Elijah works in a cubicle, lives with his parents, and never goes on dates. It isn’t an exciting life, but it’s safe and easy and that’s good enough. Then he meets Peter, a whirlwind of a man who leads a traveling renaissance band. Peter represents everything Eli usually avoids, but his boisterous enthusiasm is infectious… and his band needs a fiddle player. When Eli agrees to fill in for a weekend, he awakens a part of himself he thought long gone. With Peter’s help, he shakes off the dust that has settled on his soul and remembers how to have fun. But when the band asks him to join them permanently, is Eli’s newborn sense of adventure -- and insane crush on a man he barely knows -- enough to make him leave the safety of a life he’s clung to for years?

Jigs and Reels

I wore a standard medieval-style shirt on my upper half, letting the strings hang loose in a crisscross over my sternum. Nothing too crazy as far as renaissance fair outfits went, especially compared to our illustrious singer. Still, I seemed out of place in the country chic bathroom. The white-painted wood cabinets, claw-footed bathtub, and lace-curtained window begged to be inhabited by a woman in a paisley sundress and her expert DIY handyman husband. Instead, the poor room got me with my shit-stomping black boots and a black leather sporran hanging around my hips. On the bright side, I thought, if Peter decided to go pinching my ass on stage—which I wouldn’t put past him—the traditional style “purse” would hide any, er, resulting activity.


“You about done preening in there, Michael Flatley?” Hitomi asked, thudding her fist against the door. I jumped.


Chapter 8