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

“So where are we going?” I asked again once the moment had passed.


“I don’t like surprises,” I said.


“All right. You’ll like this one though. Trust me.”


My nerves did not like this, but something made me shut up. I subsided and let him whisk me off into the night to destinations unknown. It didn’t take long for me to have a safe guess where “destinations unknown” were. I’d lived in the area my whole life, after all. The state park outside town was a popular site for romantic moonlit strolls, though most of those typically took place on Friday and Saturday nights, prior to curfew. Sure enough, Peter turned off the main road and rolled us into a gravel lot near the park entrance.


“Are we gonna make out in the parking lot like teenagers, too?” I asked.


“We can if you want.” His eyebrows bounced suggestively.


“No, not if that wasn’t your plan.”


Chapter 19