Tessa didn't respond because there was nothing she could say. They were at an impasse where she could never be the person they wanted her to be and they couldn't seem to completely accept her for who she was. Jenkins may have been the only one bold enough to call her out, but her mother had confirmed they all agreed with him.
"I have homework," Tessa said, her voice flat.
Mom sighed like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, or at least the weight of a disappointing child. "Well before you rush off, your pillow came. Let me grab it from upstairs." Pillow. Only her mom could think of something so pointless while Tessa stood there, questioning who she was and what she wanted in life.
Tessa’s phone rang as she slid into the driver’s seat of her car. Logan. Tess sent it to voice mail and tossed the phone into the cup holder. Logan was probably calling to tell her about him and Dawn, and that was the last thing she needed to hear after the day she’d had. What she needed was to sleep until the end of the semester, and hopefully all of her problems would work themselves out on their own.
The front door opened, and Jenkins stepped outside. Cami, always the peacemaker, was probably forcing him to talk to her but Tessa wasn’t in the mood for a backhanded apology. Before he could get too close, she sped away from the house. Mom’s pillow would have to wait until next week. That is, if Tessa came to dinner ever again.
Chapter 20
A balled-up sock hit Henry in the side of the head, snapping him out of his deep thoughts on ways he could torture Logan. Henry hadn't spoken to him more than necessary since Sunday, and when he'd talked to Tessa on the phone earlier, she'd sounded different—detached or sad or something he couldn't put his finger on—but whatever it was, it made him wish he could take back his promise not to hit his roommate.
"You haven't been listening to a word I've said." Tessa stood in front of him, one hand holding the play script, the other resting on her hip. She'd showed up at his door after their phone call, looking exhausted, but insisting they practice his part before their next road show practice.
"You told me to read over my lines." He looked down at his script, pretending to read it, but really devising ways to mess with Logan. Maybe he could accidentally punch him. Like trip over something with his fist extended toward Logan's face. He could also plant one of his specimens in Logan's cereal. Or his favorite chair. No. Both.
Another sock hit him in the face. "Where are you getting these?" he asked when he realized they weren't his socks. All of his pairs were either black, brown, or white. These had a green and brown diamond pattern.
"They were balled up behind the chair."
Which meant they were Logan's dirty socks. He resolved to bring home a couple dead centipedes next time he was in the desert.
"Henry. Focus." Tessa plopped down beside him on the couch. "I've asked you three times if you're ready to run the lines."
He blinked away the haze of revenge and focused on Tessa, taking in the dark circles under her eyes. Logan was working until the next morning, which was the reason Tessa was willing to come to their apartment. As far as he knew, she hadn't spoken with Logan yet about what she'd seen. Logan had been putting in an eighty-hour work week, which didn’t leave much time for taking advantage of women.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Great!" she said with false enthusiasm. "I'm unfocused and need to lose about ten pounds, can't keep a guy's interest, and am going to fail out of pre-med, but other than that, life is great." Her last great sounded a lot nastier than the first.
Henry didn't know where to start with that list, or if he even should. Part of him, the part that disagreed with everything she'd said, wanted to dispute her. But he'd learned from Ava that walking into a conversation like this was like approaching a raging hornets’ nest. One wrong move and he’d get stung.
Tessa shot up from the couch, the vehemence clear in her every movement. "This road show cannot crash and burn. Do you understand?"
There was no other response but to nod. She held out her hand and pulled him up from the couch. He tugged her close until only inches between them. Stupid or not, stingers or not, he had to say something.
"First, you are one of the most focused people I know." She tried to interrupt him, but he shushed her. She screwed her lips into a tight pout. "You’ve taken this road show and turned it into something amazing. You study more than any other undergrad I know."
"Oh and how many undergrads do you know?" she asked.
"Second," he said pointedly running over her interruption. "You do not need to lose weight which is all I have to say on that subject, because the whole idea is ridiculous. You're beautiful the way you are."
He waited a split second for her to interject another sarcastic comment, but she went still when he called her beautiful.
"Third. Logan is a moron. We've already covered this. He leaves his nasty socks balled up behind his chair. He screamed like a little girl after he smashed the wolf spider in your apartment. He's not loyal, he's left behind more than one amazing woman, and he's not worth a second more of your time."
"Still hurts," she said under her breath, and he could respect the sentiment. Hurt wasn't always logical, much as he wished otherwise. Anger was easier to deal with, so hopefully she got there soon.
"Fourth," he continued. "Are you being dramatic or are you really failing your classes?"
She threw him the stink-eye when he called her dramatic. He knew the risk of labeling it. Ava had punched him in the stomach on one occasion when he called her a drama queen. In his defense, she'd bought the wrong shade of lipstick and hadn't realized it until it was too late to buy a new one before she needed to go on television. When Henry showed up, Ava was nearly hysterical and he worried something had happened to their dad. Nope. Lipstick crisis that ended in him getting punched, which somehow made Ava calm down and go on the show with a smile.
Women were weird.
"I'm failing two of my classes." Tessa looked at their shoes. "I didn't do well on midterms."
"Is it a lack-of-study thing or a not understanding the materials thing?"
"Both." She paused. "I’m so busy. It takes me forever to memorize the concepts, and then when I sit down to take the test and see the diagrams and pictures, it all flies out of my mind."
“What about your other classes?”
“I’m doing well in those ones. It’s all the classes with body parts that I’m struggling in.”
As usual, she had zero excitement when she talked about her classes. Instead she put of vibes of stress and anxiety, never anticipation. He hadn't loved all of his classes, but since he'd completed his generals, there had only been one he'd hated, and it had more to do with the professor than the subject matter.
He hesitated to ask his next question, but decided as he was already standing in the middle of this hornet’s nest, he might as well go for it. "Are you sure you want to be a doctor?"
She yanked her hand from his and took a huge step back, both physically and emotionally. "Of course I'm sure," she said too quickly and defensively for him to one-hundred percent believe her. She glanced pointedly at the microwave clock, the one that blinked twelve because he hadn't reset the time after the power went off during their last monsoon. "I only have thirty more minutes tonight. We'd better practice. Have you memorized your lines?"
He let her words hang in the air, debating whether or not to push his questions, but decided to let her have her way. She wanted to avoid. Who was he to force her to face it? "I've memorized most of them." It had been pretty easy. One of the benefits of having co-wrote it, he supposed. "How do we want to do this?"
"I'll play Dawn's part."
He noticed her voice sounded a little strangled when she said Dawn's name, but pretended not to.
The first few scenes went quickly. In the beginning, he played the arrogant "prince" (a.k.a.: an aspiring CEO of his dream company) who is cursed into a "frog" (a.k.a.: getting fired because of false rumors and losing everyt
hing that had defined him) after spurning a geeky girl who happened to be his boss's daughter. He then meets the princess, a quiet girl from the singles ward, whose mom is the rival CEO the company he’d worked for, but he doesn't realize it. Even though she's a girl he wouldn't normally go for, she doesn't seem to mind the more humbled version of his circumstances, unlike all of his former friends.
Henry sang the prince's songs, wondering if Tessa realized the tense lines around her eyes softened every time he did. It almost made him wish he had more than two solos.
Finally they got to the part where the misunderstandings are cleared up, and the frog prince receives an offer to be reinstated to his old position and reclaim his old life. Instead he turns it down to chase after the princess to confess his love.
“‘I love you,'" Henry, as the prince, said to Tessa.
He looked at her expectantly when she didn’t give her line, and her cheeks turned pink as she scanned her script.
“Oh. Uh. . . . ‘Do you? Or do you love that my mom can get you an amazing job?'" Tessa turned her back on him.
“‘Schyller Industries offered to give me my job back, with a promotion.'" He placed his hand on her shoulder and leaned close until his lips grazed her ear. “‘I turned them down.'"
He felt a soft tremor ripple through Tessa. " 'Why?'" she whispered.
He chuckled under his breath. " 'You know why.'" He stepped in front of her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. Tessa stared up at him, her breaths shallow and close together, their racing hearts thumping to the same rhythm. Time stopped while they stared at each other, caught in the moment between being a frog and a princess and being Henry and Tessa. Her eyes fluttered shut, and he lowered his mouth anticipating the feel of her lips pressed against his when all of a sudden coldness replaced the warmth of Tessa in his arms.
"And then they kiss." The words raced from her mouth, airy and high-pitched.
"We're not going to practice that part?" he teased in an attempt to ease the tension holding his muscles tight.
"Henry." She laughed, but her cheeks were still flushed and she wouldn't meet his eye. She cleared her throat. "After the um, kiss, the rest of the cast comes on stage and we sing the final song. The end."
Henry watched her toss her things into the bag and knew she'd been as thrown as him when they'd been close together. She'd felt something, and he wanted to see how much.
He tossed his script onto the couch. "So we'll go through the blocking on Saturday?"
She zipped up her bag. “Yeah.”
"Sounds good. I'll kiss Dawn on Saturday then to make sure we get the flow of it?"
She paused in throwing her backpack over her shoulder, unnaturally still. "I don't know. Maybe."
"But how much do you really have to practice kissing, right? It's lips touching. We'll be good." The thought of kissing Dawn didn't appeal to him one bit, especially after catching her lip-locked with Logan, but he figured he could have it over with before it really even started.
Tessa was shaking her head before he'd even finished and had tossed her backpack onto Logan's chair. "Kissing is not just lips touching."
He shrugged. "Technically, it is."
"Technicalities have nothing to do with kissing," she said. A spark of life lit in her eyes. "It's about emotion and feeling and becoming something new, better." She paused. "Please tell me you've kissed someone before."
He didn't answer and she nodded knowingly. "You haven't or else you wouldn't be trying to scientize a kiss," she accused.
He couldn't hold back his amusement."Scientize isn't a word."
"Be quiet," she said, holding up her hand. He could see the thoughts flying behind her eyes, landing on panic. "This kiss is the fulfillment of the romantic tension from the entire play. It's what the audience will be waiting for. You have to become the prince. It has to be natural, not over-the-top, but still earth shattering. Believable."
She took a breath to continue her monologue, but he said, "Tessa? Be quiet."
Then before she could stop him, he wrapped her arms around her waist and crashed his lips into hers.
Chapter 21
This is Henry. Henry. Henry!
That thought finally made it through Tessa's muddled brain, past the eruption of heat everywhere Henry touched. His lips moved over hers with a passion that took her by surprise. He slid his hand from her cascading hair and held her with a firm grip at her waist. She grabbed his broad shoulders to steady her weakened knees.
Her heart raced and she knew it would never be the same again. His kisses slowed to a steady rhythm before he pulled back, but still stayed close. Their rapid breaths mingled together and they held onto one another's arms until the room stopped moving.
Mostly steady, she dropped her hold on him and took a huge step back, unable to meet his gaze, which she could feel the heat of on her forehead.
"What do you think? Will that be acceptable?" he asked intensely.
"What?"
"For the play. Will my kissing be okay?"
It took a moment for the meaning of his words to pierce her mind. Her voice was hoarse when she replied, "Uh, yep. Yes."
He raised a brow. "My execution wasn't too scientific?"
His kiss was anything but scientific. Finally she met his penetrating gaze and confident grin she felt all the way to her toes. When she kissed Logan, it didn't feel anything like that. Logan had all the moves right, but he kissed like there were other people in the room watching—more for show than for her. But with Henry, he'd been all in, like they were the only two people in the universe.
There was no way he hadn't done this before.
She punched in him in the shoulder, wiping away his grin. He reached up to rub his arm, so she punched the other one. "Ow! What's that for?"
"You've kissed before!"
"I have."
"Why didn't you say something?" She let out an exasperated breath. If he had told her he'd kissed before, she wouldn't be having all these complicated feelings right now.
He fell back onto the couch, deep lines of exhaustion engraved around his eyes. "Why did you assume I've never kissed anyone before?"
She looked him up and down, but when her heartbeat kicked up a notch, she settled on staring at the kitchen chair behind him. "Because well, you know..." She didn't want to finish her sentence. They both knew where she was going with it. "I'm sorry." Why had Henry gone and complicated everything? He relaxed on the couch, not acting at all like he'd just given an earth-shattering kiss.
He nodded an acceptance of her apology and stood when Tessa retrieved her bag from Logan's chair. A soft smile stole across his delicious lips.
Kissing Henry had been a huge mistake.
"I really need to go," she said, rushing from the apartment. She raced to her car, ignoring Henry’s calls for her to stop. Her hands trembled against the steering wheel as she squealed out of the parking lot.
Kissing Henry hadn't given her any peace of mind about the state of the most romantic scene for her play. If anything, it only made things worse because she had to watch him kiss Dawn the very same way in a couple of days. The idea gave her an ache deep in her stomach that she used logic to soothe.
They’d both been caught up in the moment. Gotten carried away. It happened. She and Henry were friends, close friends, and it didn't do either of them any good to confuse that with something more.
She could never have a relationship with Henry.
She imagined Jenkins’s smug disappointment if she brought Henry home. Shame filled her at how shallow that worry made her. But Jenkins would never be able to look past Henry’s appearance and occupation to see the interesting and kind man underneath.
No. She needed to go back to the original plan. Tonight was a minor set-back, but nothing that couldn't be corrected. She'd spoken to Henry weeks ago about his make-over, but he always found excuses to reschedule or distract her with other things. That couldn't happen anymore. By next
Monday he'd have a new hair-cut and a t-shirt, and she'd hook him up with the new girl in the ward. Chelsea.
Tessa waited for the waves of relief, but it was more like a tiny surge, followed by the sucking of sand from beneath her feet.
Chapter 22
Tessa wasn't returning any of Henry’s phone calls with actual calls. They'd gotten in the habit of talking between classes at least once a day, usually touching base about something to do with the road show, but then chatting about their classes and their day or even weird things they saw on campus. Henry hadn't realized how much he looked forward to those calls until she didn't answer her phone anymore. Instead, a few minutes after he called her and was sent to voice mail, she'd send a short text answering his question but with nothing else to go off of.
He knew the brush-off when he saw it. Usually that was his goal with women. But it was losing its appeal—especially after that kiss.
“Can I have some of your milk?” Logan asked. He stood in front of the fridge with a bowl of cereal, his eyes glazed with exhaustion after his marathon shift.
“No.”
Logan looked up from the open fridge. “Are you serious? I’m all out.”
Henry turned the volume up on his football game.
Logan sprawled in his chair with his cereal bowl a moment later. Logan took off his shoes and then dropped his rolled up socks onto the floor next to his chair. Henry hated that Logan’s dirty socks reminded him of his kiss with Tessa. He hated that Logan was sitting there, eating cereal topped with Henry’s milk, like he had a right to have anything he wanted.
“I’ll buy you a new gallon tomorrow,” Logan said. “I haven’t eaten since ten this morning and I haven’t slept in twenty-two hours. I’m going to eat and crash.”
The room was quiet except for the sound of Logan’s crunching and the announcer on the game. Logan finished his meal and got up to put his bowl in the sink. He leaned against the counter a moment, messing with his phone.
One Little Kiss (Christian Romance) Page 12
