Can't Let You Go by Jenny B Jones

alterations. How crazy is that?” She clapped her hands over her mouth. “I just made a dress commitment!”
    “I’m so proud. Don’t move.” I whipped my phone out of my back pocket and snapped a quick photo. “I’ll send it to your mother.”
    Frances smiled for the picture, then threw her arms around me in a hug. “I’m getting married, Katie. The dress makes it so real, doesn’t it?”
    “You have less than three weeks left as a single girl.”
    “And before the big move.”
    I didn’t even want to think about that.
    Five minutes later, we stepped out of Vivi’s, ready to move on to Hank’s Hot Dog Hangout, a food trailer that promised Chicago-style dogs of twenty-three varieties.
    “Oh, no!” Frances thrust the plastic-bagged dress into my arms. “I think I forgot my dad’s credit card. He’ll make me elope if I lose that.”
    I stood in front of Vivi’s, holding a wedding dress and hoping Frances would hurry. I had twelve minutes before I was due back at the diner.
    “Hello, Katie.”
    The sky could’ve rained ice and the clouds thrown snow, and I wouldn’t have been as chilled as I was at that voice.
    “Ian.”
    The world moved in slow motion as my brain registered it truly was Ian walking down the sidewalk, mere feet away. I told myself to move, to say something, to just do something. It was much like those horror movies where the girl fell to the ground, and you knew the knife-wielding slasher was coming, but she couldn’t seem to recall how to stand to her own two feet.
    “You look surprised to see me.”
    Surprised? That was like saying the Middle East was a little tumultuous. That the ocean was big enough to swim in. That Channing Tatum was a wee bit attractive. Surprised was a paltry word for what I felt.
    “What . . .what are you doing here, Ian?”
    He smiled. He was always smiling. It was one of the things I had fallen for. Me and about a dozen other women. His thick, dark hair was a contrast to his ever-present white button down, crisply ironed and starched. He wore charcoal dress pants, as if on his way to a meeting. Instead of busting back into my life.
    “I came to see you,” he said. “Didn’t your grandmother tell you?”
    I guess she had attempted to. But why would I have believed Ian would actually come here? “I don’t understand.”
    “I’m here for you,” he said. “You and your theater.”
    I opened my mouth with a slicing retort when I noticed a woman walking toward us. My eyes narrowed as she came into focus. “Her?” I was going to kill this man. Right on the Mayberry streets of my hometown. “You brought her ?” His little two-bit twit Felicity sauntered her way to Ian, her heeled feet daring to touch the sacred ground of In Between. “You two need to get out of my city. I don’t know what Maxine told you, and I have no idea what you’re up to, but we don’t need your help.”
    My ex-boyfriend did a thorough study of my outfit, his nose all but wrinkling as if smelling the Queen’s pantyhose. “What is that shirt?”
    I crossed my arms over a top big enough to shelter an entire kindergarten class. “It’s my new uniform. I have a job. Can we get back to why you’re in the neighborhood?”
    Felicity’s tone dripped disdain like syrup on a hot cake. “Micky’s Diner? You’re a . . .”
    “Waitress, yes.”
    “Why are you waiting tables?” Ian asked.
    “Isn’t it what all starving actresses do?”
    “You were hardly starving before you quit and deserted our production.”
    “Well, now I produce eggs and bacon. And you cut me from the show, if you recall.”
    “I gave you a break. You needed one. You should’ve been thanking me instead of—”
    “Thanking you?” The nerve of this man! “You are the most arrogant, egocentric—”
    “The fact of the matter is I’m here to help you,” Ian said.
    “Do I even want to know what she’s here to help with?”
    “We both quit Much Ado . I’ll be directing a Samuel Beckett