As night fell in earnest and my little apartment was lit only by the light of the moon streaming through my skylight and the fairy lights above my bed, I nestled into him and he twirled a long lock of my hair through his fingers. “I don’t know if I can go back.” His voice was hushed, the quiet murmur of a shared secret.

“Then don’t.” I yawned contentedly and traced the line of his breastbone with a lazy fingertip. “Stay. I’m sure the guys can find their own way to Faire in the morning.”

“Oh, I know they can. But that’s not what I meant.” He shifted under the blankets, settling me just a little more into him, turning his head to brush his mouth over my temple. “I mean later. After this Faire is over and I go on to the next one. When all I have of you are texts and emails. Maybe we can go nuts and actually have phone calls or Skype. But I already know it won’t be enough. How can I go back to that after we’ve had this?” His hand skimmed up my arm, warming my skin.

“I know.” An ache rose in my chest. Up until now I’d pushed aside any thought of the end of Faire, choosing instead to concentrate on the good. On Daniel, on how perfect it felt to be with him. Why sully that with the reality of this being just a temporary thing, of knowing he’d be on to the next town as always after just one more week? But it couldn’t be pushed aside anymore. “You could always stick around.” I said it lightly, a joke I could take back quickly. But my heart pounded in my temples at the thought of it. At the thought of Daniel staying in Willow Creek. With me.

“I’d do that in a second.” His arm tightened around me. “I love the small-town vibe of this place.”

“Eh, it gets old after a while.” I couldn’t hide the smile in my voice. “What would you even do in a town like this? Not a lot of bands to manage around here.”

“I have other skills, you know. I could . . .” He fell silent, and I waited. “Okay, maybe I don’t have any other skills.”

“I don’t know about that.” I put some purr into my voice, and he snorted.

“Marketable skills, then. Ones that would let me make a living here.” We were both quiet for a moment. “Then again, you could . . .” His voice broke off abruptly, as though censoring his thought before he could express it.

“What?”

“Oh, no. Nothing.” But his heart beat faster under my palm, and the rise and fall of his chest was a little quicker. “It’s just . . . I was just going to say . . . I mean, you could come with me. With us.” He had that same lightly joking tone of voice that I’d just used. That tone that could easily be serious or flippant, depending on how the words were taken.

“To the Maryland Ren Fest?” I thought about it. “I mean, sure. It’s not that far, right? I could go out there on Friday after work and spend the weekend. That could be fun.”

“No. I mean, yeah, you’re right. That would be great. But . . .” He shifted again, and he wound my hair more tightly between his fingers, leashing me to him. “I was thinking more like . . . long-term.”

“Long-term?” I tilted my head to look up at him.

“Yeah.” He didn’t look back at me; instead his eyes stayed fixed on the lights twinkling above my bed, blinking hard. Blinking fast. “I don’t know. It was just a thought I had. I know you don’t love your job, and you’ve been frustrated about staying in this small town. So why don’t you leave? Come with me. Come with us. Travel. I think you might like Faire life.”

The words hung in the air between us, and he continued to stare at the ceiling, not looking at me.

“I . . .” My heart leapt with an immediate reaction of yes, but my brain froze and I couldn’t say the word. Of course, I wanted to leave Willow Creek. But could I leave Willow Creek? The last time I’d tried to leave town my mother had ended up in the hospital. She’d almost died. My mind was filled with that same old image: her colorless face, her limp arm with an IV, the tubes and machines. It didn’t matter that it was years ago. It didn’t matter that Mom was essentially fine now. There was an irrational part of me that was convinced that the two were linked. If I made plans to leave home again, Mom would have another heart attack. And I’d end up staying here. Again. Probably forever.

While these thoughts whirled around in my head, long moments ticked by, and the silence between Daniel and me grew thicker, his words disintegrating and vanishing in the air. He dropped my hair and slid his arm around my waist. “It was just a thought. You don’t have to—”

“No, it’s not that—”

“Shhhh.” He tightened his arms around me and pressed his lips to my forehead. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Saying “don’t worry about it” had the opposite effect on me. And on him. He sounded unconcerned, but his heart still pounded under my hand. I didn’t know what to say, or how to make the situation better. All joking aside, I couldn’t ask him to stay. His life was on the road. And my life was here. All I could do was hold him tighter and pretend I never had to let go.

* * *

  • • •

After that conversation Saturday night, nothing changed between Daniel and me. Dahlia Martin came back to Faire on Sunday, so my time as an overgrown Gilded Lily was over. Daniel and I made a day of it: I terrified him with my lack of ax-throwing skills, and we watched some of the shows we usually didn’t have time to take in. It was a hot day, made hotter by sitting on the cheap bleachers during the joust, but we ducked into the relative canopied coolness of the tavern afterward, sharing a drink with Emily and Simon while they were in character. My character was so nebulous at this point that she was nothing but a name, an outfit, and an accent. But still, Beatrice managed to fit in with the Faire just fine.

Daniel spent the night again after Faire on Sunday, and while we spent Monday apart, he texted me on Tuesday just as I was getting off work, inviting me over to his room. He didn’t act any differently after our aborted conversation Saturday night, and I didn’t know how to ask if he’d really meant it when he’d asked me to come with him. He didn’t ask again, and I couldn’t figure out a casual way to bring it up, so it was as if that conversation had never happened. As though he’d never asked me to run off and join the Renaissance faire with him. But the more I thought about it, the more I loved the idea. The vendors, the performers, they had their own culture, their own language even, and how many times had I wished that I could be part of it, more than just a few weekends a year? But I had this sick feeling that I’d waited too long at this point to say yes.

I decided to push it down, the way I pushed down other things I didn’t like to think about. Like the fact that the last weekend of Faire was coming, and if Daniel and I were to keep this relationship going, we were about to embark on another eleven months of electronic communication to stay together. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than not being together at all.

Right?

Despite all my best efforts at pushing things down, a sort of low-level panic had accumulated in my chest by Thursday, even though on the outside everything seemed normal. I brought Chinese takeout to Daniel’s room after work, and we heckled home renovation shows and slurped up lo mein and Cokes from his mini-fridge as if the last weekend of Faire wasn’t looming over our heads. But I held on to his hand a little too tightly, and his kiss when I got there had been a little too desperate. We both knew that our time was almost up.

Two DIY shows in, he levered himself off the bed to pour another drink, finally cracking into the small bottle of rum he’d bought a couple weekends ago. But he frowned into the ice bucket. “We’re already out of ice?”

“Those things are so small. I’ll go get some more.” I got up, stretching out my back. It had gotten kinked up from curling against Daniel for the better part of an hour.

He waved me off. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll go.” He took the ice bucket and left the room, propping the door open behind him with the bolt. I channel-surfed for a couple minutes before draining the rest of my own drink, then opened the mini-fridge to see there was only one can of Coke left. I knew I should have brought more. I rummaged in my purse for a few dollars. There was a vending machine near the ice machine; I could just catch up with Daniel and grab a few more sodas.

There was a murmur of voices in the hallway through the partially open door, but it wasn’t until I’d opened the door all the way that I realized the voices were Dex and Daniel, a little way down the hall.

“. . . do that thing with her tongue? She’s pretty good at that.”

“Stop it.” Daniel’s voice was hushed yet vehement. “It’s not like that.”

A full-body tingle cascaded over me as I realized they were talking about me.

“Not like what? You’re banging her, right? I saw you at Faire with her last weekend.” Dex looked over his shoulder toward Daniel’s room—toward me—and I ducked back into the room, heart pounding as I moved the door back into a half-closed position. I shouldn’t be hearing this. Nothing good was going to come from listening to this conversation. I should close the door, but I couldn’t move. My feet were rooted to the floor, dollar bills clenched in my fist, while the MacLeans talked about, well, me.