Can’t Let You Go

by Jones, Jenny B.

  “Let me get this straight. You think God told you to quit acting? When you think of giving up your theater dream forever, that gives you the holy tingles?”

  No, but Charlie sure did. I forced myself to rise from the chair and walk to the edge of the deck, needing some distance between me and the overpowering magnetic pull that kept drawing me back to him. Between that and the fact that I was completely sleep deprived, my brain was as sticky as cotton candy. “Before I came home, the attorney hired by James and the rest of the group quit. My dad said Loretta found another one last week. Ever heard of Reggie Barker?”

  “Name sounds familiar.”

  “I guess I’ll meet him at the town hall meeting tomorrow night. James wants me to size him up. You could go and help me.”

  Charlie stood beside me, his side pressed into mine. “I might be there. Katie, I think we should talk. I need to—”

  “The stars are so beautiful tonight. And look at that full moon. There’s nothing as pretty as In Between, is there?” I turned to Charlie and found him watching me with an intensity that had made weaker girls toss their t-shirts and morals.

  “I could think of a few things more beautiful.” His gaze not wavering from mine, Charlie reached out and captured a strand of my wayward hair, running it through his fingers. “I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful girl in the whole town. When I went to college, I never met anyone who turned my head like you.”

  “You do know how to sweet talk a girl.”

  “I know you’re in rebound mode, and you’re hurting from that Ian guy, but whether you deal with it now or later, you and I have unfinished business. If you need time, I can give that to you.”

  My hands slid up Charlie’s chest, as he pulled me close. “I do need time.” Didn’t I? “It can’t be right to jump out of one serious relationship right into another.”

  “This is me,” he said gruffly. “I’m not some new guy you met at Starbucks. You know me. You know us. And there’s always been an us.”

  “I have horrible judgment, especially with relationships. I don’t exactly trust my heart right now.”

  “Then trust me with it, Katie.” He hugged me to him and rested his head on top of mine. “Please. . .trust me.”

  Chapter Ten

  When the alarm went off at four Monday morning, I rolled over and thought about crying.

  But the kind of energy that required wouldn’t kick in ’til five.

  The lazy sun hadn’t even made an appearance by the time I walked into Micky’s Diner and reported for my first day of work.

  “You sure about this?” Loretta asked, swigging from a mug of coffee.

  “I think so.” I went to the carafe not labeled decaf and helped myself.

  She took another sip and assessed the blousey hang of my super-sized t-shirt I had uselessly tried to shrink in the dryer. “You gonna work two weeks then get knocked up and leave like my June hire?”

  “No plans to get preggo.”

  “You gonna be the best darn plate balancer ever, then run off with my fry cook like Miss November?”

  “I can’t balance anything.” Though hooking up with a fry cook could have its perks.

  “Or you could be like Miss February and give extra bacon and burgers to your drug dealers.”

  “My dealers are vegans.”

  Her lips quirked. “Maxine said you were sassy. You get that from her?”

  Not one drop of Maxine’s blood coursed through my veins. “Probably so.”

  “She also said you’re gonna help us run Thrifty Co. out of town. Nominated you as our new leader in your dad’s absence.”

  I choked on my classic roast. “I’m all for helping, but that sounds a little over my head.”

  “You got a fancy college degree.”

  “And if you want me to teach you all how to express your protests in mime, then you’re in luck. Otherwise, I’m not really qualified to take charge.”

  “Either you give it a shot, or I put you on dish washing duty for the rest of your career here.”

  “I was secretary of our Brownie troop in second grade, so I will take your kindly given challenge.” I could not catch a break if someone handed it to me.

  “I’ll get you a list of our group’s contact info. The property owners are gonna meet before the real show gets started, and you can jump in then. Maybe you can bring some fresh ideas.” She threw an apron at me. “Put that on. And be at the town hall meeting an hour early.”

  “Do I need a secret password?”

  “Yeah.” Loretta waddled off, her spikes especially pointy. “Thrifty Co. sucks.”

  “You ready to get started?” Kourtney with a K chewed on a pink piece of gum with lots of snap, crackle, and pop.

  I banished all the thoughts of my happy days on the stage and thought about my sad, sad bank account. “Let’s do this.”

  Before Kourtney with a K could tell me how to be a waitress, she decided to give me a fifteen minute tutorial on bleaching your own hair. “I do it all the time.” She held up her fried ponytail that was colored a shade of orangey-white not usually found in a stylist’s palette. “I could do yours if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Maybe when I get paid.” And when I no longer had brain matter.

  She then took a whopping five minutes to explain the rigors of waitressing before the doors opened and sleepy In Betweenites trickled in like harmless zombies.

  “Orders are pretty simple at breakfast,” she said, shoving me toward my first table. “Just keep the coffee flowing.”

  It sounded so easy.

  Half an hour later, I was thinking performing heart surgery or splitting isotopes might be simpler. Did everyone have to be so picky? Tea with light ice. Could I substitute hash browns for an extra egg? Semi-crisp bacon only. Was the ketchup organic? And then there was Mr. Sherman, eighty on his last birthday, trying to give me a bum-pinch every time I walked by.

  I carried out three plates of biscuits and gravy, proud of myself for not spilling so much as a crumb, and delivered it to table number seven, three ladies from the In Between Garden Club.

  “Hi, there, Katie.” Mrs. O’Reilley settled her napkin in her lap as I placed a plate in front of her.

  “Good morning, ladies.” It was hard to smile at this hour on such little sleep.

  “We heard you’re gonna help us save our town from the evil claws of commercialism.”

  “Uh-huh.” I watched another customer bustle in like her pants were on fire. “Did you want more coffee?”

  “No.” Mrs. O’Reilley patted my arm. “The Garden Club welcomes your help. We know you don’t want to see the Valiant and our other fine establishments come to ruin.”

  Across the diner, a wide-eyed Maxine locked me in her sights and waved with her entire upper body. She clearly was trying to make her way toward my direction, but various chatty diners were not letting her pass without a howdy-do.

  “Mrs. O’Reilley, I’m going to try and help,” I said, “but I just got into town, and I’m not ready to roll out any big guns at tonight’s meeting.”

  “But you must go,” said Ms. Delmonaco, vice-president of the club, whose claim to fame was growing the tallest sunflowers. And luring the police chief away from his second wife.

  Their tablemate Mitzy Kipper poured sugar in her coffee. “It’s a done deal, girls. Katie would be wasting her breath to go tonight.”

  Mrs. O’Reilley huffed. “This is a town divided. Half are for this behemoth of a store, entranced by dollar signs and empty promises. And the other half are on the side of reason and protecting the integrity of our fine town.”

  “Yoohoo!” Maxine pushed past the mayor and finally reached my side. “Good heavens, that man is long-winded. Like I care about his denture saga.” My grandmother took a cleansing breath and blessed the Garden Club with a brittle smile. “Ladies.”

  “Maxine,” said Mrs. O’Reilley. There was bad blood between the Garden Club and my grandma, but I had no idea wh
at it was. I had lost track of all who had dared to cross Maxine Dayberry and find themselves on her hissing list. “You look as wilted as a fern in Florida. Something the matter?”

  “I need to talk to my granddaughter.”

  “I’m working,” I said.

  Maxine’s grip on my arm tightened. “Surely you have five minutes for your dear grandmama.”

  “I have to go take table twelve’s order and—”

  “Here.” Maxine grabbed Kourtney as she sailed by. “Kiki, go see what those folks want to eat.” She gave her a healthy shove in that direction. “And pull up that shirt. Are we selling breakfast or boobies here?” With clasped hands and a face of feigned innocence, Maxine returned her attention to me. “A word, if I may?”

  There was only one way to get rid of Maxine, and that was to give her what she wanted. “I’ll be right back to check on you,” I said to the Garden Club.

  Maxine linked her arm in mine, then turned back to address my table. “Oh, and by the by, the yoga club loves me. They made me president.”

  “There’s no such thing as a yoga president!” Mrs. O’Reilley called.

  Maxine hauled me into a corner next to the only empty booth. “Your hair is just glorious this morning,” she said. “New shampoo?”

  “I haven’t washed it in three days. What do you want?” Apprehension sizzled around me like a griddle of fried eggs, as Maxine didn’t suck up for nothing.

  “Poopsie, I might’ve made a little human error.” She chuckled and waved a hand. “We all do, right?”

  “Did you enroll me on a dating site without my permission again?”

  “No!”

  That fiasco had taken me weeks to straighten out.

  “Dear, it’s quite possible I really bungled things up this time. But I had the very best of intentions.”

  “Like the time you got me a wax session for my birthday?”

  “Sweet Pea, you know Grammy loves you, right?”

  Oh, geez. It was bad. And who was Grammy? “What did you do, Maxine?”

  “I. . .” Her hands loosened their death grip on me to twist and twirl the gob of beads at her throat. “I didn’t know the circumstances, or I never would’ve called. But I was desperate for help. At one of our committee meetings they told us to think outside the box, so that’s what I did.”

  “Can you just spit it out please? I have tables waiting on me.”

  “I didn’t mean to stir anything up. Well, I wanted to stir up a solution. And who better to advocate for a dying theater than a theater professional? And I just wanted advice. I didn’t think he’d come here. I mean, imagine, traveling all this way and—”

  “You didn’t. He didn’t.” I shook my head, pushing her words from my rattled brain. Nope. Not possible.

  “I did.” Maxine’s contrite face clanged the alarms in my head. “He does have experience with these sort of things. He’s been involved in theater preservations before. And I didn’t know you were broken up and you were on your way home or I would’ve never—”

  “You called Ian?” At the stares of table five, I dropped my volume. “What were you thinking? How did you even have his number?”

  “Please,” she said. “Give me some credit. I didn’t call him.”

  That was a small measure of relief.

  “I sent him a Facebook message,” Maxine amended. “I’m hip like that.”

  The panic had returned. “And he responded?”

  She nodded miserably. “In a big, big way.”

  “And he said he’s coming here?”

  She made a strangled sound in her throat.

  “To In Between?”

  “Yes.”

  The haze dissipated like a slow-lifting fog. “Ian’s in the throes of a production. In another country. He’s not going to leave London, leave his cast, and fly here.”

  “But that’s what I’m here to tell you.”

  “Maxine, I have work to do. It’s my first day, I have no idea what I’m doing, and we’re swamped. Go home and rest easy. It’s not even remotely possible he’d hop on a plane and come to In Between.”

  “Katie.” Kourtney pointed to the giant clock on the wall behind the cash register. “It’s your lunch break. See you in thirty.”

  I untied the little apron where I kept my order notepad. “I’m meeting Frances at Vivi’s Bridal Boutique. She wants to try on this dress again.”

  “But I’m not through talking to you,” Maxine said. “What I’m trying to tell you is—” Maxine’s eyes widened and she began to make little venom-spitting noises. “Sissy McKinney sitting with the Garden Club? The only gardening that woman does is watching her twenty-one year old Latin landscaper trim her shrubs. I will not have it!” Maxine stomped off to vent her wrath, and I left the diner, grateful to breathe fresh air and think on anything but Ian Attwood.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was only eleven a.m., and I was already exhausted. My ponytail hung limp, my skin had a nice oily sheen from multiple trips to the hot kitchen, and I was spending my lunch break watching Frances try on another dress. The same one she’d tried on three different times on three different occasions.

  I walked the two blocks, cutting through the alley by the library, gracelessly hustling like my pants were lit by kerosene. Vivi’s Bridal Boutique was an odd shop that showcased Vivi Moreau’s hand-sewn designs. Vivi had immigrated from Canada forty years prior, bringing a single carry-on and her Singer sewing machine. Inside the shop you could find wedding dresses, formal dresses, Sunday dresses, sun dresses, Christening dresses, communion dresses, and a small section of lingerie made of French lace that nobody paid much attention to. The store had floundered for years, surviving on nothing but hope and the occasional wedding dress purchase until someone created that Internet. Five years after Vivi got her first website, she bought a Mercedes, opened another shop in Houston, and paid off her business loan at the Mercantile and Trust with a suitcase of crisp hundred dollar bills.

  I stepped inside the shop and found Frances standing in front of a wall-sized mirror. She wore a satin number that stopped just below her knee, with short-sleeves and a fitted skirt. It reminded me of something an actress from the forties might’ve worn.

  “What do you think?” Frances turned to face me, her black glasses sitting crooked on her face.

  “I think it looks just like when we saw it the last time.”

  She spun back around and studied her reflection. “It would be cute with a little pill box hat, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would.”

  “I think I’m going to get it. It fits perfect. I don’t even need alterations. How crazy is that?” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “I just made a dress commitment!”

  “I’m so proud. Don’t move.” I whipped my phone out of my back pocket and snapped a quick photo. “I’ll send it to your mother.”

  Frances smiled for the picture, then threw her arms around me in a hug. “I’m getting married, Katie. The dress makes it so real, doesn’t it?”

  “You have less than three weeks left as a single girl.”

  “And before the big move.”

  I didn’t even want to think about that.

  Five minutes later, we stepped out of Vivi’s, ready to move on to Hank’s Hot Dog Hangout, a food trailer that promised Chicago-style dogs of twenty-three varieties.

  “Oh, no!” Frances thrust the plastic-bagged dress into my arms. “I think I forgot my dad’s credit card. He’ll make me elope if I lose that.”

  I stood in front of Vivi’s, holding a wedding dress and hoping Frances would hurry. I had twelve minutes before I was due back at the diner.

  “Hello, Katie.”

  The sky could’ve rained ice and the clouds thrown snow, and I wouldn’t have been as chilled as I was at that voice.

  “Ian.”

  The world moved in slow motion as my brain registered it truly was Ian walking down the sidewalk, mere feet away. I told myself to move, to say something, to just do so
mething. It was much like those horror movies where the girl fell to the ground, and you knew the knife-wielding slasher was coming, but she couldn’t seem to recall how to stand to her own two feet.

  “You look surprised to see me.”

  Surprised? That was like saying the Middle East was a little tumultuous. That the ocean was big enough to swim in. That Channing Tatum was a wee bit attractive. Surprised was a paltry word for what I felt.

  “What . . .what are you doing here, Ian?”

  He smiled. He was always smiling. It was one of the things I had fallen for. Me and about a dozen other women. His thick, dark hair was a contrast to his ever-present white button down, crisply ironed and starched. He wore charcoal dress pants, as if on his way to a meeting. Instead of busting back into my life.

  “I came to see you,” he said. “Didn’t your grandmother tell you?”

  I guess she had attempted to. But why would I have believed Ian would actually come here? “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m here for you,” he said. “You and your theater.”

  I opened my mouth with a slicing retort when I noticed a woman walking toward us. My eyes narrowed as she came into focus. “Her?” I was going to kill this man. Right on the Mayberry streets of my hometown. “You brought her?” His little two-bit twit Felicity sauntered her way to Ian, her heeled feet daring to touch the sacred ground of In Between. “You two need to get out of my city. I don’t know what Maxine told you, and I have no idea what you’re up to, but we don’t need your help.”

  My ex-boyfriend did a thorough study of my outfit, his nose all but wrinkling as if smelling the Queen’s pantyhose. “What is that shirt?”

  I crossed my arms over a top big enough to shelter an entire kindergarten class. “It’s my new uniform. I have a job. Can we get back to why you’re in the neighborhood?”

  Felicity’s tone dripped disdain like syrup on a hot cake. “Micky’s Diner? You’re a . . .”

  “Waitress, yes.”