Hitman's Hookup: A Bad Boy Romance (28 page)

Wilder stared at her. There was a bitterness in his eyes. "It just won't. I can't work with her. There's no chemistry here."

Someone laughed behind us. I turned around. It was Josh. He was holding a fake sword. But he didn't elaborate on the snickering.

"You're fucking serious, aren't you?" Diane asked.

"If she's in it, I'm out and you can find a new Romeo," Wilder said. The women gathering their backpacks stopped abruptly to look at him. Everyone was staring at either him or Diane as if waiting to see who would budge first.

"Fine, Wilder. I'm too fucking old for this shit anyway. Jesus Christ. Who,
pray tell, dear boy
, do you suggest?"

"The last girl before Olivia. The pretty one. She was perfect."

His words stung me. The implication there was that I was
not
the pretty one in comparison. I laughed and nodded. "Thanks for the opportunity," I said to Diane, pushing past Wilder, being sure to jab my shoulder into his chest as I did so, because
fuck him
.

You did
, said a voice in my head. I pushed it aside and nearly ran for the back of the auditorium.

I burst outside into the sunshine, breathing in the fresh air rapidly.
This must be what a panic attack feels like
. I tried to slow down, leaning my butt against the limestone brick wall of the building. I ran my fingers along the chalky white stone. Flecks of hard substance glinted in the sunlight underneath my fingers.

I tried to think of my Italian helping verbs, running through the list in my head. That normally calmed me down. I heard the metal of the double doors bang open and footsteps wander over to me. I looked up, shocked to see Diane and Lydia standing there. Lydia was holding a clip board, her purple hair in an askew ponytail.

"You alright?" Diane asked me gruffly, reaching into the pocket of her oversized, loosely-knit cotton sweater and pulling out a white paper pack of cigarettes. She tapped the pack on her hand until one of the tan-tipped sticks poked itself far enough out to be pulled the rest of the way. Lydia handed her a lighter, which Diane took without looking, flipping the lid of the lighter and twirling the knob until a flame came out. She handed it back to Lydia who pocketed it once more.

"I'm fine," I replied shortly.

"Wilder's an asshole, but the Dean won't let me kick him off of the play. She thinks Wilder will hit it big some day and his success will look good for the school." She took a long drag of the cigarette and blew white smoke out of her pursed lips. "Trouble is, he's right. I've never had anyone quite like Nicholas in all my decades of teaching. People either have it or they don't. And that kid has it."

"Why are you telling me this?" I snapped at her, wishing for both of them to go away promptly and leave me here for my panic attack to ride itself out.

"I'm telling you this because I think that
you
have something too. Not quite like Wilder, but pretty damn close. Are you a senior?" she asked me, eyeing me up and down like I was on display.

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Yeah."

Diane raised her eyebrows. "Pity. Where have you been?"

"Been?" I asked her, confused.

"You've never tried out before. I would have remembered you. What's your major?"

"Film production," I replied.

She laughed. "Oh, honey. With a face like that? The director will either be grabbing your knee or shoving you into the frame as an extra. Trust me. You'll do fine. You going to L.A.?"

"After I graduate, yeah."

Diane nodded. "Let me know if you need some connections. I know a few people out there. I'd love to help." She nodded at Lydia, who handed me a rectangle of thick paper adorned with embossed ink. It had Diane's first name and her telephone number.

Diane finished her cigarette and stomped it out on the ground. "Well, if this sorority girl doesn't work out, I'm kicking Wilder out on his ass and calling you, hon." Then she held out her hand to shake mine. "See you around, Ms. Martin."

She left Lydia and I alone outside. "What. The. Hell. Just happened in there?" Lydia asked me, sliding down the wall and sitting cross-legged, her heavy combat boots unlaced.

I shrugged. "No idea. Guess he doesn't like me."

Lydia looked at me shrewdly. "Right. Okay. I've seen Wilder pull some stupid shit onstage, but that was unreal. Did you kill his mother? I mean, he straight up set out to humiliate you."

I rubbed my fingers together, trying to get rid of the white dust that covered them. Then I sat down next to Lydia, sticking my tanned legs out in a ray of late afternoon sunshine. "I slept with him last week."

Lydia dropped her clipboard with a clatter, taking her glasses off and perching them on top of her head. Then she rubbed her ears with the palms of her hands. "I'm sorry, it sounded like you just told me that you slept with Nick Wilder. Last week. When exactly? Where? At the coffee shop?"

"Uh, no. Actually..." I jerked my head behind me to indicate the auditorium.

Lydia's jaw dropped open. "In the auditorium? Where?" she was shrieking now.

"On stage. In the middle bit. On a blanket. Oh, and kind of off to the side, too. Against the wall." I blushed again thinking of Wilder’s face in between my legs.

"Why would you do that? Well…I know
why.
Who
wouldn't
do that? Who
hasn't
done that, when faced with the opportunity." Lydia said this all in one sentence, like her brain was producing words at a faster rate than they could check for coherency. Then she clapped her hands to her purple-lipsticked mouth. "Not that I'm calling you a slut. I would never do that. I mean, it takes two people to have sex, and why is it that a man gets a high-five for hooking up when a woman gets slut-shamed? I mean, when you
think
of the double standard and the sexist implications of that, it's really pretty disturbing."

I laughed. "That's basically what Wilder said when he had me announce on the quad that we were going to do it."

Lydia looked confused. "Wait - what?"

I told her what had happened. She was a great audience: shrieking, sighing, and laughing at all the right bits. I glossed over the sex part, but managed to hit the general highlights without feeling like I was reading aloud from an issue of
Penthouse
magazine.

"Nick Wilder, decrier of slut shaming. Who would have thought
that
would happen?" Lydia said, leaning back on the wall. The shadows around us were long and stretched. The sun was nearly setting.

"He
was
incredibly
generous
, I'll say that," I said, giggling without meaning to.

"Until he shamed you onstage," Lydia offered helpfully.

"Well, yeah," I said.

"You know, we burned through two Juliets before the auditions today. But each time
they
blew up at him. I've never seen him lose it. He usually leaves that up to his conquests, so to speak."

"Mm," I replied simply.

"Did you say something to him?"

"Like what?" I asked her.

Lydia shrugged. "I don't know. Curse his family and the house he came from?"

I laughed. "I guess I won't ever know," I replied. I checked my watch. "I gotta go study for Italian."

Lydia exhaled. "Yeah, I need to get back to it as well." I stood up first, offering my hands and pulling her up. Lydia brushed off the back of her short, black skirt. "Just for the record - I didn't know you could act like that. There was so much heat coming off the two of you I thought the stage was going to catch fire."

I smiled. "Me either." Lydia walked back inside the auditorium and the door slammed shut behind her. I put my hand in my back pocket and found the rolled up script still there. When I pulled it out, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

As if in a movie, a breeze came out of nowhere and carried the paper away. I was struck with an urge to chase after it, and I followed that feeling. I had no idea what the paper was. I ran bang into a guy carrying a pony keg over his shoulder, nearly knocking him and the alcohol to the ground.

"Sorry!" I called back, still running after the white slip. I lucked out. The paper lodged itself in the thick, leafy foliage of a low-lying bush. I bent down and picked it up, opening it, looking at the handwritten words scrawled across it.

This is the official written record that on April 28
^th
, 2008, Olivia the Sexy Barista insisted that she had no idea why she should fall in love with me. She wants a list of reasons. I don't have any. I only have the fact that I am hopelessly in love with her. She's in love with me, too, but she just doesn't realize it yet. One day, she fucking will. Signed, Nicholas Roman Wilder

I realized I was holding my breath the entire time I read his words. Tears pricked at my eyes and I wished Lydia were here to slap me. These were the same jeans I'd worn that night. Wilder had obviously put the note into the pocket of my pants. But when had he done it? Before sex? When he was taking my pants off? After?

I held the paper in my hand and walked over to a trash can. A group of giggling students tossing a Frisbee ran by me. I hesitated, and then placed the paper back into my pocket. As unlikely as it seemed right now that I would ever, ever want to even
look
at Nick Wilder again, something told me to hang onto it.

Maybe later I would burn it in a display of cathartic anger.

CHAPTER SIX

OLIVIA

SEVEN YEARS LATER

"Spinach and artichoke salad, please," I said to the young man behind the salad counter. The restaurant around me was filled with Angelenos: skinny, beautiful people busy
not
eating the overpriced, organic salads they had ordered. Half of them were on their cell phones the same way that I was.

I could barely hear the studio executive I was speaking with on my cheap flip phone. "Sorry, Jerry, you're going to need to say that again," I said loudly into the phone. I handed over a crumpled twenty-dollar bill to the cashier, who took it with an overly-cheery smile. I was probably the only person to pay in cash in the entire eighteen months this place had been open.

I glanced down at the Apple Pay pad that I'd seen the four people in front of me use. One day I hoped I could afford to be that willy-nilly with my money. Until then, I was using an envelope system filled with twenty dollar bills. Even eating this lunch was a splurge, but it had been a long week and I didn't have the stomach for another PB&J on white bread.

"I said - the trilogy has been
cancelled
," Jerry enunciated through the phone. "Look, Liv, I gotta make another thirty phone calls. Sorry this isn't going to work out."

For a wild moment, I considered reaching into the cash register, pulling back my twenty, and running out of the restaurant without my meal. But the apple-cheeked, gorgeous young woman who I would have bet money had just fallen off a bus from Boise handed me back my meager change. Jerry had hung up, so I snapped the clamshell of my phone shut and slipped it into my purse.

I examined the pile of coins in the palm of my hand. "Wow, not as much change as I thought I'd get," I replied, hoping to joke with the cashier.

"Did I not count it right?" the girl asked, panicked, her eyes filling up with tears.

I held my hand up. "It was a joke. It's the right change. Thanks," I said quickly, turning around before I started crying too. It was an obnoxious habit that I had – getting misty-eyed when someone else did. Even nearly seven years in the city that killed dreams faster than you could think of them had not cured me of this. I never cried otherwise; it was always this annoying automatic reaction that I couldn’t control.

I walked over to a tall stool facing the window and sat down. There was a business man sitting next to me, his Aviators still on his face. He was talking loudly. I took one look at his expensive suit pants and perfectly starched white button down-shirt; the sleeves of which were rolled back - just casually enough - to his elbows and knew that he was a producer of some kind.

Besides that giveaway, he was bragging loudly about the new movie he'd just cast. I tuned him out. I was good at that. I knew it wouldn't lead anywhere for me to network and besides that, at this point his conversation would just remind me how jobless I was.

I was supposed to be the script supervisor on the latest young adult fantasy trilogy. Something about kids being sent to the moon to start a new civilization. Apparently the outspoken author of the books had turned out to have a nasty habit of snorting blow off of hookers' stomachs and inviting his young fans to come along with him. The backlash had been so severe the studio had cancelled production.

The trilogy was thrown out the window and my contract had been tossed with it. This was supposed to be the three-movie job that meant I could finally move out of my eccentric aunt's apartment. She owned six cats, and I was allergic to every single one of them. I'd been consuming my weight in antihistamines since moving in with her right out of college.

I chewed my overpriced salad, wondering sullenly why I hadn't gone to McDonald's for a Big Mac instead. It would have been a quarter of the price and had six times the calories, meaning that I could skip dinner. Then I remembered that I would have had to sit in forty minutes of traffic to get to one. I was in the part of the city that only served "clean" food, whatever that meant.

Besides that, it was difficult to be inclined to stuff myself with a greasy burger when everyone around me was a size double zero. I choked down the rest of my lunch. It tasted like rabbit food drizzled with Pine Sol extract.

This was the breaking point. I either had to get another job rapidly, or move out of L.A.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WILDER

I was only sort of drunk.

Okay, a little bit more than sort of drunk. More than buzzed, less than blackout drunk.