She looked down at herself. “Well, but this isn’t, like, an official dress. It’s just a red-and-blue-striped dress I happened to find at Old Navy a couple years ago.”
Still. She looked very…spirited.
“And really,” she went on, “does the average person around here know that Crystal Palace’s colors are red and blue?”
Fair point, he supposed.
“Anyway, it’s not like it’s a secret that I’m here.”
“You were the one texting 911 to try to get in here unseen this morning.”
He thought they might be ramping up to argue, but she made a funny face and said, “You’re right.”
He cupped his hand to his ear. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
She rolled her eyes and turned for the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “You were right. Once. Don’t let it go to your head.”
He kind of loved when she said that to him. Not the You were right part so much as the Don’t let it go to your head part. He had no idea why.
“But anyway,” she called from the kitchen as she refilled her coffee, “I was avoiding Karl. I think we can both agree that Karl and his minions do not need to know I’m up here. Not only would they get the wrong idea, they would delight in getting the wrong idea. Do you want to become one of their projects?” She skipped back in and set her mug and the fortune cookies she’d previously left in the kitchen on the coffee table.
“Nope.” He sure as hell didn’t. “Do Eve and Nora know you’re here?”
“No.”
“Why keep it from them if it’s not a secret?”
“Do Sawyer and Jake know I’m here?” she countered.
“Touché.” They had come close to getting busted by Jake last winter. Law still remembered the panic of waking up to someone knocking on his door. “But why?” he wondered out loud. “Why do we care?”
“We care because they wouldn’t understand.”
“They wouldn’t understand soccer?”
“Football. They wouldn’t understand why two people who hate each other are secretly holed up watching football together.”
Right. Except he didn’t hate her. Never had. And he was still grappling with the bombshell news that if he hadn’t ruined Romeo and Juliet all those years ago, maybe she wouldn’t hate him, either. Maybe everything would be…different.
She flopped down next to him, turned her whole body so she was facing him, and flashed a grin. “It’s kind of like we’re having an affair, isn’t it?”
He smiled back automatically and had the jolting realization that she had smiled at him face-on a lot lately. He used to think about how he’d never gotten one of those, only observed them from the side. Though this one was really a smile of amusement: people would think they were having an affair, ha ha, how ludicrous.
“Sneaking around,” she went on, “holed up in your apartment at all hours. Ha! It totally seems like we’re having an affair.”
He wanted to say that no, it did not totally seem like they were having an affair.
Because if they were having an affair, he could kiss her right now.
Which he suddenly wanted to do more than anything.
Her smile disappeared. “But actually, I guess there’s not really any danger of people thinking that now that you have Brie.”
Huh? “Yeah, I guess I will be home more once she starts.” Was that what she meant? People wouldn’t see him with Maya at the bar as much, therefore there would be less fodder for gossip? He really didn’t think anyone was gossiping about them, though.
“Once she ‘starts’? What are you doing? Auditioning her?”
“I thought about doing that—a probationary period.” It had seemed like a way to mitigate the risk of hiring someone who might not be a good fit. “But since she’s moving from Toronto, that seemed kind of cruel.”
“She’s moving here from Toronto?” She whistled. “Wow.”
“I know. I’m lucky. Anyway, the tryout period became a moot point. When I met her, I just knew.”
“You just knew,” Maya echoed, her voice flat.
“I think that’s how it works sometimes.”
“So I hear.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Where’d you guys meet?”
“Online.” It turned out you could hire people through LinkedIn. “I was kind of amazed at how many responses I got. Once you cast your net wider than just this area, and get more methodical than word of mouth, it’s amazing what you can turn up.”
“I bet.” She frowned. “Though I clearly am doing it wrong.”
But she was casting plays. He was hiring bar help. It was different. “Well, even with the huge volume of responses, Brie was obviously the best of the bunch.”
“Obviously.”
He eyed her. Her mood had taken a nosedive, and the way she was responding with flat, one- or two-word responses was kind of odd.
“So she’s moving here.” Maya looked around the apartment with her brow furrowed. “When does she arrive?”
“Three weeks.”
She whistled again. “Wow, you don’t mess around.”
“Well, it’s going to take two weeks for her to get out of her current situation, and then she’s going to take a breather.”
“She’s going to take a breather? After her current situation?”
“Yeah. I feel like it would be rude to try to force her to rush it. It’s not like I need her. I’ve been fine without her up until now.”
She laughed, but it sounded hollow, like a bad actor laughing onstage. And Maya wasn’t a bad actor. “So I guess I’d better enjoy today’s match while I can.”
Huh? “What do you mean?”
She looked as confused as he felt. “Does Brie like football?”
“I have no idea. Odds are not.”
“But she’s going to be cool with me coming over and hanging out for hours on end?”
“I don’t see why she would care. It has nothing to do with her.”
She squinted at him. “Have you sustained a head injury?”
“Have you?”
“Benjamin. I understand that we live in modern times, where some of us are so evolved that we never feel a speck of jealousy. But do you honestly want your brand-new girlfriend to not care that you spend a suspicious amount of time cozied up with me on your couch partaking in an activity she isn’t part of?”
“My girlfriend? What are you talking about? Who’s my girlfriend?”
“Uh, hello? Brie? The one who’s moving here to be with you? The one you’re strolling Main Street and making wishes with?”
Holy hell.
“The one you were huddled with in the corner of the bar?” she went on.
He wanted to point out that she was huddled with Holden at the bar all the time. But he couldn’t, because he was laughing. Throwing his head back and letting it shake through his chest. He tried to stop when he caught a glimpse of Maya’s continuing confusion, but he was powerless against the tide of laughter. Until her confusion started to shade into hurt. That sobered him right up.
“Maya. Brie is moving here—‘here’ being Moonflower Bay, not this apartment—to become the manager of the bar. I hired her. She’s my employee.”
Her mouth rounded into an O, but no sound came out. She was doing the gears-turning thinking face, and eventually the sound caught up with the shape. “Ohhhhh.”
He could see how this had all happened. Brie hadn’t introduced herself with anything other than her name at the shop yesterday. He’d been so disconcerted to find Holden there not running lines. Which meant he was just hanging out. And then Brie hadn’t said anything about the job because she’d been overinterpreting his directive to keep the restaurant stuff quiet.
Maya started laughing, which somehow functioned as permission for him to start again. It was strange to be laughing together. Good strange, though. It made him imagine—
“How’s the mermaid queen thing going?” she asked, jolting him back to reality.
“What?” He stopped laughing but could not quite extinguish the residual smile.
“You know, your pledge to get someone else elected?”
Right. That killed the smile. Back to business as usual. “Okay, well, I told you I thought I’d try Sadie, but I decided that if I’m opening a restaurant that’s going to compete with hers, I should leave that alone.”
Maya snorted. “Yeah, maybe don’t start playing pranks on your closest rival.”
“So I tried to find someone who would be up for it. I asked Eiko, but she said no.” Karl was often elected king, and Law had suddenly thought, hey, why not Eiko as queen? The town old folks were already the de facto monarchs in town.
“Whoa, whoa, rewind. You’re asking people if they want you to get them elected?”
“Uh, yes?”
“You’re getting consent? What about me? Where was my consent?”
He was pretty sure she was kidding. His smile had died on the vine earlier, but hers hadn’t. Still…“Yeah, I’m, uh, sorry about that.”
He was sorry about a lot of things, it turned out. He had almost apologized earlier, for Romeo and Juliet, but he’d stopped himself. Chickened out. He’d been so looking forward to watching the match, and he was afraid if he apologized for that, they’d have a huge fight and she would leave. Maybe forever—and that was…not something he could live with.
But he could apologize for this instead. “It just seemed…funny? I don’t know. In keeping with our…” He couldn’t find the words. He waved his hand back and forth between them. Feud, the word everyone else used, didn’t seem right. At least not anymore.
“‘Thing’?” she supplied.
“Yeah.” Thing was suitably vague.
“And honestly, I really only did it actively that first time. After that, everyone started asking me for ballots. I think it’s because you’re, uh, really good at it. You sort of seem like you are the mermaid queen, which I know sounds dumb, but…Anyway, I didn’t realize you hated it so much. I thought you were just…” Ugh. Words. Hard. “Anyway, no more. I don’t have it locked down yet, but I’m going to figure it out. I promise you won’t be mermaid queen this year.” He would go up there and sit on that damn throne himself if he had to.
Something happened to her face then, something subtle, but he was looking closely enough to notice. It was a slight furrowing of her brow, but it was almost immediately erased. He didn’t have time to puzzle out what it might mean, because Crystal Palace scored and she was up on her feet, arms extended over her head.
He watched her celebrate by wiggling around in her dress. She looked so carefree, it made him want to press pause. Freeze the scene so they could both stay here in their secret soccer truce-bubble.
She sat back down abruptly with a sigh of happiness. All this up and down brought to mind a marionette, except not because Maya was no one’s puppet. She pulled her own strings.
She looked at him, and he realized he’d been staring—probably too intently. He forced himself to look away, and his gaze landed on the fortune cookies. “Can I have one of these?”
“Please do.”
He contemplated his fortune while he chewed. A person of words and not deeds is a garden full of weeds.
The marionette comparison was actually pretty apt, Law thought nearly two hours later. The match had been close, and every time Crystal Palace pulled ahead, she leaped to her feet. When they fell behind, she slumped theatrically on the sofa.
“Noooo,” she moaned, watching through her fingers as Liverpool scored, putting Crystal Palace down by two goals with ten minutes left.
“Tell me about how you got into them,” Law said, because apparently they talked during matches now. After establishing that Brie was not, in fact, his new girlfriend, they’d chatted on and off about all kinds of stuff: the business Karl’s Junior Achievement kids were launching, names Jake and Nora were considering for their baby. “I know it has to do with your time in the UK, but no offense, you never struck me as very…”
“Sporty?” she suggested, peeling one hand off her face to look at him with one eye.
“Yeah, so do you arrive on British soil and they plug you directly into the Premier League matrix?”
She laughed. “No. You’re right. I’m not sporty. I went on the exchange purely for the theater angle. Royal National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, all that. But my host family was into Crystal Palace. The fan bases for the London clubs are very localized—so, like, you cheer for your neighborhood club. I have to tell you, I was not pleased being dragged along to a match, but once I got there—wow. Those stadiums are huge. It’s its own kind of theater. I understood nothing about the game at that point, but I was hooked immediately.”
“You should take up hockey. You’ve seen the bar on nights the Leafs play. You’d have lots of company then.”
“I like having my own thing.” She let the other hand fall from her face and tilted her head as she studied him. A half smile bloomed. “This company is okay, too.”
He sucked in a breath. As compliments went, it was mild. But it felt like she’d bequeathed him a precious gift. The question was, would this détente, this goodwill, last?
Did he want it to?
He liked battling with her.
But he also liked…whatever this was. He liked her staring at him with a cat-that-ate-the canary smile and saying not-mean things to him.
Man, his standards were low.
Cheers erupted from the TV, and they both turned. “Ahh!” She was on her feet again, celebrating as Crystal Palace tied the score. She remained standing, bouncing in place as play resumed.
There were ten seconds left when Crystal Palace got possession. He jumped to his feet, too, tension snaking through him as Hendricks, the player they’d been talking about before, took a shot. Time seemed to slow down as they watched the trajectory of the ball. The goalkeeper leaped to try to block it.
“It went in! It went in!” She jumped up and down and…
…threw herself into his arms?
It took him a second to adjust to what was happening. To the soft dress and the pull on his neck as her arms wound around it. To her. It took him a second to adjust to her, and didn’t that just about sum up the entirety of his history with Maya Mehta?
Then they were kissing. He wasn’t sure who started it. Just that it felt like it was what was supposed to happen now. Her team had won. But it wasn’t only that. If this had been purely an impulsive her-team-won kiss—or an I thought you were someone else kiss—it would have been quick. It would have been followed by an equally quick retreat and probably by awkwardness and apologies.
This kiss was not ending. She was moving her lips across his hungrily, like she hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time. God knew he hadn’t. So he turned off his brain and let himself sink into her. Her lips were soft, softer than he’d ever imagined any part of her could be. She was usually all brittleness and angles, but now, here, somehow she was pliant and lax as she sighed against his mouth. She was still holding on to his neck, and he added his arms to the mix, wrapping them around her and pulling her against him as he pressed his tongue against the seam of her lips, which opened for him unhesitatingly. And then he was inside the mouth that had yammered at him so ceaselessly for so many years. It was soft, too, as soft as her lips had been, but hotter. Needier. It seemed—
As suddenly as it had started, it was over.
She let go of him and took a big step back, leaving him disoriented and breathing heavily. Her hair was messed up, more of it out of her topknot than in it. He had done that.
“Oh, wow,” she said, eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what—”
“Shh.” He held up a hand to silence her, though it was probably futile. But he didn’t want her to apologize. Or make a speech about how this had been a mistake.
She surprised him by doing neither, though she did not heed his request for silence—of course she didn’t. “Are you going to tell anyone about this?�
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That wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d expected a discussion. A litany of questions he couldn’t answer.
“Please promise you’re not going to tell anyone about this,” she said, with more urgency.
“I don’t kiss and tell.” He hoped she wasn’t asking because she thought he was that kind of guy. “I would never do that,” he added for good measure.
She looked at him for a long moment, smiled as if she liked that answer, and said, “I gotta go.”
What? That was it?
He followed her to the door. Was she really going to leave without insisting that they analyze what had just happened?
It seemed she was. She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “Thanks for…” She pressed her lips together like she was trying not to smile, but the corners of her lips turned up. “…everything.”
“Hold on.”
What? What was he doing? He was getting what he wanted. He didn’t want to talk about that kiss, so he should keep his mouth shut. His mouth, apparently having other ideas, asked, “Did you really think I was someone else last time?” Did you think I was Holden?
She looked at him without speaking for several long moments. Long enough for him to regret the question. Because did he really want to know the answer? But then she shocked him by saying, evenly, “No.”
He didn’t know what to do with that no, other than to stand there and let it course through him, a single syllable ricocheting through his body like a victory.
After a few beats of silence, she turned to go.
“There’s a match on Thursday—same time,” his mouth said. His brain caught up and seconded the motion. Yes. Let’s do this again.
“Much Ado opens Thursday.” He knew that. He had a ticket and an ironclad promise from Carter to cover the bar. “And I’m afraid we’ll be rehearsing all morning.” She grimaced.
“Replay after the show?” Damn, he sounded desperate.
“I’d say yes, but we’re having a cast party. Normally I’d pick football over a cast party any day, but Holden wants a party.”
“After that,” he said, having apparently abandoned all attempts to appear cool. “Just the highlights reel, maybe?”
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