Love Arrives in Pieces

by Betsy St. Amant

  Three stairs away.

  Her heart thudded in her chest.

  Two stairs.

  Her crossed arms grew prickly with goose bumps.

  Who said God didn’t have a sense of humor?

  She made an about-face on the stair, grabbing her purse. “I’ll be in the lobby with my sketch pad. There’s better lighting.” Only because she wouldn’t be at risk of the world going pitch black due to unconsciousness like the last time she’d been in Chase’s extended presence.

  He followed her. “The electrician is here.”

  “I saw that.” She kept walking, and he kept following. Another plan foiled.

  “He’s seeing what needs to be replaced to be brought up to code, and what we can keep as is. This could be a huge factor for our budget, hopefully in the positive.” They stepped into the lobby, and Stella dropped into a seat at the card table they’d abandoned earlier.

  “Fingers crossed, then.” If she didn’t look at him, she wouldn’t get angry.

  Or want to kiss him.

  Whoa. That was one memory she wouldn’t—couldn’t—let get the best of her. Talk about unproductive. Chase had very nearly ruined her life—and her sister’s. She wouldn’t fraternize with the enemy any more than absolutely necessary. This was work. Business. This was a roof over her head so her parents’ roof wouldn’t be. The end.

  Chase stood beside her, almost over her, tapping her sketch pad with one finger. “So where did we leave off?”

  Did he really want that particular instant replay? She opened her mouth to bite off the sarcastic retort rising in her throat, then stopped. Backstage Stella. Subtle Stella. She swallowed, then tried again. “It’s back to the drawing board, I guess.”

  “You guess? You don’t agree with what you’re saying?”

  Oh, why did he always have to push it? He’d asked her out when dating Kat. She’d said no. He’d backpedaled, playing it off as a mere coffee date between friends, then asked again a few days later. She’d said no. Again. Then a few weeks later, he was back. Wanted to talk about Kat, needed someone’s advice who understood her better than most.

  So she’d gone. For her sister.

  And fallen in love over a nonfat, white-chocolate mocha.

  “I—”

  He tapped the notebook again. “What do you want, Stella?”

  “What does it matter, anyway? You didn’t like my idea.” She snatched the sketch pad away from his hand, resisting the childish instinct to yell at him not to touch her stuff. He didn’t have the right. He’d lost all those rights.

  Shouldn’t have ever had them in the first place. If her sister ever knew, really knew . . .

  “This isn’t Chase versus Stella, you know.” He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, bracing his elbows on the table as he leaned toward her, pulling her in as he always had. “I’m not trying to run a dictatorship, here. We just need to get on the same page and don’t have any time to waste, because—well, we’ve already wasted some.”

  Her fault. He didn’t have to say it out loud to make it true. She gripped the sketch pad tighter. “I agree.” Why did that almost literally burn her lips to say? She didn’t want to agree with Chase on anything. If she had learned how to argue with him sooner, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten hurt so badly.

  Or hurt others so badly.

  Then the truth hit her. She didn’t want to agree with Chase.

  On anything.

  Not even designs for the Cameo.

  A sinking feeling filled her stomach, like a thousand rocks raining from a cliff edge. She hadn’t even given consideration to his suggestions earlier. Maybe he had a point she could learn from, if she could just hush her bias and jadedness long enough. If she could give Backstage Stella a pass to take over and calmly, rationally, hear him out.

  The Cameo deserved that much—and so did her landlords when rent came due again. She had to make this happen, somehow.

  Just hopefully without unearthing the contents of that Pandora’s box she’d locked away.

  “What does Stella Varland want?” Chase repeated his question. Then he grinned. “Still working on that world peace thing?”

  “Haha. You’re hilarious.” She gave in to the eye roll, and then took a deep breath. “Seriously—I’m willing to go back to the drawing board. If you thought the classic movie posters weren’t a good fit, or the black and white theme, then I can start over.” Maybe it was a little cliché, but sometimes, clichés became that way for good reason—they were grounded in truth. They were safe.

  Still . . . maybe he was right.

  She could do better.

  Recognizing that fact grated on her nerves even worse than his initial insult.

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying I’m right?” Chase grinned, a slow one that started at the corners of his lips and revealed a dimple in his left cheek she’d never fully forgotten.

  She looked away, then back. “I would never do that.”

  “Out loud, anyway.” His grinned stretched even wider.

  She started to stretch across the table to slap his arm, then thought better of it and played it off as reaching for her pencil. “Whatever. Go back in there and play with power tools while I do some real work out here.” And more importantly, get away from wreaking havoc on my five senses.

  Her heart skipped at the banter between them, but she kept her focus on her paper, absently resketching the basic lines of the lobby and pretending not to notice the way his eyes lingered on her before he slowly—reluctantly?—acquiesced.

  Stella wandered slowly around the lobby with her sketch pad, her creativity more stifled than a stopped-up drainpipe. She had doodled on her notepad at the card table for a while, until the memories of the past eventually gave up tapping her on the shoulder. From there she’d moved to aimlessly strolling the lobby, seeking inspiration and hoping Chase would keep his distance long enough for her to find it.

  But her muse wasn’t hiding behind the refreshment counter or between the rope-stand poles or in the faded wallpaper in the bathroom. Apparently, it had decided to run away completely.

  And with Chase having looked at her like that, who could blame it? She sort of wished she could hit the highway, too, where all she had to think about was her next stop for gas.

  But you had to have money to travel, and a job to make money, and so here she was.

  Besides, not even a souped-up V-8 could outrun these memories.

  She headed back into the theater, where she’d originally come before Chase interrupted earlier, and set her bag in a vacant chair. Thankfully the crew working near the stage hadn’t noticed her there on the back row.

  Something shiny glinted on the floor, reflective against the dark stairs. She bent down and picked it up. It was a piece of metal, broken off of something unidentifiable. The sides were smooth, nearly polished, the ends blunt instead of sharp. She started to drop it back on the ground, but the cool weight of it in her hand convinced her otherwise.

  She slipped the piece into her pocket, then picked a seat a few down from the aisle where she could hopefully stay hidden from Chase. Until she had something productive to show him, she’d rather not see him.

  Honestly, would rather not see him at all, period.

  She slumped into her seat, propped her sketch pad on her knees and tilted her head back, drawing a deep breath to inhale the sounds and scent of the room. What did she see when she closed her eyes? That was the missing piece of her design puzzle. She just hadn’t seen it yet.

  So Chase didn’t want black and white and red, didn’t want classic or old movie posters or anything she’d previously come up with. What, then? The opposite? Instead of neutrals, bold colors? Instead of subtle and classy, bright and obnoxious? How was that better?

  There had to be a middle ground she hadn’t discovered yet.

  With the design, of course. Not with Chase in general.

  “I’d offer a penny for your thoughts, but ya know.”

  Stell
a jumped, her heart clawing its way into her throat. Her notepad slipped off her knees and landed with a thwack on the floor under her feet.

  Dixie laughed from the chair beside her, her familiar cinnamon scent wafting toward Stella. “I ain’t got one! Get it?”

  No. Yes. Stella never knew what to say when Dixie, or anyone homeless for that matter, joked about their poverty. She pressed her hands against her chest, willing her heart back into place.

  “Sorry there, Honey Bunny. Didn’t mean to scare ya.” Dixie bent down and picked up the book, then slapped it back into Stella’s lap. “Why you so jumpy?” Her all-too-seeing eyes narrowed to slits. “Jumpy people usually have secrets. Or guilt. Or maybe guilty secrets.”

  “No secrets, Dixie.” Stella slowly lowered her hands away from her heart, then felt for her pencil where it’d dropped into the seat by her leg. None she was willing to share, anyway. “I was just trying to focus.” She really loved the older woman—in some ways, she reminded her of her late Aunt Maggie.

  Except for the crazy part.

  Which made her wonder, not for the first time, if the rumors were true—that Dixie didn’t have to be homeless. But why in the world would anyone fake that? There might be scammers who threw on scruffy jackets and stood with cardboard signs on the corners of the highways, but there was no hiding the smell that lingered deep under Dixie’s cinnamon surface. Or the dust that constantly coated her calloused hands and worn shoes. Or the rumbling she often heard from the woman’s hungry stomach.

  “No secrets? Not even one?” Dixie squinted, as if narrowing her eyes might let her see between the slats of Stella’s brain.

  Nope. She had a theater to design, and didn’t have time for cryptic small talk. She had wasted enough time as it was. She pointed to the sketch pad. “Focusing, Dixie. I’m focusing.”

  “I’ll help. What are we focusing on?” Dixie leaned over, hogging the armrest between them, and peered down at the sketch pad.

  Stella quickly flipped the page. “What are you doing here, anyway, Dixie?” Then she remembered: the shelter wouldn’t be up and running for a few more days, at best. Probably weren’t a lot of other places for the woman to go.

  “I come here all the time.” Dixie finally took the personal-space hint and leaned back against her seat, settling in and propping worn shoes with a hole in the pinky toe up on the seat in front of her. “I can hear better.”

  “All the time?” Stella repeated. As in, before the city had decided to renovate the theater? Wasn’t that dangerous, in the dark, with all the broken glass and—

  Wait a minute. “What do you mean, you hear better?” A shiver crept over the back of her neck, like a dozen tiny moths fluttering at the base of her hair.

  Dixie leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “You hear it too. Or you will.”

  Stella wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to. Her mind replayed those eerie feelings from her first moments alone in the theater, before Chase, before Cowboy Bob, before this entire nightmare of a day had begun. What exactly did Dixie hear?

  Or rather, who?

  Whatever or whoever it was apparently wasn’t terrifying, judging by the slight smile on Dixie’s relaxed face. Hmm.

  Stella glanced back at her sketch pad, uncertain how to proceed. How did Dixie sneak in like that, and why did she come to the abandoned theater frequently? It was peaceful here, of course. Quiet. When it wasn’t crowded with ex-boyfriends and unseen voices, at least.

  “You should go for the gold, dear.”

  She cut a look at Dixie, but the woman was still laid back, eyes closed, hands folded primly in her lap, fingers wrapped around the edges of that same patched blazer she was never seen without. Go for the gold? As in the Olympics? She opened her mouth to ask but Dixie wasn’t done.

  “Golden. Gold dust.”

  Now she was rambling. Crazy Dixie had taken back over. The woman always seemed to go in spurts. Stella smiled, shook her head, and opened her sketch pad.

  “Gold nuggets.”

  Stella started tracing back over old lines of her drawing, trying to find her groove again.

  “Golden man.” Dixie’s voice was softer now, as if she was drifting into sleep.

  Golden. Her pencil stilled. What if they used a gold color scheme inside the theater, instead of the black and white and red? More European, almost. Her pencil flew beneath her fingers. Gold . . . and burgundy? No, too old-fashioned, like the red crushed velvet ropes in the lobby. Too done. Gold and . . . black? Nope. Too Hollywood, which was back to cliché and would just earn her another lecture from Chase.

  Gold and silver?

  Maybe. Now that idea had potential. She began sketching faster, filling in the white spaces with Gs and Ss to come back and shade later with her colored pencils as Dixie snored softly beside. Her muse was back—yet from the looks of it, sound asleep.

  Stella worked quickly, rapidly flipping pages as more ideas flooded her mind and begged to be released onto the page. Time flew and she filled page after page with more ideas to flesh out and compare later.

  She didn’t stop until Dixie shifted beside her, stirring awake.

  “See? Told you you’d hear ’em.”

  six

  He hadn’t had Mom’s meatloaf in years.

  About four bites in, he remembered why.

  Chase rotated his half-full plate to go to work on the mac-n-cheese instead. Across his parents’ fenced backyard, his cousin Ethan threw a football to twelve-year-old Memphis, Chase’s nephew, as the rest of the immediate family scraped paper plates clean and stood gossiping, trading recipes, and joking along the landscaped patio. Enjoying the weekend. Enjoying life.

  He was home.

  So why was he already itching to go?

  Chase pushed his plate away, no longer content to just sit and eat. He wanted to move. Play. Do.

  “Hey, look at that. He caught it this time.” Chase’s older brother, Jimmy, sat down in the empty chair across from Chase and gestured toward his son. “Who’d have thought it?”

  Chase followed his pointing finger toward Memphis. “I thought he made the junior high football team last year.” Or so the Christmas card letter had stated.

  “He did.” Jimmy scooped a heaping spoonful of banana pudding into his mouth and shrugged, mumbling around his mouthful. “Benched the whole season.”

  And Chase hadn’t made it to a single game. He pushed away the regret. This year, once school started back, things would be different. Uncle Chase was here, and he would make up for all of it.

  Starting now.

  He shoved his chair back. “Hey, let me in on that.” He cupped his hands for the ball, and Ethan smoothly tossed it straight into his grasp.

  “I want to play.” His other nephew, Jimmy’s youngest son Aaron, tried to tug the ball from his hands.

  “Watch it, now, Freckles.” He poked eight-year-old Aaron in the side and dodged the kid’s giggling attempts to make him fumble the ball. “Your Uncle Chase hasn’t lost his game completely.” Not yet anyway, though every minute he inched toward thirty he got a little closer.

  “Over here, Uncle Chase!” Memphis waved his arms, and Chase faked out Aaron in exaggerated slow motion before chunking the ball to Memphis. Aaron chased after it, protesting, and after slight encouragement from Ethan, the game quickly turned into keep-away.

  “It’s like you never left.”

  Bent over, hands braced on his knees, Chase looked up from his stance in the yard and shook his head at his mom. “I wish that was true.” He’d missed so much, and for what? Memories from an abruptly ended relationship that still gnawed at his heart. A pink slip from a job he probably shouldn’t have pursued in the first place.

  And a trail of regrets he swore he’d never repeat.

  Mom took a sip from her plastic cup—he’d bet money it was sweet tea; some things never changed. She mock-frowned at him. “I’ve never lied to you, Chase Taylor.”

  No—not entirely true. She’d never liked Leah. Neith
er had Jimmy, for that matter. The one time she’d met his family, it’d been so awkward they’d all been relieved when that particular brunch was over. He never thought he’d see the day when he’d be happy to abandon a half-full plate of cinnamon rolls. Even Leah had commented on the tension from his mom on the drive home, but for the life of him, Chase couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t taken to Leah.

  Didn’t matter now.

  He exhaled sharply to release the lingering pain in his heart, a trick he’d learned in the thick of his grief. Breathe out the negative, force it out from the inside. Fill the left-behind space with something positive. In his case, it was usually prayer.

  When he slowed down long enough to remember.

  He easily jumped up and snagged the ball from thin air. His mom ducked out of the way as he tossed it neatly to Aaron, who paraded his victory in front of his brother.

  “You’ve still got it, you know.”

  His mom didn’t mean his football-throwing skills. He shot her an appreciative smile. “Thanks.”

  “You ready to put down roots again?”

  He knew that was coming. Had prepared for it, sort of. But he still didn’t have an answer. “I haven’t been back that long, Mom.”

  She shrugged. “Some things the heart knows right away.”

  Yeah. Some things.

  Others . . .

  Did he want to stay in Bayou Bend for good? He watched his nephews playing, watched their smiles and cackles of laughter, and felt a little piece of the old grief knock off and roll away. “We’ll see, Mom.” It’d be good to be back here permanently. Good for everyone.

  As long as Mom found a new meatloaf recipe.

  “Might not hurt to keep an eye on the local real estate for me.”

  She smiled, the slow smile that always ended up straight in her eyes, and nodded calmly though he knew she was dying to jump up and down. But she knew—as she’d realized quickly enough when he was a teenager—that overreacting would make him about-face.

  Chase really owed his mom a lot. He gave her an impromptu hug, which she returned while complaining about his sweaty T-shirt.