Well Played

by Jen DeLuca

  I blinked up at him. “So you were just going to hang out here while the show went on?”

  “No. I came back here to grab the shirts for the merch stand after the show. I wasn’t planning on being here while the show was going on.” He shrugged. “You kinda ambushed me here.”

  “Oh.” I bit my lower lip. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not complaining.” His hand flexed on the small of my back, and a smile teased at the corners of his mouth. My heart soared at that almost-smile. That was how far gone I was for this guy: a hint of a smile was all it took. “But I’m afraid you’re stuck in here with me till the show’s over.”

  “Oh,” I said again. “Okay.” I looked back at the black curtain. “Any other MacLeans about to barrel through here?”

  “Nope.” Daniel’s laugh was a warm chuckle in my ear, and I shivered despite the heat of the day. I’d missed him so much. “The others are out in the house, and they just hop on stage from there.”

  Sure enough, as if on cue, the sound of a fiddle cut through the murmur of the chatting audience, quieting them down, and Dex’s voice rang out from the stage, roughly six feet from where we were standing, the same spiel I heard every summer, every time the Dueling Kilts started a show. That little bit of patter was what drove it home for me. This was what they did. Not just at our Faire, but everywhere. This same show, all over the country, all year long. It had to be repetitive as hell. But I still wanted in.

  “What were you saying?” He pitched his voice low, since we were only a few feet from the audience, and I leaned in to hear him because there were also loud musical instruments just on the other side of the stage curtain.

  Right. I forged ahead. “You said you had nothing to offer me. Nothing I’d want. But you’re wrong. This”—I gestured around us, taking in the stage, this tiny broom closet we were in, the entire Renaissance festival around us—“This is it. What you have is what I want. This life. Right here.” I took a step toward him, which pretty much closed the remaining distance between us. It was cramped back there. “With you.” I rested a hand on his waist; it felt so good to be touching him again.

  His breath caught. “Do you mean that?”

  “I do.” I nodded vigorously. “So, tell me.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me,” I said again. “You said in your email that . . .” My voice trailed off as the music on stage finally filtered through my consciousness. It had taken a couple verses for me to realize what the guys were playing out there.

  Weigh heigh and up she rises

  Weigh heigh and up she rises

  Weigh heigh and up she rises

  Early in the morning

  “Oh, listen,” I said. “It’s our song.” That got me another warm chuckle as Daniel’s other hand slid from my hip to the small of my back, and the heat of his skin through the cotton of my dress was almost too much to take.

  “They don’t usually open with that. Tell you what?” he asked again, his voice low and directly in my ear, barely loud enough to hear over the music coming from the other side of the stage curtain.

  Now my smile felt real, and not like a mask at all. We should have been somewhere private at a moment like this. But there was something very, very right about telling him how I felt here, in the heat and dust of a Renaissance faire, with his cousins performing a few feet away and an audience just out of sight.

  I drew back in his arms, studying his face, loving the light that had come into his green eyes. “No more writing,” I said. “No more emails. Tell me to my face. Tell me how you feel. And I’ll tell you how glad I am that you aren’t your cousin.”

  His eyebrows rose, and now the smile came full force to his mouth. The joy in his face looked like a sunrise. “You are?”

  I nodded. “I’ll tell you that I’ve always had a thing for tall redheads that are on the lean side.”

  “Oh, really.” He would have looked dubious if he hadn’t been smiling like that.

  “Really,” I insisted. “Much, much more than huge, gross, muscly guys.”

  “Thank God for that,” he said, just before he bent to me, and his kiss felt like coming home.

  “I mean, eight packs,” I said against his mouth. “Ick. Who needs ’em.”

  “Okay, that’s enough.” But I could feel his smile against my lips, which only made me kiss him harder.

  Out on stage they’d done a couple verses of “Drunken Sailor,” and Dex started a brand new one:

  Chuck him backstage with a blonde-haired wench

  “Oh my God,” Daniel said, breaking our kiss. He looked over his shoulder toward the stage, and I burst into laughter, holding on to him more tightly.

  Chuck him backstage with a blonde-haired wench

  Chuck him backstage with a blonde-haired wench

  Early in the morning

  “Tell me,” I insisted. My smile felt enormous on my face, and this time it was all genuine.

  “Oh, Stacey.” His kiss told me everything I needed to know, but my heart still soared when he drew back to whisper in my ear. “Anastasia. I love you.”

  “I love you,” I whispered back, but the words were lost in the music and in his kiss.

  So, yes, Daniel and I declared our love for each other while his cousins sang a traditional sea shanty roughly eight feet away from us, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  Epilogue

  You’re kidding, right?” Emily looked skeptical.

  I shook my head and adjusted my grip on my phone. Dropping her while we were on a video call would be rude. “I am not kidding.”

  “Yeah, but . . . barf?”

  “BARF.” My voice was deadpan. “It stands for Bay Area Renaissance Festival. It’s one of the bigger ones here in Florida.”

  Emily covered her mouth with her hand, and her giggle was so strong it made her eyes almost disappear. “That’s amazing. I love it. That’s so much better than our acronym. WCRF just sounds like a bad radio station.”

  I grinned. “How’s everything back home? Cold?” To my left on the tiny counter, the coffeemaker started making its death-gasp burble, letting me know the pot was finished brewing. I balanced my phone against the dish rack so I could still see Emily while I reached up to the cupboard above my head for the coffee mugs. Space was at a premium in this little motorhome, so there were only two mugs in there. But we only needed two.

  “Very.” Emily gave a mock shudder. “I’m so jealous that you’re down there in Florida in February.”

  “It’s pretty great, I’m not going to lie.” I wasn’t just talking about the weather. “It’s nice to be on the road again, too.” I poured milk into the mugs and added sugar to mine before pouring the coffee. I eyed them both before adding more milk to Daniel’s mug. One of these days I’d get the proportions right on the first try.

  “Yeah? Did you two get hives staying in one place for so long over the holidays?”

  “It wasn’t too bad.” I wasn’t lying. We were just coming off the Kilts’ downtime, which Daniel and I had split between his family and mine. I’d shared a drink with Uncle Morty on New Year’s Eve, and then we’d spent a couple weeks in my garage apartment, which my parents had left available for us whenever we wanted it.

  But I didn’t want it. Not much. Life on the road agreed with me, more than I’d ever thought it would. Even though every city was different, the festivals themselves felt like coming home every time, and now the days when I didn’t have to put on a bodice and long skirts felt weird. Throwing on a pair of jeans to go to Starbucks made me feel like I was going out half-dressed.

  “Mom still doing okay?” She’d looked great when I’d been home, but that had been a few weeks ago, and worrying about her was my default state. I couldn’t help it. I was glad that I had my bestie there to keep an eye on her, under the guise of book club.<
br />
  “Oh, yeah,” Emily said. “She’s great. She misses you, though, I think. She’s had Simon and me over for dinner a couple times this month.”

  I winced. “I’m sorry. You want me to tell her to knock it off?”

  “No, not at all.” Emily shrugged. “It’s actually kind of nice.”

  The screen door to the RV squeaked open, and Daniel ducked through the doorway. “Truck’s gassed up, we should . . . Oh, hey, Emily.” He waved at her image on the screen, and she waved back.

  “Morning, Daniel! You being good to my girl here?”

  “Doing my best.” He stepped all the way inside and curled an arm around my waist before dropping a kiss on top of my head. “But I need to steal her back. It’s about that time.”

  “I just finished making coffee,” I said with a huff. “That’s why I called Emily this early. We were going to have coffee together.” He was right, though; my intentions had been good but the timing hadn’t worked out today.

  “We did.” Emily hefted her coffee mug with a smile. “And it’s okay. I need to get moving too; the bookstore’s not going to open itself.”

  Daniel nodded. “Thanks for the help with the website, by the way. It looks great.”

  “Yes!” I said. “Thank you. Did you see that I updated it last week?” I may have been social media savvy, but I was useless when it came to coding. Thank God for Emily; she’d built an actual website for the Dueling Kilts over the winter, so they didn’t have to rely on just a social media page anymore. The group’s reach expanded exponentially as a result, and Daniel had been able to book lots more gigs for the guys between festivals.

  “I saw!” Emily said. “I’m very proud of you. You need to send me one of those hoodies.”

  I grinned. “It’s already in the mail.” Daniel had given me free rein, and I’d poured everything I’d learned in college about fashion merchandising into running the merchandise side of things for the band. Until now, they’d just been selling a couple CDs and a single T-shirt. It didn’t take me long to add tank tops and hoodies, as well as souvenirs like beer koozies with the band’s logo on them. Then Emily helped me set up the online store, so merchandise could be purchased there as well as at the shows. I rotated the physical merch that we brought with us depending on the location. Hoodies didn’t move too fast in Florida, for example. The whole situation worked out well for all of us. Daniel had never enjoyed running the merch; now he was able to concentrate more on booking the band for more gigs in the downtime between Faire weekends.

  “Okay. Finish cinching up your boobs and have a great time.” Emily shook her head. “Better you than me.”

  With a laugh, we disconnected the call, and then I did a quick check of the Kilts’ business email account. I sighed in relief at the shipping notification waiting for me there. I hadn’t ordered enough tank tops, and it was unseasonably warm, even for Florida in February. But now we’d be restocked by next weekend.

  “Everything okay?” Daniel reached for his coffee, blowing across the top for absolutely no reason since all that milk made it practically room-temperature.

  “Yep, we’re good,” I said as he took his first sip of coffee and closed his eyes in pleasure. That was one of my favorites of his smiles: that reaction as the caffeine hit his system. It was a sleepy, small smile, and it was all mine.

  “Perfect.” He sighed and leaned against the counter, downing half the mug in another gulp. “Marry me.”

  He said that almost every morning while we had our coffee. One of these days I was going to say yes. But today I reached for his hand and he tangled our fingers together. One last moment of peace and quiet before the chaos of the day.

  I glanced up at the clock on the microwave. We really did need to get going. “Ready to herd cats?”

  Daniel nodded and tossed back the last of his coffee before putting the mug in the sink. “I’ll get the baby.” But he stopped to give me one more lingering, coffee-flavored, good-morning kiss, pressing me against the counter and making me wish we didn’t have to be somewhere really, really soon.

  I finished my own coffee and washed out our mugs, leaving them out to dry. Tonight I’d put them back in the cabinet, and we’d do it all over again tomorrow. I laced up my bodice loosely and strapped the wide leather belt around my waist. Everything was loose for now; I still had to ride in the truck to the festival site, and I wasn’t doing that in a tight costume. Daniel’s voice, a low and indistinct murmur, floated back from the sleeping compartment, and my heart swelled. Sometimes I still couldn’t believe he was mine. That this whole life was mine.

  I heard a zip, and I turned to see Daniel make his way back to the front of the RV, cat carrier slung over his shoulder by the strap. I bent down.

  “You okay in there, Benedick?”

  The sound of his name woke him up, and the fat tuxedo cat stretched with a squeak.

  Daniel chuckled. “I don’t think he even woke up while I was putting him in there.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “He’s a professional.”

  Benedick loved life on the road. After finding Daniel at the Maryland Ren Fest, it hadn’t taken me long to go home, quit my job, and pack up my things to meet back up with him to start our life together. I’d brought Benedick with me on a trial basis, hoping he could cope but also resigned to bringing him back to stay with my parents when I went to live on the road for good. To my shock he turned out to be a cat that was born to travel. He slept most of the time as we traveled from place to place, and the first time I tentatively put a harness on him, he took to it immediately. So we rolled with it. At the next Faire I bought him a little pair of dragon’s wings, and he became our little leashed dragon-cat mascot. He hung out with me during the day while I tended the merch booth, chasing bugs and butterflies when he wasn’t napping in the sun, and our audiences seemed to love him. I’d already sketched out a couple different logos with a little dragon-Benedick on them to sell in the future alongside the official band merchandise.

  Now, the three of us got in Daniel’s truck. I secured the cat carrier in between us while Daniel called his cousins.

  “Please tell me you’re awake.”

  Dex’s laugh came through the speakerphone. “Dude, we’re already here, where are you?”

  “On the way.” He handed me the phone before clicking his seatbelt and starting the truck. “And don’t forget, we get the hotel room next weekend.”

  “Oh, finally.” I let my head fall back against the headrest in imagined bliss. I loved the little RV, but there was something to be said for a long, hot shower in a real bathroom, and starfishing on a king-size bed.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dex said. “We’ll make the switch during the week. We still have to flip for it to see who has to give up the room. I’ll try to make Freddy do it, though. You know how staying in the RV throws me off my game. Chicks don’t dig ’em.”

  “God forbid we throw you off your game,” Daniel said dryly. Dex was who he was: the same manwhore he’d always been. But he and I had settled into an okay relationship, and sometimes I genuinely forgot that we’d slept together once upon a time. It was a different Stacey who had done that.

  “Hey,” I interjected. “I dig it just fine.”

  Dex’s snort was loud and clear despite the cell phone connection. “You don’t count.”

  I gasped and turned to Daniel, my mouth hanging open in mock outrage, but he just laughed. “Okay, we’re turning in now. See you in a few.” I disconnected the call as the truck bumped over the field where the entertainers parked. After setting the brake, Daniel came around to open my door and help me jump down—trucks like this weren’t built for shorter people, and my mobility was already a little limited in this outfit.

  “You all set if I run on ahead?”

  I waved an unconcerned hand. “I’ll text if I need you.” I gathered the front of his T-shirt in my fist
and pulled him toward me for one more kiss. He smiled against my mouth and nipped my bottom lip with his teeth.

  “See you there.” He traced the wings of the dragonfly pendant I wore around my neck with his fingertips, and with one more kiss he was off, striding across the lot with those long legs of his. I leaned against the truck and watched him go, already wishing I’d grabbed one more kiss. Oh well, plenty of time later. I set to work cinching everything up: tightening my bodice, settling the leather belt a little more tightly around my waist, and gathering my overskirt up with the skirt hikes I’d bought a couple Faires ago. Much more period appropriate than the safety pins I’d used in Willow Creek all these years.

  One last check of the belt pouch at my waist, and I felt a jolt: my phone. I’d left it on the counter in the RV after talking to Emily. Whoops. But I didn’t feel the panic I used to feel at the prospect of time without my phone.

  I’d realized, sometime around November, that I didn’t check my social media all that much anymore. Sure, I did my yearly Pumpkin Spice Latte Count, made more interesting by the multiple Starbucks in multiple cities as we traveled. (This year’s count: seventeen. This was getting ridiculous. But it wasn’t all my fault; PSL season seemed to start earlier and earlier every year.) While my online addiction had reached a fever pitch last year, it had never been about the screens at all. It had been about searching for a life of my own, which I now had. And it had been about the man behind those screens. And I knew exactly where he was.

  All cinched in, I picked up Benedick’s carrier and set off in the direction Daniel had gone, toward the Faire and the Kilts’ stage.

  Everything I owned these days could fit in two suitcases and a cat carrier. Sometimes I slept in hotels, sometimes in a giant tin can. Sometimes I camped out with my boyfriend, his cousins, and a few dozen rennies. Home was the RV, Daniel’s beat-up, rust-red pickup truck, my tuxedo cat wearing a pair of dragon’s wings, the smile in Daniel’s eyes when he looked at me, and his arms around me when we went to sleep at night.