The Fifteenth Minute

by Sarina Bowen

  I groan, because Bella is never going to let me live that night down. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “You’re welcome. Be ready at seven.”

  * * *

  After lunch I have a History of Art lecture. But once that’s done, I’m free to go back to my room and obsess about seeing DJ again.

  The weird thing about being me is that I never have to wonder, “Will he remember my name?” Everyone under the age of thirty knows my name. It’s not vain of me to say that—it’s just a fact. And not because I’m amazing. It’s because the Sentry Sorcerer films are so popular. The first one came out ten years ago when I was nine. The script that arrived this afternoon from Bob’s office is for the fifth one.

  I haven’t opened it yet, because I’m afraid to read the spicy scene. Getting naked on a sound stage in front of forty crew members sounds terrifying. In the meantime, it would be awesome to have actual sex with a person who isn’t getting paid to touch me.

  That sounds simple enough. But in my life, nothing ever is.

  For tonight’s adventures at the pizza place, I do my face in a style I’ll call “Monday Casual.” Brown mascara, but no eyeliner at all. A whisper of gold eyeshadow. I want to look good, but I don’t want to appear too eager.

  When Bella sticks her head in from the door to the little bathroom that connects our rooms, I’m just finishing my lips— a lip stain by Stila and my favorite drugstore brand gloss over it. The gloss tastes like cherries, but it’s been two years since I got close enough to a guy to share it with him.

  Sad but true.

  “Let’s go,” she says.

  My stomach does a dip, and I grab my trusty baseball cap and follow her out the door.

  It’s a Monday night, so Capri’s isn’t crowded. Bella sets us up at the hockey team’s favorite table. “You’re eating pizza with me,” she announces.

  “Great. I’ll have a slice.”

  “Wow. Who are you and what have you done with Lianne?”

  I flip her my middle finger on the way to picking up the beer she’s poured me.

  Last semester I’d followed the rules set out for me by my asshole manager—no carbs or beer (because of carbs). But my New Year’s resolution is to stop listening to all the assholes in my life who want to control me. If I gain a couple of pounds, my career won’t end. Right?

  I hope so, anyway.

  Bella wanders off to order pizza. “Where’s Rafe tonight?” I ask when she reappears.

  “He took a catering gig at the dean’s office. They pay time-and-a-half for wearing a shirt and tie. He might turn up later.”

  The hockey team begins to arrive two or three guys at a time. “Hey, Bella!” they greet my friend, plunking their big bodies into chairs around our table. Trevi, the team captain, ends up beside me. He shrugs off his team jacket and gives me a friendly smile. Then he tosses his wallet on the table and announces that he’ll buy the next round.

  “Hi, Lianne,” Bella’s friend Orsen greets me. (It’s a huge help to me that the team wears their names on their jackets. I never get anyone’s name wrong.) “Can I sit here?”

  “Sure,” I say a little too brightly. I’m trying not to watch the door for DJ. Since I spent my Christmas vacation at Bella’s house in New York City, I’ve socked away quite a bit of intelligence about the hockey team. So I know DJ is Trevi’s younger brother. And I know DJ lives in an off-campus house with Orsen, the goalie.

  But Trevi and Orsen are here already, and I’m starting to worry that DJ isn’t going to show.

  More people trickle in, and I scan their faces hopefully. There’s Bridger and his cute little sister, who slides into a booth against the wall. And Bridger’s girlfriend Scarlet who plays goalie for the women’s team.

  I’m oddly jittery, waiting for DJ to appear, which is crazy. The room is full of attractive guys, but none of them affect me the way DJ did that night in December. It was partly those dimples and the way his big, dark eyes crinkle in the corners when he grins. But it wasn’t just his looks. His smile makes me feel warm inside. While we talked, he looked at me the way a boy looks at a girl he’s trying to get to know—not like a fan or a dude who thinks I’m an amusing celeb sighting. And DJ knows a lot about music, which means that we had plenty to talk about. The night I met him, we nerded out about the rise of EDM during the last decade.

  Distracted by this geeky memory, I accidentally knock over my beer in its plastic cup. “Damn it,” I swear, standing up so it won’t run off the table’s edge and onto my jeans. Smooth, Lianne. Real smooth.

  Trevi moves fast, tossing a small wad of pizza napkins onto the spill. “Let me get some more,” he says.

  “I’ll grab them,” I insist, darting away before he can do it.

  When I return, there’s another girl sitting in my seat. She’s very attractive. I’d almost say stunning, except there’s something hard in the smile she gives me.

  “Hi?” I toss the napkins onto what’s left of the spill and brace myself for a Princess Vindi joke.

  The interloper smirks. “Can’t you, like, wave your wand to clean it up?”

  Yep. There it is. A Princess Vindi dig, and she’s taken my spot.

  “Amy, seriously?” Bella snaps from my elbow. “You’re in her seat.”

  The girl puts a hand on Trevi’s arm. “I need to see my man. You don’t mind, right?” She grabs the dampening wad of napkins and chases the last of the liquid across the wooden surface.

  From across the table, Orsen winks at me. Then he moves over one seat, making space on the other side of Bella.

  So I move, because it’s the path of least resistance. Besides—Amy’s portion of the table will be sticky, and now that’s her problem. Though I still want to punch her. Sitting in my ex-chair, she’s angling her body toward Trevi, showing me her back.

  I’ve noticed that some people at Harkness are determined to ignore me. Like they’ve decided I’ve had more than my share of attention, and it’s their job to even things out.

  The hockey team has been mostly nice to me, though. Maybe it’s because these are the real celebrities of Harkness College. Their team made it to the Frozen Four last year, and with most of the team still intact, they’re expected to do well this year, too.

  Trevi refills my beer and then pours one for his evil girlfriend. He’s missed Amy’s bitchy exchange because he’s busy arguing with another hockey player about the Winnipeg Jets.

  I’m just about to ask, aren’t the Jets in New York? But then I remember those Jets are a football team and save myself the embarrassment. My sports ignorance knows no bounds. I’m bored by their conversation, but I wish I weren’t. It’s nobody’s fault I grew up among people who bet on the outcome of the Tony Awards instead of the Stanley Cup.

  I want to fit in—it’s just that I don’t speak the language.

  Even as I’m rounding out this depressing thought, another male body appears in the doorway.

  I don’t have to turn my head to be sure it’s DJ. I’ve been waiting so long to see him again that I just know. He’s there in the periphery, hands stuck in his jacket pockets, leaning against the door frame talking to one of the players. The muscular breadth of his shoulders is exactly how I remember it. His confident stance draws me in.

  All at once, my pulse quickens and I feel a little dizzy. As if I’d walked out onto the edge of a diving board, and felt it wobble beneath my feet. Am I going to talk to him again tonight? Could it possibly be as much fun as last time? And what will I find to say?

  The sad truth is that I’m better when I’m holding a script.

  For several minutes I sit still, as if enthralled by the complexities of the Jets-who-don’t-play-football. DJ stays where he is, and so do I. There aren’t any seats open near me, though. So if I want to talk to him, I’m going to have to make my own luck.

  Rising, I dig a couple of quarters out of my pocket. I don’t head over to DJ, because I’m not that brave. Instead I make a beeline for the jukebox in the corner. I
put in my quarters and then I check out the selection. The last time someone updated this puppy looks to be during the 1990s. And it’s a problem, because I need to play something that reflects the girl I wish I was—easygoing, casual, a little bit hip.

  Hard to do that when I’m staring down at choices like Madonna’s “Vogue” (a perfectly good song, but not exactly cutting edge) or “Achy Breaky Heart.”

  Then my heart kicks into a higher gear, because I feel him approaching. I’m desperate to turn and look, but I make myself pick a song instead. I’m proud to say I don’t spare him a glance until I’ve tapped in the code for the track of my choice.

  Only then do I stand tall and turn to him. And, whoa—my memory hasn’t even done him justice. I’d remembered the thick brown hair and the dimple that’s darkened by his five o’clock shadow. But his eyelashes are darker and more devastating than I remember, and was his mouth always so full and sinful-looking?

  And now I’m staring, damn it!

  “Hey there,” he says, parking one hip against the scarred wooden paneling. “Remember me?”

  “DJ, right?” It comes out as a croak. Because I’m cool like that.

  God help me—his smile is slow and sexy. “That’s right. I’m surprised you remember, though.”

  I clear my throat and try again. “Are you saying that because we only met once? Or because I got senior-prom drunk that night?” I never went to a prom, but I heard another actress say that once and it sounded cute.

  He rewards me with an even bigger smile. “You said it, not me.” His eyes drop to the jukebox. “Pick out something good?”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “Right? I love this old thing, though.” He rubs the gleaming surface of the jukebox, and I am suddenly fixated on his wide, masculine hand. I wish I could pick it up and compare the size of it with mine. I want to know if his skin is rough or smooth…

  That’s when I notice the abomination coming from the jukebox. An electro-beat that I’d never choose, and some ridiculously high male voices…

  “Interesting pick,” DJ says, and the corners of his mouth are twitching.

  “Hell!” I bend over the box, peering at the song codes again. “How is this possible? I was trying to play MC Hammer’s ‘Can’t Touch This.’”

  DJ chuckles. “And instead you got…”

  The chorus from the long-forgotten Color Me Badd kicks in, singing “I Wanna Sex You Up.”

  Nooooo! Either my subconscious has betrayed me or the machine is miscoded. It’s probably fruitless, but I have to at least try to distance myself from this error. “You should know that I would never willingly play a song by somebody who can’t spell ‘bad.’”

  “Really?” He grins. “Yet you went for some Hammertime. And that dude spells ‘mother’ with a ‘u’ and an ‘a.’”

  Argh. If my daggers from the DragonFire game were real, I might turn one on myself. “DJ, your grasp of nineties hits is…”

  “Impressive?” His smile is cocky, and I have to restrain myself from reaching up to measure it with my fingertips.

  “I was going to say thorough, if useless.”

  He puts one of those strapping hands on his chest. “Woman, bite your tongue. I get paid cash money for knowing my nineties hits. It’s the best job ever.”

  “Oh. The hockey rink gig, right? That’s why they call you DJ.” It’s coming back to me now. For the hundredth time I curse myself for getting sloshed the night I met DJ. But I’d been so immediately attracted to him that it made me nervous. Kind of like I was feeling now.

  He smiles again, and I’m staring. Who knew I was a sucker for dimples? “That’s right,” he says, and I try to remember what we were talking about. “There are some nineties hits that would never see airtime if it weren’t for hockey games.”

  “Really? Name one.”

  “‘Ice Ice Baby,’ by—”

  “Vanilla Ice,” I finish. “Yeah, okay. I can see that.”

  “‘Cold as Ice,’ by Foreigner,” he adds.

  “That’s not a nineties tune,” I argue. “It’s 1977.”

  DJ tips his head back and laughs. “Your knowledge of seventies hits is—”

  “Impressive.” I finish. “‘Cold as Ice’ was B-sided originally before it was released as its own single.”

  His eyes widen. “Marry me,” he says after a beat.

  I giggle like a schoolgirl. (Footnote: I was never a schoolgirl. But if Hollywood scripts are to be believed, they giggle plenty.)

  “Are you, like, a Foreigner fan girl?” he asks. “Or do you have encyclopedic knowledge of all seventies music?”

  With a shrug, I just shake my head. The truth is that my father was friends with Lou Gramm. In fact—one of the reasons I know so much about music is that my father loved to talk about it. He’s gone now. But when I listen to my iPod, I feel closer to him.

  I don’t mention any of this to DJ for two reasons. It’s name dropping, which I loathe. But also—so many Harkness students assume I’m stupid. I don’t mind at all if DJ thinks I’m smart. It’s a nice change.

  “What other songs are kept alive by hockey?”

  He starts talking again, and I do my best to listen. But I’m distracted by the way his full lips move when he talks and by the five o’clock shadow roughening his jaw. He’s wearing a flannel shirt that looks soft to the touch. And there’s a V of skin exposed at his chest that teases me. I get just a glimpse of a dusting of dark hair against olive skin.

  I have to work hard not to stare, wondering what he’d look like without that shirt on.

  So this is what people mean by attraction. He is the magnet, and I feel the pull. It tingles in my belly. It resonates in my chest whenever he laughs. Hopefully I’m nodding and agreeing at all the right junctures in this conversation. Because whenever he smiles I experience a loss of executive function. Last time beer was the culprit. Tonight it’s just him.

  The loudspeaker crackles to life. “Pie thirty-seven! Thirty-eight! Forty!”

  DJ cocks a thumb over his shoulder. “I gotta get that. Be right back.”

  When he walks away, I return my attention to the jukebox. My heart is pounding and my palms are sweaty. Talking to him is exhilarating and terrifying.

  If there’s another nineteen-year-old in the world with less game than I have, I pity her.

  2

  Pizza Is Like a '90s Hit

  DJ

  Lianne Challice is chatting me up.

  As I fetch the pizza I ordered from the window, I try to decide whether or not I’m going insane. Maybe all the stress in my life has finally cracked me.

  But no. When I deposit the pie on a table, her big eyes cut from the jukebox over to me, before darting away again. She is so freaking cute and so feminine that it’s making me crazy. Her mouth is like a little red candy that I’m dying to taste. And who has teeth that straight? She intimidates the fuck out of me, to be honest.

  I make another trip to the pizza counter for paper plates and napkins. Usually we just grab slices off the tray like animals. But tonight I’m trying to be classy. The idea makes me snicker to myself. As if. Impressing Lianne Challice isn’t something I’m capable of. But I’m having fun trying. And there hasn’t been a whole lot of fun in this year for me. So that’s something.

  Years from now I’ll look back on this night and laugh. Guys, did I ever tell you about the time I chatted up a movie star? I mean, my father is still telling people about the time he sat one table over from Tina Fey at Nobu.

  Lianne sneaks another glance in my direction and I beckon to her. “Have a slice?” If she wants one, now is the time. In a minute my brother and his teammates will fall on the pizza like seagulls.

  “Thank you. I guess I should. I didn’t make it to the dining hall tonight.”

  “Your enthusiasm for Capri’s pizza overwhelms me,” I tease. “Aren’t you a fan?”

  She slides a slice onto a paper plate, considering the question. “Pizza is like a nineties hit. Pret
ty good, especially if that’s all there is and you’re hungry.”

  My own slice stops halfway to my mouth and I laugh. “Seriously?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if we can be friends,” I say before taking a bite.

  “Because I don’t love pizza?”

  I shake my head. “Who doesn’t love pizza? It’s, like, a basic human desire.” I cram a bite into my mouth to prove my point. Smooth, right?

  She bites her bottom lip, and I realize I’d rather have that for dinner. “It’s okay. But it’s mostly just something you eat when you’re in a hurry or need to feed a crowd on the cheap.”

  “Ah, I see,” I say when I can speak again. “The problem is that you haven’t had any great pizza. You’re a freshman, right? You don’t know all the glory that is Harkness pizza. Have you been to Gino’s Apizza?”

  Lianne shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “She doesn’t think so,” I scoff. “Baby, if you’d had great pizza, you’d remember.” And now I sound like a real perv, but Lianne Challice is smiling at me, watching me with her big doe eyes, and I feel it like a drug. “They make everything from scratch. Even the sausage. We’ll go together, so I can prove my point.”

  Annnd I think I just asked a movie star out on a date. Here comes the crash and burn.

  First her eyes widen just a smidge. Then two pink spots appear on her face, one on either cheekbone. “Well, it would be a shame to live in this town and never know its true pizza greatness.”

  I replay that sentence in my head and realize that she didn’t turn me down. “True,” I agree. “Do you think Thursday would be a night to experience pizza Nirvana?” I’m overselling the hell out of Gino’s now, but it’s working for me.

  She gives me a serious frown, and I’m hoping she’s not busy on Thursday. Because I have back-to-back hockey games to DJ on Friday and Saturday. “Thursday it is. I shall prepare to be amazed.”