The Law of Tall Girls

by Joanne Macgregor

  Still a little dazed when the curtain rose again, I grinned sheepishly at Jay as we stepped forward to take our bow. The applause swelled, punctuated by cheers and whistles, and soon the whole audience was on their feet. When the curtain finally came down, the whole cast hopped about excitedly on the stage in a wild round-robin of high-fives, back-slaps, hugs and compliments.

  Ms. Gooding looked seriously pleased and more than a little relieved. “You have vindicated my faith in you — congratulations! Jay and Peyton, you were magnificent tonight!”

  Wren seemed a little reluctant in her praise of my performance, but the rest were clearly impressed.

  Liz punched me hard in the arm and sounded sincere when she said, “That was fantastic!”

  Doug was ecstatic. “You were all fantastic. Magnificent! Jay — you were awesome, and your timing in that duel was perfect! Zack, you had them in stitches, and Peyton, you had them in tears. I knew you could do it — I never doubted you for a moment. The chemistry! Talk about sizzling hot! And that stunt you pulled with Jay’s shirt — inspired! Do it again tomorrow night.”

  “Yeah, Big P. You and Jay getting all hot and heavy, and half-naked — I was getting bonerfied just watching from the wings. Now if you revealed just a little more skin, I’d be living my best dreams.”

  “Your wet dreams, you mean,” Angela said, and everyone — except Doug, who was looking suddenly thoughtful — cracked up laughing.

  Apparently unoffended, Zack said, “Let’s go grab a burger at Jim’s. I’m too buzzed to go to bed, man. Unless one of the lovely ladies wants to volunteer to help take off the edge?” He cupped his nut purse to emphasize his meaning.

  When we all finally began to make our way back to the dressing rooms, Doug said, “Jay, hang on a sec. I’ve got a couple of ideas for tomorrow night.”

  A throng of supporters was waiting to congratulate us when, still high with excitement, we tumbled out of the stage door fifteen minutes later. Chloe whooped and jumped up and down while she hugged me, assuring me it was the best performance I’d ever given. Her mother showered me in praise, and Ben insisted on climbing onto my shoulders, telling anyone who would listen that I was his pet giant.

  I waved shyly at Mr. and Mrs. Young and wished Jack was there to see her prediction come true. A bunch of clearly infatuated girls wanted to congratulate Jay, and Greg Baker slapped Jay’s back, pronounced his performance “freaking awesome!” and loudly bragged that Jay was his cousin.

  Delighted by the size of the group that descended on the diner, Jim programmed an all-Elvis playlist on the jukebox and gave us a free round of drinks. We clinked our glasses together and toasted the cast, the crew and Doug.

  “We love you, man!” said Zack, slopping his strawberry milkshake as he knocked his glass against Doug’s.

  “Yeah, you were magnificent! We knew you could do it. We never doubted you for a moment,” I said, grinning.

  “Are you mocking me?” Doug said.

  I winked back, but my smile faded when Tim Anderson stopped by our table.

  “Hey, how did the show go tonight?” he asked Jay.

  “Great!”

  “Cool — I’ve got my ticket for tomorrow. I need to see how this” — he gestured to Jay and me — “turns out.”

  “Yeah, see you later,” I said, curbing the impulse to manhandle him out of the diner.

  The next two hours were spent laughing, teasing, and happily conducting a post-mortem on the play. It was a great way to end the night.

  Tori was on duty, and although she wasn’t serving our tables, she could hardly miss noticing that Jay and I were now most definitely a couple — we couldn’t keep our eyes, or hands, off each other. Every time she passed our table, I smiled up at her, and she scowled down at me.

  When the crowd started to break up and head home, I saw her talking to Tim near the door. Was she confirming the status of my relationship with Jay? Wondering why I hadn’t logged my dates with him? Tori’s back was to us, but she must have said something that surprised or amused Tim, because his eyebrows shot up and he glanced my way for a second. Then Tori looked back over her shoulder at me, and I didn’t like the sly smile that curved her lips, not one bit. I sat up straight, unsure what to do, but at that moment, Jay pulled me onto his lap — just as if I was no bigger or heavier than the average girl — and covered my lips with own. And nothing else seemed to matter much after that.

  ~ 42 ~

  Saturday night was to be our second and last performance. After the success of the opening night, I was feeling so confident that not even Faye could dent my enthusiasm.

  She popped backstage before the performance, allegedly to give the cast her best wishes. I saw her give Jay a lingering hug — still hoping for a felonious reconciliation? — and then she breezed up to me.

  “I hear you weren’t completely terrible last night, Peyton.”

  “Er, thanks.”

  “And that you were all over Jay.”

  I had nothing to say to that. This was maximally awkward.

  “Good luck for tonight, then. Good, good luck!”

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘break a leg’,” I pointed out. “It’s bad luck to wish an actor good luck.”

  “I know,” she said, smiling sweetly. “See you later.”

  Doug gathered us together for a final pep talk. “It’s a full house tonight. Everybody’s heard how amazing the show is and wants to see it. We’ve even added extra rows of seats at the back. Give it your all again, people! Jay, you remember the notes I gave you last night? Wren, you can come in quicker on your lines, and crank up the comedy a notch. Peyton, change nothing.”

  Ha! It was a rare day when Wren got direction and I didn’t.

  “Make it happen, people!”

  The first half of the play went great — at least as well as the night before. The audience oo’d, ah’d and laughed at the right spots; no one forgot their lines, and the video and audio feeds were in perfect sync with our performances. The only hiccup came when Tim Anderson stumbled in, fifteen minutes after we’d started, and flopped into a chair in the middle of the front row. He applauded enthusiastically between scenes, yelled an encouraging “Stick the pig!” in Jay’s fight scene, and wolf-whistled during the balcony speech. He was obviously drunk or high. Probably both.

  During the intermission, the stage manager came to the dressing room, where I was busy changing for the second half, and told me that Tim was at the backstage door, demanding to speak to Jay and me.

  “You’ve only got ten minutes, so make it quick,” she warned me. “And tell Tim to shut up in the second half. Better still, tell him to go home and sleep it off.”

  I quickly yanked on my shorts and combination sleeveless-top-tank-bra top, checked my makeup in the brightly lit mirror, and hurried out, catching up with Jay just as he got to the stage door.

  Tim was there, swaying slightly and grinning broadly.

  “Ah, man! Ah, man!” he said. He blinked his bloodshot eyes a few times — to clear the double vision? — and reached out to place a steadying hand on the wall beside him.

  “I wanned to congratulate the lovers. You guys are awesome. Awesome! I’m so glad you got it together. I gotta wish you to … for …” He paused for a moment, clearly trying to figure out what he was supposed to wish us, before ditching that train of thought. “And I’m so proud, dude, dudess.”

  “Proud?” said Jay.

  “I was the matchmaker, wass’n I? The cupid!”

  Uh-oh. My heart gave an unpleasant jolt and my stomach went cold. I needed to shut this down.

  “We should go, Jay. We don’t want to be late for curtain-up.”

  “Thanks for the congrats, Tim. Though I think it was Greg who introduced us. I remember the occasion very well.” Jay smiled warmly down at me.

  “But I gave her your name, man, on the list.” Tim slumped against the wall and hiccupped loudly.

  “What list?” Jay asked.

  “Nothing. He’s
talking nonsense,” I said, tugging at Jay’s arm. “Come on, let’s go. That’s the warning bell for the audience.”

  “The lis’ of tall boys, man.”

  Oh, crap.

  “What?” Jay said.

  “Five minutes!” the stage manager called.

  “She wanned the names of all boys six foot three at school. And taller. Was only five. Or six.” Tim rubbed his temple, as though thinking hard. “No, is was five. Def’n’ly! And you’re on it.” He grinned at Jay.

  Jay was not smiling. “What list?” he asked me.

  “I … I can explain,” I said.

  Maybe. But where to begin? How to make this sound anything other than awful?

  “I can ‘splain,” Tim said. “Big P asked for a lis’ of all the tall boys at school, so I gave it to her. A freebie.”

  “Why?” Jay asked me.

  “It was nothing. Just, like, a silly joke,” I said, trying to pull Jay away from Tim, as the stage manager gave us the four-minute warning. “We really need to go, Jay.”

  “S’wasn’t a joke!” Tim said indignantly. “Was a bet!”

  Shit. My heart was thudding, and my mouth was dry as ash. This was like witnessing a slow-motion car crash.

  Jay turned and took a step closer to Tim. “A bet?” he repeated.

  “That girl at the diner, the butch one, she told me everything, man. She bet Big P eight hundred dollars that she couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  But Tim had slid down the wall, patting his pockets, and mumbling incoherently.

  “Do what?” Jay asked me this time. His voice was low and edged with something dangerous. “Is he talking about that bet when you kissed me, the first time we met?”

  “Please, Jay, I’ll explain later.”

  “Naah!” Tim waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Was a bet about prom.”

  “Three minutes. Places, please,” the stage manager called.

  “What was the bet, Peyton?”

  Oh, God. I’d fully intended to tell Jay. I’d wanted there to be no secrets between us. But I’d planned to do it at the right moment, when I could explain, and make it sound like the stupid nonsense it had been.

  I puffed out a breath and forced myself to meet Jay’s eyes. “Tori bet me that I couldn’t get a tall guy to take me out on three dates plus the prom.”

  Jay pulled back, a series of expressions chasing each other across his face — shock, hurt, anger.

  “That’s why you asked me out?”

  “I didn’t ask you out, you asked me out!”

  “But would you have come if you didn’t stand to make money out of it? Were you just using me to win money — or, should I say, more money? Because I’d already won you four hundred bucks with the kiss.” His voice was cold and flat.

  “Please Jay, it wasn’t like that!” I said, desperate to make him understand. “This had nothing to do with you. When I took the bet and got the list, you were still hooked up with Faye.”

  “Two minutes!”

  “But when we broke up, you made your move,” Jay accused.

  “That’s not true!” Was it? “And it’s not fair! You —”

  “She moved in for the kill, dude,” Tim cackled, lurching to his feet, triumphantly clutching a fifth of vodka.

  “Will you shut the hell up!” I snapped at him.

  “You didn’t wan’ me to shuddup when you ordered the report. You wanned me to spill the beans then,” Tim said sullenly, taking a long pull on his bottle.

  “What the hell, Peyton? What’s this report he’s talking about?”

  “I can explain. Please, Jay, we’ve got to go. I’ll explain everything afterwards.”

  “I can ‘splain. Me,” said Tim, thumping his chest with his thumb. “She could’n afford to pay so we bartered services, but don’ tell anyone — is a secret. Naughty, naughty!” Tim dissolved in giggles.

  Jay gave me a stunned look.

  “I didn’t! It wasn’t like that!” I laid a hand on Jay’s arm, but he shrugged it off.

  “Time!” the stage manager yelled at us. “Get onto the stage now!”

  “Got her all the deets on you, dude,” Tim said. “Your classes, your car, your library record, your injuries.”

  “Was any of it real, Peyton?” Jay said, staring down at me as if I was a stranger. “Do you even like acting, or was that just a way to get close to the tall guy on your list?”

  “No, of course not. Jay, please, it was never like that — not with you. I got the report because I wanted to know where you were so I could steer clear of you! That’s all. I thought you thought I was stalking you.”

  “And were you stalking me? All those times we just bumped into each other?”

  “No! Honestly.”

  Jay’s mouth twisted into a bitter imitation of a smile at that word.

  “I was trying to avoid you, Jay.”

  “That’s was she said — ‘avoid’. But it was for the bet. Cos that’s why she dated me, too, see? That black-lips chick at the diner told me everything las’ night.” Tim gave me an accusing look and added, “S’not cool, man. I thought you were thirsty for me.”

  “You dated Tim?” Jay asked. “When?”

  “Once! You dated Faye umpteen times. I had one date with Tim before you and I —”

  “Did you date him just for the bet?”

  “I— Yes. Okay? Yes. You know why I needed the money.” My eyes were brimming with tears.

  Jay scrubbed the back of a hand over his mouth, as though wiping away the taste of something bad.

  The stage manager marched up to us and hissed through clenched teeth, “You guys are late! Move!”

  “But all this time she really had her eye on you.” Tim tapped Jay on the shoulder with the hand holding the bottle, splashing him with vodka. “You! Jay Young: tall and hot. Is two birds an’ a one stone. An’ a one stoned.” Tim giggled again.

  At that point, the stage manager lost all patience. She grabbed Jay and me by our arms, yanked us away from Tim, and didn’t let go until we were standing in the darkness behind the stage curtains. I could hear the hushed rustling of the audience beyond, and from the wings, the whispered mutterings of the stage manager to Sanjay up in the lighting box.

  Beside me, Jay took a deep breath and blew it out in a long, controlled breath before speaking. “You’ll need to scratch my name off that list. Move onto the next tall guy.”

  And all I could hear, as the curtain rose, was the sound of my relationship with Jay collapsing into rubble around me.

  ~ 43 ~

  My acting, in the second half, was absolute crap. It was a freezing night, and whether because of that or because of the icy fear growing inside me, I felt cold and shivery. And I was completely distracted. I felt guilty at what I’d done, angry that I hadn’t had a chance to explain, and scared that I wouldn’t get one. I could only hope that the audience mistook my distress for teenage angst.

  Jay didn’t let his emotions get in the way of his performance — of course he didn’t — but in his scenes with me, I was close enough to see what he was really feeling. His deep voice sounded as loving as always, but when he held my hand, it was too tight. When we embraced, the hug was hard and brief, with distance between our hips. Our kisses were fleeting and felt soulless. There were no extra, lingering caresses. A muscle in his jaw pulsed, and though no one else probably picked it up, I could tell he was simmering with rage. When he grabbed the weapon for the duel, his knuckles bunched white, and he looked ready to run Tyrone clean through. Whereas the night before, the audience had picked up on our sexual chemistry and responded to that, tonight they were swept up by Jay’s mad energy. There were fewer laughs and more gasps.

  For the video close-ups, he angled his body away from the camera so that the cold contempt in his eyes wouldn’t be projected. Instead the lenses found me, and a quick glance at the screens told me I looked like a dumb, frightened rabbit. Maybe the audience would think I was a naïve girl scared of
my lover’s next moves. Well, I was scared. But of what Jay would do in anger, not in love.

  Our scenes raced by at breakneck speed. Jay spoke his lines quickly, almost overlapping mine, as if he couldn’t wait to be finished with this charade. There was no time to talk in the wings, no moment to ask if we could meet after the play to talk things through. Before I knew it, Jay and I were alone onstage for our final scene – the sunset kiss.

  At first, we just went through the motions with our hands and our lips. It was faster and rougher than the night before. And unsettling, especially when it began to transform into something else. Something wild and fierce. Something dangerous.

  It was like we were striking each other with our caresses, attacking with our kisses. He pulled my bottom lip into his mouth and sucked on it, hard. That wind started up again in my head, a howling hurricane accompaniment to the violent storm between us. It was electrifying. And terrifying.

  I pulled back from Jay to suck in a breath and to try to make out the expression in his eyes, but a movement in the wings behind him caught my eye. It was Doug. He was bare-chested and frantically waving his shirt in the air.

  Damn. I’d forgotten about pulling off Jay’s shirt. Looking up into his eyes now, I was almost too scared to do it. Because the heat in his eyes was not warmth or passion, but fury.

  Right, then.

  I leaned in, peeled off his shirt, flung it aside, and pressed the scripted three kisses to his neck. When I pulled back, I met his gaze again — he was still furious. I hesitated uncertainly for a few seconds, before returning to the rehearsed moves. Forcing a smile onto my lips, I held my hands out to Jay. This was the cue for him to pull me down on top of himself, so we could writhe passionately on the rock as the rosy sunset light faded out and the curtain fell.

  Instead, Jay glanced over my shoulder for a fraction of a second, and then, face set and eyes still icy, he reached out, grabbed the bottom of my pink top, ripped it off and flung it behind him into the wings.