Crossover Crossroads (The Kell and Maille Story)

021: Confrontation

Maille sat up as the phone on her nightstand rang again and she answered it sleepily. "Hello?"

"Maille? Maille? Is that you? What are you doing? Did I wake you up?" It was Melia. Maille turned the clock on the nightstand to face her and was startled to see it was almost two in the afternoon. She'd never in her life stayed in bed till two. Her braids fell from all over to hide her face and she fingered them remembering last night when she had fallen asleep while Kell braided them.

"It's me." She whispered, still too groggy to say more.

"Are you sick?" Melia demanded in a faintly exasperated tone that normally would have had Maille scrambling for whatever she anticipated Melia wanted.

"No. I'm just tired."

"What in the world? First, you skip practice, then Michael says you've quit the band. What is going on? Is this because I didn't bring you home the other night? Seriously, Maille, I couldn't find you."

"You didn't want to take me home." Maille said, twining her fingers in the pillowcase.

"What makes you say that? Of course, I wanted to take you home. This is about that, isn't it? Are you mad at Meg as well?"

"I'm not mad," Maille said. "I'm just done."

"Done? What does that mean?"

"I'm sure Michael canceled the gig, right?"

"He didn't cancel it, he found someone to replace you," Melia said snidely, and Maille felt the required stab of pain, but in her heart, she determined not to be sad. It was what she'd known already, that she was replaceable.

If being with Kell was teaching her nothing else, it was giving her the courage to face the truth.

"Good." She managed without a hiccup. "Good for you. Then you can still do the gig."

"Maille!" Melia cried in frustration. "You can't just quit the band. Why didn't you talk to me?"

Maille decided she liked Kell's approach to dumb questions. Just don't answer them.

"Maille?"

But her ingrained response to Melia was too much. "You wouldn't have listened if I said I wanted to quit the band."

Melia was affronted. "Of course I would always listen to my sister."

Maille sighed, as usual Melia ran right over her. "No, you wouldn't," she answered. "You might have heard the words, but you would never listen. You would not have let me quit."

"And I don't intend to now," Melia said nastily.

"I don't see how you can stop me," Maille replied, her hackles rising to the fight. And she never fought.

"Maille. I'm warning you... "

"Oh, Mia... stop it. You have your movies to do, and your kids. Quit fooling yourself, you don't have time for the band. You're not mommy. Things stress you out. Quit the band. Meg is involved in Steve's life as well, it won't hurt her feelings either."

"You two have talked about this?" It was said with hurt rather than anger.

Maille shook her head, Melia liked to be the center of things. "No, Melia. I did it myself. I haven't talked to anybody about it. I'm just going to make a few changes in my life, that's all."

"What are you going to do?"

"Just make some changes. I don 't know for sure. We'll see what today brings. I'll let you know."

"Maille, you can't just leave it like that. Come on over to my place. You can ... use daddy's car in the garage. Come on over and we'll make you a game plan, okay?"

Maille felt a twist of humor inside. Melia and her game plans. That would really make her feel 'in the loop'.

"Well, I already have a game plan for today. And I borrowed Kell Stevak's car, so I don't need to use daddy's. He would kill me anyway."

There was a profound silence on the other end of the line, deathly still. Maille knew she'd just let the cat out of the bag, and Melia had pounced on it. She smiled. "Mia?"

"Kell Stevak's car?"

"Does that bother you?"

"Kell Stevak?"

"Mia, are you stupid? I said Kell Stevak, and you've said it three times!"

"Maille, you-you're hanging out with Kell Stevak?"

"Why sound so surprised? He's a nice guy."

"But...." Melia's voice had lost all its domineering big sister quality. "What?" Maille prompted.

"Well, it's just that I am having trouble working with Kell Stevak. There's this part where he grabs me and we swing across the ship, and he doesn't want to touch me."

"Can you blame him? You really have a bad rep about touching." Maille retorted, suddenly glad that Kell was not falling for Melia's allure. It had been a source of family contention for a while now that Melia liked to have every new male she met fall under the spell of her handicap.

Melia was instantly hostile. "I do not have a bad rep, who have you been talking to? Matthew? You know I can't control the current."

"Cassie can." Maille shot back. Maille knew she was one of the only ones in the family that knew about the current that Megan and Maille and Cassie had inherited from their mother. It was the family secret which was kind of stupid considering the way the industry buzzed about Melia's rather interesting escapades.

"You think if Cassie can that I should be able to too," Melia responded angrily. "Well, I'm not Cassie. And anyway, I 'm more like Mom. And mom has her special guys too,"

"One, Austin ... that's all... and they knew each other before she met dad. Whatever, Melia, I don't want to get into this. But you won't be able to wrap Kell around your little finger, so get over it. "

She was very glad she knew him well enough to say that. But she wasn't about to tell Melia why. She stood up now and went into the bathroom, then she came back out, a thought having struck her. If Melia was calling her, she was done with production for the day, was Kell done also? She pulled back the curtain and glanced at the trampoline.

He was there. Just sitting there waiting for her.

*****