Well Met(56)

I sucked in a breath; I didn’t like the turn this had taken. My heart sank in my chest as they started their choreographed fight. I knew how it ended. Simon lost every time. That was the way they rehearsed it, the way they performed it. But now they’d added me to this fight, like a prize to be won. I watched the two men circle each other and tried to interpret Simon’s expression. He said he was fighting for me, but he would lose. He knew that I knew that. Was there a deeper meaning there? Was he giving me the answer I’d asked for with my kiss? None of this is real. I don’t want you. Mitch can have you. I don’t care.

I knew every move of this fight, every step of it like a dance. But as I watched it this time, goose bumps rose on my arms despite the heat of the afternoon. Simon’s face was ominous, angry. He’d completely abandoned the facade of the easygoing, rule-breaking pirate, and his attacks were harder than I’d ever seen. Mitch . . . well, Mitch was still built like a brick wall, so he moved through the steps of the fight like he always did. Except when Simon flipped him, he landed a little harder than he usually did, dropping to his knees instead of landing easily on his feet. He hopped up again in a smooth motion, but the fact that he had to do so at all bothered me. These guys knew what they were doing. Why hadn’t that flip been timed right?

The rest of the fight went much the same way, especially as they fought unarmed. Simon’s swings seemed wilder, a little more out of control than they needed to be. I was almost relieved when it ended and Simon was defeated without either of them being injured. He knelt in the grass, chest heaving with exertion, Mitch’s knife at his throat. Fight over, Mitch stowed his knife and reached down a hand to help Simon up, like he did every time. But this time, instead of taking it, Simon slapped it away and got to his feet on his own. Then he stalked off the field, without a word or look to me, Mitch, or anyone else.

Mitch looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes wide, and I’m sure I looked exactly the same way. Then Mitch slipped back into character, and the chess match concluded. Simon didn’t return to the field. He didn’t come out for the curtain call. I wanted to look for him, make sure he was okay. But I had a feeling he didn’t want to see me. Not then, and maybe not ever.

Stacey and I walked back to our tavern in an odd silence until I couldn’t stand it anymore. “What the hell was that about?”

She looked back over her shoulder at the chess field, like she could see an answer there. But she shook her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him act like that in years. Since . . .”

“Since . . . ?” I was well and truly sick of this. What tragic backstory was I missing here? Would I ever catch up, and stop feeling like the new girl?

She shook her head like I’d woken her from a trance. “Oh, nothing. The two of them weren’t exactly best friends in high school. Mitch was, well, Mitch.” She waved a hand, illustrating height, breadth, and I got the picture.

“So they fought over girls a lot?”

“No.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “They didn’t have to. Girls liked Mitch, you know. Varsity football and all that. All he had to do was wink and he had a new girlfriend. Simon . . . wasn’t like that.”

I sighed heavily. “Okay. But this isn’t high school anymore, right?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” With one last shake of her head, Stacey walked a little ahead of me to the tavern, while I turned to look back at the chess field. The audience had emptied out, and a few cast members still milled around. I didn’t see either Simon or Mitch. I didn’t want to. I wanted to go back to my tavern, where it was safe.



* * *



? ? ?

The end of the day couldn’t come soon enough. Once the last patron was gone, I yanked at the strings of my bodice and tore it off before unpinning and stepping out of the overskirt. The white underdress was stuck to my torso and I peeled it away as I collected Caitlin. As we trudged to the back of the parking lot, she loosened the front laces on her bodice as she walked, while I fished my phone out of my basket. By the time we got to the Jeep we both looked pretty bedraggled, but this had become our daily post-Faire routine. We dumped our baskets and extraneous costume pieces into the back, I swapped out my boots and hose for flip-flops, and we hopped in for the drive home.

We were barely out of the parking lot when April called. I put her on speakerphone and handed my phone back to Cait.

“Hey, I called in Chinese food if you can pick it up on the way home.”

“Umm . . .” I thought fast. I didn’t have a change of clothes in the Jeep, and I was currently wearing basically a nightgown with no bra underneath and flip-flops. The people at the take-out place were gonna love me. But the thought of not having to wait for dinner won out over a little temporary embarrassment. “No problem. That sounds great.”

“You got sweet-and-sour, right?” Caitlin always asked the important questions. She also yelled a little too loudly into the phone, and I winced on behalf of April’s eardrum.

“Of course I did. I’m your mother, aren’t I?”

It was a testament to how much this whole town knew about and supported the Renaissance faire when no one seemed to notice how I was dressed when I waltzed in to pick up our order. They’d probably seen worse.

Once we got home Caitlin carried the food inside while I got everything out from the back of the Jeep. The smell of my sesame chicken made me want to drool on my skirts, but I forced myself to put my underdress in the washing machine and get in the shower before eating. No matter how hungry or how tired I was, I couldn’t do anything before washing off the day’s accumulation of dirt.