By Referral Only

by Lyla Payne

  I peeked to see a freckled girl next to Caroline, short strawberry hair tucked behind her ears, hands on her hips.

  “When Shakespeare was alive, there were no girls in his plays. The boys played all of the girl parts,” I said, trying to help.

  A cacophony of ew and gross and shrieked protestations about never wearing dresses from the boys made me laugh.

  Amy quieted them with a wave of her hand. “You’ll have to use your imaginations.”

  We ran through the lines, no argument from anyone in our small audience until the mention of kissing came up, at which chaos erupted. I knew my catching the giggles wasn’t helping, but they were cracking me up with their adorable tiny gender definitions.

  Then the redhead’s voice rang out above the rest, shrill and impossible to miss. “Mister Cole!”

  She vaulted off the front of the stage, giving me a heart attack even though she landed in a graceful crouch, and streaked into the shadows at the back of the theatre. She launched herself into the arms of a tall, built guy who looked a little too familiar.

  When Cole Stuart stepped into the house lights, my body felt hot. He held the girl against his side with a tanned arm, hugging her and smiling into her face, and those dimples killed me. His jacket and tie didn’t fit with the casual dress of everyone else in the room, and I wondered what he was doing here.

  “Well, if it isn’t my little Ginger.”

  “My name isn’t Ginger, Mister Cole. It’s Noelle.”

  “My mistake,” he replied, trying not to laugh as he ruffled her hair.

  He looked up and saw me sitting on the stage staring at him, and I wondered if he could feel my body respond to him from way over there. He was probably used to it—a guy with those dimples and that face didn’t want for female attention.

  Surprise lit his light eyes and he smiled. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Miss Amy. We have a board meeting in ten minutes and I thought I’d take a peek. I see you’ve snared yourself an excellent Shakespeare performer.”

  Miss Amy’s eyes flicked between us. “Yes. You two know each other?”

  “We have class together,” I explained, for some reason wanting to make it clear nothing else was going on.

  “Okay, well, Mister Cole can take a seat so we can finish this scene.” She nodded at Cole, who sat down like he’d been chastised.

  I reclined again, closing my eyes and hoping Miss Amy wasn’t really going to kiss me. I mean, I’d had a wild night or two with way too much Boone’s Farm on the bayou in high school, but girls didn’t do it for me. The look on Miss Amy’s face said she felt the same way.

  Maybe not exactly the same way, with the Boone’s Farm and everything, but in general.

  “Wait!” Noelle’s shrill voice opened my eyes. “Mister Cole can do the kissing, since he’s a boy!”

  Every defense mechanism in my brain screamed the need to avoid getting any closer to Cole. The way I felt connected to him was trouble, pure and simple, and even if he had good ratings, he wouldn’t meet my criteria. He wasn’t the kind of guy that girls walked away from willingly.

  I opened my mouth to protest, and so did he, but Caroline’s sassy self beat us both to the punch. “Yes, oh please, Mister Cole, please. We want to see the part and really understand the play, and we can’t imagine with Miss Amy being a boy. This would be such a help.”

  Master manipulator, thy name is Caroline. That girl was my hero and she was ten.

  “I, well…I’m not an actor. You guys are way better than me, and Miss Ruby and Miss Amy know what they’re doing. I’m sure they don’t want me showing you wrong.”

  Amy stood from the edge of my fainting couch looking, if I wasn’t mistaken, relieved. “It’s actually fine, Cole, if you wouldn’t mind. I think it will be easier for them to visualize the tragedy if they can believe Romeo and Juliet are in love.”

  My heart pounded and words of protest gagged me as I choked them back. I was a professional, and a quasi-adult. It was a stupid scene from a play, nothing to freak out about. I did this shit all the time. Just because Cole had asked me out the first day we met and I spent way too much time wondering what he looked like naked didn’t mean I couldn’t handle this.

  “Well…if it’s okay with Miss Ruby.”

  “Is it okay, Miss Ruby?” Caroline turned her big, pleading blue eyes on me as a chorus of please and oh please filled the room.

  I shrugged, hoping I looked way cooler than I felt.

  The kids settled quickly onto their butts as Cole climbed the steps to the stage. He rubbed a hand over his shaven hair, an apologetic expression in his mossy green eyes. He waved away the script Amy tried to give him, then sat on the edge of the fainting couch.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make such an entrance.” He kept his voice low.

  “They certainly like you,” I murmured.

  “They’re good kids.”

  “You’re on the board?”

  “Yes. It’s actually the same board that runs the Shakespeare Festival you starred in last summer. That’s why I saw the performance so many times.”

  “How many times?” I asked, feeling strangely hot at the idea he’d watched me perform night after night from the cover of darkness.

  “I was there most nights. You really were brilliant.”

  “If you two are done getting to know each other well enough to kiss for a half a second, can we get on with it? We’ve only got twenty minutes left,” Miss Amy raised an eyebrow at me.

  I nodded and lay back, closing my eyes and trying to sort out how I felt about Cole being a fan of my acting. It made me like him more, and not just because I loved people loving me. Even if he sat on these boards because of his family or something, he seemed to have a genuine love of theatre.

  The fact he was about to recite Romeo and Juliet from memory made him too perfect.

  It all added up to a pounding heart and dry mouth. Basically the reaction of a girl who wanted a boy to kiss her for the first time, not one pretending to be a girl who had already had married sex with said boy.

  Juliet. You’re Juliet, and you don’t feel anything because you’re unconscious.

  “Depart again: here, here will I remain, with worms that are thy chamber-maids. Oh, here will I set up my everlasting rest and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace. And lips, oh you, the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss.”

  The passion in his voice buzzed in my head like too much frat party punch. If Cole thought he couldn’t act, he was wrong.

  That was my last thought before his soft lips touched mine, hesitant at first, but lingering longer than necessary for a perfunctory performance. Even though I was dead, my body betrayed me, reacting to the sparks that lit between our mouths and searching for more.

  Electricity shot down my spine. I forced my limbs to stay prone and tried to convince my lips to let go, but it took several moments before Cole broke away. He pretended to drink poison, spouting Romeo’s final lines before slumping next to me on the couch.

  His body was warm, chest heaving, like he’d just taken a standing ovation in front of a packed house. His form blocked my view of the students, and our eyes locked and held. Neither of us spoke. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking the same thing I was. Which was, that for a rather chaste, dry kiss, that had been a doozy.

  Cole might suck in the bedroom, but he had some kind of heady effect on me like nothing I’d ever experienced. The heat in his gaze said maybe it was mutual, and that was why I needed to stay the fuck away from him.

  The kids started clapping, and Cole smiled, his dimples appearing and laugh lines crinkling around his eyes. “I can see the appeal of being onstage. I feel like a hero.”

  “I’m sure you’re used to it.”

  The retort had been meant to tease him, but it missed the mark somehow. His eyes darkened, storm clouds obscuring his good humor. “I’m no hero.”

  He sat
up and pulled me with him. I tried to shake off the strange tension from the nerve I accidentally hit. We weren’t here to make out or get to know each other better, we were here to teach little kids about Shakespeare. They all looked pretty enthralled at the moment, though, so I guess our demonstration was a hit.

  Cole returned to his seat in the auditorium and I sat on the stage apron with the kids, Caroline’s sneaky little ass on one side and the boy with the enviable lashes on the other. We all waited for Miss Amy to take control of the conversation.

  “Shakespeare wrote mostly two kinds of plays, tragedies and comedies. Who can tell me the difference?”

  The boy next to me shot up a hand.

  “Yes, Derek?”

  “Tragedies are sad, comedies are funny.”

  “That’s good, and mostly correct. What do you think makes Romeo and Juliet a tragedy?”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “Because they die.”

  I put my hand up, not wanting to speak out of turn but wanting to give input. Amy nodded. “It’s not just because they died. I mean, people die all the time and while it’s sad, a tragedy is more than that…it’s like, a loss. Something bad that didn’t have to happen, but does because people make the wrong decisions.”

  “Or by not making a decision,” Cole chimed in, his gaze seeking mine.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Well, sometimes people miss out because they don’t make a move, instead of suffering because they do,” he clarified.

  Irritation spiked, mixed with an alarming amount of lust. “People are less likely to get hurt if they play it safe. If Romeo and Juliet had used their brains instead of their…hearts,” I substituted for the kids’ benefit. “They wouldn’t have died.”

  “But they would never have known true love.”

  Cole and I stared at one another, at an impasse. I didn’t know whether or not he meant the discussion to be about something other than the play, but it felt that way to me. Like he was saying that my refusing to go out with him—or anyone I might actually care about—might be more tragic than suffering endless heartbreak when guys let me down.

  “If you two are done with the useless debate about what might have happened to these unfortunate, fictional teens, we can move on.” Amy looked partly amused and partly annoyed.

  She engaged the kids in discussion for another five minutes, answering questions about what decisions Romeo and Juliet made that led to their deaths. The students were especially interested in the idea that the parents had been at least partially to blame.

  I felt hyper-aware of the fact that Cole’s gaze never wandered from me as I offered my Shakespeare expertise to the kids or laughed about their simplistic but accurate way of understanding the story, but he didn’t interrupt again.

  The class broke up when several parents arrived in the back of the room. Caroline put her hands on her hips and pinned me with an impressively hard gaze. “You’re pretty good.”

  “Thank you,” I said, matching her serious tone easily, since she was my mini-me, and all.

  “Is Mister Cole your boyfriend?”

  “What? No.” I cut a quick glance his direction and the small smile on his lips said he’d overheard. “Is he your boyfriend?” I teased her back.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m only ten.”

  “Ah, got it. That’s very wise. If you want to grow up and be an actress and never let anything get in your way, you should wait to fall in love.”

  “Don’t be silly. Everyone knows you can’t wait to fall in love. It happens even if you don’t want it to, like in the Cinderella movies.”

  I had no idea what Cinderella movies she was referring to, but the wisdom sounded too spot-on for anything involving a fairy tale and a glass shoe, which was utter fucking nonsense. “Talk to me in ten years, Caro.”

  She grinned, exposing the holes in her mouth and looking her age again in the blink of an eye. “Gotta go, my mom’s here. You’ll be back on Thursday?”

  I nodded, feeling warm and happy that at least one of the kids liked me. “Yep. I’ll be here until you’re done with Shakespeare.”

  Caroline raced off the stage and up the aisle, grabbing her backpack and leaving with a woman who looked tired. Probably from wrangling that smart-mouthed kid.

  Cole unfolded his massive frame from the seat and strolled toward me. He reached the edge of the stage and I resisted the urge to scoot away from the force field of nerves and magnetism that surrounded him, not to mention the scent of chlorine. A week ago, I never would have imagined that would be a turn-on, but apparently, this guy could do nothing that wasn’t, at least for me.

  “Go on a date with me.”

  My head jerked up, surprise flooding me. Most guys didn’t have the balls to ask twice. Like the first time, it took me a minute to respond because of the internal war. My brain and heart joined forces against the rest of me, though, and eventually won out. “Can’t. I’m seeing someone.”

  “See me, too.”

  “Cole, you don’t even know me. I promise, you’re going to be fine.”

  Silence descended in the wake of my gentle rejection. It was a little uncomfortable, but for some reason, I didn’t want to be the one to get up and walk away.

  “You’re good with them.” He motioned to the remaining kids milling around in the back of the auditorium.

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

  “It’s just…you don’t.…Never mind. There’s no way for me to finish my thought without sounding like a pompous ass. I’m trying to compliment you.”

  I shrugged. “Geoff asked me to help out, said it’s good for me to mingle with theatre people outside of performances. For my career. Plus I get to manipulate kids into loving Shakespeare.”

  “You talk to them like they’re capable of understanding.”

  “They’re not dumb, Cole. They’re kids. Mini-people. They understand life probably better than we do. We’ve started to overthink.”

  His green eyes turned thoughtful. “What do you overthink?”

  There was one hard and fast rule that had kept my heart safe since freshman year—don’t let them see past the cliché. They expected me to act like someone who hadn’t been born into class—loud and brash—so I did. Guys didn’t want anything from me but a couple of fun tumbles, so I pretended that was fine. It was easier to make fun of myself than wait for everyone else to do it first.

  I hadn’t been able to hide as much with Cole today, because the kids deserved better, but that didn’t mean I was going to sit here and bare my soul to a guy I barely knew.

  Ever since Michael, I hadn’t admitted that relationships were a possibility, no matter how badly I might want one, but Emilie and Quinn had shoved that old longing toward the surface. I’d spent the last two years—longer, really—reminding myself every day that unicorns weren’t real. Then Quinn had shown up, magical horn and all, and with an actual unicorn staring me in the face, it got harder and harder to not believe.

  Even if unicorns did exist, I couldn’t afford to believe in them. There was no good reason my mind kept replaying that kiss. Cole wouldn’t want to date me, not seriously, and given his ratings, I didn’t want to waste my time and get my heart smashed in the process.

  I patted him on the cheek. “I’m a girl, Cole. We overthink everything.”

  Chapter 5

  Liam and I were a bad combination—or a good one, depending on how I looked at it. We’d hung out two more times and I’d had a hell of a time not sleeping with him yet, due both to his aggressive, not unskilled advances and my ongoing celibacy.

  I didn’t live hard and fast by the three date rule. I’d slept with guys sooner and also later, and had a couple of one night stands. Liam…I wasn’t sure exactly where he stood on dating. Both times we’d been “out,” it had been at his apartment and the second time his roommates had been home. I was sort of waiting for some kind of signal that he wasn’t gunning for a one-time thing.

&
nbsp; Having to work together threw an extra complication into the mix. No matter how good-looking he was or how perfectly he seemed to fit my criteria, doing anything to risk my performance in front of Geoff’s friends couldn’t happen.

  Liam had suggested hanging out a third time, and had called to ask if I wanted to go to an art house movie this weekend, too. That had to be a good sign. I still wasn’t sure whether to cast Liam in the part of a casual boyfriend, but the time to let him try out the role in the bedroom had come.

  “The Lambda Phi mixer is coming up. Ruby, does the social committee have a report?”

  “What? Oh.”

  Chaney’s voice knocked me out of my Liam fantasies and I stood up, smoothing my lilac pencil skirt. Dress clothes weren’t optional for formal meetings. My one hundred and twenty sisters sat in neat rows of folding chairs that the pledges set up in the Chapter Room before meetings, two-hundred and forty eyes waiting for my report on the DE social calendar so they could get the hell out of here and on with their lives.

  “The mixer is at The Wharf, from nine to eleven. Drink specials will be listed on the tables, and we’ve booked a local band. No official transportation since it’s not a date party, but Sober Sister will be operating, so don’t hesitate to call. Also, the Homecoming teams went up this afternoon, and we’re paired with the Lambdas for that, too, so might as well start making friends.” I felt my nose wrinkle but tried to hide it. More required bonding with Whitman’s resident flaunters.

  The meeting adjourned soon afterward and everyone filed into the hallway. Emilie escaped before I did, given that we entered in alphabetical order from the rear, which meant me and my stupid C last name had to spend the most time in here. I loved DE, loved having sisters for the first time in my life, but sometimes the duties and requirements seemed disproportionate to the fun.

  Emilie wasn’t loitering in the overdressed foyer or out on the back porch with our smokers. Brooke saw me snooping around and rolled her eyes, motioning up the stairs. “Lover boy was waiting and she took him upstairs.”

  Quinn was here. Ugh. “Thanks, B.”