But they had chemistry. They had chemistry for days.
And chemistry, it turned out, was everything.
Because what underlay chemistry was love.
And love could sustain you.
Law honestly hadn’t known if he could pull this off, but Maya saved him.
Practicing his lines by himself, or with some of the other cast members who’d come out to his parents’ house to help, had been one thing. Saying them live onstage with Maya as his foil was another. The first had been a slog. Homework. The second? Magic. Their first scene together was full of rapid-fire banter, and once they got going, it was as natural as…bantering with Maya. He had fun, which was not something he could have predicted.
And then, oh, and then.
There was a point, early in Act II, when they had to dance together at a masked ball—after some more bantering. It was a wild, reeling sort of dance that he stumbled through. He managed not to actually trip, though—until she twirled right up against him and whispered his own words from before back to him: “I’m in love with you, too. Completely and totally hung up on you, actually.”
He fell down.
Luckily, she managed to work it into the play, mocking him to the audience in such a way that it seemed like it had been choreographed.
It turned out that Benedick had the last line in Much Ado about Nothing, and as Law approached it, he felt like he’d run a marathon. He was sweaty and exhausted. But also exhilarated. He took a deep breath and delivered the play’s final line, “‘Strike up, pipers.’”
He was cueing the celebratory music, both because the bad guys had not prevailed and because there’d been a double wedding. A wedding that had come complete with a kiss. “‘Peace,’” he’d gotten to say to Maya, “‘I will stop your mouth.’” And then he’d kissed her.
He had a feeling that getting her to stop talking by kissing her was going to become a regular move for him.
The “pipers” heeded his call, but of course, in Maya’s creative production, that meant a pop version of the play’s earlier song started blasting through the theater’s speakers.
They were supposed to dance, to do some Two Squared choreography, but a man had to draw the line somewhere. So he folded his arms, raised an eyebrow, and leaned against a “tree” to watch the others frolic.
Maya came over to him and tried to get him to dance, but he wasn’t having it.
“Come on,” she whispered, pulling on his arm as the crowd cheered.
“Dream on.” He would die before he did Holden Hampshire’s choreography. The guy had done him a solid with the decoy texts, but dancing was not happening.
“Please?” she wheedled as the crowd kicked it up a notch, hooting and clapping rhythmically. “Because you loooove me?”
“Nope,” he said, but his face was about to crack open from smiling.
“What if I told you—”
“Peace,” he interrupted. See? This line was already coming in handy. “I will stop your mouth.”
And he did.
After the curtain call, they were mobbed. Law hadn’t thought about this aspect of things, so focused had he been on the dual projects of the play and the grant.
They were swarmed by the cast and crew first, and since everyone wanted to talk to either him or Maya, they were drawn away from each other. He kept glancing at her, trying to figure out a way to get back to her.
Then the townspeople started pouring in, including Karl and Pearl and Eiko. They were carrying a crown and trident, and they were making a beeline for Maya. How was that possible? He had literally stuffed the ballot box with votes for Pearl.
“Sorry,” he said, interrupting Sawyer, who was jawing about how he’d known all along that Law and Maya would end up together. Law forced his way through the crowd, ignoring everyone’s exclamations and congratulations. He had to get to her before the old folks did.
They beat him by a few seconds. They’d started talking to her, but her attention shifted to him when he broke into their circle. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
They stared at each other with goofy grins on their faces. To think that she was his. That he was hers. That they were done with the feud. Or maybe that the feud was never going to end? That part of things was confusing. But why should it be otherwise? Confused was his default mode when it came to her.
Pearl started trying to hand the mermaid crown to Maya, and that tipped him out of his slack-jawed paralysis. “Okay, so here’s the thing. I tried to get someone else elected mermaid queen. I really did.”
“But everyone just wants you, hon,” Eiko said. “We saved the coronation for now because we didn’t want to upstage certain other people’s plans.” She shot a bemused look at Law. “But you won in a landslide, Queen Maya.”
Which, again, was impossible. He had personally stuffed a hundred counterfeit ballots into the box. He’d even bought a gallon of paint so he could slip them in while Karl was distracted mixing it. He turned to the old folks. “I will fight you over this. I respect you all, but I will fight you.” He swung his attention back to Maya, who looked like she was trying not to laugh. “I swear to God, I didn’t do this. I tried to undo this.”
“It’s okay.” Maya took the crown from Pearl. “I actually secretly like being the mermaid queen.”
Huh? “You do?”
“Yeah, I just never wanted you to know I liked it.”
Wait. What?
“I mean, when have I ever seen a starring role I didn’t love?”
“All right, then,” said Karl. “That’s settled.”
The old folks started herding Maya toward the backstage exit. He followed. What else was he going to do?
And hey, he’d get to watch her as mermaid queen again. He couldn’t think of a better way to end this day.
Well, he could, but that would come later.
“Can we get a minute alone?” he said as they all approached the float.
“Nope,” Karl said. “The rest of the parade is ready to go, and the route is lined with people.”
“The Mermaid Parade waits for no one,” Pearl said.
“Yeah, but it usually starts a bit after the play.” Maya turned to Law. “I usually have an hour to shift gears.”
“Not this year!” Pearl trilled, winking at Eiko.
“But…,” Maya protested.
“Maya and I need to talk,” Law said decisively.
“You can talk the rest of your life.” Eiko tried to hand him the trident. “Hell, you can talk on the float.”
Huh? “I’m not getting on the float.”
“I don’t see why not,” Karl said. “You were elected king.”
Oh, for God’s sake. “I was not.”
“You were, though,” Karl said.
“Children.” Pearl gestured at both him and Maya. “I say this with love, but you two are kind of dumb. The whole town saw where this was going, if not years ago certainly earlier this summer. You were both elected in a landslide. The people have spoken.”
He looked at Maya, who shrugged and made a why-not face. Eiko opened his hand like he was a doll and stuck the trident in it, and Karl moved a step stool to the edge of the float.
“We don’t have the right outfits,” he tried, though he wasn’t really sure why he was objecting. If Maya wanted to be mermaid queen, he was good to go.
“Your costumes are fine,” Pearl said. “We can make an exception this year.”
“Maya and I are applying for the grant jointly,” Law said, remembering suddenly that they did have something to surprise the old meddlers with. Ha. If these people thought they pulled all the strings in this town, they had another thing coming.
“Of course you are,” said Eiko, patting his arm briefly before snapping her fingers and pointing at the steps. “Get up there.”
“We’ve been wondering when you would land on that strategy,” Pearl said.
All right. He was defeated. Law followed Maya up to the matching clamsh
ell thrones. He grabbed her hand before they sat, and the crowd cheered. All their friends were there. He made eye contact with Sawyer and Jake, who both grinned.
He suddenly thought back to his last boat ride with the guys. “Did you tell Eve that you liked me? Like a week or so ago?”
“No!” Maya sounded appalled. “Did you tell Sawyer you liked me?”
“I did not. In fact, I actively denied it.”
She cracked up. “We got played, didn’t we?”
“We did indeed.”
“Rohan was in on it, too, I’m pretty sure.” She pointed to her family as she sat on her throne. They were all waving enthusiastically at her.
“I guess the meddling spanned the generations this time,” he said, spotting his own parents and waving at them sheepishly.
“The trident is mine,” Maya said once the float started moving. She grabbed one end of it, but he held on to the other, resulting in a little tug-of-war. “I got possession of it last year, and I’m not giving it up.”
“Oh, so I get nothing?” he countered, though he let her have it. “How is anyone supposed to be able to tell that I’m the mer-king?”
“You could take your shirt off. Usually the mer-king doesn’t wear a shirt. Unless it’s Karl, in which case he wears that T-shirt with fake muscles on it.”
“I’m not taking my shirt off.”
“Suit yourself.” She shrugged. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a theater director or anything. It’s not like I have professional training and years of experience in what makes for a good visual—”
“Peace. I will stop your—”
“No!” Maya said. “I strongly suggest you don’t come over here. Don’t even stand up. It’s too easy to lose your balance.”
“Aww, you loooove me.”
“No, I just don’t want you to fall to your death and know I could have prevented it. I’d do that for anyone. I don’t want blood on my hands.”
“Close enough,” he said. “I guess that means I’ll have to stop your mouth later.”
“Yeah, okay.” She smiled. “And I guess that means for now you’ll just have to listen to me talk.”
He was extremely okay with that.
“Actually, I have some notes for you.”
“Notes?”
“It’s a theater term. The director gives notes to the actors after a show—things that can be improved or done differently. Because I assume your whole swoop-in-and-save-the-play move wasn’t a one-time-only thing? There’s still a show tomorrow.”
Right. This was the flaw in his plan. Even though he was the one who’d told her not to cancel tomorrow’s show, he hadn’t really allowed himself to think beyond his wild attempt to save the play and get the girl. But now that he had done both those things, he was gonna have to get up onstage and do it all again tomorrow, wasn’t he?
“You know what they say?” Maya said, looking like she was trying not to laugh.
“Um, I think they say, ‘Thanks for saving the show the big fancy theater critic was at, but you’re off the hook now’?”
“No. They say the show must go on.”
He reached over and grabbed her hand. “And so it must.”
“Are you ready for my notes?”
“Bring it.”
Epilogue
A year later
Bang, bang, bang.
Law rolled over and checked the time on his phone. Seven a.m. “Are you kidding me?”
“Whaaa?”
“Shh,” he soothed the befuddled Maya—they had only gone to sleep three hours ago. She’d had a show last night and then, well…He had heard the phrase honeymoon phase to describe new relationships, and if that was a real thing, they were still in it. Maybe the length of the honeymoon phase was proportional to the number of years the couple had spent picking at each other? “Go back to sleep,” he murmured, resting his hand momentarily on her cheek as he got out of bed.
Their visitor must be Jake, though they had not been the recipient of an early-morning visit since last summer. Now that Law and Maya were together and shacked up at his place—their place, now—his friends had calmed down on that front.
He threw on some clothing and hustled out to yank open the door before whoever it was knocked again and further disturbed Maya. “What?”
There was no one there. Just a newspaper lying on the ground next to a tray from Lawson’s Lunch holding two cups of coffee. He stooped down to grab it all. It was the Globe and Mail, and it was open to a random— Oh, hang on. It was open to a review of Titus Andronicus, Maya’s play that was opening tonight. Holy shit!
Her shows were popular enough now that she staged a preview the night before opening. He used the occasion, too, to test-run the accompanying food. They only sold preview tickets to locals, though—it functioned like a dress rehearsal of both food and theater in front of a friendly audience. But it looked like someone had tipped off the same Globe and Mail critic who had come to Much Ado about Nothing a year ago. That review had been mixed, praising the staging but lamenting the “underwhelming last-minute stand-in for the promised big-name Benedick.” Apparently saving a show and locking down the love of a lifetime looked “underwhelming” from the outside. Whatever.
But this review…He jogged back to the bedroom, leaped onto the bed, and shook her.
“Stop it.” She rolled over.
“You’ll want to see this.”
“What happened to ‘Go back to sleep’?”
Instead of answering, he started reading the review. “‘One could be forgiven for assuming that Titus Andronicus as staged by the mighty-but-small Moonflower Bay Theater Company would be an overreach. One would be wrong.’”
That woke her up. She bolted to sitting. “What?”
She was not wearing a shirt, and he could not help but stare. He still wasn’t used to this. The idea that she was here, after all those— “Ow!” She had slugged his shoulder.
She did it again. “Read!”
“Okay, okay! ‘The bloody tale of mortal enemies culminates in Roman general Titus murdering the children of Tamora, queen of the Goths, and serving them to her in a pie, so as one might imagine, in lesser hands the resulting production could tend toward the overwrought. In the steady, nuanced hands of director Maya Mehta, though, it does not. There’s no melodrama here, just theater that is smart, bracing, and exhilarating.’”
“Ahhhhh!” she screamed.
He smirked. “I think maybe that’s the first time anyone’s ever called you subtle.”
“Ahhhhh!” she repeated, as if to illustrate his point.
He went back to the review. “‘I’m not sure the same can be said about the dinner half of the optional dinner-theater package.’”
“What?” She was indignant on his behalf. She grabbed the paper and read silently. “Oh, this is actually okay. He says, ‘Because, really, there’s nothing subtle about the meat pie—or mushroom, should your own personal vision of revenge be less carnivorous—served before the show at the new and punching-above-its-weight Lawson’s Lunch. (A boxed version of the same dinner can also be preordered and picked up at the theater after the show—not a bad option considering the town’s two charming beaches make an ideal backdrop for a leisurely late-night nosh.) Chef Michelle McAdams, formerly of the well-regarded White Rhino in nearby Bayshore, hits you over the head with organic lamb, locally foraged chanterelles, fennel, and mixed herbs in a perfectly flaky double crust. Thoughts of revenge evaporate with the first divine bite.’”
Well. He grinned. He would take that.
“We did it!” she said.
“We did.” And they had. They’d won the grant. Law had gotten the mortgage and bought and renovated Jason’s place. Lawson’s Lunch had been popular with locals the moment it opened, and it had been at capacity nearly every day this summer. The theater was thriving, too. With her take from the Much Ado run, Maya had been able to do a massive repair and refresh. They even had plans in the works to close off half the bal
cony and build a second, cabaret-style venue that would house stand-up comedy, concerts, and smaller-scale plays—and have an integrated bar serving drinks and snacks. “But we already knew that. We didn’t need the Globe and Mail to tell us that.”
“Still,” she said, “it’s nice to have, isn’t it?”
“I guess so, but you know what’s even nicer?”
“What?”
“You naked in my bed.”
“It’s not your bed anymore, it’s our bed,” she shot back, and he smiled. One of the best things about his permanent cease-fire with Maya was that she still sassed him whenever the opportunity presented itself.
“You naked in our bed,” he corrected smoothly, taking his shirt off and crawling toward her.
She put her shirt on.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He tried to grab her as she hopped off her side of the bed, but she evaded him.
“Who dropped that paper off?” she asked. “Who has keys? Jake and Brie?”
“Who even knows at this point?”
“I have to find the girls.”
He followed the familiar strains of the Spice Girls into the bathroom. Maya, he had learned, started each day with a shower and the Spice Girls—she played the music on her phone that she left on the bathroom counter. He eyed the lineup of fortune cookie fortunes taped to the mirror. She kept her fortunes, it turned out, and he had added his about deeds-and-not-weeds to her collection.
“What are you doing?” she squealed when he pulled the shower curtain back and got in with her. “I gotta find the girls and show them that review.”
“You’ll see the girls tonight.” Would she ever. She would see everyone tonight. She just didn’t know it yet.
“Yeah, but I want to tell them…Oh.” She let her head fall back against his chest as he hugged her from behind.
He ground himself against her shamelessly. “I think the girls can wait, can’t they?”
“You’re right.”
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
She turned in his arms. “Oh, shut up.”
Maya was giddy as she arrived at the bar for the opening-night cast party. The scene was familiar. Comforting. Ben looked up—right at her—as she paused in the doorway, taking everything in. He saw her before anyone else did, and he winked.
Sandcastle Beach--Includes a Bonus Novella Page 30