Well Played (Well Met #2)(20)

Obligation, huh? You may be on to something there. You’re right, it’s tricky when it comes to family. Sometimes I wish



“Stacey?”

I jumped at the sound of Mom’s voice and closed my laptop. “Yeah, Mom.” I put my laptop on the coffee table and got off the living room couch. “You need me to get the popcorn bowl?”

“You know it. Come in here, Tall Girl.”

I had to laugh. I’d outgrown my mother by about an inch when I hit the tenth grade, but I’d stopped growing not long after that, topping out around five foot five. In no way did that make me a tall girl.

But I went into the kitchen anyway. “You could put the bowl somewhere else, you know.” I stretched on my toes to tease at the edge of it until I’d moved it far enough off the top of the fridge for it to tumble into my hands. “Somewhere you can reach.”

She shrugged and got the bag of popcorn out of the microwave. “Why do I need do that when I have you?”

“True.” I nodded slowly, trying to keep my expression neutral. There it was. She didn’t mean anything by it. She didn’t know about the email conversation I’d just been having. But just the same I felt myself nudging against the bars of that golden cage. “But you might not always.”

“What do you mean?” Mom raised her eyebrows. “You going somewhere?”

She had me there. “No . . .” I hated how heavy my heart felt in my chest when I said that. “But I might, you know.” It was a small thing: the tiniest of pushes against those golden bars. At least it was a start.

“Of course. But no rush, honey. Take your time. And until then, you can get the popcorn bowl down for me.” She patted my cheek as only a mother could as she took the bowl from my hands.

Take my time. Right. What did I expect?

Back in the living room, I moved my laptop off the coffee table while Mom picked up the remote. “Working on anything important?” She nodded toward my laptop as she pointed the remote at the television.

“That? No.” I glanced at my laptop. “Just some wedding stuff for Emily.” The lie slipped easily from my mouth, and my heart pounded. I didn’t lie to my mother. I never had. But what was I supposed to say? I’m bitching about you to a guy I used to bang but who is now a long-distance pen pal that I spill my secrets to?

If she noticed my lie, she didn’t say. “She’s so on top of everything, isn’t she?” She settled back onto the couch next to me, scrolling through the movie selections. “She runs that book club of hers with an iron fist.”

The thought of Emily distracted me from my anxiety and even made me laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I think her lists have lists.”

I picked up the popcorn and put it between us on the couch. I could finish that email later.





Seven




Birds flew south for the winter, and apparently so did Renaissance faire performers. I’d never paid attention to the Faire circuit as an entity; it was just something I did every summer in my hometown. But since Dex and I had started—well, whatever you wanted to call what we were doing; I wasn’t sure I wanted to define it—I checked in on the Kilts’ fanpage on a regular basis, and it became clear that our Faire was just one stop among many. One small dot on a path that wound through the eastern United States, snaking through several states, sometimes ducking out toward the Midwest before coming back to the East Coast again. And as the weather grew colder and the holidays grew closer, that path moved farther and farther south, culminating in Florida just before Thanksgiving. After that they went home to Michigan through the new year, and then it was back down to Florida, where the whole thing went in reverse: Faires in the South as the path headed northward again and the weather warmed up.

Following their progress down to Florida, combined with Dex’s emails about his daily life—so different from mine—lit a fire in the back of my mind. Not a raging fire. Not even an especially bright or urgent one. More of a flickering candle flame, but it combined with that odd feeling of being left behind when Faire had ended this past summer. And together, that flickering light and that sense of yearning made me want something new. A life on the road. A life somewhere other than here.

But, as usual, I let that candle and those feelings flicker out and then I went back to work on Monday as though they’d never existed.

After Dex and the rest of the Kilts went home for the holidays, his emails came less often, which I tried not to take too personally. He was back with friends and family, after all; he probably didn’t need his online pen pal as much while he wasn’t on the road. But as Christmas slid into New Year’s Eve, the lack of emails showed me how much I’d made them part of my life. Made Dex part of my life. And I wondered if that had been a mistake. If he was just someone else who would move beyond me.

But I masked the feeling and sent him an email before I left to go out on New Year’s Eve. In the spirit of Auld Lang Syne and all that.


To: Dex MacLean

From: Stacey Lindholm

Date: December 31, 9:32 p.m.

Subject: Happy New Year


I’ve always thought that New Year’s Eve had a special sort of energy to it. Saying goodbye to the old, worn-out year, and looking forward to the promise of a bright new one. Like sliding into a bed with fresh, clean sheets on it. It’s not an energy that lasts. By February most people have forgotten the New Year’s resolutions they’ve made. I’ve stopped writing them down, myself—I hate the feeling of not living up to my own expectations.