Chapter 6
Opening weekend became a blur of jigs, bells, and popped balloons.
Each of their eight shows went off without a hitch, Chicot’s mask not giving them a lick of trouble.
On Saturday night, they hung out with other performers at the dog park, Lyza bringing them from RV to RV, introducing them to people they hadn’t met yet, helping Chicot and Elijah meld into the faire community.
She also used Chicot and Elijah to pawn off any alcoholic drinks she couldn’t refuse from fellow performers as they chatted.
Chicot didn’t push any deeper conversations about being an understudy, leaving it alone and simply making firm plans for her and Elijah to join them at the gym the next time they went. She worried about what working with Monty would look like, and she didn’t want to overstep any boundaries.
Luckily, when Chicot interacted with Monty, it wasn’t hostile.
That eased Chicot’s mind each time it happened.
Monty was still surly sometimes, sure, but she wasn’t impolite— which was all Chicot needed to deal with filling in for Lyza.
Monty had even gone out of her way to drop off a printed script for Chicot at her RV, the pages carefully placed in a binder so she wouldn’t immediately lose them all.
On Sunday evening, they all piled into a car together to go to the nearest dive bar, a place called The Final Frontier, a haven for giant nerds. By the time Chicot was pressed up against the bar, the foreboding feeling of meeting them at the gym to train on Monday had subsided.
It seemed like the entire faire wound up there, unlike Saturday when many had abstained so they wouldn’t be hungover Sunday morning. At least, the smart ones had. Chicot and Elijah had both been hungover that morning. Nothing a shower and a bottle of water hadn’t fixed, though.
As she took her drink and tipped the bartender, Chicot felt a presence behind her.
A tall one. At first, she assumed it was Elijah, so she simply tipped her head back and looked straight up into an unfamiliar but cute face.
She drew away from the warm body quickly, her beer sloshing as she spun, a few drops escaping the can.
Chicot’s eyes dragged over muscular biceps, following a well-defined collarbone until Chicot spotted the plush rabbit charm on a carabiner clipped on the narrow strap of her dress. Monty.
“Sorry.” Chicot wiped the few drops of beer off her hand with the bottom of her baggy T-shirt.
She looked at Monty’s blue cotton dress, which clung to her chest in a heart shape.
Her soft blonde bob formed a halo around her head, a clip with a strawberry on it holding her bangs back as she eyed Chicot.
It didn’t seem like Chicot’s beer had gotten on Monty’s pretty dress, thankfully.
“You’re good.” Monty tilted her head, her lip twisting up to one side as she looked down at Chicot, setting a hand on her shoulder to still her.
Chicot didn’t think she was off balance, but Monty’s warm touch wasn’t unwelcome either.
She still had not sorted out how she was going to handle Monty holding her ass while doing acrobatics in the show.
Something told Chicot she was going to have to get real normal about how hot Monty was soon.
“… you okay there?” Monty’s voice brought Chicot out of her thoughts. She hadn’t realized how long she’d paused.
“Yes! Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind.” She couldn’t tell her that “a lot” was mostly code for Monty’s hands. Monty nodded in response, leaning over to say something to the bartender before she looked down at Chicot again. She rubbed her brow, squinting.
“Okay,” Monty said. “It’s weird to see you and not hear a bunch of jingling.”
Chicot’s voice rose in pitch unintentionally, and she giggled, “Oh, yeah. I know.”
Part of her had wanted to crawl under the bar the moment the giggle had come out of her. Monty seemed unfazed, just smiling as she set cash down on the bar and grabbed her beer.
“I guess it’s just as strange for you, huh?
” Monty continued as she turned back toward the crowd.
She said nothing further, just walked back over to Elvis and Lyza.
Chicot’s face burned, her ears hot as she walked back over to Elijah, who had the sausage stand guy in a booth with him. Chicot really needed to learn his name.
When she sat down, it was the sausage guy who snorted, smiling at Chicot. “What’s up with that face?”
Chicot covered her ears as she rested her elbows on the table, her lips pressed against the beer can. Elijah just laughed.
“Ah, leave her be.” Elijah nudged him. “She looks like she may have had a run-in with someone hot and now she’s overheating.”
Chicot balled up a napkin and threw it at Elijah. She smiled, because it wasn’t like he was wrong; she just didn’t want to say that it had been Monty.
Eventually, she found out that the sausage guy’s name was Ken; and he was sober, so he was driving them back to the dog park.
Apparently, he lived nearby in Albion rather than at the faire grounds themselves.
Chicot had learned that wasn’t uncommon for the food vendors; most of them were locals who worked seasonally and then did something else.
For Ken, that was working at a restaurant up north during snowmobile season.
When they got back to their trailer, Elijah showered first, coming out with his fake elf ears in hand because he’d still been wearing them.
His ears would have been sticky if he’d taken them off earlier, so he’d elected to just be an elf at the bar.
Chicot showered after him, getting the sweat from the day and the bar off her before she lazily rinsed her hair.
As she stood under the cool water with her head pressed against the wall of the tiny bathroom, she let her mind drift.
She couldn’t help thinking about all the tricks she had to learn to take Lyza’s spot, her mind revisiting how Monty and Elvis tossed her around.
It didn’t take long before her focus narrowed in on Monty’s hands again, and she had to shake her head hard to make her thoughts come back to the real world.
She turned off the water. She needed to get out of the only real private place she had in the RV.
She didn’t want to be tempted to let her mind drift anywhere inappropriate.
Monty didn’t seem to even like her that much, so Chicot shouldn’t be thinking about how nice her hands would feel.
Duchess awaited her when she stepped out, ready for her to play their little game of guard cat and tired human who just wanted to sleep. Chicot just threw a treat across the RV for her. It always landed somewhere difficult to get when Chicot was drunk because her aim got worse.
Soon, the three of them settled in to sleep while Elijah’s phone played the last few chapters of The Hound of the Baskervilles and Duchess purred softly on Chicot’s chest.
It was tough to wake up after two days of drinking, particularly with Chicot’s cat snuggling her, but the day off made things a little better.
They started slowly, stretching with Duchess and getting into comfortable clothes.
Lyza asked them to meet at noon, so they had some time to wake up before they went, eating breakfast while standing in the kitchen as usual.
Elijah then grabbed them each a water bottle before they left to meet Monty, Elvis, and Lyza.
When they got to the car, it was already started, Monty in the driver’s seat with Lyza waving at them from the passenger side.
Elvis squished into the back with them, so Chicot was shoved in the middle, forcing her to make eye contact with Monty every now and again in the rearview mirror.
Something about it tortured her, Chicot keeping her eyes on her hands after the third time it happened, her mind drifting to similar thoughts as the ones she’d had in the shower.
She breathed deeply, disguising it as lack of sleep or a hangover.
Once they parked, Elijah nudged Chicot, speaking under his breath as they followed the other three inside. “You good?”
“Yeah.” Chicot took a deep breath.
Elijah nodded back at her, and then they stepped into a real gymnastics gym. Even if it smelled like sweaty feet, Chicot’s excitement didn’t wane. As she looked at the boxy, white room, Chicot’s steps became light enough that she was almost hopping.
“We really have this whole place to ourselves?” Chicot asked and Elvis confirmed they had it to themselves.
There was a large spring floor in the middle and mats stacked in various places.
On the far wall, uneven bars hung over a foam pit, a vault horse in one corner that looked unused, and so many trampolines.
Chicot moved faster to set down her water bottle and bag, making a beeline for one of the trampolines. Before she could do that, though, Lyza said something to Monty that resulted in Monty’s brow furrowing.
“I didn’t realize we’d need to start right away,” Monty said. Her eyes quickly moved from Lyza’s face to Chicot. Chicot stopped mid-step, her eyes darting between Lyza and Monty before she smiled awkwardly.
“If she might take my place, she has to know my part.” Lyza set her hands on her hips. “We need to start teaching it to her now.”
Chicot felt her stomach do a backflip, a knot quickly forming. Monty lowered her voice as she turned back to Lyza. Not enough that Chicot couldn’t hear her.
“Okay!” Monty threw her hands up. “But I thought it would be just for closing weekend, not more than half the season.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, so we have to be ready,” Lyza said. “Which means starting now. We probably should have started last week.”