Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I t was only eleven a.m., and I was already exhausted.
My ponytail hung limp, my skin had a nice oily sheen from multiple trips to the hot kitchen, and I was spending my lunch break watching Frances try on another dress.
The same one she’d tried on three different times on three different occasions.
I walked the two blocks, cutting through the alley by the library, gracelessly hustling like my pants were lit by kerosene.
Vivi’s Bridal Boutique was an odd shop that showcased Vivi Moreau’s hand-sewn designs.
Vivi had immigrated from Canada forty years prior, bringing a single carry-on and her Singer sewing machine.
Inside the shop you could find wedding dresses, formal dresses, Sunday dresses, sun dresses, christening dresses, communion dresses, and a small section of lingerie made of French lace that nobody paid much attention to.
The store had floundered for years, surviving on nothing but hope and the occasional wedding dress purchase until someone created the internet.
Five years after Vivi got her first website, she bought a Mercedes, opened another shop in Houston, and paid off her business loan at the Mercantile and Trust with a suitcase of crisp hundred-dollar bills.
I stepped inside the shop and found Frances standing in front of a wall-sized mirror. She wore a satin number that stopped just below her knee, with short-sleeves and a fitted skirt. It reminded me of something an actress from the forties might’ve worn.
“What do you think?” Frances turned to face me, her black glasses sitting crooked on her face.
“I think it looks just like when we saw it the last time.”
She spun back around and studied her reflection. “It would be cute with a little pill box hat, wouldn’t it?”
“It would.”
“I think I’m going to get it. It fits perfect. I don’t even need alterations. How crazy is that?” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “I just made a dress commitment!”
“I’m so proud. Don’t move.” I whipped my phone out of my back pocket and snapped a quick photo. “I’ll send it to your mother.”
Frances smiled for the picture, then threw her arms around me in a hug. “I’m getting married, Katie. The dress makes it so real, doesn’t it?”
“You have less than three weeks left as a single girl.”
“And before the big move.”
I didn’t even want to think about that.
Five minutes later, we stepped out of Vivi’s, ready to move on to Hank’s Hot Dog Hangout, a food trailer that promised Chicago-style dogs of twenty-three varieties.
“Oh, no!” Frances thrust the plastic-bagged dress into my arms. “I think I forgot my dad’s credit card. He’ll make me elope if I lose that.”
I stood in front of Vivi’s, holding a wedding dress and hoping Frances would hurry. I had twelve minutes before I was due back at the diner.
“Hello, Katie.”
The sky could’ve rained ice and the clouds thrown snow, and I wouldn’t have been as chilled as I was at that voice.
“Ian.”
The world moved in slow motion as my brain registered it truly was Ian walking down the sidewalk, mere feet away.
I told myself to move, to say something, to just do something.
It was much like those horror movies where the girl fell to the ground, and you knew the knife- wielding slasher was coming, but she couldn’t seem to recall how to stand on her own two feet.
“You look surprised to see me.”
Surprised? That was like saying the Middle East was a little tumultuous. That the ocean was big enough to swim in. That Channing Tatum was a wee bit attractive. Surprised was a paltry word for what I felt.
“What . . .what are you doing here, Ian?”
He smiled. He was always smiling. It was one of the things I had fallen for.
Me and about a dozen other women. His thick, dark hair was a contrast to his ever-present white button down, crisply ironed and starched.
He wore charcoal dress pants, as if on his way to a meeting. Instead of busting back into my life.
“I came to see you,” he said. “Didn’t your grandmother tell you?”
I guess she had attempted to. But why would I have believed Ian would actually come here? “I don’t understand.”
“I’m here for you,” he said. “You and your theater.”
I opened my mouth with a slicing retort when I noticed a woman walking toward us.
My eyes narrowed as she came into focus.
“Her?” I was going to kill this man. Right on the Mayberry streets of my hometown.
“You brought her ?” His little two-bit twit Felicity sauntered her way to Ian, her heeled feet daring to touch the sacred ground of In Between.
“You two need to get out of my city. I don’t know what Maxine told you, and I have no idea what you’re up to, but we don’t need your help. ”
My ex-boyfriend did a thorough study of my outfit, his nose all but wrinkling as if smelling the Queen’s pantyhose. “What is that shirt?”
I crossed my arms over a top big enough to shelter an entire kindergarten class. “It’s my new uniform. I have a job. Can we get back to why you’re in the neighborhood?”
Felicity’s tone dripped disdain like syrup on a hot cake. “Micky’s Diner? You’re a…”
“Waitress, yes.”
“Why are you waiting tables?” Ian asked.
“Isn’t it what all starving actresses do? ”
“You were hardly starving before you quit and deserted our production.”
“Well, now I produce eggs and bacon. And you cut me from the show, if you recall.”
“I gave you a break. You needed one. You should’ve been thanking me instead of— “
“Thanking you?” The nerve of this man! “You are the most arrogant, egocentric—“
“The fact of the matter is I’m here to help you,” Ian said.
“Do I even want to know what she’s here to help with?”
“We both quit Much Ado . I’ll be directing a Samuel Beckett production on Broadway next month. Felicity will continue to be my assistant.”
“I’m sure she’ll give you a lot of. . .help.”
“What happened to your forehead?” Ian asked.
“Remains of my lobotomy. Now why are you two in In Between? And more importantly, what time does your flight leave?”
The door behind us opened and out came Frances. “Got my card.” She extended her perky smile to the two interlopers. “Hi.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Frances. Friends of Katie’s?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes.” Ian slowly shook Frances’s hand, and I could see his charm already reaching out like invisible tentacles. Nobody was immune.
“This is Ian.” His name tasted like a bitter berry on my tongue. “My ex-boyfriend. And this is his. . .his. . .”
“This is Felicity.”
Frances’s mouth hung in a small oval. “I don’t think I understand.”
“Kind of defies logic,” I said, my narrowed eyes on Ian.
“Your grandmother asked me to help your town,” he said. “Theater preservation is a passion of mine.”
“Are you seriously trying to tell me you flew all this way for that?”
Felicity wrapped her hand around Ian’s bicep. “He didn’t fly here for you, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Ian put a halting hand on my shoulder before I could wrap my fingers around Felicity’s throat. Or at least get in a good hair yank.
“You clearly have some strong feelings, Katie,” Ian said. “One could only expect that. Things didn’t end well, and I know I hurt you deeply.”
“A mere paper cut.”
He looked at me with such pity in his eyes, like I was three steps away from throwing my sad self off the nearest bridge. “No matter your anger,” he said. “I have a job to do here, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“What job? Seducing the skirt off every woman in town?”
He laughed, a throaty sound that had once all but made me float on air, but now made me want to claw his face with my nails. “Your grandmother needs help saving your theater, and I can be of use. I have many connections, and we can create a PR storm the likes those Thrifty folks have never seen.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
“You screaming across the stage as you tackled him during the intermission of your last show.” Felicity put a bracing arm around her dear Ian. “Does that ring a bell?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “I envision his black eye every night as I say my prayers and give thanks to the Almighty.”
Ian sighed. “It’s just like you to act so irrationally without any thought to anyone else.”
“Were you thinking of anyone else when you had your hands all over your assistant during the show? You couldn’t even wait ‘til it was over? Until we were all gone?” The curtain had just gone down for intermission, and I had run back to Ian’s office to tell him that a major critic was in the fourth row and found him and his perky, skinny, skanky assistant entwined on his desk.
Had I walked in just a few minutes later, I would’ve seen something straight out of a Rated R movie.
“You humiliated me,” Ian said. “That critic absolutely crucified us all in her review.”
“You probably dated her once too.”
“If you can’t keep your personal life off the stage—quite literally—then you are not cut out to be an actress.”
It was a rusty scalpel to my heart, and Ian knew how to twist it until it hit a critical vein. There were lots of reasons I wasn’t stage material. And we both recognized it.
“Katie is a brilliant actress,” Frances said.
Ian merely smiled.
“This has been such a refreshing conversation,” I said.
“I love how you still spin the tale and cast me as the evil villain. And now that I’ve heard it— again —you can leave.
We don’t need your help. The very idea that you could save my town is just laughable.
We’d have more luck shining a bat spotlight into the sky. ”
“I already have press lined up,” Ian said.
“A writer from the Huffington Post contacted me yesterday. Fox News, CNN, the Today Show . I’ve had bites from all of them.
Even a few across the Pond. You need someone with connections, and that’s me.
And you need someone who speaks theater as a director and a businessman. Also me.”
“Why would you do this?”
“Investors breathing down my neck. Your intermission show was an absolute scandal. Videos on YouTube, articles in the papers, our production made into a mockery.”
“Kind of like our relationship.”
“Oh, grow up, Katie. You had to know it wasn’t working between us.”
“No, actually I didn’t. We’d been together nearly a year. You know what I expected from you? Integrity. I expected to be able to trust you.“
“And all of that’s in the past,” Felicity said. “We’re over it, so you need to move on. It’s not like we appreciated being shoved on a plane to Texas.”
“Arrangements could probably be made to shove you elsewhere.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore than you want me here,” Ian snapped.
“If we save your little homespun theater, then I’m taking the glory back with me.
Call it humanitarianism, call it a PR stunt, but I call it a job.
And I’m going to do it. The same money that’s fronting Much Ado is also behind the New York production.
I’ve lost all credibility with the London theater community, and they need time to forget our little intermission sideshow. ”
“And New York has yet to hear of it?” I could fix that .
“And they’re not going to,” Ian said pointedly.
“Please go back to London before you mess this up even more.”
Ian took a step, his tall form leaning way too close to mine. Geez, he still smelled good.
No! Stop sniffing! That was the scent of cheating and lies.
“Don’t think you won’t be seeing me often while I’m here.” And then Ian’s tone shifted, softened, and he sounded more like the man I had fallen for. “Face it, Katie. You need me.”
“You know, I’ve come to realize I never needed you. Today is no exception.”
“Let’s go home,” his new girlfriend whined, her voice hitting an octave known to set off choruses of yipping dogs.
“Go to the car, Felicity,” Ian commanded.
“But—“
“I’ll be there shortly.” His gaze locked on mine as his companion huffed then sashayed away.
“You need me to help save your theater,” Ian said. “Just like you needed me to turn you from a spare cast member into a star.”
There it was, that poison dart right to the throat. I wanted to deny it, to tell him he was wrong. That I was a good actress, that I did have what it took to be on the Great White Way or the West End.
But I couldn’t form the words. Not any that I believed.
Ian shook his head. “I thought we were going to be so good together.”
I swallowed and looked away before he could see the singular tear. “Sorry for having such unreasonable expectations.”
“You’re nothing without me. Your career is dead, and—”
“Nothing?” Frances bowed up like she was about to show Ian how she’d earned her black belt her senior year. “Katie’s already so much better without you. Do you see that bag in her hand?”
Oh, no.
“Do you know what that is? Do you?”
Ian shrugged a careless shoulder. “I do not.”
“It’s a wedding dress.”
“No, Frances,” I warned.
“It’s her wedding dress. That’s right, Katie is getting married. ”
Ian slid his piercing stare to me. “To whom?”
“The love of her life, that’s who,” Frances said. “The boy she dated in high school and college.”
“Is that so?”
I just frantically shook my head. “Frances—”
“That’s right. They reunited on an airplane that nearly crashed. You’re welcome to Google that. He carried her unconscious body to safety, and they realized they never wanted to be apart.”
“Very touching,” Ian said. “That’s quite a story. And just who is this dashing hero who’s asked you for your hand?”
“Everything okay here?”
I could not contain the groan as I turned around to see Charlie standing behind us.
“That’s him.” Frances pointed a finger at Charlie. “That’s Katie’s fiancé.”