Damn Everything But the Circus
Chapter 1

It was all over the island by the next day. The news that the mayor's son's fiancé had been caught in bed with her future father-in-law (by the groom-to-be, no less!) spread like wildfire among the town gossips. By noon, when Gill finally managed to drag himself out of bed, everyone from the oldest grandmother to the smallest child knew.

He had been saying in the Ocarina Inn for the past three days, hardly ever leaving his room. It wasn't as though he had anywhere else to go – his fiancé's farmhouse, where he had been planning to move in, was out of the question, for obvious reasons. So was his father's house, which he could not set foot in without wanting to destroy everything within reach.

It wasn't all that bad, he liked to think. The Ocarina Inn had room service, so the only person he ever really had to see was Maya, who had started including a free tomato juice with his lunch ever since she heard the news. It was the only bit of sympathy he could stomach – he could not go out to face the other townspeople, who would whisper behind his back and send him pitying glances as they passed him on the street.

Well, except for maybe one person.

"I've gotta say, I told you so," Luna said flatly, cutting another small bite out of her pumpkin pie. "I had a feeling this would happen."

Gill looked up from his tomato juice (which he was considering drowning himself in) to stare incredulously at her. "When did you ever say that?"

"Oh, somewhere in the few days between when you broke up with me and when you started going out with her," Luna replied in breezy tones. "Chase probably remembers, don't you, Chase?" she addressed the cook working behind the counter.

Chase merely raised his eyebrows. "I'm pretty sure the entire town remembers," he said sardonically. "You certainly said it loud enough."

Luna shrugged, unapologetic. "I never liked that girl anyway," she continued. "She dated practically every bachelor in town before she settled on you. And probably slept with at least half of them," she added as an afterthought. Out of the corner of his eye, Gill spotted Chase's reddening face before the cook turned away, pretending to straighten the tip jar.

He sighed, feeling a vague need to defend his fiancé (well, ex-fiancé, even though he hadn't actually spoken to her since the…incident). "Akari isn't a slut, Luna."

"I never said she was. But if ditching your fiancé for his father isn't slutty behavior, I don't know what is."

"I have to second that." Maya, who had come in on the tail end of the conversation, piped up. "And you know what, I have a theory!"

"Oh, no, another one of Maya's theories," Chase mumbled, and received an elbow in the ribs for his comment.

"Anyway," Maya continued, after giving Chase – who was rubbing his side with a frown – a dirty look. "I think Akari only goes after guys that are taken. Like, think about it. She started up with Owen, who's been pretty much engaged to Kathy since they were little, almost as soon as she got to the island. But a few weeks after Owen broke up with Kathy to date Akari, she broke up with him to date Luke – which must've been awkward, since Owen and Luke live just up the road from each other – because she saw him making googly eyes at that girl who dances at the Brass Bar."

"I remember when Kathy and Owen broke up," Chase mused. "Then Kathy got into a fight with Akari and nearly took out the whole bar. Yolanda said it's the biggest catfight she's seen since Shelly and Irene got into that argument over Ramsey, back when they were all still young." He pursed his lips. "Weird though. I can't see Shelly getting into a fight with anybody, much less Irene. They seem like such good friends now."

"Well, Grandma doesn't like to get confrontational usually, but she's definitely fierce when she has to stand up for herself," Luna said with a hint of pride in her voice. "Well, go on, Maya. What happened next?"

Gill, despite himself, was almost fascinated in this sordid story. Though he'd heard rumors, he'd never inquired into Akari's previous relationships, simply because he hated gossip in all its many forms. It was the reason why he hardly came downstairs to eat – at rush hour, the Inn was the prime meeting place of all the town's major gossip queens. The only reason he'd accepted Luna's invitation to lunch was because it was at a time when the Inn was almost empty…and because the girl had threatened to blackmail him with various incriminating photos that he hadn't known she still had…

Maya was starting to get into her story. "Okay, well, Akari dated Luke for about a month, and then Anissa came back to town and started up with Jin again. So of course Akari dumps Luke and starts pretending to be sick all the time so that she can see the doctor, right?" She leaned in close, and whispered, "I hear they even did it in the Clinic a couple times when Irene was out."

"Irene did come in around that time to ask for some new sheets," Luna said thoughtfully. "She said the old ones were stained, and some of them were ripped in places for some reason."

Chase recoiled. "That's disgusting. I'm never going to the Clinic ever again," he said fervently.

"Well, who did she go after next? Or did you not think about whose beds your girlfriend might have been in before yours?" Maya shot back, somewhat bitterly. Her relationship with Chase had never quite been the same after he'd cheated on her with Akari, and by this point, everyone knew. On an island as small as Castanet, it was nearly impossible for anyone to keep a secret.

An awkward silence descended as Maya looked pointedly at Chase and Chase tried to look at anything other than Maya. Gill fought back a sigh. Even he could see that Chase was utterly hopeless at mending broken relationships, especially with someone as sensitive as Maya. He felt an inkling of sympathy for the cook – another man whose life had been destroyed by a woman he could not resist.

Then he wondered if this applied to his father as well, and felt absolutely sick to his stomach.

"Uh, well." Luna broke the silence and skirted around the issue – even she wasn't quite up to delving into the dark details of Maya and Chase's breakup. "Didn't she start dating Toby after that?"

Maya broke off her glaring at Chase and turned back to Luna. The stormy look on her face started to fade slightly as she recalled the story. "Oh, yeah. Toby. You know, I really thought that relationship was the one that would make Akari change. Even though it broke Renee's heart, Toby was the one Akari stayed with the longest."

"Almost a whole year, wasn't it?" Luna sighed and shook her head. "I seriously thought they were going to get married."

"But it didn't happen." Maya rolled her eyes. "Because Akari left Toby to chase after someone else's boyfriend."

Gill felt all eyes on him. He very pointedly did not make eye contact.

"And then she seduced Mayor Hamilton!" Gill had to take a gulp of tomato juice to cover his wince at Luna's words.

"Technically he's not taken," said Chase. Both of the girls glared at him.

"He was married!" Maya declared. "Even if he's a widower now, his wife will always be the one who has claim over him!"

Luna huffed in annoyance. "So she's dated practically every eligible bachelor on the island at one time or another, always when they had a girlfriend."

"Except for Julius," Chase said. Luna rolled her eyes.

"Which is a good thing. If she'd broken my sister's heart, I would've had to break her legs."

"And Perry," Maya said.

Luna made a face. "He's a priest."

"Plus, he's in love with Mira," Chase contributed, then reddened when everyone looked at him. "What? He talks about her all the time. It's impossible to miss."

Luna shook her head. "What about Bo?"

"Too young. She'd be arrested for pedophilia."

"The fortuneteller?"

"He's never had a girlfriend, as far as I know. Plus he's been around here for as long as our grandmothers, maybe longer – Grandma Yolanda said she once went to see him when she was a little girl. Though how it could possibly be the same guy, I'll never know…"

Luna threw up her hands in disgust. "I don't get it. What does everyone see in her?"

"Well, she is really pretty," Maya conceded, frowning. "I don't get it – she's out in the fields half the time, she handles animals on a regular basis, and she goes to the mines at least three times a week, and yet her skin's always perfect and her hair's always super shiny. When it's humid my hair frizzes, but hers never does!" She pouted. "It's not fair."

"She does have a pretty good sense of style," Luna said grudgingly. "I hear she gets her clothes from her cousin on the mainland. Though," she was quick to add, "she has massive biceps. Must be from all the farming."

Gill disagreed with that one a little bit – Akari's arms weren't massive, though they were quite muscular from the work she did. But he couldn't picture his ex-fiancé's arms without remembering how they had been twined around his father's neck in a loving embrace, so he said nothing.

Both Luna and Maya turned to look at Chase, who had retreated towards the kitchen in hopes of escape. No luck. "Well, Chase?" Luna said pointedly.

You could practically hear the cook flinching. "What?"

"What do you think?" Maya clarified. "Why is Akari so attractive to men, even when they have perfectly attractive girlfriends that they should be ecstatic to be with?"

"Yeah, Gill," Luna said without subtlety, even going so far as to elbow him in the side. He glared at her. This was a bit much, especially since it hadn't even been a week since he'd caught Akari cheating on him. Luna got the hint and left him alone. Chase, though, wasn't so lucky.

"Um," he said intelligently. "I think I hear Yolanda calling. I'd better go!" And he ran for it. The coward.

"Yolanda's not even here, Chase, she's taking a walk with Shelly!" Maya followed him, still intent on the subject. "What was it, Chase? Was it her boobs? Or was it her butt? I know those are the things that guys look at! Okay, maybe my boobs are smaller than hers, but my butt is way nicer. Hers is as flat as a board! I – "

The back door of the Inn slammed, cutting off her last few words. And then there was silence. Gill swallowed the last of his tomato juice and stood up as quickly as he could without seeming undignified.

"I'm going back to my room," he said shortly, putting a few coins into the tip jar (Chase would probably need ear surgery by the time Maya was done with him). "Thanks for the – " he couldn't exactly say great conversation, seeing as how all discussion had been on his ex-fiancé's former love life, " – company. I'll see you later."

"Wait a minute, Gill." Luna grabbed his sleeve just as he was about to leave. "Have you spoken to your father yet?"

His gut twisted into intricate knots and the tomato juice threatened to make a second appearance. Gill swallowed with difficulty. "No."

"He wants to see you. Colleen can't legally give him your room number, since you're an adult and no longer under his jurisdiction, but he's been checking in every day, hoping you'll show up."

Gill couldn't stop himself from glancing out the window, half-expecting to see his father staring back at him. "I don't want to talk to him."

"I think you should."

"I think," Gill extricated his arm from her grasp and took a few steps away from her, "that you should stay out of this matter."

They'd dated for too long for Luna to be surprised at his harsh words – after all, she was capable of the same candidness that he was – but there was still a flash of hurt in her eyes when she looked at him. "I still don't understand what you ever saw in her," she said sadly.

"I thought I did," Gill found himself saying, as he walked away. "But I guess I was wrong."

A/N: Wow, so I totally did not expect to be doing this, since I was working on Dolce, Ma Non Troppo. But that story's kind of hit a bit of a block, since it requires so much character development, and then this baby popped up! Yeah…

Originally it was going to be Chase who ran off to join the circus, but I decided it was a bit too ridiculous, since he's too committed to his cooking to do something that ridiculous, and anyway, who would his fiancé cheat on him with? It's much more dramatic with Gill, no?

Chapters one and two were originally one chapter, but it got to be too long, so stay tuned for the next post, coming soon!

Title is from a quote by Corita Kent.