by Cassie Mae
“I called Julie almost right after I talked with the studio, told her what was happening, and she said to use the credit card to get your ass to Alabama.” Shay pauses for a minute and gazes back on her ankle nearing Woody and the Gang, but her eyes are sort of cloudy, as if she’s not even sure what’s she’s staring at. “If I land the contract,” she says quietly, “I’ll be promoted to head agent.”
Shay gnaws at her pinkie nail, and I lean back in the booth, folding my arms. “So…why can’t you call her and tell her what’s up?”
“If the agency finds out that I lost the credit card I wasn’t supposed to have, not only will they kick me out the door, but Julie will be gone too. I can’t do that to her. Not when—”
“There’s still a chance to land a six-figure contract.”
“It’s not just that.” She stops biting her pinkie nail, bringing her hand back to rest around my phone. “Carletta just split with her agent. If I get you this audition, the role, then maybe…Well, I know you and I aren’t the dynamic duo of the century, but…” She does a couple of tiny shrugs with a side of a giant smile that shows all her teeth.
A smug grin hits my lips. “You want me to talk you up?”
“A contract and a client? That would be big.”
“Big enough that they’ll look past you royally screwing up?”
She taps a finger to her nose.
“Well,” I say, interlocking my fingers and resting my head on them. “That’s quite a pickle you’re in.”
“I didn’t see you gluing your butt to the hotel bed.” She finally moves her ankle away from the Smurfs, adjusting the ice pack and prodding it with her fingers. “Why’d you jump in the car so willingly?”
“Isn’t money and fame enough?”
Her eyes flick up to mine. “I can tell when you’re acting.”
My arms drop from behind my head, and I watch her poke at her sore ankle. Even that’s getting me going. Could’ve been the fact that she had her foot in my lap. Could be the fact that she’s still slightly muddy, wet hair dripping onto the skin of her arms, soaking into the oversized hoodie. Could be that I’ve tried not to notice that she’s obviously cold. But Woody is rising, despite the wet jeans, and, damn it, I need that one-on-one with Carletta.
“I need to get laid,” I blurt, tearing my eyes away from her chest. The people in the booth next to us both stop talking to give me the same slightly amused look.
“Um…what did you just say?” Shay’s holding back a laugh.
“You probably heard me right.” I toss my head back. “It’s been…a while.”
“I get it,” she says. “I usually try to have sex every couple hours.”
“That is the dream, isn’t it?”
“And what does this have to do with…” The light clicks on behind her eyes, and a slow, amused smile spreads across her face. “Carletta sleeps with her leading men.”
I tap my finger to my nose.
“Here I thought Jace Carver couldn’t surprise me anymore.” She pushes her lips together, and my brain takes a side road…I haven’t heard my real last name in over a year. I’m surprised she even remembers it.
She puts the ice back on her ankle and scoots up in her seat. “I really didn’t think the reason was so—”
“Shallow?” I smirk. “Thought you knew me better than that.”
“I wasn’t going to say ‘shallow.’ I was going to say ‘carnal.’ ” She taps her nails against the table briefly before she gives me a quizzical look. “For the record, I haven’t had sex in ‘a while’ either.”
“Explains why you’re so uptight.”
“Does your dry spell explain why you’re an ass?”
“Nah, I’ve always been this way.”
She ignores me. “Is sex really more important to you than the potential leap of your career? You land the role, you’ll probably have to fight the women off of you.”
“In theory,” I mutter. Some version of that is what I’ve fantasized about ever since I started acting. Money, fame, women…It’s partly why I don’t want just one girl, because my hopes are high to get to the A-list and have them flock to me. But that’s all just pipe dreams at this point. The Stinson dream.
“Look, there’s no guarantee I’ll get the role. And if I do, what if the movie flops? Or I end up sucking at the chick-flick stuff? Or Carletta and I show zero chemistry on-screen? There are too many unknowns at this point in the game, but there’s something I do know. Carletta saw my tape, and she wants me.”
“She wants you to screen test—”
“For the lead.”
“So you think you already have an in with her?”
“I get there by Friday, then yeah, I think I do.”
She hesitates, chewing on her nail and wincing every time I move an inch and hit her ankle. I put my hand on her leg to keep everything steady.
“Hmm,” she hums after a moment.
“What?”
“Just thinking…We both want to get you this role.”
“No shit.”
“And arguing obviously isn’t helping us out.”
I snort. “But that’s what we do.”
Her eyes drop to my fingers on her ankle, and I just now realize how deeply I’m pressing into her skin, massaging out the pain. Slowly I pull back so it doesn’t look like I’m freaking out about it. (I am.)
“Can we…put it on pause for this week?” she asks.
“The arguing?”
She nods. “Let’s help each other out instead. We do whatever it takes to get you to Alabama by Friday.”
“So you get promoted.”
Her lips tilt up and mischief glints in her eyes. “And you get laid.”
“You want to help me get laid?” I laugh and lower my tone when I notice another little kid walking by. Shay waits for him to get to the indoor slides before talking again.
“If that’s what’s motivating you,” she whispers, leaning in so I can hear her, “then fine by me. Might even speed things along.”
She’s damn right about that. “Okay…but I bet you can’t make it ten seconds without arguing with me.”
She opens her mouth, and I know a retort’s waiting on her tongue, so I point at it with a tilt of my head. She snaps her lips shut.
“This is gonna be entertaining,” I say through a grin. She gives me a dorky face and her hand smacks the tabletop, blindly searches for my phone while she keeps eye contact with me. When her fingers run over the screen, she finally breaks our staring contest and her shoulders slump hard.
“Hate to say it, but our clothes aren’t the only things that got soaked.”
“Great.” I take my useless phone from her and jam it into my carry-on. “What now?”
“You call a tow with the phone back there.” She points behind the Burger King counter. “Maybe they can give us a lift to the airport.”
“Why me?”
Her gaze drifts to my hand zipping up my carry-on. “I was hoping you had some more clothes I could borrow.”
9:16 P.M.
“Um, Jace?”
“Yeah?”
“When you called the tow truck, did you tell them to wait for us?”
Shay looks pointedly between me and the empty side of road where the rental was parked.
“That may have slipped my mind.” Yeah, I admit it. I’m a dumb-ass. “But in my defense, I wasn’t the one standing pantsless under the hand dryer in the bathroom for a half hour.”
She pushes her lips together, crossing her arms over the giant long-sleeved shirt I let her borrow. I never considered myself a tall guy until I saw her come out in it. She didn’t stand a chance of fitting into any of my jeans, and the one pair of drawstring pajama bottoms I brought I wouldn’t let her go near. They’re my lucky Marvel pants. With the way this trip is going, I’m not gonna risk her ruining them.
So I guess it’s my fault she had to dry her pants. Not gonna admit that, though.
It’s getting dark, and the ra
in made the air real heavy and hot. I look down the road where we just came from and figure we may as well turn around and head back to a working phone.
“How’s that ankle?” I ask, swiveling my carry-on around to roll it toward the way we came.
“It’s fine.”
“Yeah, I know. But how is it really?”
Her shoulders straighten as her eyes flick past me to a pair of headlights. She quickly fixes the shirt hanging down to her knees, tightening the sides and making her boobs more prominent. “Hold this for me,” she says, and I grab at the extra material while she tries to pose on the side of the road. Yeah, I’m laughing.
The car doesn’t slow, mainly because the driver was texting and I doubt he saw Shay’s hilarious—but, I have to admit, clever—way of getting his attention.
“Well,” she says, shoulders slumping, “zero to zero. You’re up next.”
My mouth picks up at the corner. “You care if we walk during our hitchhike competition?”
She shakes her head, trudging forward. The limp is hardly there anymore.
10:47 P.M.
The score is one to zero. I’ve attempted to flag down six cars; Shay’s currently working on her seventh. She’s trying the frantic “Help us!” wave of her arms, which would be adorable if I was allowing myself to think of her as adorable. Which I’m not.
“I don’t get it,” Shay says, flipping off the tool in the Mercedes flying past us, another very not adorable thing. “Does no one pick up hitchhikers anymore?”
“We must look like creeps.” I kick a rock and roll my carry-on across a particularly bumpy patch of side road. I’ve lost all enthusiasm for this shit. “We should just walk to the airport.”
“We should’ve taken the last guy up on his offer.”
I wrinkle my nose, and she lets out the tiniest laugh at the look on my face. When one of us finally scored, the driver offered to take us to the motel he’s staying at. He said it had a good vibrating mattress—which I didn’t think existed anymore—and then gave Shay a toothy, suggestive smile. He had murderer written all over his character description. I took one step in front of her, even though I know Shay could probably kick his ass, and told him we were good walking.
But even knowing that dude was a creeper, I’m regretting the decision now.
“I feel naked.” Shay shivers and pulls her arms into my long sleeves. She crosses them under the fabric near her chest.
“You’re not. I’d have noticed.”
She rolls her eyes. “I mean, I feel naked without my phone, my purse, my wallet. I feel like I should be carrying something.”
“You can have this,” I say, sliding my carry-on up a bit.
She gives me one of those “I’m refusing to smile” smiles and shakes her head. “Don’t you feel weird without your phone?”
I shrug. “A little.” I miss being able to push a button to distract me from hellish situations such as this, but no way am I telling her that now. Not after our pact or whatever. “But I’m not as attached to it as you are.”
“I’m worried. What if they move up the screen test? Or Carletta calls again? I never confirmed anything; they might think I’m a total flake. What if they call my agency? Julie will have to tell them that I have the company credit ca—”
“Shit, will you relax?” I check behind us for headlights. “If you’re this bad metaphorically naked, I’d hate to see you when you’re actually naked.”
“Bull. Like you’d hate to see any girl naked.” She pauses for a second, biting her bottom lip before adding, “Even me.”
My pace slows and the corner of my mouth starts curling upward. She catches the unexpected grin on my previously grumpy face before she shuts her eyes and shakes her head.
“Don’t picture it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
We get about another fourth of a mile before headlights beam bright up ahead.
“I got this one,” Shay says, pushing her arms through the overlarge sleeves.
“But it’s my turn,” I say, but she’s already fluffing her hair, straightening her back, and marching out into the road. I stand back, since letting her try is probably the quickest way to get a ride. “I’ve got a better shot with the truckers. You should let me have them,” Shay said when I tried to wave down a semi about an hour ago. But here we are, still walking along an abandoned side road somewhere between LA and Vegas.
The giant Walmart truck zooms by, the driver completely ignoring Shay’s Korean obscenities. I get another roundhouse kick in my gut because it’s the most unattractive thing…that I’m finding unbelievably attractive. Must be the dry spell.
“Well, he was going the wrong way anyway,” she says, sticking her arms back in the sleeves and trudging back to me.
“I think a ride anywhere would be nice right about now.”
“We’re not arguing, remember.”
“You’re right,” I say like a jackass, but I don’t give a shit. “I’d much rather walk another five miles in the right direction than take a lift to anywhere with a phone.”
Her lips purse and she keeps her eyes straight ahead. “That’s the spirit.”
She lengthens her stride, and I let her take the lead. My feet are starting to ache, and it’s mostly from the dampness of my socks. I imagine my toes are looking well above the age of eighty right about now. Maybe I should’ve stood under the hand dryer.
Dammit, it’s not like I’m normally such a whiny son of a bitch, but (a) I haven’t eaten anything since that coffee this morning, if that even counts (right now I’m the definition of hangry), (b) I haven’t slept all that much in the past twenty-four hours, and (c) I need some action. I remember once overhearing Liz talking to her best friend, Theresa, right before she tied the knot with Landon. “Guys are easy to please,” she said. “They just need sleep, sex, and food, and they’re good to go.” I sort of laughed at her reasoning, but now I’m thinking that girl is one hell of a smart woman.
“So how long has it been?” Shay says, and I furrow my brow at her. Have I gone delirious and spoken out loud?
“Um, huh?”
She drops her gaze to the road, keeping her eyes on our moving feet. “Since you’ve had sex.”
“A while.”
A small laugh parts her lips, but she doesn’t prod at my vagueness.
“So was that a girlfriend or just a one-night thing?”
What in the…“Is this your idea of small talk? You want to know about my sex life?”
“I’m bored. And considering I’m about to majorly help you in that department, I’m curious why it’s so important to you, yes.”
“It’s sex.”
“Therefore, important?”
“Yeah.” I give her a sideways glance. “Do I need a better reason?”
She takes a deep breath, shivering a bit before blowing into her cupped hands. “I think there’s more to it, but whatever.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like someone broke your heart and you’re looking for a noncommitted fling so you don’t get hurt again.”
Damn. “You’re close.” I smile. “But that only counts in horseshoes.”
“Where did I get it wrong?” she asks with an arrogant tilt of her eyebrow. That’s damn adorable, too, I think before I shake my head to get rid of the thought.
Thing is…she’s mostly right. Someone got hurt, and it was my fault.
I was working at a small theater as an understudy, and Penny Shaw was a girl who lived down the hall from me. I used to trick her into coming to the playhouse just in case I was the one performing that night, and after about the fifth invite, she showed up. I never did need to take over for the original cast, but despite not showing off my mad skills as an actor, I got laid anyway.
Next night she came to my place. I didn’t really know much about her. Not where she worked or if she had siblings or whatever. I didn’t think I’d see her after we had o
ur fun. Maybe in the hallways here and there.
The “fling” lasted for about two months. Till that last night I spent with her. Right in the middle of sex, her eyes opened and locked with mine. I remember thinking, She has green eyes. Dark green. And in the two months of sleeping with her and the month of flirting before that, I’d never noticed what color her eyes were.
My hips stopped. My release was long forgotten, and something crushed against my beating heart and pumping lungs. And I realized what a giant jackass I was. I had avoided holding hands, kissing her anywhere that wouldn’t lead to sex, or calling and talking on the phone for hours. Those were couple-like things. I didn’t want that. I wanted Barney Stinson’s life while I was still young and still had that going for me. I didn’t want her finding out about my family, my past, the other girls I’d been with. I didn’t want to share anything with her because that’s what comes with a relationship. The thought of it scared the shit out of me. It sounded ridiculous, but there was always this fear of rejection idling in the back of my head. What if she found out I was slow in the head? What if she started to pity me? And even though I’d never done the couple-like things, I realized right then, staring into her green eyes, that she saw me as way more than I saw her.
Then she opened her kiss-swollen lips and said the three words I’d never heard from any of the girls I’d been with. The three words I never want to hear again. The three words that ended our relationship before it started…
Because I didn’t love her back.
And just like it did in the car earlier today, my life flashed before my eyes. So I pulled out, neither one of us getting the relief we went in for. I ran a sweaty hand over my face, muttering curses under my breath. The bed shook, and I knew she was crying. Damn it, she cried. She cried so hard I felt like I was drowning in it. She tugged the bedsheet out from under my ass and covered her chest, and I refused to look at her face. I refused because I was a dick and a coward.
“You don’t have to say it back,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to…Please don’t freak out.”
But I was freaking out. I don’t do love, and all the women I’d slept with ran through my head and I wondered how many I’d hurt, how many didn’t really feel the same way I did—unattached or indifferent—and I dropped my hand from my face and said, “We shouldn’t see each other for a while.”
