Making Promises (6 page)

It helped the guy’s image that he was well over six-foot-four and had long black hair down to his waist.

Shane had, oddly enough, actually been focused on the costume.

“It’s amazing,” he said to the nice woman. “Where does someone get something like that?” He gave a look to her many colored—and many layered—skirts and her flowered bodice (which in no way color coordinated with anything else in her outfit).

“You’ll see—after you eat lunch, just follow that path down there.

Most of the vendors are selling
something
that will help you make your costume. You get here an ordinary wank in a T-shirt, but you can leave like a knight in shining armor if you like.”

The little girl in her lap took a drink of mom’s soda and pushed a mop of the brightest red hair out of her face. “I don’t wanna be a knight. I wanna be a princess!”

“Absolutely, baby,” Mom said dryly. “You can be nothing other than a princess.” She met Shane’s eyes. “And you can be a princess too,” she told him soberly, and he laughed outright, because she was friendly and because, like Deacon, she made him feel welcome.

“Probably somewhere in between,” he said with a wink, and she laughed. Her husband met her then with a handful of food balanced in his arms, and the illusion that he was part of a happy family vanished. The music started then, right there in the middle of the food square. Shane stood up with his food and moved with the edges of the crowd who were gathered to see his sister dance.

Kimmy had grown in her senior year of high school, and it had almost broken her heart when she’d reached five feet, seven inches tall.

The fact was dancers needed to be tiny—the better for their partners to hoist them over their heads or whip them around like ribbons made of muscle and grit. It also kept the amount of weight pounding down on delicate joints and tender cartilage bearable—but still, Kimmy had kept dancing.

She had danced through injury, through demotion from one of L.A.’s premiere dance troupes to finding work where she could get it. It had been ten years since she’d discovered the Faire circuit—performers who were booked in Faires (and there were Renaissance, Celtic, Tudor, Viking, Dickens, or some other old European events happening all over the country on nearly every weekend of the year) made their living doing something they loved. As Kimmy had been telling Shane for ten years, what was valued on the Faire circuit was showmanship, craft, and true athleticism—not who had the youthful body capable of doing the move of the week.

The woman who stepped into the ring sinuously, dressed as Titania, possessed all of those qualities—showmanship, craft, and a truly gifted grace and athleticism. She also had some meat and muscle on her bones—

a thing for which Shane was grateful. Her bulimic days to keep a dancer’s weight were obviously over, and he thought she was beautiful. She was wearing a green unitard and tights, and her long, blond-streaked brown hair hung in waves down her back. Her brown eyes slanted mysteriously at the crowd as she stopped as though listening and then grabbed the 24

strong drapery suspended from a hard-bolted scaffold, erected directly above the dancing square.

As she climbed, a costumed man appeared—shirtless, but with a hairy pair of trousers on. Truly hairy—he also had pointed ears, long hair, and eyebrows colored in to wickedly arch. He began the narration as Puck, telling the story of Titania’s seduction by Oberon, and Shane was lost. He still saw small things—the bandages wrapped around Kimmy’s feet and knees were worn threadbare and showed him that she was still plagued by injuries, but the way her body moved like silk in water showed him that she was doing what she loved, and it was worth it. The way Kimmy’s mysterious smile never wavered even as she worked her dancer’s body around the hanging draperies, seeming to fly above the ground, told him that her heart was still in this hard, difficult work—and the way her hair clung to her face with sweat told him that she’d learned that nothing you really loved came without its price.

Shane was so proud of her he actually felt his chest swell. His whole life, he’d wanted to be lovely and graceful, he’d wanted to move like his heart moved, and here was his twin sister, doing just that, and she was beautiful.

And then Oberon entered, and Shane’s brain took a vacation.

Oberon was supposed to be dancing in the forest before he caught sight of Titania’s loveliness and became enchanted. Shane was completely enchanted by Oberon.

He was small—maybe an inch or so shorter than Shane’s sister—and slightly built. His hair was blond, tightly curled, and came to a point on his forehead above almond-shaped gray eyes. He was… delicate. Pretty. He had high, Slavic cheekbones and pouty lips and a little diamond of a chin, complete with a dimple, and Shane’s heart tripped over itself and fell in a puddle as he began to move.

He moved like poetry, like music, like song. Birds were clumsier, cats more awkward, snakes less sinuous. The music was slow—it was time for a power exhibition—and Oberon performed. He was not dancing on a floor in toe-shoes; he was dancing barefoot, his feet wrapped like Kimmy’s, indicating injury or pain, and still he moved as though his body was pure power, and not flesh and bone at all.

Slowly he extended his foot, his leg parallel to the ground in front of him. Just as slowly, he raised his foot, then grasped it, holding his leg Making Promises

nearly flush with his side before he left his toes pointing to the blue sky and bent backward, taking his weight on his hands and making a graceful extension under the golden October sunshine.

His other foot came off the ground, and he held the pose until Kimmy swirled the sturdy draperies around his feet. He tangled himself in them, and then—as the narrator told of Titania taking a fancy to the dancing faerie king—used the draperies and his amazing body to haul himself upward to join Kimmy for acrobatics in the air.

Please God, let him like guys.

Shane was half ashamed of the thought. It wasn’t like he had a chance—even a chance of a chance—with such a person. The man clasped hands with Kimmy, and the two started a slow spin, hands clasped, legs extended in the draperies, bodies stretched out over the ground.

Oh God. It almost seemed impossible that Shane was breathing the same dust.

It was just, Shane thought, his eyes hopelessly glued to that lithe body rippling with lean, corded muscle, that it would be nice to dream. It was like when a middle-aged woman, happily married, found out that her favorite movie star was gay. It broke her heart a little just to know that there wasn’t a chance even in fantasyland for the two of them to ever touch.

Shane just wanted to know that there was a chance of touching. Just to know it, he thought with a painfully thudding heart, just to know there was a chance…. It might make celibacy worth it just to know someone that beautiful might ever touch him.

The dance continued and time stopped. When it was over, Shane clapped with the rest of the patrons in the food court, and the three performers stood together, bowed, and set up the tip basket. Shane waited until the crowds had cleared out and walked over and dropped a twenty in the basket Kimmy was holding, and she looked up at him in surprise.

When she saw who it was, she passed the basket off to Oberon and squealed, launching herself at Shane with enough enthusiasm to make the three-hour trip to Gilroy completely worth it.

“You
came
! Oh God, Shaney, you
came
!”

Shane laughed and hugged her, picking her up and swinging her around. “How many sisters you think I’ve got, sweetheart?” he asked as he 26

put her down. (
Three
, he answered himself, if he counted Benny and Amy, which he did.)

“Did you see? Did you like?” Kimmy asked excitedly, bouncing up and down, and then she stopped and flushed. “I’m sorry—I’ve been trying to be less about Kimmy and more about the rest of the world.” She paused like a schoolgirl remembering her times tables. “How was your trip? Do you like the Faire? Will you be staying long?”

“I’m here for the rest of the day, Kim. I’ve got a hotel room, but I need to leave early in the morning. I was hoping we could go out for dinner or something—even if it’s with your friends and all.” He took a chance and swung his chin around to indicate Oberon and Puck, both of whom were hanging out like friends to see who the behemoth hugging their Titania might be.

Kimmy’s face lit up, and Shane forgot her pretty companion for a moment. His sister was honestly happy to see him.

“You’ll stay?” she asked again hesitantly, and Shane smiled, feeling very happy he’d come.

“Yeah—how many more performances you got?”

“What, Mikhail—three today?” She grabbed Shane’s hand and looked behind her at Oberon, who was showing no signs of bugging off into the dusty wonder of the Faire.

“You have three,” he replied in voice that held a slight accent. “I have only one more.”

“Oh yeah,” Kimmy said, frowning in thought. “I’d forgotten.

Mikhail isn’t a regular member of the troupe—he’s taking some of the slack off Kurt while he’s healing up.” She pitched her voice conspicuously over her shoulder. “Although we’d
love
for him to join us on a permanent basis, wouldn’t we, Brett?”

“I’m all for it!” Brett muttered with a lewd and playful waggle of his eyebrows, and Mikhail cast a furtive look at Shane and blushed.

Shane tried very hard to keep walking and not just turn around and stare. Did that blush mean what he thought it did? He dismissed the idea of what Brett might be to Mikhail—why would he blush?

“I have things to do this season,” Mikhail was saying softly. “If there’s still room in the troupe when those things are done, I’d be happy to join, Kim—you know that.”

Kim’s face softened. “Yeah, I know.”

“Where we going?” Shane asked. He was being dragged past myriad vendors, all of them in costume and calling raucously to the passers-by to come see the wares set up in a variety of tents.

“Well, I’m going to do my next costume change!” Kimmy laughed as she dragged Shane behind what looked like the Faire proper to a set of smaller tents behind the vendor’s tents. “And then I think we’re going to go get you some clothes. You’re sticking out like a sore thumb, Shane.

Was that really the effect you wanted?”

Shane cast a sideways look at Mikhail and knew he turned red.

“No,” he said thickly. “Sore thumbs hurt.” Christ. Did he really say that?

Jesus, Shane, try not to be such a psychopath, would ya? Thanks,
Brandon, you big fucking prick—by all means take up residence in my
head-space right now.

But Mikhail looked up at him with a smile. “Da,” he said, his accent even stronger. “Then we must bandage this one in fine Faire clothes—is your wallet thick enough for good healing?”

Shane grinned. “Consider it a ‘green-thumb’ kind of hospital,” he said happily, and although Mikhail was laughing, he realized that Kim was looking at him with something like pity.

“Still talking in code, huh, Shaney?”

Shane let out a big heaving sigh. “Yeah, Kimmy, sorry ’bout that.

But I’d love to go shopping. And maybe while we’re at it, you could help me find this shit too?” He pulled out his carefully made list and gave it to his sister, who gave it to Mikhail.

“You have a girlfriend?” Mikhail asked, and dammit, there could be no mistaking the disappointment in his voice.

“More like a little sister and a niece,” Shane corrected hastily, and Kimmy said, “Hey!”

Shane shrugged, turning his attention back to Kim. “Sorry, sweetheart, but it’s true. I’ve sort of got… I don’t know. A family at home. Brothers—one of them a real pain in the ass, but I think he loves me like a brother anyway. A sister—two, actually—and they’ve got babies. It’s….” He grimaced, remembering the day he’d met Deacon and Crick and their motley crowd in Deacon’s kitchen. Motley, oddly assorted, with complicated stories, but still family.

“It’s complicated,” he said at last lamely. “But mostly it’s family. I love ’em.”

“And I am?” Kimmy asked, her face set in stony lines. Kimmy never had liked not being the center of attention.

“Always invited for holidays,” Shane told her gravely, and her face relaxed a little.

“Well, I guess it’s good you’ve got someone the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the year,” she said grudgingly. “Wait here.

I’ll go change.” She’d stopped in front of a tent big enough to sleep maybe four people and ducked inside.

She left Shane looking awkwardly at her two companions, trying to reconcile “Brett” to “Puck” and “Mikhail” to “Oberon.”

“So,” Shane said, wishing he could think of some way to be smooth,

“you, uhm, don’t do the Faire circuit full time?” Mikhail looked at him hopefully, and Brett grunted, “I’m out of here,” and socked Mikhail on the arm. “Remember, we’ve got a show at two o’clock—try not to be jerking off before curtain.” And with that, the guy with the long hair and hairy pants stalked off.

“Asshole,” Mikhail muttered sourly at his back. “And no,” he continued, turning to Shane with a slight smile, “I don’t do the Faire circuit full time. It’s sort of my….” He paused, searching for a word.

“Mad money. I teach dance during the week. I’m saving for something, and that’s where this”—he indicated the tip bucket—“usually goes. And that reminds me….”