Well Played

by Jen DeLuca

  “What’s that?” I took the small plastic cup out of his hand and sniffed the pale liquid inside. “Mead?” I made a face and handed it back to him.

  “Yep. Got it from your tavern.” He took a sip. “You don’t like mead? You should. It’s sweet, like that wine you drink.”

  I shook my head. “It’s too thick, like that beer you drink.” He laughed as I went back onto the stage with the girls.

  “Now the great thing about this song,” Dex said to the girls while he continued to play the melody line, “is that it’s so old, people just keep making up new verses, and as long as they fit the meter, it works. It’s good for audience participation–type stuff, you know?” The girls nodded, eyes wide, soaking in the man-candy that was Dex MacLean, as though they hadn’t told me ten minutes ago that they shouldn’t be singing this song at all.

  “Like . . . like what?” Janine asked.

  “Well . . .” Dex finished the final bars of the verse and started them over again. Frederick jumped back in with a flourish of his hand drum.

  “Like . . .” Frederick pointed at Todd, on the fiddle. “Put him on stage and make him tap-dance!”

  We all laughed, but Todd did an impressive time-step in his stompy boots, and the girls joined in:

  Put him on stage and make him tap-dance

  Put him on stage and make him tap-dance

  Early in the morning!

  Syd jumped in next: “Make him listen to eighties music!”

  That one was even better, and we turned it into a verse:

  Make him listen to eighties music

  Make him listen to eighties music

  Make him listen to eighties music

  Early in the morning!

  By now the girls were all laughing, and we were all clapping along with the music, our voices harmonizing with the Kilts, and I was almost sorry when we did one more round of the “weigh heigh and up she rises” refrain to end the song. The guys were grinning, the girls were giggling, and the audience that had gathered for the Kilts’ next show gave us an enthusiastic round of applause. Great. We’d become their opening act. Hopefully Simon wouldn’t find out about this.

  Daniel stood up from his place in the second row, tossing back the last swallow of his drink. “I hate to break this up, guys, but we’ve got a show to get ready for.” From the look on his face, he really did hate being the voice of reason. But it was about time for the guys to do their set. Which meant we should get back to our little stage up front for a set of our own.

  We bid the guys goodbye, and I gathered the girls like a mama hen with her chicks, shooing them off the stage and up the center aisle. Daniel was there when I got to the lip of the stage, offering a hand to help me hop down. But when my feet were back on the dirt he didn’t let go. Instead his hand tightened on mine and he tugged me a step closer.

  “I’ll see you later, right?”

  I grinned up at him. “Of course you will. Early in the morning?” I pronounced the word the way it was in the song: earl-eye.

  He shook his head. A hint of a wicked smile played around his lips, and his eyes held a glimmer of heat. “There’s no way I’m waiting that long.” He bent to brush his mouth over mine right there in front of everyone, and oh yeah, we were definitely public now.

  The taste of mead wasn’t so bad that time.

  Nineteen

  I’d meant to catch up with Daniel at pub sing, but once the Gilded Lilies had finished their final set of the day, I felt obligated to stay with the girls as they got out of their costumes down at the Hollow. Caitlin stayed with me since Emily was her ride, and by the time we got back to the front of the Faire it was over for the day. Pub sing had just ended, and patrons were filtering out through the front gate. I went over to the Marlowe Stage, but it was empty too. Not a MacLean in sight. When I got to my car I checked my phone, but there wasn’t a text from him either. Then again, he knew I didn’t keep my phone on me, so I tried not to read too much into that. He knew where I lived—he’d probably be by later.

  But by the time I’d taken a long, hot shower and gotten into my most comfortable yoga pants, I realized that he hadn’t actually said he’d come by. I’d just assumed he’d come over tonight, but “sooner than earl-eye in the morning” wasn’t exactly a concrete plan. I checked my phone to make sure he hadn’t called while I was in the shower. Nothing. Hmm. I twisted my hair up and put water on the stove for some pasta for dinner.

  “Is he ghosting us, Benedick?” It seemed unlikely, but it was also weird to not hear from him. The cat didn’t answer, opting instead to wash his butt. Great. Helpful.

  Just as the water started to bubble on the stove, there was a knock at my door. The sound was loud, echoing through my quiet apartment and shattering the thoughts that had started to spiral in my head. I hurried to open the door.

  “There you are.” I leaned on the doorjamb and tried to look casual, as if I hadn’t been checking my phone every fifteen seconds for a text from him.

  “Here I am.” He bent to kiss me, a real kiss this time, one that didn’t need to stay all polite and closed-mouthed in front of witnesses, and any residual annoyance I may have had flew out of my brain. “I was going to text you like I always do,” he said when we came up for air, “but I thought, why do that when I can see you instead.” Daniel took in my yoga-pants-and-messy-bun ensemble and grinned. “I was going to see if you wanted to get dinner somewhere, but you look pretty settled in . . .” His eyes widened as he took a sniff of the air. “Not to mention that whatever you have in here smells delicious.”

  I pulled the door wide and ushered him inside. “It’s just spaghetti. I threw sauce and meatballs in the slow cooker this morning, and there’s tons of it. Come on in and have dinner.”

  “Yes, please.” He followed me into the kitchen, where I threw some salt into the boiling water, followed by the pasta. I pulled down another plate for Daniel and dinner was an intimate affair, not so much because of the romantic ambience but because my dinette table was really, really small. But we barely noticed as we worked our way through a carb-laden dinner of pasta and about four pitchers of ice water. Faire could dehydrate a person.

  Daniel refilled our glasses and added another slice of lemon to his before leaning back in his chair with a happy sigh. “I can’t tell you the last time I had something home-cooked. Probably not since the holidays?”

  I scoffed, though I couldn’t help smiling at the praise. “This was hardly homemade. Frozen meatballs and sauce?”

  “Still better than takeout.” He raised his plastic tumbler to me, and I clinked it with mine.

  “Come over anytime.” I meant it. Daniel could move in, for all I cared. Squeaky bed and all.

  Daniel was mid-sip when his cell phone rang, a custom ringtone that sounded like Celtic fiddles. He groaned and reached for his back pocket. “Dex.”

  My heart thudded at the name, but I brushed past it. “You need to take it?”

  “Yeah. He probably forgot how to . . . I don’t know. Order a pizza on his own or something. Be right back.” He answered the call on his way out the front door. “Hey, man, what do you need? . . . No, I’m out . . . I don’t know when I’ll be back . . .” He shot me an exaggerated eye roll as he pulled the front door behind him. I didn’t blame him for leaving; my apartment was basically one big room, so there was nowhere to go for privacy unless you wanted to hide in the bathroom. The front stoop was his best bet.

  I stuck the dishes in the dishwasher and the leftovers in the fridge, and then reached for my own phone. Emily had created a Facebook album called “First Day at Faire as Mrs. Captain Blackthorne,” which was just as insanely cute as it sounded, including a selfie of Simon as the pirate and Emily as his bride, taken early in the morning before Faire had started for the day. There was something about a wide gold band on the pirate’s finger that made him look complete.

&n
bsp; I’d just finished clicking through the photos and leaving emoji-laden comments, when a text came through from Daniel. He’d sent emojis of his own: three eye rolls. I snorted, and before I could reply he sent another one: Be back inside ASAP, believe me. I smiled as I typed a response: You know where I’ll be. Phone still in my hand, I wandered toward my bed under the eaves, switching on the fairy lights and reclining on my pile of pillows, while the murmur of Daniel’s voice filtered in from the other side of the front door. There was something about him, here in my space, that was so comforting. I could get used to this.

  Meanwhile, back on my Facebook feed, my high school BFF Candace’s baby was now walking! “Huzzah,” I said under my breath. She was nearly a year old; should I stop thinking of her as a baby? She was toddling around now—didn’t that qualify a kid as a toddler? I had no idea, but I still left a heart-eyes emoji on the video of the kid stumbling through the living room and almost falling on the dog, because even if we were nothing more than Facebook friends these days, I was at least going to be a good Facebook friend. Spent the day with your little sis, I added as a comment. How is she already in high school?! We’re getting old!

  A click of a camera shutter startled me, and I looked up to see Daniel in the middle of my living room, his phone pointed toward me snuggled up in bed with my cat and my phone.

  “I’ve pictured this in my head for so many months.” A soft look came to his face as he glanced down at the image he’d captured. “Is this what you looked like, all those times we were messaging each other?”

  I hadn’t thought about it like that before. “Usually,” I admitted. “Sometimes I was on the couch on my laptop, but late nights when we would text just before I fell asleep? I’d usually be in bed on my phone.” I patted the mattress. “Right here.”

  “Hmmm. Right here, huh?” He dropped his phone onto the side of my bed and ducked into my little bedroom space. “I have to say, I did a pretty good job of picturing you . . .” He crawled onto the bed and up my body at the same time, and I clicked my phone off and set it next to his with a grin as he did so. “. . . But real life is much better than pictures. Just like this . . .” He dipped his head down to kiss me, his mouth lingering on mine. “This is so, so much better than texts.”

  “Mmmm, you think?” I grinned against his kiss, and he responded with a nip, his teeth tugging gently on my bottom lip.

  “Oh, I think.” His hands glided up my sides, pushing up my tank top, and what do you know, he didn’t complain about my squeaky bedsprings this time around.

  Later, I reached for his phone and scrolled through to his photos to the one he took of me earlier. “Okay, I take it back,” I said, sitting up and frowning at the phone. “I usually look better than this. At least I hope I do. I’m deleting this.”

  He plucked his phone out of my hand. “Don’t you dare. I need that picture. I need more pictures. In fact, I’m going to purchase more cloud storage so that I can have all the pictures of you on my phone that I can take.”

  “Then take a better one.” I pushed the blankets aside.

  “Where are you going?” He hooked his hand around my upper arm, stopping me.

  “To put on some makeup,” I said. “Maybe even do my hair. If you want pictures of me, I want to not look like a swamp witch in them.”

  “Nope.” He tugged on my arm, pulling me back into the bed and into his arms. “You look perfect like this. Your hair’s all tumbled and tangled . . .” He ran his fingers through my hair, which had long since come out of its messy bun from earlier. “Your cheeks are pink, and you have the sweetest smile that I’ve ever seen in my life. I put that look on your face, and I want to document it.” He aimed his phone at me, and even though I made a show of trying to cover my face and wrestle the phone away from him, my heart glowed at his words. How could I say no when he said things like that to me? I even retaliated, picking up my own phone and taking pictures of him too, while he laughed and pretended to protest. He looked so comfortable, so right, here in my bed tangled up in my sheets. It seemed he’d always been here. And in some ways, maybe he had.

  As night fell in earnest and my little apartment was lit only by the light of the moon streaming through my skylight and the fairy lights above my bed, I nestled into him and he twirled a long lock of my hair through his fingers. “I don’t know if I can go back.” His voice was hushed, the quiet murmur of a shared secret.

  “Then don’t.” I yawned contentedly and traced the line of his breastbone with a lazy fingertip. “Stay. I’m sure the guys can find their own way to Faire in the morning.”

  “Oh, I know they can. But that’s not what I meant.” He shifted under the blankets, settling me just a little more into him, turning his head to brush his mouth over my temple. “I mean later. After this Faire is over and I go on to the next one. When all I have of you are texts and emails. Maybe we can go nuts and actually have phone calls or Skype. But I already know it won’t be enough. How can I go back to that after we’ve had this?” His hand skimmed up my arm, warming my skin.

  “I know.” An ache rose in my chest. Up until now I’d pushed aside any thought of the end of Faire, choosing instead to concentrate on the good. On Daniel, on how perfect it felt to be with him. Why sully that with the reality of this being just a temporary thing, of knowing he’d be on to the next town as always after just one more week? But it couldn’t be pushed aside anymore. “You could always stick around.” I said it lightly, a joke I could take back quickly. But my heart pounded in my temples at the thought of it. At the thought of Daniel staying in Willow Creek. With me.

  “I’d do that in a second.” His arm tightened around me. “I love the small-town vibe of this place.”

  “Eh, it gets old after a while.” I couldn’t hide the smile in my voice. “What would you even do in a town like this? Not a lot of bands to manage around here.”

  “I have other skills, you know. I could . . .” He fell silent, and I waited. “Okay, maybe I don’t have any other skills.”

  “I don’t know about that.” I put some purr into my voice, and he snorted.

  “Marketable skills, then. Ones that would let me make a living here.” We were both quiet for a moment. “Then again, you could . . .” His voice broke off abruptly, as though censoring his thought before he could express it.

  “What?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing.” But his heart beat faster under my palm, and the rise and fall of his chest was a little quicker. “It’s just . . . I was just going to say . . . I mean, you could come with me. With us.” He had that same lightly joking tone of voice that I’d just used. That tone that could easily be serious or flippant, depending on how the words were taken.

  “To the Maryland Ren Fest?” I thought about it. “I mean, sure. It’s not that far, right? I could go out there on Friday after work and spend the weekend. That could be fun.”

  “No. I mean, yeah, you’re right. That would be great. But . . .” He shifted again, and he wound my hair more tightly between his fingers, leashing me to him. “I was thinking more like . . . long-term.”

  “Long-term?” I tilted my head to look up at him.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t look back at me; instead his eyes stayed fixed on the lights twinkling above my bed, blinking hard. Blinking fast. “I don’t know. It was just a thought I had. I know you don’t love your job, and you’ve been frustrated about staying in this small town. So why don’t you leave? Come with me. Come with us. Travel. I think you might like Faire life.”

  The words hung in the air between us, and he continued to stare at the ceiling, not looking at me.

  “I . . .” My heart leapt with an immediate reaction of yes, but my brain froze and I couldn’t say the word. Of course, I wanted to leave Willow Creek. But could I leave Willow Creek? The last time I’d tried to leave town my mother had ended up in the hospital. She’d almost died. My mind was filled with that sam
e old image: her colorless face, her limp arm with an IV, the tubes and machines. It didn’t matter that it was years ago. It didn’t matter that Mom was essentially fine now. There was an irrational part of me that was convinced that the two were linked. If I made plans to leave home again, Mom would have another heart attack. And I’d end up staying here. Again. Probably forever.

  While these thoughts whirled around in my head, long moments ticked by, and the silence between Daniel and me grew thicker, his words disintegrating and vanishing in the air. He dropped my hair and slid his arm around my waist. “It was just a thought. You don’t have to—”

  “No, it’s not that—”

  “Shhhh.” He tightened his arms around me and pressed his lips to my forehead. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  Saying “don’t worry about it” had the opposite effect on me. And on him. He sounded unconcerned, but his heart still pounded under my hand. I didn’t know what to say, or how to make the situation better. All joking aside, I couldn’t ask him to stay. His life was on the road. And my life was here. All I could do was hold him tighter and pretend I never had to let go.

  * * *

  • • •

  After that conversation Saturday night, nothing changed between Daniel and me. Dahlia Martin came back to Faire on Sunday, so my time as an overgrown Gilded Lily was over. Daniel and I made a day of it: I terrified him with my lack of ax-throwing skills, and we watched some of the shows we usually didn’t have time to take in. It was a hot day, made hotter by sitting on the cheap bleachers during the joust, but we ducked into the relative canopied coolness of the tavern afterward, sharing a drink with Emily and Simon while they were in character. My character was so nebulous at this point that she was nothing but a name, an outfit, and an accent. But still, Beatrice managed to fit in with the Faire just fine.