Well Met Read online

  Her look of alarm turned to surprised joy. “Really?” The word was a squeak coming out of her mouth. “So we both get to do the Faire?”

  “Looks like it,” I replied. “You owe me one, kiddo.”

  Her response was more squeal than words, but the way she threw her arms around my neck in an awkward hug over the row of seats told me everything. Maybe that was the advantage to being a cool aunt as opposed to a mom. This new family dynamic took some getting used to, but I was already starting to like it.

  “We talked you into it, huh?” Mitch was waiting for me at the end of the row when I scooted back down to the aisle.

  I shrugged. “It’s not like I have much of a choice.” I looked over my shoulder at Caitlin, giggling with her friends over something on their phones. “Doing this means a lot to her, so here I am.”

  “You’re a good person, Emily.” He squinted. “It was Emily, right?”

  I nodded. “Emily Parker.” I moved to offer a handshake, but he came back with a fist bump instead, and what kind of idiot would I be to not accept that?

  “Good to meet you, Park. But trust me. You’re gonna have a great time at Faire.”

  I blinked at the immediate nickname, but decided to roll with it. “Well, I have been promised that there are kilts involved, so . . .” I did my best to let my eyes linger on him without being some kind of creep about it. But Mitch didn’t seem like the type of guy to mind a little ogling. In fact, he seemed to encourage it.

  “Oh, yeah.” A grin crawled up his face, and his eyes lingered right back. A flush crept up the back of my neck. If I’d known this was going to be a mutual-ogling kind of day, I would have done more this morning than wash my face and put on some lip gloss. “Believe me,” he said. “You’ll have a great summer. I’ll make sure of it.”

  I laughed. “I’ll hold you to that.” An easy promise to make, since I was already enjoying myself. I headed back up the aisle and plopped into my vacated seat in the last row. Down at the front, Simon collected more forms, probably criticizing applicants’ handwriting while he did so. He glanced up at one point like he could feel my eyes on him, and his brows drew together in a frown. God, he was really holding a grudge about that form, wasn’t he?

  At the other side of the auditorium, Mitch high-fived a student and offered a fist bump to Caitlin, who looked at him like he hung the moon. I knew which of these two guys I was looking forward to getting to know better this summer, and it wasn’t the Ren Faire Killjoy.

  * * *

  • • •

  I’d always been a little in awe of my older sister. Married young and divorced young from a man who’d had little interest in being a father, April had raised Caitlin on her own with an independence that bordered on intimidating. We’d never been particularly close—a twelve-year age difference will do that, when April was off to college right around the time that I was starting to become interesting—but I’d always thought of her as someone to emulate.

  Which was why it was so hard to see her in her current condition.

  When we got home from auditions, I opened the front door to find a crutch in the middle of the living room floor. I followed the line of the crutch, which pointed directly at my big sister on the couch. She looked like a dog who’d been caught going through the trash.

  “You tried to get up while we were gone, didn’t you?” I crossed my arms and stared her down. It was hard to look threatening when you were barely five foot three, but I managed pretty well.

  “Yeah.” April sighed. “That didn’t go well.”

  Caitlin didn’t notice our little standoff. “Hey, Mom!” She dropped a kiss in the vicinity of April’s cheek before running off to her room. She could text more efficiently in there, probably.

  I picked up the fallen crutch and propped it against the arm of the couch next to the other one. “BLTs okay for lunch?”

  “Sure. Everything go okay?” April craned her neck to the side and tossed the question over her shoulder as I went into the kitchen to get the bacon started. “Did Caitlin get signed up for the cast?” Shifting noises on the couch, punctuated by some swearing under her breath. Yeah, she was definitely cutting back on the pain medication. The next few days would be bumpy.

  “Everything went fine. They said they can’t take everyone, but they’re sending out an email next week to everyone who made the cast.”

  “Next week? Oof. I don’t know if I can live with her long enough for her to find out if she’s in.”

  “She’ll get in.” I punched down the bread in the toaster and started slicing tomatoes. “If they don’t let her in, they don’t get me. Thanks for that, by the way. You totally set me up.”

  “What? No, I didn’t. I told you not to go in there. All you were supposed to do was drop her off.”

  “Yeah, well.” I got down three plates and started assembling sandwiches. “Caitlin can’t be in the cast without a parent volunteering. They said you were going to volunteer, you know, before . . .” There was no good way to end that sentence.

  “What?” April was repeating herself now, and it had nothing to do with meds. “I . . . oh.” Yep. There it was. She remembered now. “Shit.” I glanced through the pass-through to see her sag against the back of the couch. “I did set you up. I completely forgot.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I have it on good authority that it’ll be fun.” I put the plates on the pass-through and tossed a bag of chips up there beside them. I thought about Mitch and his promised kilt. That would certainly be fun. Then I thought about Simon and his disapproving face. Less fun. I brought lunch out to the living room, and we ate on TV trays so April wouldn’t have to get up. I left the third plate on the counter; Caitlin would be along for it eventually.

  “Fun,” April repeated as she reached for her sandwich. She didn’t sound convinced. She took a bite and shrugged. “I guess. I mean, what else have you got going on, right?”

  I crunched a chip and half squinted at her. She couldn’t be serious. I had a list-making app completely dedicated to their schedules. Surely she remembered what a nonstop life she and her kid had before one guy ran a red light one night and changed everything.

  She met my gaze and squinted back with an exaggerated face. She wasn’t serious after all. I wasn’t used to a sister who joked around with me. But she was trying, so I played along, throwing a chip at her. “You’re right. In fact, I picked up a box of chocolates so we could lie around all weekend and watch television.”

  “Good plan.” She leaned forward and snagged the bag of chips. She shook her head at me. “You’re too defensive. That Jake guy did a number on you, huh? You know, when Mom told me about him I said he was no good. You broke up, what, a couple months ago?”

  “Yeah.” I sighed. Of course Mom had told her. April and I had always gotten along fine, but the age difference, plus all the moving away from home and starting our own lives, had kept us from being as close as sisters usually were. Hence Mom acting as a kind of conduit between us, filling us in on each other’s lives. It was a weird system, but it worked for us. “Yeah, it was a week or so before your accident. So you know, good timing.”

  “Well, it saved you from being homeless.”

  “I wasn’t homeless.” But I frowned into my sandwich because she was right. When Jake had left for his fancy lawyer job he’d not only dumped me like unwanted baggage (which I guess I was), but he’d canceled our lease on the way out the door. I’d been panicked, scrambling to find another apartment I could afford with my two part-time jobs, when Mom had called from the hospital about April’s accident. It’d been a no-brainer to throw my stuff into storage, drive the four-hundred-something miles from Boston to Maryland, and transfer my panic away from myself and onto them.

  But I didn’t want to talk about Jake. That wound was still too fresh. Time to change the subject. “Stacey says hi, by the way.”

  “Who?”

  “Stacey?” Had I gotten the name wrong? “Blond hair, about my height, big smile? She acted like she knew you. She knew Caitlin, anyway, and she knew who I was.”

  “Ugh.” April rolled her eyes and took a sip of her Diet Coke. “That’s the one thing about living in a small town. Everyone knows your business. Even people you don’t know that well.”

  “So . . . you don’t know Stacey?”

  “No, I do. She works at our dentist’s office, and we say hi every time Cait or I have an appointment. Nice, but . . .” She shrugged.

  I got it. “. . . But not someone who should know that much about you.”

  “Exactly.”

  I thought about that, considered my next question. “I don’t suppose you know a guy named Mitch, do you?” Now, there was someone I wouldn’t mind knowing a little better.

  “Mitch . . .” April tapped a chip on her bottom lip. “No . . . Oh. Wait. Kind of a big guy? Muscles? Superman jaw?”

  “Looks like he can bench-press a Volkswagen.” I nodded. “That’s the one.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him around. Nice guy. I think he teaches gym? Hey, Cait?” April leaned back on the couch and called toward the hallway. I turned to see my niece had come out in search of lunch.

  “Ooh, sandwich. Thanks, Emily.” Caitlin grabbed her plate and perched on a stool. While she chewed she raised her eyebrows at her mother. “What’s up?”

  “That guy Mitch . . . doesn’t he teach gym at your school?”

  “Mr. Malone?” She swallowed her bite of sandwich. “Yeah. And coaches something. Baseball maybe?” Caitlin wasn’t into sports. None of us were, so she came by it honestly. “He was hitting on Emily today.” She reached over and dug a handful of chips out of the bag.

  “No, he wasn’t.” Was he? Maybe a little. The back of my neck prickled with heat.

  “Don’t get excited,” April warned. “From what I hear, he hits on everyone.”

  “Damn. So I’m not special?” I tried to look upset, but being teased about a guy by my big sister was something that had never happened before, and it made me grin. I shrugged and handed Caitlin the chip bag. “That’s okay. I’m not planning on marrying the guy. Maybe just objectifying him while he wears a kilt.”

  The more I thought about it, the more this summer was starting to sound like fun. And I needed to have some fun. Put Jake in the rearview. I still remembered the look on his face when he told me he was moving on without me. His face had looked like . . . well, his expression had reminded me of Simon’s. The form-police guy from this morning. I’d gotten serious Jake flashbacks from him, and I didn’t like the way that made me feel. Embarrassed and small.

  Right now, guys like Mitch were much better for my sanity. Guys like Mitch offered the possibility of a quick, fun hookup at some point during the summer, with no complex emotions or perceived inadequacies to get in the way. I could use someone like that in my life right about now.

  After cleaning up the kitchen, I pulled up my calendar app again. My afternoon and the rest of the weekend were pretty much an open book. Much like my entire future. I didn’t like it. I liked plans.

  With Jake I’d had a plan. We’d met my sophomore year in college at a fraternity party, two like-minded intellectuals that were too good for beer pong. We’d talked all night, and I thought I’d found my soul mate. He was smart, focused, driven. I’d liked that streak of ambition in him that matched mine. For years I’d stuck with both him and our plan. Get him through law school. Once he’d set himself up in a career we’d be an unstoppable team. It was going to be us vs. the world. Jake and Emily. That was the plan.

  But Jake was gone. What I hadn’t realized was that, while my ambition had been for us both, his was only for himself. When he got that high-powered job he’d been shooting for, he left old things behind. Like our place, which he left for a high-rise apartment downtown. And me, the would-be fiancée he no longer needed. “It doesn’t look good,” he’d said. “I can’t have a wife who works in a bar. You don’t even have a bachelor’s degree.” It was like he’d forgotten all about our plan. And maybe he had. Or maybe he’d gotten what he’d wanted out of it and didn’t need me anymore.

  So here I was in Maryland. I’d arrived without a plan, but my sister needed me. That was enough for now. The thing was, I needed her too. I needed to feel like I could help. Make a difference in someone’s life. Fixing things was what I did.

  Two

  And just like that, I was a tavern wench. The email arrived on Wednesday afternoon, sending Caitlin tearing into the house after school.

  “Did you get the email, Em? Did you get it? I’m in the Ren faire cast—are you in? Did you get in?”

  She finally took a breath—did she run all the way home from the bus stop?—while I pulled up my email on my phone. Sure enough, there was a message from the Willow Creek Renaissance Faire, welcoming me to this year’s cast. Caitlin gave me a quick hug of excitement and grabbed a soda from the fridge, then she was off to her room and I went back out to the car for the last bags of groceries.

  I finished putting the groceries away, checked on the chicken slow-roasting in the oven—yep, it was still there—and looked in on April. She’d gone to her room to take a nap before I’d left for the store. Yep, she was still there too, just stirring from sleep.

  “Did I hear Cait come home?”

  “I think the whole neighborhood heard her come home.” I handed April the bottle of water on her nightstand and perched on her bedside. “Looks like us Parker girls are doing the Renaissance faire. You sure you don’t want to sign up too? I don’t want you to feel left out. Crutches are period. You could be an old beggar woman.”

  “Funny.” She took a sip of water and struggled to sit up. I took the bottle from her and offered a hand for balance, but she didn’t take it.

  “Oh, Marjorie came by just now.” Ambushed me when I’d pulled into the driveway more like, but April didn’t need to know that.

  She groaned. “Oh, God. Did she bring another casserole?”

  I nodded. “Mac and cheese this time. It’ll go with the chicken, so that saves me some work. I’ll make a salad.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s no trouble.” I shrugged. “Caitlin needs a vegetable in her life.”

  April gave a thin smile at that. “No, I meant for running interference with Marjorie.”

  “She seems nice,” I said tentatively.

  “She is. It’s just . . .” She sighed. “This neighborhood has a lot of families, and that’s great. Kids for Caitlin to play with, you know? But the moms do things like get coffee together on Tuesdays.”

  “Hmmm.” I nodded solemnly. “They sound like monsters.”

  She whacked me on the arm. “They get coffee on Tuesdays at ten in the morning.” She raised her eyebrows at me in meaning, and then it clicked.

  “When you’re at work.”

  “When I’m at work. I don’t think they do it on purpose, but . . .” She shrugged. “I’m the only single mom on the block. I’m sure Marjorie’s perfectly nice, but I’m also sure that she wants to know how I’m doing so she can tell the other moms. It’s like the whole town wants to micromanage my recovery. She wants gossip, and she pays for it in casseroles.”

  I thought about that for a second. “You want me to give it back? I could make some mashed potatoes.”

  “No, that’s okay. I mean, it is mac and cheese.”

  “The kind with the crunchy topping,” I said. “I peeked at it.”

  “Oh, we’re keeping it then.”

  “Yeah, we are.” I stood up. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of it. Caitlin, Marjorie, the town. All of it.” I put the bottle back on the nightstand and stood up. “Light on or off?”

  “On, please. I think I’ll read for a bit.” She settled back against her pillows. I lingered for a moment, but she was already lost in her e-reader so I went back into the kitchen and read the email on my phone again. First rehearsal was Saturday morning, dress comfortably. I made a note in my calendar app and went to make sure Caitlin had started her homework.

  “Hey.” I knocked on her bedroom door before bumping it open with my hip. “Dinner’s ready at six.” I leaned against the doorjamb. “Got a lot of homework?”

  “Not really.” She looked up from her textbook-scattered desk. “I think they’re being nice to us since finals are coming up in a couple weeks.”

  “I don’t miss those days. Let me know if you need help studying, okay?”

  “Well . . .” She glanced down at her books, then back up at me. “How good are you at geometry?”

  I winced. “Not very. Let me amend that. Let me know if you need help with, say, English or history, okay?” Those subjects were more my speed, and Cait’s grin said she knew it. She was messing with me. Smart kid.

  “Hey, Em?” Her voice stopped me as I started to head back to the kitchen. “Thanks.”

  I shrugged. “No problem. Sorry I can’t help with the geometry, but I know more about—”

  “No.” She turned in her chair, sitting sideways to face me head-on. “I mean thanks for signing up for the Renaissance faire with me. So I could do it.” Her face fell a little and she cast uncertain eyes toward the hallway. “Mom wouldn’t have.”

  “Sure she would. She just can’t because of the accident.”

  She shook her head, her brown curls—so much like her mom’s, so much like mine—bouncing around her face. “I don’t think she knew. About having to volunteer with me. And if she had, she would have said no.”

  “I don’t know about that.” I came into the bedroom, quietly pushing the door closed behind me, and sat down on the edge of Cait’s bed. “Stacey said at tryouts that your mom was going to volunteer. So I think she was really planning to before all this happened.”

  But Caitlin looked skeptical. “She would have changed her mind.” She looked guiltily toward the bedroom door and lowered her voice. “Mom doesn’t like doing stuff, you know? She doesn’t volunteer.”