Chapter Twenty-One #2
“Does Emily know about this?” I took out my phone, snapping pictures of the shop, then the tent, eager to send her a text.
Wheels started turning in my head. Maybe we could do something similar at Willow Creek next season…
not a whole bookshop, of course, but we could set up a tent.
Bring a selection of books from Read It people should have gathered around me to yell huzzah!
Time should have stood still as I made such a big life decision.
But instead there was just the whooshing sound of the text being sent. The happy chime of Emily’s response. I put my phone away with a sense of finality. Contentment. I’d made my decision. I was out of limbo.
There was only one thing missing. One missing piece that kept my happiness, my future, from being complete.
Alex.
I looked around for him. He wasn’t far away, in conversation with the bookstore proprietor, an older man with gray hair and a kilt.
Alex was an animated talker, and as I watched, he gestured and they laughed, and something in that moment made me feel…
content. Like I was looking at my person.
Like I could walk up there, take his arm, and we could just move forward with our lives together.
Like that was how it was supposed to be.
There had to be some way. Some way for us to make a future together.
—
We doubled back, laughing like kids as we took the giant slide back down the big hill we had just climbed, making a beeline for the crab pretzels we’d passed up earlier. We’d just started digging in, still walking as we ate, when we stumbled across something even better at a nearby stage.
“Cait!” Stacey came running out from behind her merch table with a squeal, catching me up in a hug like she hadn’t just brought me a sandwich a couple days ago at the bookstore.
She released me and gave Alex the same treatment, an exuberant hug—Stacey gave no other kind—that left him a little breathless.
“I didn’t know you were coming today! You should have let me know! I could have—”
“Could have what?” Daniel asked. He was still over at the merch table, leaning against the edge of it, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He raised his eyebrows in her direction. “We don’t have any comps.”
Stacey clucked her tongue at him. “Oh, whatever. I’m just so glad y’all are here! Ooh, and you got crab pretzels! They’re so good; I get one of those almost every day. Have you had a beesting yet? You’re staying for the show, right?”
Should probably address that last question first. I glanced over at Alex; had he gotten enough of the Dueling Kilts during the Willow Creek season?
There were plenty of acts here that we hadn’t seen yet.
But he nodded enthusiastically, reaching for my hand.
“Of course we’re staying.” We lingered at the merch table on the way in; Alex bought a T-shirt that featured one of the band’s logos: a black and white tuxedo cat wearing dragon’s wings, while I knelt down under the table, giving scratches to said cat.
Benedick rolled happily in the dirt under the table, offering me his belly to rub.
The band gave us delighted waves and nods as they took the stage, and as they started their set, I realized that despite dropping in on their show during the season and seeing them at pub sing, I hadn’t seen their actual set in a long time.
And while it was a lot of fun, my attention kept wandering to Alex, watching him watch them.
He mouthed along to the words of “Drunken Sailor,” his hand tapping the beat against my thigh.
He looked delighted, his smile wide, but his eyes looked…
hungry. A hungry Victorian child out in the snow, looking in the window of a restaurant.
Was he really going to be happy if he gave this life up? And was it my place to suggest he was making the wrong choice?
The feeling only persisted as the day went on: a sweaty, humid August afternoon that had me grateful to be in a modern sundress instead of all my layers.
We crowded in for the joust, found ourselves folded into a kind of flash mob dance in the late afternoon that took us back past the Kilts’ stage and the crab pretzel stand.
We were sagging by the end of the day, but there was no way we were missing pub sing.
Many, many patrons felt the same way, crowding around the outdoor stage.
We were lucky to find a spot at the end of a bench in the center wedge-shaped section of the audience.
I snuggled close to Alex and his arm slid easily around my shoulders, while we took long drinks from our bottles of water.
The sun was high in the sky and glowing golden, just about to begin its slow slide into evening.
I was tired from being out in the sun all day, every part of me ached, and I couldn’t wait for a long shower.
But at the same time, as I clutched the rose that Alex had bought me, this one dyed in the colors of the Maryland flag, I found myself also clutching to these last moments of the day.
I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want today to be over.
A sudden thought occurred to me, and I grinned. “We’re on the other side of it now,” I murmured, and Alex turned to me with raised eyebrows.
“Hmm?”
I gestured with my water bottle toward the stage. “What you said before, about pub sing. But this time we’re the audience. We’re the ones who don’t want to return to real life.”
His laugh was more of a gust of breath, and his smile held a tinge of pain. “We are, aren’t we.”
I grasped for his hand, and he held mine tightly.
“Not yet,” I said. “Not yet.” He nodded, laying his head against mine as the performers on the stage began the final song of the evening: a slow, sweet ballad called “Wild Mountain Thyme.” I hummed along; it had been one of the songs I’d done as a Gilded Lily.
All around me, the audience took up the chorus, music swelling all around us, cradling us, holding us close.
The music, this day, this place, this man. They all felt like home.
How did being here feel more like real life than real life did?
—
The peaceful, dreamy feeling of that last song at pub sing carried us through the gates (this time under a banner that read Until another day, fare thee well) and to an endlessly long walk back to the van, followed by an even longer wait to get out of the parking lot and back on the road.
All that time the sun sank lower and lower in the sky, casting long shadows over the parking lot, and then through the trees that lined the side streets.
I was sun-drunk, slightly dehydrated, and feeling the effects of an ill-advised four o’clock beesting, so I rode for a while with my eyes closed, wrapping myself in the peace and contentment of a long day out in the sunshine.
It was nice to be patron instead of performer for a little while.
It wasn’t until we hit the highway that I realized that Alex hadn’t said a word.
I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and peered over at him.
There was a furrow between his brows, and the streetlights on the highway threw his jaw into sharp relief.
His eyes, concentrating on the road, looked distant. Thoughtful. Hard.
The silence between us grew, no longer peaceful and companionable but tense, an almost tangible thing that made it hard to breathe. Five miles from our exit, I finally had to say something. “Are you okay?” A foolish question, but at least it got the ball rolling.
Alex answered with a laugh, short and sharp.
“I’m really not.” He blinked hard, and even in the dark I could see his eyes shine.
He finally drew in a breath that shook only a little and pinched the bridge of his nose hard to banish those threatening tears.
“This whole last-huzzah thing was good in theory, but now that it really is over…” A muscle jumped in his jaw as he glanced over his shoulder, changing lanes.
His glance slid to me, a passing streetlight briefly turning his eyes a burning amber, before focusing on the road again. “How am I supposed to not have this in my life? How am I supposed to just…work?” He spit the last word out of his mouth, as though it tasted particularly bitter.
“Maybe it won’t be so bad.” I was trying to cheer him up, but my own words sounded doubtful, like I was asking a question instead of reassuring him. “Today was fun, right? Maybe wherever you end up you can find a…”
“A renaissance festival to attend?” Another mirthless laugh, cutting me off. “Spend the rest of my life sitting in the audience? You don’t…It’s not the same.”