“If he’s guilty of anything, it’s of another attempt at matchmaking, which happened to work this time.”
“But he set us up!”
“He saw two unhappy people who needed someone to love. Bernie’s not devious enough to do anything other than that.”
“No, but Maxie is,” she added venomously.
Deacon shrugged, he had to admit that was true. Maxie was devious and underhanded, unlike Bernie.
“I’ll kill her then!”
“Is it such a bad thing? Us being together, is it bad?”
She shook her head. “I feel as if we’ve been manipulated, that’s all. I don’t like the feeling.”
His kisses stilled any further protest. She kicked the door shut and they were not disturbed for some time.
A tentative tap on the door, around five, alerted them.
“Yeah! What?” Deacon called distractedly.
He tried to straighten his clothing, but it was pointless. Kacy combed her hair with her fingers, fixing her sweater and pulled out a mirror to check her make up. The lip gloss was smeared irreparably.
“It’s Mac,” he called through the door. “My crew and I are gonna head home. Mr. Sawyer said knock off at five, that okay by you, boss?”
Deacon opened the door. “Yeah, that’s cool, Mac. See you guys tomorrow. Thanks.”
Mac looked past Deacon’s shoulder and winked at Kacy. “Night, ma’am. See you kids tomorrow.” He tipped his hard hat and left with a grin.
“Let’s go home, Deacon. You’re tired and so am I. I’ll gather the plans and we can go over them after supper. We’ll order out pizza or something. I don’t think Dino has anything planned, but I’ll ask him before we go.”
A quick kiss and she dashed out. He heard her talking to Dino in the hallway. Hobbling out the door, he saw Kacy kiss Dino on the cheek and thank him for the lights. He looked pleased. One thing Deacon gave the guy, he loved making people happy. He was one of the most generous men Deacon had ever met.
They called for a pizza as soon as they got home. Deacon got a quick shower, and Kacy laid the set plans out on the huge dining room table. When he got out, she went in. By the time she came out, toweling her hair, the pizza had arrived. They sat in the living room eating and chatting happily. When they had cleaned up their mess, they sat in the dining room to go over the new set plans.
“Has Dino seen these yet?”
“Not got them finished yet. I don’t like to show a director unfinished plans, they want too many changes.”
“This is great. It keeps the general feeling of the other, but you’ve eliminated those impossible angles. Have you done a front elevation yet?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got a rough rendering in the office. Not to scale and it’s only pencil. By tomorrow afternoon I should have that done. How is the lighting plot coming?”
“I’ve got the major stage areas covered, but some of it will be dependent upon blocking, of course.” She was so excited, she jumped up and walked around the table, heading briskly for the office. She returned, carrying his drawing.
“This is terrific! Do we have scene painters yet?”
“The college kids will be doing that, supposedly. I may end up doing the majority of the detail work myself, unless they’re really fast learners.”
Kacy gazed at him with an unreadable expression on her face. She looked like a little girl on Christmas morning, who had been handed the most fabulous present ever.
“You know, I am so enjoying working with you. I dunno, you make it easy for me. This was an aspect of my life that Pete couldn’t ever really share. Even if we were both in theater, our emphasis was so different. I never understood why he did the stunts.” Her voice trailed off.
Taking her little hands in his big ones, Deacon drew her into his embrace, his cheek against her hair. “When I was a kid, I had nothing and nobody. I was one of those kids abandoned by everyone—parents, teachers, foster parents, society. The scrawny, smart, weird kid no one wanted to be around. I was a total geek.” He chuckled as she looked at him in disbelief. “Then I got into theater when I was in high school. The foster family I was living with wasn’t too bad, and the theater teacher was just awesome. It gave me a direction, an outlet, a reason to keep going. When I went to college, it was a dream come true.”
“Where did you go?”
“Carnegie-Mellon”
“Really? Very impressive! That’s where you met Bernie then? Pete met him in boarding school. He, Dino and Pete were a trifecta of trouble.”
“I was strictly a public school kid.”
“Pete was adopted, did I tell you that?”
“No, you didn’t mention it.”
©2021 Dellani Oakes
Dellani Oakes 