I shot a look across the tent toward Caitlin, who shook her head at me emphatically. She patted the little leather pouch at her hip I’d gotten her the previous weekend. I raised my eyebrows in a silent entreaty that she keep her phone in there, and she nodded back in understanding. We were only in our second weekend of Faire, but we’d gotten pretty good at the whole communicating-with-our-eyes thing.

Meanwhile, this itch wasn’t going away. While Simon finished up his lecture on the evils of cell phones or whatever, I tried shifting around some more inside my costume, but once again that did nothing. Annoyed, I slammed my closed fist into my side. That . . . that actually helped. I did it a couple more times, until I realized Simon had stepped off the stage and was staring at me while I stood there punching myself in the side.

“Everything okay?” The tremble in his voice said he was trying not to laugh.

I opened my fist and turned the last punch into a smoothing motion down my side, which fooled no one. “Fine,” I said breezily. His eyebrows went up, and I sighed. “I had an itch.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Well, that makes more sense than you being a masochist.”

I gestured to my outfit. “I think wearing this all day qualifies me as a masochist all on its own.”

“Hmmm.” His hum in response was noncommittal, but the way he looked at me was more than assessing my costume for period-appropriateness. He stepped closer, and all my resolve about avoiding pirates melted away as I remembered the way his mouth had tasted. “Listen.” His voice was pitched low, just for my ears. “Do you think—”

“Park! There you are, Park. Been looking for you!”

I jumped at the mention of my name—well, my nickname—and turned toward where Mitch bellowed at me from the other end of the tent. I threw up a hand to wave him over and he in turn threw an arm around my neck in greeting when he got to me.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Taking a long hot shower and thanking my lucky stars I don’t have to wear this costume for a week.”

He shook his head. “Wrong answer. We’re going to Jackson’s tonight.”

“What? Going to what?” Then it clicked. “Do you mean that pizza place, just before the highway?” I’d driven past the dingy, squat-looking brown building several times, but never felt like I had enough hand sanitizer on me to venture inside.

“Are we going out tonight?” Stacey had joined the party, which meant there was no getting out of it now.

“Oh, it’s so much more than the pizza place just before the highway.” Mitch didn’t answer her question, choosing to rhapsodize on the qualities of Jackson’s instead. “The food is good and the drinks are strong. The best part is that it’s always happy hour.”

“It doesn’t look like much from the outside.” Simon’s reasonable tone cut through Mitch’s enthusiasm. “But they make a good pizza and the drink prices are cheap.” He shrugged. “A lot of people go there on Sunday nights after Faire.” He wasn’t extending an invitation the way Mitch was; he was imparting information. That was all. A feeling I didn’t like prickled at the back of my neck.

“Exactly.” Mitch pointed at Simon, who had already backed away a step or two from the group. It was like the sun going behind a cloud, and I felt a chill from it. “You’re coming too, right, Captain?”

Simon shrugged a nonresponse, but I was still confused. “Why Sunday, though? Isn’t Saturday night the party night?”

“Not on Faire weekends.” Simon raised his eyebrows in rebuke. “Believe me, stage fighting in the hot sun with a hangover is something you only ever do once.”

“Good point.” The wisdom in that was obvious, and I was annoyed with myself for even asking the question.

“Besides, Simon and me”—Mitch gestured between the two of them—“a few others, we’re teachers. It’s summer, so we don’t have to go to work on Monday.”

“Chris doesn’t open the bookstore on Monday, either.” Suddenly that made a lot more sense.

“Right. See? Sunday is the perfect night for the Faire cast to blow off steam.”

Wow. When I’d first met Mitch, I wouldn’t have thought he was capable of putting together a cohesive argument, but here we were. Sure, said argument was about drinking, but still. I was impressed.

“Yeah, you should come, Em!” I knew enough about Stacey by now to know she was cut from the same cloth as Mitch—always up for a night out. “Come on, Simon, tell her. It’s a good time, right?”

He shrugged again. “Yeah. I mean, if you want to.” He sounded completely disinterested; he couldn’t care less if I went out with them or not. He’d turned into the old Simon, the one who wanted nothing to do with me. He’d withdrawn from me in increments ever since Stacey and Mitch had arrived.

“Okay, so with Park and Stace, that’s three, and you’re coming too, Captain, so that’s four. I’ll work on the chess guys today, see how much of a party we can get out there tonight.”

Simon’s lips curled up in a smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “Sure. Yeah. Maybe I will.” Everything in his body language said he was looking for a way out of this conversation. The prickling on the back of my neck intensified. Before Mitch showed up, he’d been about to ask me something, and I wanted to know what it was. Because if it had to do with kissing me again, I was all in.

“‘Maybe.’” Mitch shook his head, clearly disappointed. “Yeah, I know what that means.”

Simon took the rebuke with another limp smile and a wave of his hand. “I need to finish getting ready. See you out there.”

No, I wanted to say. Stay and talk to me some more. Or drag me behind a tent and kiss me again. Just do something so I know what’s going on here. Instead, I turned to Mitch after Simon walked away. “What does that mean?”

Mitch scoffed. “It means he’s not coming. He says that to shut me up. Getting that guy to go out is like pulling teeth.”

“Not everyone is as social as you are, Mitch.” Stacey nudged him with a grin.

“Yeah, I know, but . . .” Mitch shook his head. “I thought he was a by-the-book nerd when we were kids, but it’s even worse now. Like he’s twenty-seven going on fifty.”

I nodded in agreement, but my mind whirled. Twenty-seven. Something was important about that number, but I wasn’t sure what.

“He is not.” Stacey smacked Mitch on the shoulder, and the action broke my train of thought. “You need to stop.”

“I thought that dude would lighten up once he went away to college, you know, out from under everyone’s thumb.” Mitch sighed. “But then he came right back. It’s a damn shame.” In Mitch’s world, everyone should be having a good time at all times.

“It’s not his fault,” Stacey said. “You know how he gets. It’s that time of year.”

Something inside me stirred at her words, like a memory I couldn’t quite catch. This time of year . . .

Mitch shook his head again before reaching up to pull off his T-shirt. “He needs to move on at some point.” He stowed his shirt in his gym bag and picked up his claymore, indicating that he’d already mentally moved on from the conversation. “Okay, girls, time to start the show.” He twirled the giant sword like it was a toy. “Break some hearts and fight some pirates.”

I rolled my eyes and smiled, but as he left, my attention turned back to Simon, who was on the other end of the tent now. He chatted with some of the other cast members dressed as pirates, his little pirate clique, as he finished getting ready for the day. I whooshed out a breath as he buttoned himself into his vest, a black leather one today. How was I getting turned on by someone putting on more clothes?

His words echoed in my head. Do you think . . . Did I think what? There had been this split second of an almost-moment between us, before Mitch had interrupted. Like the ice had been broken by our kiss the previous day, and he saw me now as a person. Not just a wench in a corset—sorry, a bodice. But the moment hadn’t lasted. As soon as we’d started talking about socializing outside of Faire he’d withdrawn completely, like my ex had. I knew the signs by now. I was an expert at he’s just not that into you.

In a flash, I was back at the last party Jake and I had gone to together, sometime last fall. A networking event at his first firm, the small one where he’d been a promising new associate. He’d worked the room like the smooth attorney he was fast becoming, and it was there that he met the senior partner at the big firm that he left his first job—and me—to join. At that party, he’d hardly introduced me to anyone, and if he did I was “his friend Emily.” Not girlfriend, and certainly not fiancée. Friend. After an hour or so he’d abandoned me to make connections on his own, as I was clearly holding him back. I’d adhered myself to the open bar, nursing a cabernet and feeling about two feet tall.

Now I felt that way again, without the benefit of unlimited alcohol to drown myself in.

I probably should get the message: Simon wasn’t interested. Besides, I shouldn’t want him to be. I shouldn’t want to be anywhere near someone who made me feel the way Jake had. That kiss had been an aberration, and I should forget it had happened.