Well Played (Well Met #2)(11)

For a split second I imagined telling her. Telling them both how my life had stalled out. Saying, I need to get my shit together. I’ve been doing nothing but existing for the past few years, working an uninteresting job and going to happy hour and karaoke nights like that’s all I want out of life. Because it’s all I’ve got. I pictured filling them in on Drunk Stacey and her laptop a couple nights ago, but I couldn’t decide if they would be amused or horrified.

But I wasn’t ready to share any of that. It was all too messy, too complicated, to be able to fill her in over one brunch. So instead I put my smile back on. Fixed it in place so I could hide behind it. That was the Stacey that had been invited to this brunch. “That’s me,” I said, as I forked up a bite of waffle. “Always something going on.”

“I detect sarcasm,” April said.

Emily snorted. “That’s because you’re the master of it.” April pretended to look offended, but instead just grinned into her drink.

“Maybe a little,” I conceded. My smile slipped a fraction, but I pushed it back in place. “I think I’m still in that post-Faire letdown, you know? Eleven more months till it starts up again.”

“Counting down already?” Emily rolled her eyes with a smile. “You’re as bad as Simon.”

I shrugged. “When you grow up doing it, you look forward to it, you know?”

“I can see that.” She nodded and nibbled at her toast. “Not to mention that guy. I bet you look forward to him too, huh?” She raised her eyebrows at me suggestively.

“What guy?” I felt a guilty tingle across the back of my neck. I thought Dex and I had been more subtle than that.

“That guy you were seeing over the summer. And last summer too.” She frowned. “Is it the same guy? You kept sneaking off to see him. Someone from Faire, right?”

“Ooh.” April leaned forward, her eyes eager. “What guy?”

Emily pointed at her sister with a piece of bacon. “I thought you didn’t like gossip.”

“This isn’t gossip,” she said mildly. “This is girl talk. Very different.” She turned back to me. “So who’s the guy?”

I took another bite of my waffle to stall for time. “I don’t know about . . . Who are you talking about?” My heart pounded in my throat, making it hard to swallow. How did she know?

“Stacey.” Emily put down her fork and looked me square in the eye. “Don’t play coy with me. You sent me texts. With little fire emojis. And something else . . . eggplants or something.”

“Oh,” I said. My heart calmed down. “Yeah.” I’d forgotten about that. It had been a particularly long, particularly . . . creative night with Dex. And Emily had been going through a rough patch, so I’d sent her a string of dirty emojis to cheer her up. I was nice that way. But now it came back to bite me in the ass.

“Yeah,” Emily echoed, her eyes shrewd. “And if you think I didn’t notice how sometimes you practically ran out of Faire at the end of the day and came in the next morning looking suspiciously tired yet happy . . .” She trailed off, obviously forgetting the beginning of that extremely long sentence. “Well, I noticed,” she finally said.

“Right.” I pretended that my memory had been jogged, as if Dex and our sporadic hookups hadn’t been sitting in the forefront of my mind for the past few days. “It was nothing,” I said. “At least nothing that lasted.” I hated the note of regret that colored those words. I wasn’t going to see Dex for eleven months, and since he hadn’t answered my message it seemed unlikely that we’d be picking up where we left off. I should just write him off for good at this point.

“Do you wish it had?” Emily’s eyes searched mine, a flicker of sympathy in them.

I didn’t want sympathy. “Nope.” The Stacey Smile was back in place, but it didn’t feel as much like a mask this time. The sting had started to wear off the rejection, and maybe in a day or two I’d even be able to forget I’d sent it. I could delete the one-sided attempt at conversation and pretend it had never happened. Sure, it might be a little awkward when next summer’s Faire came around. I was already sad at the prospect of losing my summertime hookup. But it was probably all for the best. Wine-drunk Stacey had gotten everything off her chest, and now I could cross Dex off as any kind of prospect. Not that he’d ever been a legitimate one in the first place.

One mimosa wasn’t enough to untangle all these conflicting feelings. But I kept my smile in place and I didn’t order a second one. Alcohol had gotten me into this mess, after all. Moderation was the way forward.



* * *



? ? ?

I’d just pulled into the driveway after brunch, my belly full of waffles and my brain full of whirling thoughts, when my phone pinged in my bag. I pulled it out while I bumped the car door closed with my hip. Before we left the restaurant, April had invited me to her neighborhood book club, but she’d forgotten which book they were reading. Emily had promised to text me with the title when she opened up the bookstore after brunch.

Before I could read Emily’s text my phone lit up with a second notification, and I froze in place three steps up the staircase. Emily’s text was there, but I didn’t register it. All my attention was focused on the instant message icon below it, along with the first few words: I have to say first that getting your message the other night was such a surprise. But . . .