Well Played (Well Met #2)(29)

A grin crawled up my face, and I pressed one hand to my cheek, which had gotten awfully warm.

He texted again. You don’t know what I’d give for the chance to dance with you in that dress.

My grin dipped a little. It was a nice sentiment, but it seemed so . . . pessimistic. As though he thought the chance of actually getting that dance was unlikely. You think I’d turn you down? You have to know I’m a pretty sure thing here.

He took a long time to reply. Longer than he really should have. LOL of course.

He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask him to. Something about his “LOL” rang false. I couldn’t explain how I understood that via text, but I did. Dex had never been an LOL kind of guy, so to use it now felt like a brush-off.

I’d always known, of course, that when Faire rolled around and we saw each other face-to-face and in the flesh again, things might change a little. We knew each other so much better than we had last summer, but we hadn’t talked. Hadn’t touched. We would have to reconcile all the things we’d said via email and text with seeing each other in the flesh. Would all this flirting translate into a real relationship once he came back to town? Or would the sensitive, intellectual Dex I’d gotten to know over the past few months be subsumed by the swaggering hottie I’d hooked up with the two previous summers? Even after all this time, it was hard to believe that they were the same man.

My finger hovered over his number, and not for the first time I thought about calling him. It would be so simple. One tap, and I could hear his voice. But I didn’t. I’d never taken that step, and neither had he. We were keeping that final bit of distance between us, no matter how intimate our conversations.

So I clicked my phone off without calling him. Summer was almost here. Almost time for Faire sign-ups, and for the cast of the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire to be assembled once again. Before I knew it, it would be July. Faire would open, and Emily and Simon would get married.

And I’d see Dex again. For better or for worse.





Ten




My phone dinged with a text one Tuesday night in April while I was unloading the dishwasher, and I dove for it with embarrassing eagerness. I was disappointed to see that the text was from Simon Graham and not from Dex, and then I was disappointed in myself for being disappointed.


Sign-ups for Faire are Saturday at 10. Can I count on you to help out as usual?



Of course, I texted back immediately. Wouldn’t miss it!


Thank you. You’re great at recruiting the adults.



I know. I couldn’t hide my smirk as I tapped out my reply. I got Emily on board a couple years ago, after all. I’d been the one to shove a clipboard in her hands and gently break it to her that if her niece Caitlin wanted to be in the cast, then Emily had to be too. The rule was barely enforced, but to my surprise Emily hadn’t dropped out, as most well-meaning parents did. She’d been dedicated, and after some initial clashes of personality with Simon, she’d become pretty dedicated to him too.

You did, Simon texted back. There was a pause as he kept typing. Been meaning to thank you for that.

I grinned at my phone. Simon was not an effusive guy; for him that was practically a squee. See you Saturday morning. I’ll be there an hour early.

I was true to my word. I met Simon at Willow Creek High School—our alma mater and his employer—bright and early that Saturday morning. He unlocked the building and turned on the lights in the auditorium, and I sorted out stacks of forms, attaching them to clipboards. Before long, the first wave of kids started showing up for tryouts.

Tryouts. Auditions. Sign-ups. This whole process was a little of each, which is why we never called it by one name. Our cast was made up largely of high school kids, and we vetted them for whatever talent they had, which meant listening to a lot of questionably sung madrigals. Our dance captain was a volunteer from the local ballet school; she led aspiring dancers through some simple figures and would let Simon know later which kids had promise. Students who had participated in the past were a shoo-in if they wanted to do the same thing the next year. Adults who wanted to participate had a much easier time of it; we always wanted more adult volunteers, so if you could fill out a form and were even halfway willing to learn an accent, you were in.

I stationed myself at the top of the house in the auditorium, handing forms out to kids and adults alike as they came in. Emily joined me a few minutes after ten.

“There you are,” I said. “I thought you’d come in with Simon.”

She shook her head. “I swung by to pick up Cait.” She indicated down at the front of the auditorium, where I immediately spotted Caitlin by her brown, curly hair—so much like Emily’s you could tell they were related. She leaned against the edge of the stage, talking to Simon. Emily shook her head. “She’s such a suck-up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she’s got a little bit of a crush on Simon—excuse me, on Mr. G—but she won’t admit it to me.”

“Oh, really?”

She shrugged. “I could be wrong. May not be a crush so much as her seeing him as a means to getting into a better college. She’s been all about that college prep this past year.”

“Well, that’s good, right? She’ll be a senior, time to start applying to schools.”