride briefly battles it out with her common sense. Her common sense wins. She sighs, and reaches for the coat.
Phil helps her into the coat. He, of course, is already bundled up like an Eskimo. After she's all wrapped up, he clasps his hands in front of him and says, "I, er, wanted to say I'm sorry."
"No, it's all right," Judy says, although it isn't. She starts walking again, down the road - it's only a mile or so down to the mailbox. "I was the one who had the oh-so-wonderful idea to solve everything."
Phil falls into step beside her, easy as a new dance step. "It was a good idea!" Judy looks up at him, eyebrows raised, and he winces. "It should have been a good idea. Even if it meant getting - um, saying that we'd - "
"Engaged," Judy says, just so he'll stop stumbling over his own tongue.
*
Betty might think she's older and wiser, but Judy knows better. Her older sister - all of a year and a half, but Betty acts like it's a decade - has stars in her eyes and purity in her heart, and if not for Judy, they'd never have gotten any gigs. Of course Judy sent that letter to Bob Wallace and Phil Davis. Bookings don't fall from trees on the worthy and talented, after all.
The letter bore fruit, and the night before they were due to make a not-entirely-aboveboard exit to Vermont, Wallace and Davis showed up to check out their act. Afterwards, of course she and Betty joined them for a drink. If Judy had her hopes for what might happen then...well, she was only human.
She's ashamed to admit that she completely missed the undercurrents, that first five minutes. She expected advice, or maybe - in her wildest dreams - the request to join their show. She didn't expect Bob Wallace to fall hard and fast for Betty of all people. Phil had to explain it to her, out on the dance floor.
And then - well.
Here is a thing - maybe the most important thing - that she has learned about Phil Davis in the past few weeks: when his brain sticks on something, his mouth goes into overdrive, and he says the most ridiculous things. ("I feel the same way about my cocker spaniel." Ha, ha, and ha.) Half the time they're just defensive nonsense, but half the time...half the time they're true.
*
"Engaged," Phil repeats. At least he doesn't have the vaguely panicked look that he did at the party. "We didn't know she'd run away. Do we even know why she ran away?"
"No." That's the worst part, the part that stings worse than anything Bob Wallace could say. Judy knows her sister, and she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that her sister had fallen as hard for Bob as Bob had for her. "No, we don't. I thought that was why Bob went to New York."
"That and the Ed Harrison Show," Phil agrees, dodging a large pot-hole in the road. He adds awkwardly, "So. Er. When she comes back…"
Judy waits to see how he's going to finish that sentence, keeping her eyes fixed on the dirt road. After a long pause, she takes pity on him and says, "I won't hold you to the engagement, if that's what you're worried about."
"You said that before," he says, unflatteringly quickly. "No, I meant - we've been working together for a while now, and you pick up choreography quicker than I do, plus you're, uh, well, what I'm trying to say is, you can have a job with our show even after we leave Vermont. If you. Er."
"Thank you," Judy says, and means it. "I don't think I can accept, but thank you."
Phil stops short. Judy notices only after a few steps, and then stops in turn, huddling into the coat Phil brought her - either the temperature's dropped again or the wind's picked up, she doesn't know which. Phil's blinking at her, head cocked to one side like a large, lanky owl. "Don't think you can't - but you're an amazing dancer, you'd be a fantastic addition to the show. We've needed a new lead dancer for ages so Bob and I can catch our breath: we keep wearing them out in six months." He blinks again for a moment, then adds, "I'm not trying to be flattering. I really do want you to join the show."
"I know. That's not why…" Judy's turn to trail off, while she thinks hard about what, exactly, to say next. She's experienced enough at putting off the small-town Romeos who think that a professional girl would always be up for a few laughs, but this is Phil.
*
Judy's first impression of Phil Davis is from television and radio and newspapers. He's the funny-man, lanky like a scarecrow but dancing like a dream. She doesn't think about how he became part of Wallace-and-Davis, although she vaguely remembers Bob Wallace on the radio when she was a kid, before the war.
Her second impression involved being swept off her feet, and maybe trying to do a little sweeping herself. Phil might not be the looker that Bob was, but he was interested in her. She knows better than to take that for granted.
After that, things got more complicated.
Phil is a funny guy. He likes to act like he's super straight-forward, like you always know exactly what he's thinking. He babbles, and half the time it is the truth. But you have to guess which half. And he always has a plan.
It's only now, after everything blew up in their faces, that Judy's really starting to think about what kind of person Phil Davis is, and what that might mean about his interest in pairing up Bob Wallace - and more to the point, his interest in her.
*
"Part of it is Betty and Bob," she says finally. Phil opens his mouth as if he's going to protest, then promptly shuts it again when she shakes her head firmly. "Not all of it. Part of it is because I don't want you to regret it as soon as we leave Vermont. Everything's blown up once, and…" To her distress, she's tearing up. "Oh, go on, make a joke of it."
"No," Phil says quietly, and reaches out, and hugs her. It's not romantic at all, and not just because her eyes are all teary and her nose is starting to run. "It's not funny," he says into her hair.
"I was always the one who had flings," she says, half muffled against his chest, and not sure if she's hoping that he can hear her or not. "And Betty was always the one who rescued me. She followed me into show business half just to take care of me, but after a while...you get tired of being rescued. I wrote that letter, not my brother - and then Bob noticed Betty, and I thought, here's my chance. Only now I've made an idiot of myself, and her too."
Phil sighs - she feels the rise and fall of his chest against her forehead - and murmurs, "Forty-five minutes, all to myself."
"You said that before," Judy says, raising her head again and looking up. "What does that even mean?"
"It means you're not the only one who made an idiot of themselves - I'm right in there too, and for pretty much the same reason." Phil isn't crying, but he has a wry little smile that keeps poking out around the edges as he talks. "Bob's always been full speed ahead, and I hang on as best I can so he doesn't speed right into disaster, but it means I don't have any time to myself."
Judy hiccups a little laugh. "So we're both selfish."
"That doesn't have to be a bad thing," Phil says. "You got this far - and I didn't just notice you because Bob's sweet on Betty. Things could still change."
"Snow could come," Judy says, looking around at the trees, still all drab and brown, and discreetly wiping her eyes on her cuffs.
"There might be a dramatic resolution in New York," Phil suggests.
"There better not be! The dramatic resolution should be here in Vermont where I can see it with my own eyes!"
Phil laughs like he understands she's only part joking. Then he lets her go, only to loop one arm through hers, tugging her on down the road toward the mailbox. "I'd like to argue, but I agree. In the meantime, we should get the mail and enlist Susan and Emma. I think we'll need all the help we can get to keep the General away from that television set at 9 o'clock."
-end-