The Trouble With Flirting

by Claire Lazebnik

  “Don’t you have to get back to rehearsal or class or whatever it is you do here during the day?” I say eventually.

  He mutters something vaguely obscene that might suggest a rehearsal could have sex with itself and tries to go back to what we were doing.

  I push him away. “Think how bad it would be if you got kicked out of here. I’d have to find someone else to make out with. It might take me hours.”

  He lets go of me and steps back. “Don’t say stuff like that, Franny. I’m too worried it’s true.”

  “I’m just teasing.”

  “I know.” He takes my hand. “It’s just that I get the sense I really do like you more than you like me, and it’s not something I’m used to feeling.”

  “I like you plenty,” I say. “I just want to take things slowly.”

  “I know. I get that.” He slips his fingers between mine and gathers me toward his chest. “I’ll work hard to be worthy of you.”

  “Oh, please,” I say. “‘Worthy’? Who talks like that?”

  He’s silent a moment. Then he says, “How about, You don’t have to worry, Harry. I’m crazy about you?”

  I squeeze his hand. “You don’t have to worry, Harry. I like being with you.”

  “I’m not getting anything helpful out of you today, am I?”

  “I’m not about to stand here massaging your ego, if that’s what you were hoping for.”

  “Humph.” He absorbs that for a moment. Then he shifts and says hopefully, “Speaking of massages . . .”

  I shove him. “Time for you to go.”

  “Don’t forget me,” he says, and shoots me one last lingering, wistful look while he clutches his hand to his heart. The guy is always acting, always playing around. He’s never serious. He just plays at being serious now and then for a minute. For the fun of it.

  When I join the cast at rehearsal late that afternoon (this time they’re in one of the practice rooms above the dining hall), Marie glares at me. Eyes like daggers.

  Julia pulls me aside to tell me, laughing, that Marie complained to her that morning that there was something creepy about how I had targeted Harry, made him carry me at the beach, then hijacked that excursion the other day—

  “Where was she yesterday, anyway?” I interrupt. “I figured she’d find a way to zone in on Harry, but I never even saw her.”

  “Oh, my God, it was the funniest thing ever!” Julia says. “Her boyfriend had said that he’d take her to some fancy restaurant on Sunday, and she was bragging all about it for days, and then she found out about our day trip. I heard her on the phone to him, trying to cancel, but I guess he had worked hard for the reservations and said they had to go, and she was all like, ‘Fine, but don’t expect me to enjoy it!’”

  “She’s a delight,” I say.

  “She better start being nicer to him,” Julia says, “or she’s going to lose him, too.”

  “Too?”

  “You know what I mean. So how are things with Harry?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She doesn’t ask me what I mean, because she doesn’t really care. She asked only so she could launch into how great things are going with her and Manny. I’m happy for her, and I listen and I say the right things and squeal when it’s appropriate to squeal. But pretty soon Charles needs me for a scene: true to his word, he’s making good use of every minute I can spare from sewing.

  I jump to attention the second he calls on me and come flying in at my cue. I’m so happy to be acting, I have to work hard to stay in character and not keep grinning the whole time I’m onstage.

  act III

  scene one

  A few days later, at the end of our rehearsal, Marie sidles up to Harry and tells him she’d really like to run lines with him after dinner. He agrees that they could use the extra practice; then he turns to me and says I should come too.

  “Are you implying that I need to work on my lines?” I ask with a slightly pained laugh. The truth is, I did forget a bunch of lines during this last rehearsal. Charles has been patient with me because I started two weeks after everyone else, and I know I shouldn’t expect to be perfect yet, but I hate the look of panic that crosses his face whenever I mess up.

  “If I say yes, will you join us?” Harry asks.

  “I can’t. I have to go back to the Sweatshop.” I wish I didn’t. I don’t love the idea of the two of them going off alone together: Marie still flirts with Harry every chance she gets, and even though he and I have been an established couple for close to a week now, I feel like she’s breathing down my neck.

  “Come find us in the common room as soon as you get out,” he says.

  “We should go somewhere more quiet than that. Just text us when you’re done,” Marie tells me. “We’ll probably still be working.” She’s wearing a lot of makeup today, with smoky eyes and deep red lips. Since her character is supposed to look like a boy, it was a little unsettling to see her like that during the rehearsal, but she looks pretty hot. She may be annoying and self-centered and dishonest, but she’s also incredibly cute and knows how to work what she’s got. All the straight guys watch her whenever she’s walking across a room. She has the whole übergirl hip-swaying, hair-tossing thing down. It’s affected, but it’s also apparently effective.

  After we all have dinner, I tell Harry I’m heading back to the sewing workroom. He tells me to “blow off the old lady,” but when I say I can’t, he shrugs and says, “Fine, but come back when you can.” Easygoing as always. I kind of want him to protest more. Maybe it’s silly, but it just feels like he doesn’t really care, like, yeah, maybe he’d rather be with me, but if he can’t, he’s perfectly happy to be with Marie, who’s already tugging on his arm as I say good-bye.

  It puts me in a bad mood. I’m mad at myself for caring. Wasn’t not caring supposed to be my MO when it came to a relationship with Harry?

  Amelia and I wrap up the night’s work around eight thirty. She says, “Where do you think you’re going?” when I head toward the door.

  “To hang out with my friends. It’s still early.”

  “It would be nice if you’d spend an evening with me now and then,” she says. “You’re always dashing off. I thought this summer would be our chance to get closer.”

  “We just spent the entire day together.”

  “But that was work,” she says. “That’s not the same. You think I don’t know how to have fun, but I do. Like tonight I was thinking we could make popcorn and watch an old movie in our pajamas. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  “Yeah, really nice,” I lie. “But I promised some of my friends I’d come by.”

  “You could text them and say you can’t make it.”

  “I’ll only be an hour or two. I promise.”

  “Fine,” she says. Her lips tighten, and she closes a drawer with a violent shove. “Do whatever you want. You always do.” She adds in a low, vicious hiss, “You’re just like that father of yours.”

  “Excuse me?” I stop and turn around. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” She waves her fingers toward the door. “I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “Were you dissing my dad?”

  She puts her hand across her chest. “I would never say anything negative about him. Not in front of one of his kids. He may have been a bad husband, but he’s still your father, and I will always be respectful of that.”

  “He wasn’t a bad husband!”

  “I certainly won’t argue the point with you. I’m not that kind of person.”

  I take a deep breath and get control of my temper. “Whatever. I’m off. Don’t wait up for me.” I open the door.

  “You said you wouldn’t stay out late.”

  Yeah, that was before we had this little talk, I think, but the only thing I say out loud is “good-bye.”

  Now my mood is even worse. First of all, I hate Amelia for casting my father as the bad guy in my parents’ marriage. I was there and she wasn’t, and maybe he and my mom
didn’t always get along, but it wasn’t like he was some kind of villain and she was some kind of saint. They both acted like jerks to each other a lot of the time. Never to us, though. Neither of them was ever mean to me or William. I remember wishing they could be as nice to each other as they were to us, but for some reason they just didn’t seem to be able to do that.

  And it’s crazy for Amelia to complain that I’m not spending enough time with her. All I do is spend time with her.

  Most important, the whole time I was standing there having that miserable conversation, Harry and Marie were rehearsing alone together.

  I get to the dorm and check out the common room. It’s quiet tonight. I look around for friends, but they must all be off doing something else. No Harry or Marie in sight.

  Guess the big rehearsal is still going on.

  I’m reaching into my pocket to get out my phone so I can text Harry, when Alex enters from the other hallway. He spots me and comes over.

  “Franny!” he says. “I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to play a round of darts and there was no one to play with.”

  “Where’s Isabella?”

  “With her roommates. Apparently they needed to have a serious talk about bathroom hygiene. What about Harry? Where’s he?”

  “Rehearsing with Marie.”

  He kind of raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything.

  I shove my cell phone back in my pocket. “Let’s play darts.” I don’t really want to send Harry a text anyway—I don’t want to tell him to stop rehearsing with Marie and come be with me. I want him to stop because he’s had enough. Which clearly he hasn’t, since he’s not around.

  Alex leads the way back across the common room. A bunch of people are sprawled on the sofas—and on top of one another—watching SpongeBob SquarePants. A girl comes in right after us and squeals, “I love this show so friggin’ much!” and squeezes herself in between two seated guys. One of them grabs her hand and holds it tightly, but there’s nothing romantic about it—it’s just a moment of shared glee. They cheer and wave their joined hands when SpongeBob bursts into song.

  We have to wait for a minute until Raymond and Wilson finish their game of darts, and then Alex high-fives the winner (Raymond) and we take over.

  “Go ahead and throw first,” he tells me. “I want to see if you’re any good.”

  “Any good?” I say. “I’m like practically a professional.” I throw the darts and manage to miss the target with every one of them. The darts mostly hit the wall and bounce off, landing on the floor. “Maybe I should clarify that.” I scoop the darts up off the floor and turn around to face him again. “I’ve never actually played before.”

  “Okay,” he says. “The first rule is don’t kill anyone.”

  “Oh, don’t start making up rules now. That’s not fair.”

  “Fine,” he says. “Kill people. Just know that you don’t get any points for it. Here,” he adds, and gently bends my elbow a little and moves my wrist. “Try holding your arm like this and flicking your wrist more when you throw.”

  I try not to think too much about how close Alex is to me. His touch is light and respectful, but it’s still kind of . . . intimate. I’m suddenly glad Harry and Isabella are somewhere else. Even if it means Harry is with Marie.

  “Okay,” Alex says, stepping back. “Give it a try.”

  “Like this?” I try to do what he said. After a few more throws, I’m still not landing the darts anywhere near the bull’s-eye, but at least they’re sinking into the target and not bouncing off the walls. “Ready to play a real game?” I ask.

  “Am I ready?”

  “Prepare to be humiliated.”

  We play a round, and he beats me by a lot. “I went easy on you,” I say.

  He tilts his head and gives me a fondly skeptical look. His eyes are so blue. Blue is the best color for eyes. “I’ll spot you seventy points this time,” he says.

  “You sure you want to make it that easy for me?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I lose again. “See?” I said. “You made it too easy for me—to lose.”

  “No offense, Franny, but you kind of suck at darts.”

  “Yeah, but I have incredible team spirit.” I raise my hands in the air and wave invisible pom-poms. “Go, me!” I drop my hands. “All you have is skill.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Well, you do also have a certain indefinable something . . . that’s hidden and indefinable . . .”

  “You said ‘indefinable’ twice,” Alex points out.

  “It’s really indefinable. Possibly even nonexistent.”

  He laughs. So do I. It’s one of those moments where you laugh because you’re happy more than because you’re amused. There’s a pause. “Want to watch SpongeBob?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I’m glad he doesn’t want our time together to end either.

  “Or we could . . .” His voice trails off. “I don’t know,” he says. “What could we do?”

  I gesture toward the big windows. “It’s a really beautiful night.”

  “Let’s go outside,” he says, so quickly it’s almost like he was waiting for me to propose that.

  No one looks at us twice as we leave the dorm. We always hang out together, Alex and I. Just not usually alone like this. But no one else is thinking about that. Only me. And maybe him.

  I’m tense. In a good way. A trembling, could something happen tonight? kind of way.

  I briefly wonder if I should be more worried about Harry and Isabella. Technically, we’re going out with them. Technically, there are rules about this kind of thing. Technically, there are ideals of fidelity and honor.

  But it’s summer and we’re only here for a few more weeks and plenty of people have gone out and broken up already.

  Anyway, as much as I don’t want to hurt anyone, I don’t think either Harry or Isabella is likely to be hurt for too long. If something happens between me and Alex, the two of them will cuddle up together with a couple of cigarettes and then go make some other people fall in love with them.

  I’ve liked Alex longer than Isabella has, anyway.

  I glance at him, wondering if his thoughts are running along the same lines as mine, if he’s trying to square everything away so he doesn’t need to feel guilty, no matter what happens. But he’s looking down at the ground, and I can’t see his eyes or his expression—the sun has set completely and it’s dark. There are fireflies lighting up the branches of the trees. A bunch of kids are playing Frisbee in the courtyard with a glow-in-the-dark disc, and it streaks across the sky like an alien spaceship.

  We move away from the players and spectators, toward the greater darkness between the buildings. Neither of us is leading, as far as I can tell. We just both choose to walk that way.

  “How’s your summer going?” Alex asks after a moment of walking in not-uncomfortable-but-oddly-weighty silence.

  “Okay, I guess. Today wasn’t great. I got reamed out by my aunt for being a bad niece. Which I guess I am.”

  “I doubt that.”

  He’s so nice. Have I mentioned that? How nice Alex is? From the moment he gave me that stupid rose in eighth grade, I’ve been aware that this is a nice guy. “It’s true I’d rather be hanging out with my friends than with her.”

  “Well, of course you would. Who wouldn’t?” We’ve reached a small circle of trees behind the building. We stop and Alex leans against one of the trunks. “What’s it been like working with her?”

  “She’s not a barrel of laughs. But it’s fine. I’m glad I’m here—especially now that I get to be in a play. I almost feel guilty, getting to have the fun part when I never even had to apply or try out or anything.”

  “From what I heard, you totally earned it, as much as anyone here.” We’re completely in shadow now, far from the splashes of light that the streetlamps throw off. But there’s enough moonlight for me to catch the quick glance he throws at me. “And Harry?”

  I pluck at t
he bark on the trunk closest to me. “What about Harry?”

  “Is he improving your summer?”

  “I don’t know. He’s Harry, you know? He’s a goof.” I sound more dismissive than I feel. But right now I want Alex to think Harry’s no big deal to me. And clearly I’m no big deal to Harry—he’s still with Marie and hasn’t even bothered to check in with me. Maybe they’re just really into rehearsing. But maybe not.

  “I can’t get used to it,” Alex says. “You and Harry.”

  “Me and Harry what?”

  “You know. Isabella says you’re totally a couple now.”

  “Well, if Isabella says it, it must be true.”

  “Is it?”

  We’ve both been lowering our voices during the whole last exchange. We’re practically whispering now.

  “Of course not,” I say. “I’m not an idiot. We’re just having fun, that’s all.”

  “Good,” Alex says. “Harry’s not the kind of guy you want to see a girl you like getting too involved with.” I don’t know what to say to that. And what does the like mean in that sentence?

  Like is such an ambiguous word. So open to interpretation.

  He says, “I don’t want to see you get hurt, Franny.”

  “I’m tough.”

  He shakes his head with a gentle smile. “That’s not how I see you.”

  “How do you see me?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, which is disappointing. But then he reaches out and catches my hand in his. “Franny,” he says, and I wait, my throat tightening with my caught breath. But suddenly there are voices near us and he lets go of my hand. “It’s getting late,” he says. “We should probably go back inside.”

  I don’t want to. I want to stay in the dark with Alex, who I’ve had a crush on since middle school. It’s dark and it’s warm and I know that something could happen and everything could change.

  Something is happening: I can feel it.

  I draw closer to him. “Alex? Do you remember giving me a flower?”

  “A flower?”

  I tell him the story.

  “Wow,” he says. “I totally forgot I did that. But now it’s coming back to me. You were so cute with your costume and makeup and all, but no one was there for you. And everyone was making this huge fuss over Julia—as usual. And I thought, Someone should give that girl a flower. So I did. And then I was so embarrassed I ran away.”