The Seat Filler: A Novel

by Sariah Wilson

  My disappointment in not hearing from him surprised me. And was more than a little troubling.

  Friday finally came, and I could hardly wait for him to get back. My heart sank into my stomach when I got a text from him that said:

  I texted him the address.

  Had he never been to a student production before?

  I wanted to text back Really? Because he seemed like he was doing just fine without me while I was missing him terribly.

  And although I was annoyed with him, I did leave my hair down for him. I considered wearing his hoodie to the show but figured that was a step too far. We were cool and casual, and I needed to remember it. He obviously had.

  Traffic made me slightly later than I’d planned. I had wanted to hang out with my mom backstage before she went on. It had been one of our traditions when I was little. When I got there, the play was just about to start. Tickets weren’t required, so I went down to the third row and sat near the aisle, putting my jacket on the seat next to me so that Noah could sit there when he arrived.

  There were only about twenty people in the theater, and I figured most of them were drama students who had been offered extra credit to come and see the shows of their fellow performers. The curtains lifted, and we all applauded.

  What happened over the next hour was a mishmash of things I didn’t want to know about my mother, as it was some kind of one-woman confessional that started with a re-creation of her birth and ended with her current situation of being a student and feeling out of place. I kept checking the door for Noah, but he never came in. He’d probably gotten caught in traffic, too, and I didn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved that he’d missed this.

  The lights came up and I stood, cheering for my mom. I was easily the most enthusiastic applauder. I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned to see Noah in a ball cap, wearing the hood from his sweatshirt over the hat. He also had a denim jacket on and dark pants.

  “Hey,” I said, feeling surprisingly awkward, both from the lack of contact and not knowing where things stood between us now.

  Apparently he didn’t feel the same way, as he said, “I missed you,” and then wrapped me in another amazing hug. I buried my face against his neck, breathing in deeply. I felt like I could happily live in the circle of his embrace.

  “You didn’t call,” I said without meaning to.

  “I should have. I was so busy every minute of the day. I’m sorry.”

  And just like that, all was forgiven. His touch was just that overpowering. “Why are you dressed like that?”

  He pulled back. “What do you mean? This is to disguise myself so people don’t mob me. It works.”

  “How? You look like the Unabomber. How does that not draw more attention to you?”

  “What’s drawing attention to me right now is you loudly comparing me to a serial killer and bomb maker.”

  “Whatever you say.” He was holding my hand, and I laced my fingers through his. My heart sighed happily. “Did you see the show?”

  “I missed the first ten minutes.”

  “What did you think?”

  His face went blank, and I realized that he was trying to hide his real reaction from me. “It was . . . interesting.”

  “Is that doublespeak for it was terrible and you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings?” Because it had been pretty bad.

  “I can tell that your mother really loves acting and the theater,” he said diplomatically.

  “She does. Why do you think she named me Juliet? Most of my memories with my mom revolve around being at our community theater with her.”

  “Do you love it the same way she does?”

  “It’s never really been my thing. But you said you liked the theater. Do you have a favorite play? Or maybe a favorite playwright?”

  He seemed to be thinking, and I loved the way he always took all my questions seriously and how he always answered them. “That would be hard to choose. I’ve been reading Sam Shepard’s plays lately. I enjoy them because he wrote from the perspective of someone who was an actor, too. But if you spent all that time in theaters, you must have a favorite playwright.”

  “I am a fan of musicals, to my mother’s eternal dismay. Do I lose cool points if I say Rodgers and Hammerstein?”

  “Yes, you lose all the cool points. But that’s okay. I’ll still let you kiss me.”

  I slapped him lightly on the forearm, and he laughed.

  Someone walked up behind us, and I turned, half expecting that we were about to be interrupted by one of his fans.

  It was my mother. I hugged her and congratulated her and then said, “Mom, this is Noah Douglas.”

  They said hello and shook hands. Then my mother asked, “And what is it you do, Noah?”

  He couldn’t suppress his amused smile. “I’m an actor, as well.”

  “Good for you,” my mom said. “It’s a hard profession!”

  “It is,” he agreed, very good natured about the whole thing.

  “Did you study it in college?” she asked.

  “I didn’t get the chance to attend college.”

  “It’s never too late to go back. You could have a show just like this one.”

  “That would be . . . something,” he said, and I felt like I needed to intervene before this got too far off the rails. I wondered if I should tell her that he was a professional, but given how much Noah seemed to be enjoying the anonymity, I decided against it.

  “You seem familiar to me,” my mom said thoughtfully. “Like we’ve met before.”

  “I get that a lot.” Which was probably because people weren’t expecting to meet a movie star in real life and it took their brain a minute to catch up with where they recognized him from. Because he definitely didn’t just have “one of those faces.” He was much more unique than that.

  His phone buzzed, and he took it out of his pocket to look at it. “My car is here. I’m sorry to do this, but I’ve got to get going. It was nice to meet you!” He waved to my mother and then leaned in to kiss me quickly on the cheek.

  “Wait.” I grabbed at his arm, confused. “I thought we were going to hang out tonight.”

  “I have plans. But I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

  Then he was gone, and I was left feeling bereft. This was not at all how I’d hoped this evening would go.

  And what kind of plans did he have? My heart lurched as I considered that he might be seeing someone else. That maybe that’s why he didn’t call me while he was in New York. Because he was out on dates with women who would actually kiss him. Who would more than kiss him.

  For the first time in my life, I understood the phrase green with envy. Because I felt sick with jealousy at the idea of him being out with other women. Which was totally irrational, because I was the one who set up our situation. I was the one who had said friends only. If he was seeing other women, he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

  “Is that your boyfriend?” my mom asked.

  “We’re just friends. We’re not dating.”

  She raised one eyebrow like she didn’t believe me. “How old is he?”

  Given that I was currently embroiled in my own jealousy spiral, and while I adored my mother, getting into this weird hang-up of hers was going to make me roll my eyes so hard that my ocular muscle would spasm and make me go blind. Even if I was the last person who should be judging anyone’s weird hang-ups. “He’s twenty-seven. Not fifty-seven. He’s only three years older than me. We’re basically the same age.”

  She must have heard how unwilling I was to have this discussion with her, because she immediately backed off and then proceeded into territory that made me want to roll my eyes even harder. “He’s not very conventionally handsome, is he? I can’t really see him ever getting a leading man part.”

  “Okay, I’m making an appointment for you with your eye doctor, and we’re getting your vision checked. I know opinions are subjective, but yours is wrong.” Maybe it was because she’d never seen
him act. The intensity, the sheer talent, the vulnerability he conveyed, the way he made every character into a real person who deserved to find love and their happy ending.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised at her reaction—my mom had always looked to find the bad in every guy that I’d ever expressed an interest in. During my Felix Morrison obsession, she’d reminded me more often than was necessary that he was a fictional character and that I’d never date him.

  Ha. I’d showed her. Well, sort of. Since we weren’t technically dating.

  But she seemed to always find the flaws in guys that I had crushes on. To discourage me. Did that have something to do with my dad? Did she think she was protecting me from feeling the same kind of heartbreak she had? I wondered if her bringing up what was wrong with guys I liked played into my phobia issues at all. And why hadn’t this ever occurred to me before?

  My phone beeped, and there was a message from Shelby.

  And while there was no way to parse out her tone, I felt in my gut like something was wrong. Maybe because the text was so short, with no greeting, no flowers or emojis. I knew that she needed me.

  But before I could tell my mother that I had to go, she hugged me and said she was off to have a small get-together with her professor and a few of her classmates. She kissed my forehead. “Love you, kiddo!”

  “I love you, too. And you did a really good job tonight.” Then I practically sprinted out to my van.

  Fortunately the campus wasn’t too far from my apartment, so it didn’t take me long to get home. When I burst through the door, I expected to find . . . I didn’t know what I expected. It certainly wasn’t Shelby sitting on the couch watching a Noah Douglas movie and eating chocolate chip cookie dough.

  “Hey.” She didn’t make eye contact with me.

  I closed the door and said hi back. I shrugged my jacket off, leaving it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Is everything okay?”

  “I just wanted a girls’ night.”

  That wasn’t it. I heard the pain and sadness in her voice. But whatever was wrong with her, she didn’t seem quite ready to tell me yet. I’d just wait until she was. I grabbed a spoon from the kitchen and sat down on the couch next to her. In this movie Noah played a medieval knight avenging the murder of his wife and child. We watched the movie for about an hour until it got to the scene where Noah’s character was about to kiss the princess he’d fallen in love with during his quest.

  Shelby paused the movie just as the kiss started and put her spoon and the tub of dough on the coffee table and announced, “I’m going to break up with Allan.”

  She immediately burst into sobs while I put my arms around her. “What? Why? Did something happen? Did he do something? I’ll kill him if he cheated on you. I’m not even kidding.”

  “No,” she said in a muffled voice. “Tonight Allan’s mother told him that if he married me, she would never speak to him again.”

  Why would that make Shelby want to break up with Allan? “So? That sounds like a good deal to me. You get Allan and you don’t have to deal with Harmony.”

  “But how can I do that? I don’t want him to have to choose. I don’t want to come between him and his family.”

  “You’re going to be his family,” I told her. “That witch should be thrilled she’s getting you as a daughter-in-law. I wish I had a brother so that you could marry him and we’d always be related.”

  Her crying started to subside, and I asked, “What does Allan say?”

  “He said he loves me, he chooses me. But I don’t want him to have to give up his family.” Her voice wobbled and broke, like she was going to start sobbing again.

  “So he wants to be with you and you’re going to run away? That doesn’t seem right. It’s not your fault Harmony’s a psycho. And I’m sorry you’re going through this, but I think pushing the man you love away is probably the worst thing you can do. And take that from someone who is slowly learning that avoiding things isn’t the answer. If you love him, which you do, and he loves you, which he does, and you want a life together, then that’s what you should do.”

  “You’re right. But this is going to cause him so much pain. And I don’t want to be the reason he’s in all that pain.” She reached for the extra roll of toilet paper we kept on the coffee table because neither one of us ever remembered to buy Kleenex. She blew her nose and then put her face in her hands while I rubbed her back.

  I kept trying to make her feel better. “You aren’t the reason he’s in pain. His mom did that, not you. And think about how much worse it would be if you broke up with him. I’m pretty sure that would destroy him. You’re his entire world.”

  She nodded. “I can’t even imagine my life without him. But I would give him up so that he could be happy.”

  “Which is why you’re the one he deserves to be with. The person who puts his happiness above their own.” Unlike his stupid mother, but I refrained from adding the last part on.

  “Okay!” She straightened back up. “I’ll call him after this movie’s over and talk it out with him. But thank you, Juliet. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for.” She hugged me tightly. “Let’s finish this and then I’m going to have a difficult conversation.”

  She pushed play and the movie started up again. After a minute or two, she said, “I wonder if Noah Douglas kisses like that in real life. If he’d be all aggressive and take charge.”

  Without thinking, I said, “He’s actually very sweet and gentle.” I immediately realized my mistake, and it was like time came to a complete stop.

  Shelby stood up and shrieked, “What?” Only she lengthened the vowel sound in the word for, like, twenty seconds. “You’ve kissed Noah Douglas? Where? When? How? Anywhere interesting? What else should I know? How is this happening and you haven’t said one word to me? You’ve been sending me these texts saying ‘what’s up’ and what was up was that you were making out with Noah Douglas! Details, now. All of them.”

  I sighed. Now I was the one who was about to have a difficult conversation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When I didn’t respond, I saw her suck in a big breath, ready to barrage me with another round of questions. I held up my hands to ward her off. “In order for me to tell you anything, you have to stop talking first and sit back down.”

  And there was no way to tell her about Noah without giving her the full picture. I wasn’t terrified or frozen by the idea of telling her. Maybe it was because I’d already told Noah everything? My secret no longer felt earth-shattering. These stories had somehow just become part of who I’d been, and they didn’t define me.

  I didn’t know who to give credit to for that.

  So I filled her in, starting with what had happened to me in high school (which she’d never known about, since we’d gone to different schools) and about my full-blown phobia over kissing. I also told her about my arrangement with Noah—how he was helping me to overcome my phobia, but that we were strictly friends and nothing more. While I talked her eyes kept getting bigger and bigger until she resembled an anime character.

  When I had caught her up on everything that had happened between him and me through the events of tonight, I tensed up, some small and scared part of me still believing she might think I was weird or make fun of me. But I should have known better. There was a reason she was my best friend.

  “That’s why you never date,” she said sympathetically, taking both of my hands in hers. “I wish I’d known. I was always pushing you at guys and this was how you felt? I’m so sorry.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I should have.”

  “How?” I said with a laugh.

  “I just should have had best friend ESP or something. You really think that trying to kiss Noah Douglas is going to fix this?”

  “That’s kind of the plan.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “Is falling in love with him also the plan?”

  What? That wasn’t going to happen. “I told you, w
e’re just friends.”

  “You like him as a person. It sounds like you guys click really well and get each other’s sense of humor. You are friends. You add in attraction and intimacy and physicality? Like, that’s going to go somewhere.”

  She wasn’t seeing the big picture. “It isn’t. We’re compartmentalizing. I’ve compartmentalized for a really long time. I can do it here, too.”

  “You’d have to be superhero-level strong to avoid falling for this guy.” She gestured toward the TV.

  “Call me Supergirl. I got this.”

  “Okay. You can claim friends only, but you do realize that you’re dating him, right?”

  “How do you figure that? We’ve been very clear with each other on what this is,” I said. Even if my heart sometimes wanted to forget.

  “Why don’t you want it to be more?”

  “So many reasons. Trying to work through my phobia is sort of sucking up all of my emotional energy. The fact that I know things aren’t going to work out between us. That I’m pretty sure he’ll get bored with me and cheat with some groupie and leave.” I let out a shaky breath. Why was this upsetting me? I knew how things had to be.

  “I don’t believe that. He was in the army. Don’t they breed them to be loyal? He’d probably make an excellent boyfriend.”

  “Being monogamous for Noah Douglas means beating off thousands of women with a stick. For me it means not matching with somebody on Tinder. Unless he defines faithfulness as small bursts of devotion that are followed up by him having the freedom to do what he wants.”

  She frowned. “How would you even know that?”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s on a date right now.” That sickly jealous feeling returned, making my stomach queasy.

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “No. But look at him.” Now it was my turn to point at the TV. “Who wouldn’t want to date him?”