Well Played Quotes

“I wonder if what you’re seeing as a cage is obligation instead of love. They can look the same, especially when it comes to family. It’s hard to break free from that, and some people never do.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“I love cats... I’ve never had one myself, but they’ve always fascinated me. They’re these perfect little predators, yet we let them curl up on our laps like they wouldn’t eat our faces if we died in the night. Hmm, that got morbid. They’re also really soft, and I hear that sometimes they let you pet their bellies. I like that.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Daniel chose that moment to join us; I saw him over Simon’s shoulder, walking up to our little group. Something must have shown in my face because Simon turned around just as Daniel walked up.

“Hey, good morning.” Daniel inclined his head toward Simon in greeting, but his expression was careful. He met my eyes and raised his eyebrows a fraction. The message was clear: were we public with our relationship? Canoodling at a wedding was one thing, but day-to-day was something else. This was my town, and these were my people. He’d follow my lead in this.

Well, the hell with that. I stepped up to his side and rose onto my toes, skating a hand around his ribs to steady myself. With me on my toes he only had to bend a little to kiss me, and thankfully he took the hint, brushing his lips over mine. “Morning,” I said around a smile. We were public. We were public as hell.

Simon coughed. “Morning, Daniel. Everything okay with the Kilts?” Emily elbowed him, and he gave her a what the hell did I do? look.

“He’s not here on business,” Emily said, and I pressed my lips together hard to keep from laughing.

Simon blinked at Daniel and me, then closed his mouth with a snap. “Right. Of course.” He shook his head. “I knew that.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Ever since I’d made the decision to stay home, my parents had lived by the mantra of “take your time.” It was nice that they liked me being around and were in no hurry for me to strike out on my own. But every once in a while, I wondered if taking my time should be taking this long.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Are you sure you don’t want to get married in costume?” April shook a sugar packet into her coffee before stirring in the cream. “You’d look so cool as a pirate’s bride.”

Emily shook her head, not looking up from her tablet. “Simon vetoed that pretty much immediately.”

“Too bad.” April sighed dramatically. “Because that would have made Stacey and me your . . .” Her voice quavered, and when I looked over at her, she was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “. . . your bridesmateys.” She barely got the word out before she sputtered into a laugh, and my own giggle burst out before I could check it.

Emily snorted a laugh of her own but shook her head. “You’re the worst”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“But I’d confessed one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Takeout Chinese and home renovation shows on cable. Something about lo mein going great with schadenfreude.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“His voice caught, and he spared one sidelong glance at his beer, but turned back to me. “I still remember the first day I saw you, here at this Faire. I don’t remember what you said, but I remember your smile, and as far as I was concerned, that was it. You were it. But I’m . . . you know, me.” There was that awkward laugh again.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“wonder if what you’re seeing as a cage is obligation instead of love. They can look the same, especially when it comes to family. It’s hard to break free from that, and some people never do.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“I have to say first that getting your message the other night was such a surprise. But . . .”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Dex,”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“D”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Dueling Kilts’ fanpage.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Dex MacLean”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Anastasia.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“the man on the other side of the screen was his cousin. Daniel.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“What kind of Cyrano de Bergerac bullshit is that?”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Dex! Dude, how’s it going?”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“I raised an eyebrow. “Well? Aren’t you going to answer it?” He pressed his lips together hard before making a sigh of defeat. Then he pulled his phone out of his back pocket, still ringing, my name on the display. He hit the red button on his phone at the same time I did on mine.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“I stole an appraising glance at him as we got our second round of drinks, and I reached deep inside for the high school girl that I knew still lived inside me.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“I had no one to blame but myself. Hadn’t I chosen this cage? Willingly walked into it and locked the door behind me? I didn’t know what it would take to finally break out of it.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“In a lot of cultures the dragonfly symbolizes change.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“You know, love songs say crap like “love will set you free,” but lately I’ve been thinking that love is more like a cage. The most beautiful cage, with gold filigree and diamonds on the bars. But a cage nonetheless.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Last night with him had been perfect, in every single way. I wanted to tag every second of it with our names.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“What the hell is wrong with you two?" I closed my laptop with a snap and took my phone back from Emily. "You're both nerds, you know that? In this century we don't go straight for a Cyrano reference. We call it catfishing.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“One necklace wasn't enough retail therapy to keep this melancholy at bay.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Three car doors slammed in quick staccato as we got out. For a long moment we looked around at the lot, where we were just one in a massive sea of cars. Patrons who parked in the lot of the Willow Creek Faire could see the entrance when they got out of their cars: a two-dimensional castle façade that some volunteers had put together about five years ago. But not here. Our entire Faire could probably fit in this parking lot, and all we could see around us was row after row of cars. Like parking at Disney World, but without the trams or mouse ears.

“Holy shit.” April wasn’t part of our Faire, but even she sounded impressed. “Where’s the entrance?”

“Up that way.” I couldn’t see the gates I was pointing toward, but the stream of people told me I was indicating the right way.

“A little bit of a hike, then.” April looked behind us, where the grassy lot continued to fill slowly with cars. “Holy shit,” she said again. “This isn’t a Faire. This is a town.”

“Yeah.” Mitch had been here before—so had I; if you grew up around here you went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival at least once during your childhood—but even his eyes were a little wide at the vastness of it all. “This place is . . . It’s pretty big.” He paused. “That’s what she said.”

I was too nervous to snicker, but April elbowed him in the ribs, and that was good enough.

“Okay. We’re going in.” He reached over his head for the back of his T-shirt, pulling it off and tossing it into the back of the truck.

April sighed. “All right, Kilty. Naked enough?”

“Look on the bright side.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her as he stuck his keys into the sporran he wore attached to the kilt. “I’m not working this Faire. Which means I get to wear this kilt the way it’s meant to be worn.”

I coughed. I didn’t want to think about what Mitch was or was not wearing under there. Which was sad, because thinking about Mitch in a kilt used to be one of my favorite hobbies. The man was born to wear that green plaid”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Comparing our Faire to the Maryland Renaissance Festival was ridiculous. If Willow Creek’s Faire was a small town, then the Maryland Ren Fest was New York City. The Big . . . Turkey Leg? Whatever. You couldn’t compare the two was what I meant.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“He glanced over his shoulder, and he raised his eyebrows at me. The message was clear: Should I ask?

But before I could use my own eyebrows to telegraph something back—like No, I’m chickening out, get us out of here immediately—Dex followed Mitch’s line of sight and spotted me. Dammit. “Hey, Stace.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Sorry. Um. So that’s the ugly truth.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What ugly truth?”

“That I live with my parents.” I spread my arms in defeat. “You are now welcome to flee in terror.”

He made a show of looking around the living area, then walking past me into the kitchen. “I don’t see them here,” he said. “Are they both in the bathroom?”

I rolled my eyes. “No.”

“Under your bed? Kind of a tight fit under there.”

“No,” I said again, but this time with a laugh in my voice.

“Then I don’t see the problem.” He shrugged. “You live near your parents. You’re parents-adjacent. I knew that already, remember? You’re close with your parents.”

“Literally.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played

“Now, Daniel and I propped ourselves up with pillows in his bed, our legs stretched out in front of us, passing the lo mein and dumpling cartons back and forth, digging into them with chopsticks while we heckled the married couple with more money than sense on the television.

“Really?” I yelled. “You have a quarter of a million dollars to renovate a Philadelphia row house, and that’s the cheap garbage tile you pick for the bathroom?”

“They have to make up for the money they spent replacing those hardwood floors somehow.” Daniel crunched into an eggroll.

I tsked and shook my head. “They could have refinished the original ones for half that, easily.”

“Oh, yeah?” He bumped my shoulder with his. “Refinish a lot of floors, do you?”

“I watch a lot of TV where other people refinish a lot of floors. I think that makes me an expert.”

He considered that. “Close enough. I’ll accept that.”

I slurped up one more bite of noodles while the couple on the screen bickered about the color of the shower tile. Their marriage wasn’t going to last beyond the renovation of that house. “I wonder what it’s like,” I finally said.

“I think the green would have looked better, but that’s not the hill I want to die on.”

“No . . .” I passed the lo mein carton to him. “I mean having a space like that. My place would fit in their kitchen, you know? I watch shows like this and wonder what it would be like to live that kind of life. Where you have an amazing space like that, and the money to make it exactly what you want.”
― Jen DeLuca, Well Played