23. Break a Leg
brEAK A LEG
CHLOE
A hand slides down my waist. Another coasts over my breasts. A scratch of a beard makes me gasp. I arch, murmur, breathe out.
Then moan. Long, loud. Everything feels good—hazy, heady. Music plays. A familiar song.
I roam my hands through thick hair, grabbing when…
A rattling of wood invades my dirty dreams right when I’m close—so close.
I try to hold on, to cling to the edges of this sleeping fantasy.
But the sound grows louder, more annoying. An infernal…knocking. Harmonizing with barking. Right by my ear.
I push up on my elbow, my eyes fluttering open with reluctance as I sit up in my bed. “Who the hell is knocking at…?”
I glance at the digital clock. Seven a.m. This can’t be good.
“Go see who it is,” I tell Captain, since there’s no better deterrent to a burglar than a German Shepherd. With what I swear is a nod, he scampers off the bed as I grab my phone from the nightstand and turn off Do Not Disturb.
Captain whimpers in the other room, and the banging intensifies. Then a voice brays, “Darling, it’s me.”
Of course it’s my mother.
With a groan, I scan my clothes—a T-shirt and…
that’s it. I throw on sweats in a flurry, shouting, “Be right there!” Then I pop into the bathroom for a quick mouthwash rinse to kill the dragon breath and head to the door still half asleep.
I yank it open, and Captain spins in a circle around my mom.
Her red 1966 Mustang is parked behind Roxie.
“Hello there, my sweet grandson,” she says, petting Captain as he whines happily.
Me? Less so. I stare at my mom. She’s perfectly put together, with glasses, her blown-out brown hair, and a blouse the color of rich merlot. But her wide and worried eyes expose the lie of her clothes. “Darling, you didn’t answer my texts!”
“I was asleep.”
“Still,” she says, affronted.
“I’m supposed to answer your texts while I’m semi-conscious?”
“It’s urgent,” she says, then thrusts her phone at me.
“What?”
“Just watch. It’s horrifying.” She’s talking much faster than her normal tone. Much less controlled too.
“You came over to show me a horrifying video?”
“Yes. Watch now.”
She’s not normally this frazzled at any hour of the day, so I walk into the living room, sink down onto the couch, and hit Play.
And what the hell? It’s a video shot through the storefront window of The Slippery Dipper. Cameras are set up on the street around it—presumably for Happily Maybe After—but the focus is on the man beyond the glass.
Noah.
Right as he walks toward a display, stepping on something out of frame, and crash-landing.
“What happened?”
“He slipped on a bar of soap! Of all the things. Can you believe it?”
“Well, he sells soap, so…yeah, I kind of can.”
“He broke his leg,” she shrieks.
“That’s terrible,” I say—and truly, I feel awful for him—but I don’t know why his wipeout warrants a seven a.m. wake-up call.
“He was checking to see if his window display looked good, since it’s in the background of the shot the show is setting up. Someone caught it on their phone. And the video’s been circulating all morning. It’s terrible.”
Yes, it is. But why is she here to tell me? “Agreed. But why are you—”
“He was my finale!”
I get it now. This is a theater emergency.
She flops down on the couch, falling—dramatically, of course—onto her back, flinging a hand across her eyes. “Whatever am I going to do?”
“The show’s in two weeks?” I ask, confirming what I already know.
“Yes,” she says, frowning, then moaning like the world is ending. To her, it is. “He’s not supposed to really break a leg. It’s just an idiom. Just a saying. But now, he’s truly broken a leg. Do you know what this means, my love?”
She unflings her hand from her eyes, meeting mine with her wide brown eyes. She doesn’t wait for me to answer though. She barrels on. “It means bad luck. Since how on earth am I going to find someone in two weeks to bring down the house?”
It’s a quandary all right. Or really, it would be on any other occasion. But this woman has leverage, and she intends to use it. With a nefarious grin, I pat her leg. “Mom. I’ve got this.”
She perks up, lifting her head, arching curious brows. “How? How do you have this?” Her question is dripping with intrigue.
“Just you wait,” I say, then pop up. “Come with me. I brewed some iced tea yesterday. It’s like the universe knew you’d be coming over.”
“The universe always knows,” she says. My mom doesn’t drink hot beverages. But she adores iced tea as much as she loves Penny Lane—her rescue pup.
“And I’ll make you some French toast too, and we’ll put on a mix of Pearl Jam and Sondheim.”
“Oh, I love your taste, and your French toast. It’s so sweet and eggy at the same time.”
“Yes, you taught me to make it.”
“Well, that explains that.”
She follows me into the kitchen while I plot my payback.