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Authors: Nia Stephens

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“Well, it's not because he's ugly,” Sutton agreed. Matt's picture was a professional head shot, emphasizing huge green eyes that stood out against skin the color of
dulce de leche
.
“Well, you've got time to e-mail one of them before we've got to run. Who's it going to be?” Kylian asked, pointing at the clock.
 
DOES BREE CHOOSE JUSTIN?
DOES BREE CHOOSE ANTONIO?
DOES BREE CHOOSE THOMAS?
DOES BREE CHOOSE MATT?
Think Bree should go out with Justin, the clever college boy from LA? Then read on!
Chapter 5
Justin
B
ree spent the whole afternoon wondering if Justin would write her back after seeing that awful picture. He probably wouldn't.
“Calm down,” Sutton said when they met in the lobby at three forty-five. They plopped onto one of two long oak pews by the door to wait for Kylian and waved to Mike and Larry, the security guards who worked the front doors after school. Mike and Larry did not wave back. Back in the eighties a group of masked men tried to storm Rittenhouse and take a diplomat's two daughters hostage. The security guards shot three of them, killing one, though one of the guards took two bullets in the leg. Rittenhouse had always been an unusually secure high school, but since then, and especially since September 11, it was basically a fortress. Bree didn't see why that meant the guards weren't allowed to talk to the students they saw every day, but Dr. Hightower, the principal, had never asked her opinion.
“How am I supposed to calm down?” Bree asked, tugging her hair in frustration. “Justin probably won't answer me at all! I can't believe I let Kylian talk me into using that picture!”
“Where is Kylian, anyway?” Sutton asked. The stream of nearly one hundred students that made up Rittenhouse had already dashed out the door.
“Probably talking to his new boyfriend or checking his e-mail,” Bree said unhappily.
“Have you even checked yours? Maybe what's-his-face already e-mailed you back and you're worried about nothing.”
“One, it's Justin, and two, I don't want to check using a lab computer after school. Dr. Henderson thinks I have drama classes every afternoon, and I don't want him to think otherwise. He thinks I need more practice on programming.”
“You do, if you haven't figured out how to check your e-mail on your cell phone.”
Bree shrugged. She had a lot of talents, but technology was just not her thing.
“Give it here,” Sutton ordered, so Bree passed her the phone. She pushed a few buttons, passed it back, and Bree found herself looking at a tiny version of the Gmail login page.
“Huh,” she murmured, typing in her login and password. “Thanks, Sutton.”
“It really isn't all that hard, you know. If you would just play around with it—”
“Yes!” Bree screamed, leaping to her feet. Mike jumped, and in hindsight she swore she saw him reach for his gun.
“Good news?” Sutton asked when Bree began to tap dance around the lobby.
“He likes me,” she sang back, grinning so broadly that even Larry had to smile. “He really likes me!”
Sutton rolled her eyes. “He doesn't even know you.”
“But he wants to. That's the important part.” Bree curtsied for Mike and Larry, who were pretending to be statues again, and danced back over to Sutton.
“I told you there was nothing to worry about,” Sutton said. “As long as your phone is out, why don't you call Kylian? I don't want to spend the night here.”
“No need,” Kylian said, trotting down the hall.
“Where have you been?” Sutton demanded while Bree put her phone away.
He gave a detailed explanation of the problems he was having with a chemistry experiment while they headed toward Central Park West, though Bree missed the entire discussion, thinking about Justin. His e-mail was short but sweet:
A fellow exile! Yes, I do miss LA, especially now that it's freezing, but classes keep me busy. I'm pre-law, so I take a lot of philosophy and English, but my elective on the Harlem Renaissance is my favorite class. In response to your question, I know a bit about the drama scene here at Columbia, but not as much as you
).
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide
is opening here Friday night. I have every reason to believe that it will be a wonderful production. Want to go? I wish I could take you to a premiere at the Chinese Theater and dinner at the beach, but maybe a play and pizza at Manny's will do?
See you soon (hopefully),
Justin
“Um, hello? Bree? Are you coming in or what?” Sutton asked.
Bree stopped daydreaming and saw that they'd arrived at Starbucks, where they went every day after school to pick up lattes during the winter and Frappucinos in the spring.
“Coming in,” she said meekly, following them inside.
“It's cool that you're excited,” Kylian said as they joined the line. “But you have to remember that you haven't met him yet. People do lie on these things. And he might turn out to be a complete asshole.”
“Thanks, Dad. I'll try to keep that in mind,” Bree said, giving Kylian a reassuring pat on the back.
“And even if he isn't a complete asshole, he still might not be right for you,” Sutton chimed in. “Chemistry is a very weird thing. I don't think anyone really understands it.”
“That's just what I was saying! Is anybody listening to me today?” Kylian half-whined.
“I think Sutton means the other kind of chemistry, but none of it makes any sense to me anyway,” Bree admitted.
 
Bree kept thinking about chemistry on her way to Manny's pizza that Friday night. She had decided on a cab—she didn't want Justin to see her show up in a hired Mercedes, but she also didn't want to risk her white cashmere topcoat in the subway. She asked the driver what he thought made two people go from like to
like
like.
“We have arranged marriage in my country,” he said with a thick but unidentifiable accent. “Works much better.” Like most of the cab drivers Bree saw lately, he was wearing an
I Love New York
sweatshirt and a Support Our Troops baseball cap. She missed the days when foreigners living in the US could be a little more comfortable with their dual nationalities. Even her mother was less likely than she used to be to speak Arabic on her cell phone walking around New York.
“You don't think people should marry for love?” she asked. Arranged marriage seemed so old-fashioned to Bree. How could anyone marry a complete stranger?
“Half of marriages here end in divorce. You think marrying for love work?”
“Good point,” Bree had to admit. After that, the cab driver was silent, and so was she. She was beginning to feel a little nervous, and realized she had sweaty palms. She didn't even get this anxious before an audition.
It's just one date,
she reminded herself as the pizza shop came into view.
And if it's awful, I can just go home.
“Keep the change,” she said, handing the driver a fifty-dollar bill. It was a habit she had picked up from her father. A lot of cab drivers didn't even stop when they saw an African-American flagging them down. Bree always made sure to over-tip the ones who did.
Manny's was an old-school New York pizzeria, complete with a Ms. Pac-Man video game, and the whole place reeked of garlic. It was packed with people, mostly kids from the university. It was famous at Columbia for having great pizza at ridiculously low prices, and for being open until five
AM
. Bree had been there at least a dozen times after catching a play at school. She didn't really want to be a stage actress, and she never tried out for the Broadway plays Fiona tried to talk her into, but she loved watching stage drama, especially the more out-of-the-box shows college theater was known for. Bree didn't have much interest in seeing
Hamlet
performed by a bunch of women in mouse costumes, but she did like edgy plays like
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
She was thrilled that Justin wanted to see it. Most of the boys she knew at Rittenhouse, even the handful of black guys there, would rather stay home and polish their Rittenhouse-standard brown loafers than watch a play like that. It gave her hope that Justin might be her first love. She was jumping to conclusions, she knew, but she couldn't help it.
But before any of the fantasies could become reality, she had to find him. She didn't see the movie-star handsome face of Justin Charles anywhere in the crowd of people waiting for tables. She wriggled her way through the crowd to peer at the lucky ones who were already seated, but she still didn't see him.
It was five minutes after seven, which meant she was five minutes late. Did Justin stand her up? Maybe he had seen her first e-mail on his cell phone, and when he reread it later on a full-sized screen, he decided he wasn't interested in someone so plain? Bree had to calm herself down somehow.
“Bree?” a voice called behind her. She turned and found herself face-to-face with Justin. Well, more like face-to-chest—he was almost a foot taller than her five-foot-six-inch frame. Otherwise, he looked exactly like his photograph—his head was shaved perfectly smooth, he had golden eyes, and cheekbones so sharp they looked like they had been carved from satiny mahogany. He was even wearing the same black sweater as in the picture, but he had replaced the jeans with grey slacks and topped it with a black pea coat. He looked like New Yorkers always look in movies.
“Oh! Hi, Justin! I thought you were already here!” The comment popped out before she could do anything about it except realize that she sounded like an idiot.
Draw attention to the fact that he's late, why don't you,
she thought to herself.
He probably already feels bad about it.
“I was here, standing by the door. I would have stopped you earlier, but I didn't recognize you at first. That picture didn't do you justice. You look stunning,” he purred in a lovely low voice that was sure to keep juries hypnotized. Bree would definitely hire him to be her lawyer on his voice alone.
“Thanks!” Bree tucked her arm in his as she beamed up at him. These were the sorts of signals that Sutton disapproved of, but with a man as cute as Justin, she was not holding back her feminine wiles. From the way he confidently strode to the hostess's stand and commanded a table, Bree could tell that he was self-assured, and probably got more than a fair share of female attention. So Bree allowed herself to be perfectly charming, confident that he could hold his own with her.
“What do you miss the most about LA, besides the weather?” she asked once the hostess found them a tiny table tucked into a corner.
“I miss the way that everyone was two people at once, you know? Every waitress is also an actress, every cab driver has a screenplay under the seat just in case Steven Spielberg ever flags him down.” Justin's dark eyes shone as he talked about his hometown, but Bree would have bet on the fact that every waiter in Manny's had the same sort of double life. Here the cabbies were more likely to have a novel under the front seat than a screenplay.
“Not everyone in LA is living two lives. What do you think happens to the waitresses who actually become actresses? They aren't secretly waiting tables, I don't think,” Bree pointed out.
“Maybe not waiting tables, but you'd be surprised what really famous people do in their free time,” Justin said, a fully fleshed-out argument at the ready. “My parents are entertainment lawyers, and one of their richest clients went to Italy and apprenticed himself to a luthier. You know, a guy who makes instruments? This client makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year after taxes, and he chooses to spend his time off sanding wood!”
Bree laughed. “I can see it. My father has this strange obsession with carving tribal masks. He'll fly to Kenya and drive all over Africa in an armored Humvee to find some remote village and watch old men carve masks. It rocks his world whenever one of the old men lets him help out. The ones he buys are hung all over the house, but he keeps the ones he makes in his home office. He doesn't think they're good enough yet.”
“You're Rashid Black's daughter?” Justin asked instantly.
“Um, yeah,” Bree admitted, only now realizing he'd seen her full name in her e-mail address. She hadn't meant to mention her dad so soon, but if Justin's parents were big-time entertainment lawyers, he wasn't going to be wowed by the fact that Rashid was a producer.

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