Well Played

by Jen DeLuca

  “And my cousin won that contest. Didn’t he?” His voice was grave. “I don’t know how long you two have been . . . well, is together the right word?”

  I had to snort at his description. “No. No, it’s really not.” Certainly not now that I knew that Dex hadn’t been anywhere near a computer or a cell phone to compose any of those messages I’d read in my nest of a bed under the soft fairy lights.

  “I hoped not,” he said. “Not just for my sake, but . . .” He cleared his throat, shifted on his barstool. “I saw you that night last summer. Here at the hotel, at the ice machine.”

  “Yeah. I saw you too.” My face heated with remembered embarrassment. The ice bucket had been cold in my hands, and my instinct had been to duck behind the rough stucco pillar so that Daniel wouldn’t see me. It was as though I’d known even then that Dex wasn’t the one I wanted to be with, and that Daniel’s good opinion was one worth keeping. Why hadn’t I listened to my instincts? I should have chucked that ice bucket and gone home that night.

  Silence settled over us as we sipped our drinks.

  “I knew it wouldn’t last,” Daniel finally said, and I could barely hear him over the general noise of the bar. “You said ‘Happy New Year, Dex.’” He shook his head. “Dex. By then we’d talked so much, and shared so much, that I’d let myself forget that you thought you were talking to him, and not me. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “You could have started with ‘By the way, this isn’t Dex.’ That might have been a good beginning.”

  “Yeah?” He raised his eyebrows. “And how would that conversation have gone, both of us slightly drunk at one in the morning on New Year’s Day?”

  Anger still blazed through me, but I had to admit he had a point. “There were plenty of sober opportunities to set me straight. You should have told me.”

  “I know.” He tilted his head back, draining the last of his beer, and pushed the glass away. “I should have done a lot of things. For what it’s worth, Stacey, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.” He reached for me, his hand halfway to my arm, but something in my eyes must have made him halt the movement.

  “No.” I put my hands up. This was all confusing enough. If he touched me it would only be worse. He’d hurt me, but he was also the one I wanted to comfort me. “I trusted you.” Tears sprang to my eyes, but I blinked them back. They weren’t part of this conversation. “I told you things that . . .” I bit down hard on my bottom lip. “Do you have any idea how much you meant to me? How much it meant to have someone to talk to? Really talk to for a change? You were . . .” I swallowed hard. Those damn tears weren’t going away, and that made me angrier. Which made me tear up more. I hated this.

  “I know,” he said again, his eyes large and sorrowful. “I wish I could fix this.”

  I shook my head. Most of my anger at him had burned away with my tears, leaving me frustrated and not a little bit sad. “I wish you could too.”

  “Yeah.” I thought he was going to say something else, but instead he stood up, his barstool making a scraping noise as he pushed it back. He took his wallet out of his back pocket and laid a couple bills on the bar in between us, placing his empty glass on top. “I’m so sorry,” he said again. But his eyes weren’t sorry. They ate me up again, and this time I was the main course and dessert all wrapped into one. His eyes were gorging themselves on me, as though he knew he’d never get this chance again, and I didn’t like the way that made me feel.

  Before I could say anything else he was gone, threading his way through the Friday night crowd that had formed while we’d been talking at the bar. And that’s when his eyes made sense. He hadn’t just been saying sorry. He’d been saying goodbye.

  Well, crap.

  At first I just stared at the empty space he left behind. The empty beer glass, my mostly full wineglass, the cash to pay for both. The air between us was clear, but there would be no kissing tonight. Maybe not ever.

  So much for my plan.

  Thirteen

  The Willow Creek Renaissance Faire had been a part of me—and I’d been part of it—for a decade now, and from the beginning the first day of Faire felt like magic. It was opening night of a play, the first day of school, and the beginning of the best summer vacation all rolled into one. The grounds were ready. The performers were in town, and vendors were set up with otherworldly wares. And while every year brought some new faces into the mix, for the most part the performers and vendors were the same each time, so it was like a reunion of familiar faces.

  But on this opening day I woke up without that same sense of joy I always experienced. I tried to push away my frustration, remind myself that Faire was my happy place. My happy time. But would it still be, knowing that Daniel would be there too? Were we about to start four weekends of elaborately avoiding each other? Faire wasn’t that big.

  The sun had just crested the trees when I parked my car in our grassy lot in the back of the Faire grounds. I didn’t get out right away; instead I watched the early morning sunlight through the trees. I’d thought about texting Daniel a couple times last night, and at least three times this morning, but I hadn’t known what to say. He hadn’t texted me either.

  “Ugh, enough,” I finally chastised myself. I locked my phone in my glove compartment. I wasn’t going to need it for a while. I’d put on most of my costume at home: the underdress and overskirt of my wench’s outfit, along with my new boots; all I had to do was get wrangled into my corset, pull back my hair, and put on my necklace. As I tripped my way down to the Hollow that first early morning to finish getting ready, I passed the leathersmith’s booth and she flagged me down.

  “How did that backpack work out for you?”

  “Oh, it’s wonderful!” I was so pleased she’d remembered selling it to me last summer. It had been an impulse buy to assuage my sadness at the end of the season, but it had become one of my favorite souvenirs. Every time I looked at it and used it, I was reminded of these trees, and how I felt during these weeks. It reminded me that this was my favorite time of the year, every year.

  But this time . . . Daniel’s presence lurked at the edges, like storm clouds waiting to blot out the summer sun. All I’d wanted was to clear the air between us, and maybe move forward, but instead he’d just . . . walked away. I’d started at least three texts to Emily last night about the whole thing when I’d gotten home but had erased them all. I’d see her this morning, and talking was better than texting when it came to things like this.

  Now that I was alongside my castmates, I pulled my hair up and tied a kerchief over it so it looked oh-so-carefully casual. Then I loosened the strings on my corset as far as they’d go and went looking for Emily. Once she strapped me in, my transformation into Beatrice the seventeenth-century tavern wench would be complete. I’d missed Beatrice, and I was looking forward to being her again.

  Em was five minutes late, which for her was right on time. How she managed to do that while living with a control freak of a fiancé was beyond me, but there you were. It was also possible that Simon slept on the Faire grounds once it was this time of year . . . he was pretty attached to it. The idea of the fastidious Simon living in a tent was so ridiculous that the smile was still on my face when Emily found me. But when I saw her my smile fell. I’d been looking all over for her blue and white wench’s costume, but here she was with an underskirt the color of deep wine, and the dress over it a dark black. The corset she’d fastened around her middle was a dark wine color the same shade as her underskirt. She’d gone and changed her costume, and here I was in the same old thing.

  Why was everyone else able to seek out change while I let everything remain the same?

  But before I could ask her about her new outfit, she hurried over to me and grabbed my arms. “Did you talk to him? How did it go?”

  I blinked as my brain switched topics. “Daniel? Oh, yeah.” I folded my arms over my chest. “I t
alked to him last night when he got into town.” My flat tone of voice did a pretty good job of letting her know how that went.

  “Ohhh.” Her eyebrows climbed her forehead as she drew the word out. “It really was Daniel writing to you all this time?” I gave her a tight nod, and her hopeful expression faded quickly. “So I take it things didn’t go well?”

  “No. Not at all.” I filled her in on what had happened the night before. How I had hoped that after Daniel and I had talked, there would be a fresh start between us. A new beginning. But his response had been an apology and a closed door. An ending. “But it’s okay,” I said after I’d brought her up to speed. I tried to give her a helpless, what are you gonna do? shrug and my usual smile, but neither one of them really fit right.

  And Emily wasn’t buying it for a second. “But he’s been writing to you for months. Months. You’ve been getting to know each other better than anyone else, right? And the second he’s confronted with the truth, he just throws up his hands all ‘Welp, you caught me’? That’s it?”

  “Well . . .” When she put it like that . . .

  “You’d think he’d try to fight for you. At least a little.” She shook her head. “That’s disappointing.”

  “I guess he didn’t want to.” A sense of loss swept through me, which was strange. How could I lose what had never been mine? But despite everything, I didn’t want to believe that this was it. That after all these months, what Daniel and I had had together was over, as if it had never happened. That didn’t seem right either.

  My shrug and smile were slightly more successful this time. It was long past time to change the subject. “Anyway. I have two questions for you.”

  “Okay, shoot.” She turned her back to me. “Tighten me up?”

  “First off, when did you get this outfit?” I started at the top, working my way to the middle of the corset, pulling on the laces until the corset was fully closed in the back and the dress underneath was completely covered.

  “A week or two ago.” She threw a quizzical glance over her shoulder. “I sent the link to you, remember?”

  “Well, yeah, but I didn’t know you’d actually ordered it.” I tugged on the laces from the bottom of the corset and moved up, meeting in the middle and tying it off. “Okay, the other question. Did Simon approve it?”

  “Do you think I gave him a choice?” She grinned and turned back around, and something in my expression made her face fall a little. “I’m sorry. I really thought you knew I was getting a new outfit. I thought you were too.”

  I shrugged as she started gathering the black overdress up, pinning it up at her hip as I’d taught her to do during her first year of Faire so that the deep red skirt underneath showed. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve been a little preoccupied lately.” That was putting it mildly.

  “What do you think?” Her expression was uncertain as she shifted around in the new outfit, which was understandable. It was a departure from her wench’s outfit, that was for sure. The corset was tighter, the colors were bolder.

  But she looked great in it. I smiled. “I think you look like a pirate’s bride. So that’s fitting.”

  “That was the plan. You should have seen his face when it came in the mail.”

  “You’re going to give that poor boy a heart attack before he’s thirty.” I wrapped my loosened corset around my rib cage and fastened it down the front before turning so Emily could lace me up.

  “Eh, he’s fine.” She pulled on the strings, and the breath whooshed out of my body. Not only because she’d tightened my corset, but because I spotted Daniel across the way. He looked like his normal self, the one I’d seen every summer: black jeans and black T-shirt, red hair under that black baseball cap. He held a clear takeout cup of iced coffee in one hand, the beverage pale with milk.

  In an instant, I flashed back to that awful day earlier this year, when my mother had been in the hospital and I’d been so scared. He’d kept me distracted, starting with a picture of his coffee order, the same kind of coffee he held now. That was who Daniel was. Not a creepy catfisher, looking to take advantage. He was the guy who’d gotten me through that terrifying day, sending me silly memes to make me laugh when I’d been at my worst. He cared about me, the way no one else had in a long time. He was . . .

  He was talking to Simon, whose face was like thunder.

  “Oh, crap.” I said the words on an exhale.

  “Did I pull too tight?” Emily froze behind me, the laces of my corset still in her hands. “I’m sorry, this seemed about right, but give me a sec, I can loosen . . .”

  “No.” I put my hands on my waist, tracing the familiar dip and curve that came with putting on this outfit. Wearing these clothes, changing my body’s shape, really helped me get into character as someone else. “No, I’m good, you can tie it.”

  “You sure?” But Emily tied the strings into a firm knot that would last the day. “So what was the ‘oh crap’ for . . .” Her voice trailed off as her gaze followed mine. Daniel and Simon were deep in conversation, Daniel gesturing while Simon finished buttoning his vest and started adjusting the cuffs of his pirate’s shirt. “Oh,” Emily said. “Crap.”

  “Exactly.” I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Emily was done with my corset before I stepped away from her. “Do you know what they’re talking about?”

  She shrugged. “I’m marrying the guy, but I still can’t read his mind. He’s been pretty pissed about how upset you were last weekend, though. Should we save him from Simon or let him fend for himself?”

  I was more inclined toward the latter and opened my mouth to tell her so, but my better nature won out. “Let’s go save him.”

  We’d made it only a few steps when I skidded to a halt, dragging Emily to a stop as well. “What the hell . . . ?” She turned to me.

  “On second thought, let’s don’t.” Because Dex had joined the two of them, and I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. A tight corset, plus the guy I’d hooked up with the past two summers, plus the guy who’d been wooing me by email while pretending to be someone else the whole time? I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that, now that I’d straightened things out with Daniel, I would have to straighten things out with Dex too. I’d been his wench with benefits for a couple summers now. How soon was he going to expect me to jump back into his hotel bed again? Was he expecting it at all? Was two summers a pattern? God. I didn’t want anything to do with anyone named MacLean. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  So like a coward I spun on my heel, hiked up my skirts, and hurried away, Emily trailing after me. It was official. My excitement for the first day of Faire had been replaced by a low-level anxiety that took up residence in my gut. And that made me angry. I’d looked forward to this day, to these four weeks, all year, and now I’d ruined it for myself over a guy.

  Well, the hell with that. I wasn’t going to let Daniel MacLean take Faire away from me. I just needed to get away from him long enough to think.

  * * *

  • • •

  Once again, Emily earned her Best Friend status by following me on my mad scramble up the hill out of the Hollow, catching up to me when I stopped at the top of the hill to lean against a tree and attempt to catch my breath.

  “Hey. Come on.” She settled her hands on my shoulders, making me look her in the eyes. “Don’t think about any of that shit right now. Let Stacey deal with it later. You’re not Stacey right now.”

  “I’m not.” My voice was a slight wheeze—I was still getting used to being back in the corset—and my words came out close to a question.

  “Of course you aren’t. Look around. Out here there’s no emails, no texts. No guys lying to you about who they are. It’s time to be Beatrice now.”

  I let her words settle in my brain, and when I was calm enough I took
her advice. I looked around, at the sunlight filtering through the trees. At the vendors lined up on either side of the dusty lane under our feet. The multicolored banners fluttering in the treetops. I concentrated on the quiet sounds of the Renaissance Faire waking up for the day. Just like that, some of the anxiety dissolved, and my shoulders felt lighter. “You’re right, Emma. Of course.” I slipped into both Beatrice’s accent and Emily’s Faire name as easily as putting on a comfy pair of fuzzy socks. I bumped her shoulder with mine and gave her hand a grateful squeeze. “They’re waiting for us at the tavern. We should get started.”

  The path to our tavern was like the road home. Our volunteers were waiting for us, and had already done most of the work of setting up for the day. Emily and I pitched in, putting the wine bottles in ice and making sure the beer coolers were stocked up. But soon Emily put her hands on her hips and frowned.

  “Those tables aren’t right . . .” she said under her breath. This was her third summer here, and her third summer with this obsession: figuring out the right configuration of tables, stools, and benches that would look the most inviting and would persuade patrons to linger and get that second drink. It was all about selling refreshments, which raised more money.

  “Em, it’s fine.” Jamie, one of our head volunteers, had gotten used to Emily’s trying to change things around, even though he’d been with us almost as long as I had and knew more about running the tavern than probably all of us put together. But he tolerated her ideas with good-natured patience. Because what did it hurt, really, if Emily wanted to move a few tables around? The girl was getting married in a week. She probably had some nervous energy to burn off.

  And what better place to burn off energy than outside, under the trees and bright midsummer sunshine of a Renaissance faire? There was plenty to do to keep us both distracted. We pitched in with the volunteers, serving beer and wine. We flirted with patrons and counted it as a victory when we could elicit a blush. We strolled the dusty lanes together, stopping to take in parts of shows, cheering loudly for each one and helping draw patrons in when we happened upon a show that was about to start. Last summer Emily and I had transitioned from being strictly tavern wenches—glorified bartenders in uncomfortable costumes—to serving as local color. And being local color was fun, in a way that being an overworked bartender was not.