Stolen Hearts (2012 Wattys Finalist)

Chapter 16 - Just Like Heaven

A few days later when they got their groceries and Robert was helping Georgie put them away, she pulled something out of a bag saying, “What’s this?”

He looked up and practically shouted, “Bloody hell, its beer!” making her jump. She was holding a six-pack of beer, and it was British beer not American beer.

“It says, ‘For Robert’,” she said, and turned it around showing a note taped to it.

He took it from her, and tried not to cradle it like a baby. He wasn’t a big drinker. He’d have a pint once in a while when he was done with a show, or hanging out with his mates, usually nursing the same one all night. But seeing something from his life before he was kidnapped, something so familiar, something from home, made him happy.

“This is going right in the fridge!” he said, anticipating having a bottle that evening while he read. She was smiling at him in a bemused way, clearly not understanding why he was so excited, and turned back to putting away groceries.

Later that morning, he joined her in the library after he’d worked out and dressed. When she saw the t-shirt he was wearing, a mossy green color, her face lit up and she said excitedly, “I knew that one would be my favorite!” She took a long lingering look at the shirt, her face glowing, before she turned back to cleaning and Robert started dusting the books as usual.

While they were working in silence, he was lost in his own thoughts as usual. He thought of the song he’d heard her singing to herself in the library the first time. The thirty year old song his band played as part of their regular set he thought she only knew because it’d been covered so many times. Now he knew she probably remembered it from when she’d listened to the music her mum listened to. She hadn’t seemed to know any of the music he’d played for her on the piano, and it made him wonder what was the last popular music she’d listened to before she lost her freedom.

While he dusted he said, “Georgie, what were some of your favorite songs, the ones you used to listen to?”

She was quiet for a few minutes while she considered his question and then said, “Well there was this one song I really liked,” and when he turned towards her, to his utter astonishment, she started doing a rap that was the beginning of a British all-girl pop group’s most popular song from some years ago.

She wasn’t just rapping, she was perfectly mimicking the moves from the video for the song. It was funny to see Georgie rapping like that and he had to work very hard not to laugh. But when she finished, she laughed and he realized she was being funny on purpose and laughed with her. He didn’t get to see that side of her personality very often, and it was wonderful when she showed it.

“And I really liked this one too,” she said. She closed her eyes and started singing the chorus from an all-boy band’s overwrought romantic ballad about losing a girl, rocking her body to keep time.

But this time, instead of singing softly like she always had in the past, she opened up her voice, singing much louder with a beautiful, strong, sweet voice. Robert was shocked. He’d had no idea she’d had that voice hidden inside her. As she sang, she put one hand on her heart and the other out in the air to emphasis the dramatic part. When she finished, she opened her eyes, smiling.

She wasn’t finished. “My friends and I really loved this one, and we used to sing it all the time,” she continued. Then she closed her eyes again, took a deep breath and started to sing a love song by a teen girl pop star from around the same time as the previous two songs. As she sang in her high, sweet voice, she seemed to forget he was there, rocking her body to keep time and giving it everything she had, her hands gesturing with the lyrics and bringing out all the emotion of the song.