Making Merry (A Firsts and Forever/Castaways Series Holiday Collection) Read online

  The last number of the night featured the entire troupe. We all took the stage in simple white leotards and began by performing a modern interpretation of Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy from the Nutcracker. As that song neared its conclusion, our brilliant DJ blended it seamlessly into Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses, and we kept dancing in perfectly choreographed unison as our audience laughed and applauded.

  Afterwards, we were given another standing ovation. Our emcee handed me a microphone, and I looked out over the crowd and said, “Thank you so much for being here. To finish up tonight, we’d like our crew and everyone behind the scenes to join us onstage, and we invite all of you in the audience to dance with us. Happy holidays, everyone!”

  I jogged to the side of the stage and put down the microphone before grabbing Skye’s hand. Christian and Shea joined us, and Aiden and Quinn dragged Duke back into the spotlight. We all started to dance as Elton John’s Step into Christmas played. One of my dancers pulled a cord, and squares of silver glitter fell like snow onto the stage and the audience. Skye looked delighted, and we danced with abandon as the glitter sparkled all around us.

  When the song ended, we were met with more applause, and we waved to the audience and left the stage. Skye held me close and said, “I’m so glad we didn’t miss that.” So was I.

  Backstage was total chaos, as each dancer’s friends and family flooded in to congratulate us. Someone tried to gather the troupe for a photo, and Skye handed me my hoodie and called over the noise, “I’m going to try to round up the rest of your clothes. See you in a minute.” I thanked him and pulled on the jacket before smiling for a bunch of pictures. After that, there were hugs and well wishes all around.

  On my way to the dressing room, I was intercepted by a man in a nice suit. He gave me a business card and shook my hand as he said, “Mr. Evans, your performance tonight was truly exceptional. My name is Lucas Bingham, and I represent the Credence Walker Dance Company. We’ve had our eye on you for some time, and we’d love to speak with you about joining our organization.” I mumbled something along the lines of ‘holy shit’, and he added, “I know you’re busy, so I won’t keep you. Please call me after the holidays.”

  He wished me a Merry Christmas before disappearing into the crowd, and I stared at the business card for a long moment. New York City-based Credence Walker was one of the most prestigious and well-respected dance companies in the U.S., and being asked to join them was a huge honor. I felt dazed as I slipped the card into my pocket.

  Dare: Chapter Five

  Skye was upbeat and optimistic when we got up early the next morning. He took Benny for a walk, and I made us a big breakfast before we drove to the warehouse. So far, so good.

  He studied his sculpture as he said, “I know exactly what I need to do to finish both of my projects. I’m going to construct a framework for Nana’s rainbow out of the leftover aluminum from that mobile I built last summer. I should be able to get that done in about four or five hours. As for the lovers, I can’t join them together yet. They’re so heavy that they’ll need to be loaded onto the flatbed individually. But once they’re positioned in my client’s lobby, I’m going to wrap them with that steel cable I have out back.”

  I asked, “So, it’s taking a BDSM turn?”

  Skye shook his head. “The cables will represent all that keeps a couple together: the love, companionship, shared memories, and so on. I think I can do it in a way that looks graceful, as opposed to kinky, and I’m changing its name to ‘Bound by Love’. This should unify the sculpture, in a very literal sense, and add some visual interest.”

  “It sounds like a great idea.”

  He stared at the sculptures for a long moment before saying, “I just need to get up there and adjust the head tilt of the figure on the right. Like I said yesterday, I want him to really nestle into his companion’s shoulder, and he’s not doing that.”

  That decision proved to be disastrous.

  Skye separated the couple and went to work with a crowbar. He ended up removing a couple of pieces of metal, then a couple more. Every change he made seemed to trigger a cascade effect, and the head started listing forward, which sent Skye into a near-panic.

  Three hours later, the figure was totally decapitated. The head hung from the rafters, and Skye seemed defeated as he climbed off the ladder and removed his welding mask. “I can’t believe I fucked this up so badly,” he muttered. “I’ve made dozens of sculptures, and they never spiraled out of control the way this one has.”

  I gathered him into my arms and said, “Maybe you should call your client. You said he’s a nice guy, so he’ll probably understand if you can’t get it done by tonight.”

  But he shook his head. “I promised him I’d deliver it by seven, and there’s still time to save it. I just don’t think I can do that and get Nana’s rainbow finished and installed before six, which is when the judges are arriving for the holiday decorating contest. I feel terrible about that.”

  “Nana loves you, Skye, and she’ll understand. Let’s give her a call.”

  When he agreed, I pulled out my phone and found the name Stana Dombruso in my contacts. She answered on the second ring with, “Hiya, cutie! Are you calling to tell me my rainbow’s on the way?”

  I put the phone on speaker, and Skye told her, “Just the opposite. I’m so sorry, Nana. I know how important it is to you to beat your homophobic neighbor in the holiday decorating contest, but I just couldn’t get it done in time. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Oh now, don’t beat yourself off about it,” she said. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing at her expression. “We can put up the rainbow next year, and I’ll come up with a Plan B for tonight. It’s not the end of the world!”

  “Thanks for being so understanding, Nana. I’ll send some people over right away to take down my scaffolding.”

  “Actually, let’s leave it up,” she said. “I just had a peach of an idea! Do you mind if I tell my grandsons to paint it?”

  “That’s fine. In fact, do anything you want to it.”

  “Hot damn, this is going to be fun! I need to make some calls and get the balls rolling,” she said, and we grinned at that. “Come on by tonight if you get the chance and check out my holiday display, because it’s going to be a real humdinger. My asshole neighbor won’t know what hit him!”

  After we said goodbye and disconnected the call, I said, “So, there’s one problem solved.”

  “I still feel bad, but at least she didn’t seem upset. I’m totally scrapping that rainbow and building a better one next year, and I’m starting months in advance so I won’t let her down.”

  “In that case, do you mind if I try to make something out of the pieces of this rainbow? The lights and colors were really pretty.”

  “Go right ahead.” He sighed and looked up at the giant, severed head. “While you do that, let’s see if I can pull off a Christmas miracle.”

  *****

  Skye spent the rest of the day reattaching the head and reinforcing the neck in a way that didn’t look reinforced. When he was done, it matched the artwork’s overall aesthetic. The whole sculpture looked light and airy, which was a remarkable effect to pull off, given the fact that the combined figures weighed a ton and were made of rusted metal.

  When we slid the two huge men back together on their rolling platforms, my husband sighed and said, “It’s exactly like it was when I started. After all of that, I didn’t end up nestling his head onto the other figure’s shoulder.”

  “It’s a great work of art, though. Nobody but you will ever look at that and think there’s anything wrong with it.”

  “It is what it is. Christian and Shea are going to be here any minute, and so will the truck I rented. I need to let it go. I also need to clean up real quick, because I’m a mess.”

  “There’s a change of clothes in the office for you,” I said. “I figured you’d want to look nice when you met your client.”

  He kissed my che
ek. “Thank you Dare, not just for thinking of that, but for everything. You’ve been so great throughout all of this.”

  “I’m happy to help.”

  While he’d worked on the sculpture, I’d tried to salvage Nana’s rainbow. I certainly wasn’t a metal sculptor, but I did have some basic construction skills. So when Skye emerged from the office dressed in a dark blue button-down shirt and a fresh pair of jeans, I gestured at my creations and asked, “What do you think? Are these worth dropping off at Nana’s house before we deliver the couple? It’s more or less on the way, but I know they’re not the grand vision you had of one huge rainbow.”

  The original had been built in sections to make it easy to install, and I’d bent and rearranged them into a series of smaller, freestanding rainbows, ranging in height from two to seven feet. I’d done some rewiring as well. When I flipped a switch on the soundboard Skye had built and a song began to play, the lights flashed and flickered to the beat.

  My husband beamed at me and exclaimed, “They’re fantastic, and Nana will love them! Thank you. It sounds like the truck’s pulling up right now, so let’s load these with the sculpture. They’ll be quick to install, so we might even get them up and running before the judges for the decorating contest reach Nana’s block.”

  The truck was an eighteen-wheeler with a long, open flatbed. The entire bed could be raised or lowered like a dump truck, which didn’t really help us, but the extending ramp did. When Shea and Christian arrived, the four of us worked together to get both men and their rolling platforms onto the flatbed and secured with rope. We added two ladders and the eight rainbows and tied them down, too.

  Next, we loaded Skye’s pickup with extension cords for the rainbows, the sound board, two huge spools of metal cable, several tools, and a bunch of metal brackets that Skye would use to hold the cable in place. While we did all of that, the truck driver sat by indifferently and stared at his phone. Not that I’d really expected him to help, but still.

  Shea checked the ropes holding the sculptures in place (for a third time), then said, “I think we’re set. I don’t see how you’re ever going to get these guys off their rolling platforms, though. They must weigh a thousand pounds each.”

  “My client hired a team of movers to provide some extra muscle,” Skye explained. “They’re supposed to be waiting for us when we reach the installation site.”

  Shea murmured, “Well, that’s a relief,” and put on his navy blue sweater before heading to the SUV.

  I handed the truck driver a slip of paper with Nana’s and the client’s addresses and told him, “We’ll be right behind you and watching to make sure the load doesn’t shift. I’ll call you if there seems to be a problem, but I think it’s pretty well secured. The first stop should take us less than thirty minutes, and the goal is to make it to the second location before seven p.m.”

  He muttered, “Great, whatever,” and got behind the wheel.

  I took one last look at the sculptures. Skye had used industrial-grade winches to reposition each figure on its side atop its rolling platform, and they looked like they were curled up in fetal positions, facing in opposite directions on the long flatbed. We’d locked the wheels on the platforms and tied the figures down well, so they seemed secure, but I always got nervous whenever we transported Skye’s artwork. He did too, but he flashed me a smile and a thumbs up as we headed to his truck.

  Our caravan moved through the streets of Oakland at a quicker pace than I was comfortable with, and I started to wonder if the truck driver knew what he was doing. My faith in him was shaken further when he tried to merge onto the crowded Bay Bridge. A puff of diesel smoke accompanied a pretty dicey lane change, and as a couple of cars slammed on their brakes, Skye muttered, “Oh hell.”

  The only positive was that the sculptures didn’t shift throughout all of that. They even remained stable as we climbed a few steep hills in San Francisco. I began to think we were going to pull this off.

  We reached Nana’s neighborhood around five-forty. Most of the grand mansions were decorated for the holidays with tasteful, restrained displays featuring white lights, wireframe deer, and (fake) snowy pines. The truck slowed to a crawl, and we followed it down the narrow street, made even narrower by all the cars parked on either side.

  It was pretty easy to find Nana’s house. All we had to do was follow the giant search lights and the thumping sound of techno music. Skye and I were both surprised when the truck tried to pull into Nana’s driveway, but then I leaned out the window and caught a glimpse of what had stopped him. “There’s a street fair at the end of the block, so the road’s closed,” I told my husband. “It looks like our only option will be to back out the way we came. I hope the truck driver can pull it off.”

  Skye said, “Why don’t you hop out here? I’ll try to find a place to park.”

  “Good idea. Give me just a minute to grab the sound board and extension cords out of the back of the pickup.”

  I paused on the sidewalk and grinned when I reached Nana’s house. She’d implemented Plan B like a boss. Skye’s scaffolding had been arranged in a pyramid, painted green, and was totally decked out in metallic garlands and colored lights. It held about twenty dancing go-go boys, dressed only in colorful jock straps, boots, and Santa hats. Each of the jock straps featured a dinner plate-sized, glitzy decoration on the front, and I realized after a moment that they were meant to be the ornaments on a four-story scaffolding Christmas tree. On the smallest platform at the top, a go-go boy in body glitter with a big, gold star over his package shook his money maker and seemed to be having a great time.

  Ten more go-go boys danced in the small, well-lit yard, amid inflatable reindeer and a full-size sleigh. That held a hunky, shirtless Santa, who was making out with a guy dressed like an elf. My favorite features were the lights on Nana’s short, fat palm trees, which flanked either side of the yard. The trunks had been wrapped in pink lights, and some of the palm fronds had been lined with strands of white, perfectly creating the illusion of spurting dicks. I had to wonder if that was intentional, or a happy coincidence.

  Either way, they and the rest of the ‘display’ were having the desired effect on the neighbor across the street. He stood on the sidewalk in an expensive suit, red-faced and yelling into his phone while he gestured at Nana’s house. Behind him, his yard was filled with an elegant but very boring all-white holiday display, featuring a Santa mannequin that looked an awful lot like him in a sleigh suspended in mid-air behind a row of ugly, highly stylized reindeer.

  Nana appeared at my side a moment later. She was wearing a red mini-dress with white trim, which she’d paired with a tall, pointy Santa hat, fishnet stockings, and patent-leather boots. The fact that she was in her eighties and barely five feet tall made her ensemble even more awesome.

  She beamed at me and yelled over the music, “Isn’t this great? Old man Humpington across the street is about to blow a fuse! I don’t even care if my holiday display wins the decorating contest at this point. Seeing that pompous, bigoted fucker turning the same color as my dress is all the reward I need.” His real name was Huntington. I wondered if Nana got it wrong on purpose or by accident, but it was funny either way.

  “Skye’s sorry he couldn’t get the big rainbow done for you. He really tried, but it kept folding in on itself,” I said. “We brought you a bunch of smaller rainbows instead, but I’m not sure where we’ll put them because your yard looks pretty full.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we can cram them in there somewhere,” she said, as she accompanied me to the truck. It was sort of jack-knifed into her driveway and blocking the street, which probably didn’t matter too much, since the road was closed off just half a block down.

  Nana called to some of the go-go boys, and with their help we set up the rainbows and ran the extension cords in a matter of minutes, filling every available bit of space. Then I carried the sound board to the booth on the front porch, and the lavender-haired DJ plugged it into his sound system. I did
a fist-pump when the rainbows began to flash and sparkle in time to the music.

  Skye joined me on the porch a few moments later and exclaimed, “This is so great! What Nana came up with in a pinch is much more fun than what I had planned anyway.”

  I called over the music, “This reminds me of old times.” We’d both been go-go dancers when we met, and Skye grinned and began to move to the beat. We danced for a few minutes, until something caught my eye. I gestured toward the street and said, “Looks like Nana’s about to get busted.”

  A police cruiser had pulled up with red and blue lights flashing, and I cheered when Duke and Finn stepped out of the vehicle in their uniforms. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that the dispatcher had sent cops we actually knew. Nana tended to require more police intervention than most, and at some point the department must have learned that those two knew how to deal with her. Skye said, “I don’t think this is going to go how the neighbor expects it to.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Hey, how are we doing on time?”

  “Great, but we should get going. I hope the truck driver can back out of here.”

  We stepped off the porch and went up to the cab of the truck, and Skye asked, “Where’d he go?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe try calling him on his cell.”

  Skye pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped the screen, and then he muttered, “Well, we’re screwed.”

  “Why?”

  He held up the phone so I could read the text from the truck driver, which said: My boss isn’t paying me enough for this shit. Call him and tell him to get another driver out here, because I quit. No fucking way would I be able to back this rig out of here. Also, fuck that shady truck driving academy. I graduated four weeks ago, and they did NOT prepare me for shit like this.

  Skye sighed and said, “We were so damn close, too. I really thought I was going to make that deadline.”

  “It isn’t your fault. Who could have predicted this?”