Well Played, стр. 8
My little apartment was a cozy nest. It ran the length and width of the two-car garage it was built over, with a small kitchen tucked in one corner and an enclosed three-quarter bathroom (no bubble baths for this girl) in another. My clothes lived in two freestanding wardrobes, and my queen-size bed was tucked in the eaves. I’d strung fairy lights on the wall that sloped above my bed, and their soft glow made it feel like I was sleeping inside a blanket fort. A pair of skylights in the kitchen area let in lots of natural light, and when it rained I loved falling asleep to the patter of the rain on the glass.
It was a great little place, and it was mine. I loved it. I told myself that a lot, and most of the time I even believed it.
I’d barely closed the door behind me and tossed my keys into the little dish by the door when my phone rang. Not my cell phone, which was silent in my bag, but the old-school landline attached to the wall in the kitchen. It didn’t have caller ID, but I knew who it was. There was only one person in my life who had the number.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi, honey, I heard your car. Did you have dinner? We just finished eating, but I can fix you a plate.”
“No. No, I’m fine. I ate when I was out.” I slid my little leather backpack off my shoulders, the buttery blue leather bag I’d bought just as Faire had ended—I hadn’t been kidding about the retail therapy—and dropped it onto my kitchen table. “I’m kind of tired; it’s been a long day. I think I’ll watch a little TV and turn in.”
See? Semi-independence. Mom didn’t call every night, but often enough to remind me that in some ways—in most ways—I still lived at home. I loved my parents, but it was getting old. Hell, I was getting old. I was almost twenty-seven, for God’s sake.
That feeling of getting older without really being allowed to grow up lingered, and that feeling combined with the sight of Emily’s engagement ring. I’m gonna miss her. Now that stray thought made sense. Getting married, becoming a wife. And what was I doing? Going out to Jackson’s every Friday night and posting the same selfies on Instagram.
I needed to get a life.
I needed another glass of wine.
• • •
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