Chapter Nine #4
The realization was a bomb in my heart, sending shrapnel through my bloodstream. I tucked this revelation away in my heart to unpack later, and brought myself back to the present. “Your favorite? I thought that little hidden spot that you showed me yesterday was your favorite.”
“That’s my favorite thing in the morning,” he said. “This is my favorite thing at the end of the day.”
“What…” I glanced back to the stage. “Their rendition of ‘Here’s a Health to the Company’?”
“Well, no.” He huffed out a laugh as he followed my gaze.
“Though I do like that song. I mean, look around…” He nodded out toward the crowd.
“The day’s over, but no one’s ready to let it go yet.
Everyone’s getting one last drink, taking in one last show.
They want to linger. They don’t want to leave the reality we’ve spent all day creating for them. ”
I’d never thought it of that way. I’d always thought of pub sing in its role of getting patrons out of here.
One last show before herding everyone to the parking lot, so we could close up and go home.
But now I looked into the audience, and saw that he was right.
Some of the patrons were in costume, almost indistinguishable from the cast, while others were in regular street clothes.
Some took sips from their final plastic cups of beer or wine or mead—hopefully with a designated driver nearby—as they adjusted the newly purchased flower crowns on their heads, while the more seasoned patrons finished their drinks from their own wooden tankards they’d brought from home, snapping them to their belts afterward.
Whether in garb or in street clothes, here at pub sing they were all the same.
Swaying to the almost hypnotic music, their faces tired but blissful.
It had been a long day for them too, taking in all the merriment that we busted our asses to give them.
I’d never looked at them like that, the way Alex did. But now I felt a warm glow of satisfaction that pushed through my aching feet and hunger for Chinese takeout.
“It really is all worth it, isn’t it?” I mused, my words more for myself than for Alex, but he nodded anyway.
“It truly is,” he said.
Something in his voice made me look at him, and the world around us fell away.
All I could see were his dark eyes, searching mine, and all I could hear was my own breath, coming quick in my chest. I swayed a tiny bit closer to him, and his eyes flared.
He drew in a sharp breath and pushed off our tree.
“See you around, Caitlin.”
I felt the loss of him the moment he stepped away, like a sudden drop in temperature before a summer thunderstorm.
I was still reeling from the memory of the way we used to talk, the way he used to kiss.
The scent of the rose in my hair. The twenty-seven freckles scattered over his nose.
The way he saw what I did all day as the hard work it was.
The vulnerability in his face when he let his mask fall.
He’d fascinated me when I was younger. But there was something more now, something I would never have understood then.
It was all those memories, old and new, that sent me hurrying after him, swimming upstream as I dodged patrons heading for the exit, past vendors breaking down their booths at the end of the weekend.
I picked up my skirts and hurried down the lane, catching up to him just past the food court area on the way to the Chaucer Stage.
“Hey!” I called out, very much not in character.
He stopped immediately, turning around and waiting for me to catch up. He raised his eyebrows. “What’s up?”
I hadn’t planned that far ahead. I’d run after him but didn’t know what to do now that I’d caught him. We faced one another as the remaining patrons on this side of the grounds streamed around us like we were a rock in the middle of a creek.
“I…” I searched his face. His performer’s mask was completely gone, now that the day was over, and he looked exhausted. He looked like he was craving the same cold shower and comfy pajamas that I was. He didn’t look like the ogre of my memory, the cold man who’d broken my heart. He looked…human.
When I didn’t speak, he took a step closer. Almost close enough that I could count those twenty-seven freckles. I didn’t need to be here. I didn’t need to waste his time, or mine. I should head back to the Hollow. I should strip out of this dress, get ready to go home.
“Nothing,” I finally said. I sounded defeated. I felt defeated, and I had no idea why.
Alex’s brow furrowed, and as I started to turn away I just barely saw him start to shake his head.
“Oh, fuck it.” The words were a sharp, annoyed sigh, and I probably wasn’t meant to hear them. Then his hand caught my elbow, spinning me around to face him again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…I have to know.”
“Know what?” was all I had time to say before he was closer still, stepping into me and taking my face between his hands. All I could see were those amber eyes, looking set and determined and all kinds of other nonromantic things.
Then his eyes fell closed, and so did mine, and Alexander Wright kissed me for the first time since the summer I turned eighteen.