* * *
• • •
Ten minutes later I was in my pajamas and had flopped onto my old comfy couch with a second glass of wine. I powered up my laptop and hadn’t even logged into Facebook before Benedick was purring in my lap.
Benedick. My main man. My one true love. Our favorite thing to do on a lazy Sunday was snuggle together and watch a movie. Superhero movies were his favorite, but he tolerated romantic comedies because I was the one who opened the cans around here.
And no, this did not make me a crazy cat lady. You needed at least three to qualify for crazy status, and I was a one-tuxedo-cat woman, ever since the day I’d found him in the parking lot after Faire three summers ago. I named him Benedick, after the hero of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and I was his Beatrice. See? Who needed a diamond ring? Or a man looking at you adoringly over mozzarella sticks under the crappy light at Jackson’s?
“Oh, shut up,” I told myself, just loud enough to wake Benedick, who blinked at me reproachfully. I scritched behind his ears in apology as I scrolled through Facebook. But the more I scrolled, the more my mood darkened. Two of my sorority sisters had gotten married in the past six months, and three girls I’d grown up with had had babies. How had this happened? We’d all been allotted the same number of years, and they’d taken that time and built lives. Families. Meanwhile I was living in my parents’ attic, working at a job that could replace me in five minutes if I got hit by a bus, with nothing going for me but a fat tuxedo cat—sorry, Benedick—and a half bottle of wine. Emily’s little diamond ring flashed in my mind like a beacon, and I found myself fiddling with my dragonfly necklace again. Change. Bah.
“Screw you, dragonfly.” I untied the cord and tossed the necklace onto my coffee table on my way to refill my wineglass. Looked like change was happening for everyone but me. When was the last time anything had changed in my life? Certainly not since college, and I didn’t want to think about how long ago that was.
Back on the couch I took a healthy sip of wine and clicked through to our Faire’s private group page, filled with pics from not only the Faire that had just ended but also from years past. A warm glow filled my chest, which was only partially from the wine. Those few weeks of Faire every year were the best part about living in Willow Creek these days. I’d just put my wench’s costume away for the winter, and I was already looking forward to taking it out again.
In one of the online albums, Emily and I grinned at the camera in a photo taken the summer before last, our arms around each other in our wench outfits. She’d been a complete newbie then but totally game, and by the end of the summer she’d become a real friend. I’m gonna miss her.
“Stop it,” I said. “She’s not going anywhere.”
A couple more clicks, and I landed on a shot of the Dueling Kilts. One that was obviously taken at pub sing; Dex was framed by late afternoon sunlight streaming through the trees. God, he was gorgeous. I missed him.
That thought brought me up short. Did I really? Or did I miss the whole “friends with benefits” situation? That couldn’t be it . . . we weren’t friends. We’d gone out on what could loosely be considered a date a few times over the past two summers, and we’d hooked up more times than that, but we weren’t friends. We’d hardly even talked this summer. Acquaintances with benefits? I should want a guy who wanted actual conversation with me. Who wanted to get to know me. Relationship material. Dex was relationship Teflon.
Besides, he had a girl at every Faire. For all I knew, he was with the next girl right this minute. I looked back at my laptop, at the photo I’d blown up to screen-size. Dex cradled his guitar, grinning at something just off camera, his dark eyes doing that crinkly thing at the edges that was somehow ridiculously sexy on guys. He’d smiled at me like that, and every time he did I was lost. Friends, acquaintances, whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it with benefits, he was the kind of guy who gave you his full attention when he was with you. I’d never asked for more . . . but what if I did? Would I stand out among the crowd? I’d stood out well enough for him here in Willow Creek, after all.
It was the photo that did it. That grin. Those crinkly eyes. What was he smiling at? I’d slept with the guy, but had no idea what made him laugh. And suddenly I really, really wanted to know.
Well, only one way to fix that.
The photo was tagged, so it was just a matter of a couple clicks to navigate to a private message screen. I put down my wine and started to type.
Yes. This was a great idea.
Three
The next morning I woke up with a head full of hammers and I pulled the covers over my head. I was usually an early riser, and while the skylights were great for letting in natural light, they were hell on hangovers. I lay back on my pillows—as well as I could since Benedick took up most of the room there—and willed my head to stop pounding. That had been far too much wine last night.
Eventually I hauled myself out of bed and got some coffee started. Everything was so bright. I squinted against the early morning sunlight streaming down from the skylight over my whitewashed kitchen table, and I almost went looking for my sunglasses. Benedick abandoned my pillows to wind around my legs, reminding me to feed him.
Cat fed and aspirin acquired, I brought my coffee over to the couch before putting away the mostly empty wine bottle I’d left on the coffee table. At least Past Stacey had had the presence of mind to cork the thing. Especially since I’d left my laptop open next to it, and Benedick liked to roam at night. A knocked-over bottle of wine next to an open laptop would be a disaster . . .
Laptop.
The end of the night suddenly snapped into much clearer focus. That third—fourth?—glass of wine. An open private message screen.
Oh, no.
I practically fell onto the couch and woke up my laptop as fast as I could. “No. Nononononono . . .” The word was a prayer under my breath as the screen came to life. Maybe in my drunken haze I’d forgotten to hit Send. Maybe my Wi-Fi had gone out and the message hadn’t gone through. Maybe he hadn’t seen it yet and I could delete it before he did.
No such luck. My screen blinked to life, and there it was. Wi-Fi fully connected, message sent. Even worse, it was marked as read. Crap. Who knew Dex was such an early riser? Certainly not me: our nights together had never evolved into sleepovers.
I pulled my mug over and took a long sip of my coffee. I barely felt the heat of it, as everything had gone numb. I didn’t move, I didn’t even want to blink. All I could do was read the message I’d sent my yearly hookup, well into last night’s wine-drunk.
Hey!
This is Stacey Lindholm. Well, obviously you can tell that since my name is right here. Do you even know my last name? Well, you do now. That’s kind of why I’m writing. Not about my name, who cares about that. But I realized that I don’t know you. I mean of course I know you, I’ve known you for a few years now, right? And I guess I know more about you than you do about me, since you just now learned my last name and I already know yours.
So let’s start with the basics.
What makes you laugh?
How do you take your coffee?
Do you like cats?
Do you miss me?
I should delete that last one. But I’m gonna let it stay up there. Because with merlot you tell the truth.
So here’s the truth. I miss you. I know I shouldn’t, I know I have no real reason to. But I’m already looking forward to seeing you again next year, and that’s eleven months away. I’m not expecting you to do anything with this information, other than just know it. Know that I miss you, and I wish we had more than those few weekends a year to spend together.
I hope you have a great run at the Maryland Ren Fest, and the rest of the season. You travel so much, don’t you? Do you like traveling that much? See, something else I’d like to know about you.
Take care,
Stacey
I groaned and leaned back against the cushions. This was pretty bad, but after all that wine it could have been so much worse. I thought about sending another message. Maybe I could apologize for Past Stacey. For Drunk Stacey. But no. That would just compound the awkwardness. Instead I closed my laptop and finished my coffee. Nothing I could do now but wait for him to respond.
Of course, it didn’t occur to me until the next day that he might not respond at all.
Between Saturday morning and getting ready for brunch with Emily and April on Sunday, I checked my phone roughly a hundred times. It had been more than twenty-four hours since I’d sent that first regrettable message, and he hadn’t answered. Relief mingled with disappointment, and I couldn’t decide which emotion was stronger. No response meant not having to own up to my drunken words, and I was all for not being held accountable for my actions. But no response also meant that he wasn’t interested, which, let’s face it, sucked.
I sighed a long sigh, tied back my hair, and put on some pink lip gloss. This wasn’t that big a heartbreak, after all. Nothing a little brunch couldn’t cure.