A Lot Like Perfect

by Kat Cantrell

  After he’d handed off tickets to the women, he let them go ahead so they could pick out whatever seats made the most sense to them given the climate. The last thing he wanted to do was get in the middle of a knock-down-drag-out over who refused to sit next to who.

  Since Tristan had likewise hung back, it smelled like Isaiah’s one chance to dig. He grabbed Tristan’s arm and pulled him to the side, out of the flow of traffic.

  “What gives, man?” he demanded.

  Marchande scowled and crossed his arms. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t play it like that. Why are you being such a jerk? Normally I can’t get a word in edgewise when there are females around.” And this was the one time he’d hoped for that.

  “Laisse tomber,” he shot back and rushed on, scarcely giving Isaiah enough time to rifle through his French vocabulary to recall the phrase meant drop it. “It’s not like I’m dating either of them.”

  Point taken. This was where it got tricky. Isaiah couldn’t come right out and say that he’d organized this thing as a way to put Aria in Marchande’s path, but neither could he let the opportunity pass to test the waters. “It’s not like either of them are off limits though. They’re both nice women.”

  “One of them is,” he countered darkly. “The other one is a pain in my rear. She should watch her mouth.”

  Cassidy, Isaiah assumed. At least the subject was now opened for questions. “Did you have some kind of argument?”

  Marchande’s expression got blacker. “That would imply there was a back and forth of some type. So I’m going with no. She slings blanket statements around like what she says is carved on stone tablets given to us mere mortals from the Almighty.”

  This was the angriest he’d seen Marchande in some time. It was a little impressive to watch how his friend bristled as he made chopping motions with his hands.

  “So forget her,” Isaiah suggested mildly. “Spend some time talking to Aria. She’s a great woman. You’ll like her.”

  “Yeah.” Marchande mused that over for a minute, sliding a hand along his ridiculous man bun as if even one strand of hair had dared escape from the sleek knot at his crown. “That’s a great idea. The more obvious I can make it that I’m freezing out that woman, the better.”

  That woman? This outing was swiftly turning into a disaster.

  “Uh…that’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Isaiah called out after his friend who had already started moving toward the theatre, rubbing his hands together as if he had just devised a very diabolical plan that involved using one woman to teach the other a lesson.

  Aria did not deserve to be put in the middle of this grudge match that had sprung up between their friends. Beleaguered, he loped after Marchande, nearly knocking the popcorn bucket from the hand of a middle-aged woman who had unwittingly stepped in his path.

  “Sorry,” he threw over his shoulder as he skirted her to draw up even with Marchande, who had paused in the doorway of the theatre. “Why don’t you hold up a sec and listen to me?”

  “You’re done,” Tristan said, his attention already on the seated movie-goers, presumably scanning them in search of their companions. He must have spotted them since he took off up the carpeted steps.

  Shades of Syria, or rather the aftermath. What Marchande had really meant was that he didn’t want to listen to Isaiah, not anymore, and this was his way of softening the blow. Isaiah had tried to reach out, multiple times, and had gotten shot down. Tristan had a lot of guilt over what had happened in al-Sadidiq. They all did. But Isaiah wanted to help everyone get better and that’s where they parted ways—no one else cared about that. They all acted like it had never happened, burying the destruction of the wrong village under a mound of government paperwork, like that would change facts.

  Seventy-five people would never draw breath into their lungs again and it wasn’t fair that he still could. He didn’t deserve to have functional respiration, and it didn’t take a fancy psychology degree to figure out that might have something to do with his panic attacks.

  Or why he couldn’t fix any of his teammates. If he couldn’t glue himself back together, why should anyone else trust him with their healing process?

  Somehow he managed to sit through the movie, but once the lights in the theatre came up, he couldn’t have named one plot point, an actor in the movie or even the title. The icing on the cake came as the four of them spread out for the long walk back to the car and he found himself walking next to Aria, who would have been on Tristan’s radar by now if Isaiah had done his job right.

  “That was fun,” she said, her voice laced with so much sarcasm that he almost laughed.

  At least he didn’t have to pretend with her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that Tristan and Cassidy hated each other so much or I wouldn’t have suggested this.”

  “It’s okay. News to me too.” She shrugged. “And I’m sorry it ended up not working out for you to spend time with Cassidy.”

  He lifted a brow. “That wasn’t a goal for today.”

  It wasn’t a goal for any day. Had he not already nipped that idea in the bud with her? He could hardly focus on his prediction when everything else was such a mess. Healing and nurturing his soul wasn’t on the agenda, especially not since he’d failed at doing that for everyone else.

  “Well, it should have been.” Aria flipped a hand in the direction of her friend, who was standing near the SUV, arms crossed as she stared at the sky in an obvious attempt to avoid a conversation with Tristan, who had already climbed into the passenger seat, then slammed the door with more force than a hurricane. “Tristan tried to talk to me a couple of times during the movie and Cassidy shushed him with uncomplimentary comments about his manners. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was jealous that he sat next to me.”

  Yeah, that seemed unlikely. “We’ll try again another time. With another plan. And no Cassidy.”

  “Well that defeats the whole purpose of our deal. You get nothing out of this if she’s going to keep acting like a third grader. I’ll talk to her,” Aria promised with a secret smile as they approached the SUV. “Pinky swear.”

  Isaiah got in the car. There was nothing else to say at this point.

  Nine

  Aria let it ride until the next morning, dutifully rolling out of the king-sized bed she shared with her sister to get ready for church. Havana groaned and flopped onto her stomach, flinging the patchwork comforter over her shocking red curls. Aria kicked at her sister a few times because obviously she still hadn’t gotten into the swing of attending services with Serenity on a regular basis. Today was not a good day to be late since Aria had a come to Jesus lined up for Cassidy.

  They had much to discuss about A) what in the world was going on with Tristan and B) why in the world Cassidy had thrown away an opportunity to get closer to Isaiah. The woman had been spouting off about him for at least as long as Aria had been doing the same with Tristan.

  Cassidy had been Ember’s buddy more than Aria’s back in high school, but once Ember had hightailed it out of town, leaving the two of them behind, it had turned into a natural bonding experience. Plus, once they’d hit their twenties, a couple of years age difference hadn’t affected things much, not in a place like Superstition Springs where friends were hard to come by.

  As a result, Aria usually knew what was going on in her friend’s headspace. Not so much after that horrible movie experience. Cassidy owed her some answers.

  Twenty minutes later, Aria strolled into the pre-fab building that served as the non-denominational Superstition Springs church. Farmer Moon had donated both the land and the structure, but drew the line at preaching. That honor fell to his eldest son, Matthew, who had married a woman from Bastrop named Augusta. She liked to sing, which worked out well. Together, they pretty much did the whole service. The messages were always uplifting and since the five former SEALs had started sitting in the second row, attendance had gone way up.

  Havana beelined over
to squeeze in next to Caleb, who in turn, bumped his buddies down a bit on the hard wooden bench. They grumbled good-naturedly and Aria bit back a smile as Isaiah shushed them all.

  “Sharing is caring,” he said with a warm glance at Aria, which should not have released so many winged things in her stomach.

  Mavis J and Lennie Ford sat on the third row as per custom, taking up almost the entire bench by themselves—or rather Lennie did. Mavis was a tiny woman in the first place but next to Lennie, who could be easily described as a mountain of a man, she looked more like a doll that he might break in half. They were an odd couple who had been together for more years than anyone could count but had never married.

  “Morning, Aria,” Mavis said cheerfully as Aria squeezed into the fourth row where Cassidy had already claimed her usual, dead-middle spot. “Tell Serenity I got in a new batch of fabric she might like.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Serenity sewed all her own clothes, a skill Aria admired and definitely didn’t possess the patience for. But the last thing she wanted to do was chat about anything other than the disaster of yesterday.

  “What is the deal with you?” Aria muttered to Cassidy and wedged in close to her friend in case she had a mind to flee. “After the movies, I thought for sure you’d want to dissect every last thing that happened, but you didn’t come by the diner last night.”

  That had kind of stung too. She’d waited and waited, hoping to commiserate with Cassidy about their respective love lives or lack thereof. Instead, she’d only had Ember and Judd for company. Her sister had definitely been in the mood to gripe about things, particular how Judd had developed a tendency to talk back to her. The sullen little boy had refused to eat anything but French fries with mustard, and Aria got the distinct impression he didn’t even like the combo but enjoyed irritating his mother enough to choke it down.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Cassidy whispered, staring straight ahead as she studiously avoided glancing at Tristan, who was sitting just two rows ahead. Tristan wasn’t affording her the same courtesy, openly eyeing her with a very hard to read expression on his face.

  He never looked at Aria like that. Right at that moment, she was glad. “Well, you spent so much time arguing with Tristan that you forgot about Isaiah. I thought you liked him.”

  “I should apologize to him,” she mumbled as guilt crept over her expression. “He’s nice and sweet. Unlike some other people I could mention who are arrogant, thick headed and obviously think they are the universe’s gift to women. I mean, really. He’s not even that good looking—”

  “Now you’re being silly,” Aria broke in and lowered her voice as Tristan glanced at her instead of Cassidy. “Tristan is gorgeous and you know he is. Also, that’s the man whose attention I’m trying to get. So lay off. Focus on Isaiah for a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  Cassidy didn’t brighten the way she normally did when talking about Isaiah. In fact, she hadn’t mentioned him at all lately, though there’d been a time when they could both go on for fifteen minutes straight about the qualities of the guys they had the hots for. They’d turned it into a regular hen-fest at times, especially as Havana’s relationship with Caleb heated up. Both she and Cassidy had pumped Havana for details about Tristan and Isaiah, and they’d both—more than once—made silly comments about clawing other women’s faces off if they so much as looked at the men they’d targeted.

  That was one of many reasons she hadn’t told anyone that Isaiah was helping her land Tristan. Land. It was such a funny word to use in relation to a man, like she’d cast her bait in the water and all she had to do was wait until he bit. Then she could reel him in, same as a fish hooked onto her line.

  It left a bad taste in her mouth all at once. Why couldn’t Tristan just notice her on his own? She wasn’t beautiful like Cassidy, but she had a good personality. Or at least she thought she did. Isaiah seemed to enjoy hanging out with her. But that came so natural, she barely had to think about what to say or how to act around him. Maybe that was the piece she was missing here—she should have asked him to help her work on being more fun on a date. Then she wouldn’t need an inside edge.

  “Isaiah is nice and sweet,” Aria repeated because it was true. It was also impossible to think of anything else to say about him that wouldn’t betray the secret meetings they’d had in the name of the bet. “He likes jazz music. Maybe you could ask him over to listen to an album or something.”

  “Jazz music.” Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I could even pick out a jazz song from a playlist.”

  “Really? We’ve known each other since we could walk and you don’t know a single jazz song? I have all the best stuff on my iPod.”

  Cassidy glanced at her askance. “You listen to jazz? Since when?”

  Since forever. She started to give her friend a blistering what-for since she clearly wasn’t paying attention to anything other than her own problems, when it occurred to her that she’d never talked to anyone about her love of jazz. Except for Isaiah.

  She’d started listening to it after Ember left and she’d been forced to sleep in her bedroom by herself for the first time since their parents had died. Nightmares weren’t uncommon and who was there to soothe her through it? No one. Serenity hadn’t ever gotten the hang of mothering, often falling back on Havana to handle day-to-day things like permission slips and homework.

  But Havana had left for Austin, supposedly to go to school but mostly to get away from Superstition Springs…and Aria. Who could blame her? It must have been rough on an eighteen-year-old to have responsibility for both a mouthy, temperamental seventeen-year-old sister and a fifteen-year-old.

  Except no one had thought about how Havana being gone meant Aria had to fill that void with Serenity, basically growing up overnight as she learned how to mother herself and her aunt. Aria had worked hard to forgive and had. Mostly.

  In the meantime, she’d glommed on to jazz. It was one of the few kinds of music that had been free, probably because most of what she’d listened to then—Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Holliday—was old school music that struggled to find an audience in an increasingly digital world.

  Jazz was a private thing, linked to a difficult period of her life when abandonment had been her emotional reality. Yet she’d shared her love of it with Isaiah readily, not even pausing to think about how intimate of a thing it really was. How would that come across to Cassidy, who had expressed an interest in Isaiah? Not well, surely.

  “Yeah, I listen to it,” she mumbled casually. “I guess Isaiah mentioned he liked it and it happens that I do too, so we talked about it. Briefly. You should brush up on it.”

  “Maybe I will. Thanks for the tip.” Cassidy sang the opening bars of the first worship song as the service started, her expression decidedly blank.

  Great. So Cassidy would start listening to jazz and then she and Isaiah would have something to connect over. That’s exactly what should happen. If nothing else, Aria had helped move the dial for her friend and that was the important thing.

  But the thought of Cassidy and Isaiah together on the rooftop of the hotel made her stomach hurt. He’d probably take her up there and spread out that blanket like he’d done for Aria, then stretch out his long, lean body to cover the length of it. Cassidy would definitely not be able to avoid appreciating how good-looking Isaiah was, not when he put himself on display like that. Isaiah would play some of his sultrier blues, horns wailing through the still night air, and it would be so romantic that Cassidy would fall for him instantly. If she hadn’t already.

  Aria slouched down in her seat, crossing her arms over the squiggle in her stomach that had turned into more of an ache behind her ribs. How stupid was she for opening her big, fat mouth about jazz? And how selfish was she for regretting it? Cassidy deserved someone good and kind like Isaiah in her life, assuming he stuck around.

  Actually, she didn’t know that he would. After they’d talked about his love of
travel, she’d made an assumption that he’d be taking off again soon. Why wouldn’t he? There was nothing holding him to this town.

  The thought of him leaving knifed through her much harder than the mental image of Cassidy in her spot on the roof. One or the other was inevitable. Maybe both would happen, but either way, Aria would have to give up her secret friendship with the man. Soon. Cassidy was her friend and there were rules. You didn’t hang out with a guy that your friend was dating. That was totally not cool. Aria couldn’t get in the way of that budding relationship or she’d never forgive herself.

  Except a part of her had dreamed of tagging along with him when he took off to see more of the world that she’d only heard about. It was a silly thought, born of desperation to avoid being hurt. If she left with Isaiah, then it wouldn’t matter if Havana and Ember stayed in Superstition Springs or if they’d both planned to abandon her again. Aria wouldn’t be around to care.

  If Isaiah headed out into the big, bright world, he might take Cassidy with him instead. That’s what Aria should be guiding them both toward. She vowed to bring that up after church, because if nothing else, this was her chance to be a good friend. Besides, the sooner Cassidy and Isaiah became an item, the less it would ache inside for no good reason.

  She hoped.

  She had no business thinking about what it might be like to take her friend’s place and she definitely had no call to be suddenly imagining how she’d react if Isaiah had tried to get a whole lot closer to her up in his rooftop sanctuary. Because she wasn’t picturing herself pushing him away. That alone meant she had to swiftly backpedal before she did something irreversible and ruined her friendship with Cassidy.

  Aria knew what it felt like to be hurt and betrayed by people who should love her. She refused to do the same to Cassidy by letting her thoughts stray even a little toward unseemliness with Isaiah. It was time to up her game. Once she had Tristan in the bag, she could—and surely would—forget all about secret rooftop alliances with Isaiah.