Snark and Stage Fright (Snark and Circumstance Book 5)

by Wardrop, Stephanie

  “You were hot, too,” he said after a few deliciously agonizing seconds. “But I don’t like you as a blond. Georgia Barrett is a brunette, and that is a good thing.” Then he took my hand and we walked into the huge rec room where the rest of the party had assembled, listening to an album by the original Broadway cast of The Sound of Music, and singing along with it. Dave and Gary were already there, playing quarters with Gary’s girlfriend, Megan, and her friend Brittany. They applauded when we approached them.

  “Best Performance as Mid-Century Eurotrash goes to … Georgia Barrett!” Gary yelled and hugged me like I had just won a real award, adding, “And Best Jackbooted-Thug-Slash-Partygoer goes to Mr. Michael Endicott!”

  Michael bowed but refused to give a speech despite Megan’s urging. As the quarters game broke up and people started dancing, Michael and I sat on a long sectional leather couch and watched. I was so glad to see Leigh on the dance floor with Alistair, looking so beautiful and happy, and then Brittany coaxed Dave to join Megan and Gary, and they started pogoing and things got really crazy. But Michael and I stayed in our corner of the couch, perfectly content. I felt like I had champagne bubbles in my veins.

  “So what role do you want to take on next?” Michael asked as he ran the back of his hand against my cheekbone. “Something dramatic, like an Ibsen play? Or maybe play Ophelia, since you love her, as I recall.”

  I did recall—I recalled our impromptu debate about Hamlet in English class last year. It probably marked the moment when we had both stopped “squabbling” so much, as Tori had put it, and really started to listen to—and respect—each other. The first moment, maybe, when we really understood each other.

  “Shut up. I was a last-minute replacement and I looked like it. But it was fun. It was really … I don’t know. It was good to be outside of myself for a while, to force myself to open up some more.” I bit my lip and looked him in the eyes that were so close to me right now. I wanted to speak carefully for once; I wanted him to understand. “Tori says I spend too much time assuming what people think of me and then making a defensive joke that only ensures that they will think the worst of me. And she’s right.” I hoped he couldn’t tell that my hand, lying next to his, was shaking like the rest of me; it occurred to me that the shaking might be internal, though, and not visible to the naked eye. I wanted so much to say everything right, but, knowing that was impossible, I surrendered with, “I’m so sorry I messed everything up between us. If I could do it over again, all of it, but especially that last night—”

  “Shhhh,” he said softly. “You don’t have to say that. And you don’t have to be sorry.”

  “But I have to stop protecting myself, like I’m some fortress to be defended at all costs, especially against the things I want. The people I want … you … ”

  His forehead bent to mine, his lips so close I could tell he had recently had an Altoid mint, and asked, “What did you wish for last night, on the vegan wishbone?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I sighed, “I didn’t win.”

  “Maybe you did,” he said, cupping my chin with three fingers, “if we both wished for the same thing.”

  “I wished—” I began, as Todd, who’d played Max, suddenly collapsed onto the couch, laughing about something, and Tatum from the cross-country team grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back up, and then they were both laughing. I felt really disoriented all of a sudden, like I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and no longer knew where I was.

  Michael’s face darkened for a second, then he took both of my hands and asked, “Do you want to dance?”

  I just nodded and let him lead me away.

  Spencer put on a slow song, Paramore’s The Only Exception, just as we made our way to the dance area, so we got to hold each other and sway and it felt as good as it did at his cousin’s wedding and better than the first time we’d ever danced, at the Harvest Ball almost exactly a year ago. It got even better when he started humming into my hair.

  “You should go out for the spring musical,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder.

  “I think my time on stage is done for a while.”

  We danced until he started kissing my neck and my heart beat faster and I stopped him and stepped back.

  I knew this risked breaking the spell, but I had to ask, “Does this mean we’re okay?”

  “Let’s talk,” he said, and he took my hand and started for the front door and my heart was pounding even harder because what if we weren’t okay and for some reason he just thought it would be nice to make out at Spencer’s party for a while. In the front room, he helped me into my coat, then stopped and said something to Leigh, and she nodded vigorously and grinned at me as she waved goodbye. He led me to his car, opened the passenger’s side door for me, and gestured for me to get in. He climbed in and turned on the heat because it was starting to snow a little. I remembered sitting in his car while the snow fell last New Year’s Eve, when he had saved me from a drunken hookup with Jeremy Wrentham. It was the beginning of our friendship—and everything after.

  “I don’t think I could try to be just your friend again,” I admitted as I looked out through the windshield at the big fat flakes falling like frozen stars, leaving perfect little patterns on the glass. “I’ve tried really hard to be your friend,” I said, “to work on that project together and to be chill when I thought you and Diana were such a happy couple. Because she seemed to make you happy. She didn’t complicate your life like I did.”

  He took both of my hands between his. He said, “Georgie, you didn’t complicate my life. You opened it up. Without you pushing me gently to do stuff like walk onstage in a tuxedo or eat seemingly inedible things or wage war against our oppressors—” He paused and smiled for a second. “I would never do any of those things. You open me up. You make me better, more adventurous. We do work together, better than we do apart. And as for Diana and me—we went out twice. I did it mostly because I wanted to feel like I was moving on. Like I was getting past us.”

  “You needed to get past us?” I marveled, and I started crying; he pulled me into his arms and held me, stroking my hair.

  He said, “I wanted us to leave the party because I need to apologize,” he said, “and I want to be sure I do it right, so I thought we should be alone.”

  “What are you apologizing for?”

  He frowned and I could tell he was forcing himself to speak carefully by the way his eyebrows formed a little V of concentration as he said, “That night we … broke up, I was really hurt. Hurt and humiliated and angry.”

  “I know, I know!” I started to wail, but he put a hand on my lips, very gently.

  “But it was my fault, too. I should have known you weren’t a hundred percent ready. And that that stuff with Catalina was making you anxious, even if she didn’t matter at all. But when things … fizzled out, I was angry, so I said I wanted to take a break.”

  I nodded, rubbing my thumb over the black buttons on his coat. I said, “I understood why you needed a break. Really. After all the stupid things I did, all the ways I embarrassed you in front of your family. Geez, I wish I could take a break from myself sometimes, too.”

  He stopped my hand and squeezed my fingers slightly.

  “I was never embarrassed by you. And after we were back in Longbourne, when I was kind of over the initial shock,” he began with a rueful grin, then a pause. “ I … God, I hate to admit this. It’s pretty awful.” He slumped forward as if he had been punched in the spine, so I reached out a hand and rubbed his back a little until he sat upright again. “I was still angry enough, I guess, to want to punish you for making me feel bad. So when you came to me at Cameron’s party and said you were sorry and you missed me, I just turned off every feeling I had for you. It was mean, I know, and it wasn’t the truth of how I felt, but I did it. And when Diana’s mom kind of pushed us into a date, I went, because she’s been a friend and I thought it would be good for me to move on. And by the time I was finally over myself,”
he said with a smirk at his own expense for once, “it was too late. You were going out with Dave. So I just suggested we work on the history project so we could at least work together again.”

  After I had absorbed everything he had said—and calculated all the time we had wasted, I said, “I was never going out with Dave.”

  “But you got so mad that day in my kitchen when I asked about your date the night before. You told me it was none of my business.”

  I had to laugh. “I couldn’t see why you kept asking me about it! I had been so nervous about coming over to your house that day, about working with you, seeing your parents again … ”

  He twisted his mouth in a regretful smile. “I kept asking about Dave, Georgie, because I was jealous.”

  “You were?” I probably sounded way too excited when I said that, especially given how badly I had treated Dave, whom I was hoping was still dancing with Megan’s friend, or even making out with her on the sectional couch we had abandoned when Todd fell on it.

  “I was,” he admitted. “I had no business being jealous, but … I was.”

  “We only went out once. I did not handle it well,” I sighed, taking his hand off the steering wheel and studying the lines running across it. “I feel really bad about it. We went up to Ashworth and then we came home … ”

  “I recall your saying that he ate un-meltable vegan cheese like a gentleman.”

  “Yes, and then we went home and … that’s it. Dave’s an amazing guy, and a great friend, better than I deserve, but … I missed you too much.”

  “I missed you, too,” he said and his lips met mine. They felt so warm and soft and good that I wanted to devour them, but I returned their gentle pressure until Michael pulled away and asked, “Was this your wish, from last night?”

  I nodded.

  “Me, too.” He kissed me again, on my lips, on my nose, on my closed eyelids, behind my ears, and he whispered, “I missed you so much,” when we came up for air. After we caught our breath, he said, “Georgie, do you know what Diana and I were whispering about all those times in the cafeteria? She was trying to get me to tell you how I felt and that I missed you.”

  “So all the time I was missing you, you were missing me?” I put two fingers on his lips and said, “It seems like we’ve wasted enough time already, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded his head beneath my fingers and I put a palm on each side of his face and kissed him. And he kissed me back with all the warmth and yearning that I felt myself.

  After we had fogged up the windows a lot, I wiped away a clear space in them and saw that most of the cars were gone.

  “Oh, no! I’m supposed to drive Leigh home!”

  Michael laughed, low in his throat, and reached out a lazy hand to try to return my tousled hair to some semblance of order.

  “I talked to Leigh,” he assured me. “Alistair—is that his name?—was coming to take her home.”

  One thing I love about Michael? He thinks of everything.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I have a mystery to resolve and then I think we are all caught up on this sad series of misunderstandings: Why was Diana sitting in your lap last week when I came into the cafeteria?”

  He frowned, perplexed, and then laughed. “That must have been the day she threatened to sit on me until I told you how I really felt. It wasn’t much of a threat since she weighs about as much as a mouse. But I do remember you looked at us funny.” He grinned a little too smugly and teased, “Were you jealous?”

  I decided to wipe the smirk off his face with another kiss. He put his hands on my hips and lifted me onto his lap. And we resumed kissing until we were out of breath, lips bruised, faces chafed.

  He said, “We should probably leave before we’re arrested for loitering. Let me walk you to your car.”

  When he opened the doors, we looked around to see there were no other cars parked outside Spencer’s. The party had ended and everyone else had left and we hadn’t noticed. We were like the last two people left on this now-snowy planet. So we found my car easily since it was the only other one left on the street, but it was at least ten minutes before I drove away for home.

  We’d decided to see what it was like to kiss in the front seat of my car for a change.

  21 Comfort and Joy

  “I can tell the difference,” Michael admitted when he took his first sip from the mug of almond-milk hot chocolate I’d offered him. “But it’s good.”

  He was in my kitchen for a change since we had my house to ourselves on Christmas Eve. Leigh was at church, Mom and Dad were at some faculty thing, Tori was at Trey’s, and Cassie had actually accepted an invitation to attend Mass with Leo Haag from the basketball team. It seemed like a weird first date, especially for her, but I wished her well. My dad wasn’t thrilled about leaving the house for a faculty party, but both of my parents were extremely happy to have me spend my Christmas Eve with Michael. Maybe they were relieved that I wasn’t back to being a dateless wonder, but I prefer to believe it was because they knew I was happy.

  Michael and I took our mugs into the living room and curled up in front of the fireplace, where the two older cats were stretched out in front of the tidy flames my dad had left for us. Rufus the tabby sniffed Michael’s pant leg briefly, noted signs of dog smell, and went back to sleep. You could detonate a bomb in the next room and Rufus would just open one eye, note the calamity, and go back to sleep.

  “Okay, sit and wait!” I directed, and Michael laughed as I scurried upstairs to my bedroom to grab the box I’d wrapped an hour ago in gold foil and then tied with a big blue bow. When I returned, I found him stretched out right alongside Clover, the calico, his head propped up on one elbow. I checked my desire to throw myself on top of him, though, and handed him the gift.

  But he set it down and said, “Yours first,” as he produced a small wrapped box from the pocket of the coat behind him.

  I was giddy with excitement as I pulled off the ribbon, eager to see what he’d chosen. I was curious to see what he’d decided was right for me more than I was about the actual contents of the box. But when I opened that box, my breath left me like the smoke going up the chimney. It held a fine silver chain with two small silver charms: a heart and a wishbone.

  “Oh, Michael, I love it!” I squealed, throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him until he had a hard time breathing. “It’s perfect.”

  “I know you don’t wear a lot of jewelry, but I thought it would look nice on your neck, fitting into that hollow there,” he said, putting two fingers in the exact spot of my neck that the charms would nestle in, then helped me to put it on. “Perfect,” he agreed.

  “Well, I got you something for your neck, too, but it’s not as nice,” I warned him, and he opened the package slowly, running the edge of his thumb along the tape to break the seal without ripping the paper and pulling out my sad creation: a scarlet scarf—soft but not too soft—that I thought would look nice with his black pea coat.

  “Did you make this?” he marveled, turning it over in his hands. “You really made this?”

  “You can tell, right? Because it’s a little crooked on that side. It’s only my second scarf ever. But you should see the first one. It looks like a wolverine chewed on it.”

  He wrapped it around his neck and kissed me, running his fingers through my hair and making me feel like I had just presented him with the key to eternal happiness.

  “I can’t believe you made this for me. I didn’t even know you could knit!” His eyes were dark but bright and the red scarf looked great against his skin, if I may say so myself.

  “I just started, last month, when I was up all night every night because I was nervous about the show. And I didn’t know what to get you, so I thought with a scarf, even if it looks awful, you’ll know that I was thinking about you, stitch by stitch, the whole time I was making it.”

  “That’s the best part of it,” he said. He pulled me down onto the floor with him and we kissed and caressed each othe
r until we were breathless. It was so good to feel his skin again, to luxuriate in his touch that both produced and relieved such profound ache in me.

  “So,” he rasped when we took a break for air, “this time you’re going to be more honest with me about how you feel, and I’m going to not be judgmental when you tell me. That’s the plan, yes?”

  “Yes,” I promised, burrowing my head in the space between his neck and shoulder. “And I will never, ever laugh from anxiety again, especially in delicate moments. I’ll just excuse myself and vomit, very quietly, into the nearest receptacle.”

  He kissed my head and brushed the hair off of my face. “So what was the phrase you thought of at that delicate, inopportune moment in my bed at the Cape? The one from one of your mom’s romance novels?”

  I never should have told him everything I’d thought that night. It provided way too much material for teasing, but I guess that is the risk you take when you choose emotional nakedness.

  “Um, pulsing pillar,” I divulged, my face no doubt the color of Santa’s suit.

  “That’s terrible writing,” he scoffed, and I was so grateful that he could actually chuckle about this now I wanted to press him to me like a teddy bear. “And a terrifying concept. I can assure you that I have nothing like that on my person.”

  I started kissing his neck and when he growled happily I said, “I like everything about your person. Everything. And when I told you that night that I love you, that wasn’t just the heat of passion talking. I meant it. And I still do.”

  He sat up and looked down at me, smiling, and ran one hand down the length of my neck. I closed my eyes, wishing that this moment could last forever so that I could never screw things up again.

  “Me, too. I never stopped loving you, Georgie. I’m just not always sure how to deal with it.”

  I burrowed my face into the warm hollow between his neck and right shoulder, saying, “I know. I feel the same way. But I would rather figure it out together than be apart anymore.”