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“We’ll be fine,” he repeated, more to assure himself than her, but he felt no certainty. “Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you… Lucy said your mom reached out to you recently. I know you hadn’t heard from her in a long time. Everything all right?”
Her demeanor changed in an instant, closing like a prison door, guarded and gray. “Yeah. Everything’s fine. I gotta go. Just stopped by to update you.”
When she’d left, he buried his face in his hands.
He had to kiss Melody Reed again. Eleven years wasn’t enough to recover from the last time his lips had met hers. What was this time going to do to him?
* * * * *
“How are you going to be in the playanddirect the play?” Debra leaned over her desk, face pinched, nostrils widely flaring, sharing the stale coffee on her breath.
Eww.
Melody tipped her face away as far as was polite. “I’m enlisting the help of my best stagehand. Betsy is so good I might promote her to assistant production engineer. This is her trial run.”
“Trial run.” Debra’s eyes bulged until Melody feared they’d pop out of her head. “Trail run! There is no ‘trial’ about this play. It has to be professional.”
“And it will be.” Summoning the confident air she had perfected over the years, Melody backed away with a wide smile. “Don’t lose sleep over it, Debra. This play is going to be amazing.”
It might actually be. TJ singing versus TJ acting was like giving a kid candy instead of spinach. Day and night. Beauty and ashes and all that. His singing would steal the show, she had no doubt.
It was Friday. Five days until the performance. They practiced every day this week, but Melody had waited until today to let Debra know about the actor switch. That conversation had gone over as well as she expected. She had waited to make sure Betsy was getting the hang of directing the portions Melody couldn’t. Which was a lot of them.
Honestly, Melody was having a blast. She hadn’t acted in years, and doing so alongside TJ was a dream. He loosened up beside her considerably better than he had with June. But they hadn’t practiced the kiss. It was an unspoken agreement. No one else in the cast questioned it, either. Melody knew she needed to do something about it, but she didn’t have the heart. TJ’s last kiss had nearly turned her life upside down, and she was still trying to right it. She wasn’t ready for a repeat.
When she had a few minutes here and there, she messaged Jeremy. She was too busy to write much, but his sweet responses to her honest admissions last Sunday wouldn’t leave her alone. When she looked back at what she’d written, she got all trembly and nauseous. Had she admitted it? Put it in writing? Said the words she’d never said before?
She had never told a living soul about the abuse she endured growing up. Why had she chosen Jeremy?
“Am I late?” TJ blew in the door with an arctic blast. A strong storm was in the forecast this weekend, and Melody wasn’t sure if she should hope it blew over quickly or stuck around long enough to get the play canceled.
“Right on time. Early enough for a snack, in fact.” Seriously, there was no way she could express her feelings of gratitude for all TJ was doing. She knew each sacrifice, every volunteered hour, was for her. She wished things could be different between them. Wished it more than he would ever know.
But since it couldn’t, she could at least give him an offering of gluten-free thanks.
“What’s this?” He reached for the pastry box, his face as eager as a boy’s on Christmas morning. Before she could answer, he pushed up the lid and drank in the aroma like it was an elixir for everlasting life. “Don’t tell me.” He sniffed again. “Cinnamon coffee cake made with almond flour, topped with that scrumptious caramel drizzle only you can make.”
She ducked her head at the praise, unable to stop smiling. “You got it.”
“Make this for me every week, and I’ll star in any play you direct, Melody Reed.” He cracked a grin. “I bet that’s an offer you can’t pass up. The worst actor you ever had on your hands in exchange for what I can only assume is a time-consuming dessert to make.”
She stood and began readying the stage as the rest of the troop filled up the room. “You’re not as bad as you think. But I’ll pass on making that on a weekly basis. You’d become an ungrateful wretch.”
Although she still needed her script in hand, practice was smooth-sailing, with only minor hiccups—until a canvas backdrop for the winter park scenes fell down, ripping through the middle. Looked like Melody would spend her Saturday morning with a couple cans of paint. Goody, goody.
“I’ll take care of it.” TJ surveyed the mess on stage when they had finished, again cutting out the kiss scene. “I’m better with paint than you are.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
“Thank you so much. Pull the door closed behind you when you’re done. It locks automatically.”
“Stay with me.” At the breathless quality of his tone, Melody paused, her pulse accelerating as her stomach tangled up into a million tiny knots. TJ wasn’t asking as her friend this time, was he? She took a shaky breath, their eyes connecting from where he stood on stage, she on the floor below. His face contracted with the smallest motion, like he was silently pleading. She could almost hear his voice.Please, Mel. Please.
Her breath came out in a rush, but she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to do. If she stayed, what would it mean? For their friendship? For their future?
The sound of her phone ringing sent her scurrying to her bag on a chair against the wall. The caller ID contained the most dreaded three-letter word she’d ever known.
Mom.
