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

As we wrapped up the set with “Wild Rover,” I let myself relax a little and enjoy our performance. The other three were all energetic and smiling, even during a slower song. Peter hopped off the stage and went ambling through the audience. By the end of the song, he’d managed to get mostly everyone joining him on the chorus and the clapping, swaying back and forth in their seats as he stood on a bench in the middle of the crowd swinging his arms like an orchestra conductor.


My brain totally stopped working as I watched him. The sun fell golden on his tanned skin, glittering on his fairy wings and offering some interesting contours to his long, legging-clad legs and hips as he swayed…My hands stopped playing out of habit—my old band always repeated once and then ended it—but the rest of them rolled on into one more repetition and I had to scramble to get my place again.


Chapter 12