I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Kelsey’s hand found mine, and she squeezed.
It took another twenty minutes to finish up introductions because, well, we’re theatre people. We love to hear ourselves talk.
With only five minutes left in class Garrick said, “Great. It sounds like you’ve all at least given a thought to the next step. Wednesday I want you all to come to class with your résumé and headshots and be ready to audition.”
“For what?” Dom asked. “It’s the first week of class. There aren’t any auditions for a few weeks.” Dom loved to hear himself speak more than most.
“It doesn’t matter.” Garrick answered. “In the real world, you might go to ten auditions in a day. You might have weeks to prepare or you might have an hour. Your job is only acting if you land the part, until then your job is auditioning, so you better be good at it. Dismissed. See you all on Wednesday.”
He grinned. It wasn’t quite as awe-inspiring as the grins he wore last night, but it was still enough to make my steps stutter on my way down the risers.
I was at the curtains, a mere ten feet away from the door when I heard, “Miss Edwards, can I speak to you for a moment?”
Kelsey’s face was caught somewhere between pity and glee. For the first time in twelve hours I wanted to punch someone besides myself.
“Lunch at noon?” She asked. I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure I would survive until noon. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I could stomach going to my next class.
I took my time walking toward him, waiting for the rest of the class to clear. Dom was currently bombarding Garrick with questions, so I took a second to distract myself with Cade. Where Kelsey was the friend who dragged me out to bars and encouraged stupid behavior, Cade was the friend who always knew the right thing to say.
His first words—“On a scale of one to bitchy, how hung-over are you?”
I raised the corner of my mouth in a smile. That was all I could manage in my vortex of emotions, but it was a smile all the same. “Depends… right now? A solid seven. If Dom tries to talk to me… we’re going to need a bigger scale.”
He laughed, and something made me wonder how last night would have gone if I’d told him my secret instead of Kelsey. Somehow I doubt things would have turned out the same.
“I gotta run. Poli-Sci.” He made a face, and I concurred, glad I’d gotten that out of the way last year. “Let’s do something tonight, k?”
“Sure.” This time I did smile, because Cade was great for distractions, and that was most definitely what I needed right then.
He pecked me on the cheek, and then went on his way.
I turned toward Garrick to find him watching me, his eyes dark and narrowed. Dom was long gone. He must have gone out the doors on the other side. We stood there awkwardly for several seconds. His hands were shoved in his pockets, and mine were fidgeting with the bag slung across my shoulders.
Finally, he cleared his throat.
“How’s your leg?”
I swallowed, and looked down at my legs. I’d worn a skirt today to keep it uncovered. I tilted my leg so he could see the bandage. “Good. I re-bandaged it this morning. It’s blistered, but as far as I can tell, or well according to the Internet, that’s normal.”
I looked back, but his eyes were still on my legs.
I stiffened. God, this was so awkward.
He cleared his throat again.
“So… you’re in college.”
“So… you’re not.”
He stayed still for another second, then turned to the side abruptly, pacing several feet away from me, and then back. His fingers pushed through his hair in frustration, and all I could think about was my own fingers in his hair, and how incredibly soft it had been.
“I thought—“ He started. “Well, I wasn’t doing much thinking at all. But, you don’t look like you’re in college. I said I went to school here, and that I’d just moved back, and you said ‘Me too’ so I just assumed you had done the same.”
I kept having this irrational need to blink. I wasn’t crying or anything, but I just couldn’t stop. I said, “I lived in Texas when I was really young. I meant that I moved back here for school.”
He nodded once, and then kept nodding. So, he was nodding and I was blinking and neither of us was saying what really needed to be said.
And since I couldn’t stand silence, I was the first to break.
“I won’t tell anyone.” His eyebrows raised, but I couldn’t tell if it was surprise or judgment or just a facial tick. “I mean not that there’s anything… not that we… I mean we didn’t actually… um, make the beast with two backs and all that.”
OH. MY. GOD.
KILLMENOWKILLMENOWKILLMENOWKILLMENOOOOOOW.
The beast with two backs? Seriously?
I’m 22-years-old, and rather than just spitting out the word sex, I used a Shakespeare reference! A really embarrassing Shakespeare reference.
And he was smiling! And his smile did funny things to my insides that had me thinking about last night, which was totally not something I needed to be thinking about right now. No beasts. No backs. No last night.
I looked away, trying to keep it together. I took a deep breath, and said as calmly as I could. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
He took a moment to answer, and I wondered if he was waiting for me to look at him. If he was, he’d be waiting for a while.
“You’re right. We’re both adults. We can just forget it happened.”
There was no way I could forget it happened. But I could pretend.
I could act.
“Right,” I nodded.
I turned to leave, but his voice stopped me.
“How’s your cat?”
“What cat? Oh! MY CAT. The cat… that is mine. Oh, she’s... ” I had said it was a she, right? “She’s fine. All meowing and purring and other cat things.”
God, why did the door have to be so far away?
I kept walking away, calling back my last few words over my shoulders.
“I’ve got to get to class. I’ll see you Wednesday I guess, okay, bye!”
I speed-walked out the door, down the hallway into the art wing, past the ceramics classroom, and into the handicap bathroom that no one ever used. Then I sunk down to my knees (on a BATHROOM FLOOR. Clearly, I was distraught because… GROSS).
I focused on not hyperventilating. Only I could have an affair with a teacher on accident. I knew one thing for sure. There was no way in hell I was going to my next class.
Chapter Nine
“I swear there was so much awkward in the air, it felt practically solid.”
My face was pressed against the table in the student lounge while Kelsey tried to ply me with french fries and other wonderful carbohydrates.
She patted at my back half-heartedly. There was nothing even remotely mothering about Kelsey, but at least she was trying. “You’re exaggerating, Bliss. The only thing I felt in the air was sexual tension. I mean, he didn’t look at you often, but when he did… Hello! Swoon!”
“There is no way I can survive a semester in that class.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re an actor. Actors sleep with each other all the time, and then move on. Hell—don’t you remember Freshman year when you didn’t want to make out with Dom in that scene, and Eric sent you in the other room and told you to kiss until you guys were comfortable with each other?”
“Why would you bring up what is, as of today, the second most mortifying moment of my life?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you got over it.”
“I will never get over having Dom’s tongue down my throat. I can still taste the douchiness.”
“You will be fine, Bliss. It’s five months. And you only have to see him for 3 hours a week. It will be over before you know it. Then you can jump his bones one more time before you travel the world with me.”