The Trouble With Flirting (24 page)

“I was listening.” He hauls me away from the glass and safely onto the grass at the side of the building. “People like you need to stay far away from sharp objects.”

“People like you need to rescue people like me.”

“It’s a full-time job.”

“And it doesn’t pay very well.”

He’s still holding on to my arm. He doesn’t seem in any rush to let go. He studies my face for a moment, then nods toward the walkway. “You’d really walk barefoot through broken glass for me?”

“I’d
crawl
through broken glass for you.”

He shakes his head. “Overkill, Pearson. Now you’re getting all hyperbolic.” He sounds like himself again. Finally. Like Harry. Like
my
Harry.

I pull his arm tightly around my waist and pin it there. “No,” I say. “It’s true—I would. If I thought it would work to get you to give me another chance.”

“So what?” His voice sounds a little raw, but he’s not pull
ing his arm away. “So now I’m just supposed to be okay with everything? Crush you to my bosom? Say ‘all is forgiven, my child’?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Except for the ‘my child’ part. That’s creepy.” I butt my forehead against his chest, like a calf. “Harry,” I say.

He takes his arm away from my waist, but only to grab my shoulders in both his hands. He shakes me gently, his fingers pressing into the flesh there. “Broken glass all over the cement. You’re such a moron.”

“I know.”

And then he kisses me. It starts out sort of angry, but it ends somewhere else entirely.

Some time goes by. Maybe a lot of time. I don’t want to move from that spot, and unless I’m totally misreading the situation—and I’m not—Harry is pretty happy where he is too.

His touch still gives me goose bumps. And his kisses still send tiny little earthquake shock waves through my head and body that leave me vibrating. It’s even better now than before, and not just because there’s the whole
I thought I’d lost you I’m so glad I didn’t
making-up thing, which, believe me, is nice enough in its own right, but also because I was holding back before, not completely believing in the idea of
us
. I thought Harry was some kind of second-place runner-up, someone to distract me while I hoped and waited for Alex to see the light.

Our theme for tonight: Franny is an idiot.

Our moral: the guy who sends smoldering glances your way may turn out to be kind of lame, and the guy who seems like a shallow pretty boy may actually be kind of wonderful.

Also: silky tank tops are an excellent outfit choice if you’re planning to make out standing up.

Also: I think I’m in love with Harry Cartwright.

I know—that’s not actually a moral.

I just wanted to sneak it in there.

I have no idea what time it is when we stop kissing. Harry walks me back to the apartment, saying that if I could walk through broken glass for him, he can risk a warning slip for me.

It takes me forever to fall asleep.

At some point I do, though, because in the morning I wake up smiling.

Aunt Amelia wants to know how my Very Important and Special Event went. “Best night of my life,” I say sincerely.

“You got in awfully late.”

“I told you I might.”

She can’t argue with that.

I walk into the dining hall at breakfast time and look around. There’s only one person I want to sit with, and he’s already at a table with Isabella and Julia and Manny. Just as I cross to them, Marie sits down next to him and smiles, putting her hand on his arm. His eyes meet mine—he saw me
come in—and he kind of looks at me like he’s asking a question.

I shake my head. I don’t care. He wasn’t reaching for her; she was reaching for him. And that’s how it’s always been, really, except that one time, two nights ago, when I hurt him so badly I can’t bear to think of it now, and he wanted to hurt me back.

I get a cup of coffee and a muffin and stroll back to the table. I take the empty seat next to Isabella, who smiles at me more warmly than she ever has before.

So she and Harry must have already talked about us. I’m glad she doesn’t hate me. She seems to love Harry almost as much as I love my brother, and I’d hate any girl who hurt William. But maybe Isabella is more forgiving than I am. Or maybe Harry told her to give me a break.

He greets me now with “Looking a little tired there, Pearson. You stay up late last night?”

“You’re not looking so fresh yourself, Cartwright.”

“That’s not what my mirror tells me.”

“Yeah? What does it say?”

“That I’m one fine-looking young man.”

“God, you’re conceited,” Marie says, pushing at his arm with a little laugh. But both the gesture and the laugh feel a little desperate. Like she knows something’s going on. She turns to me. “I’m really worried about my costume, Franny. The dress is like slipping off my shoulders, and I don’t want to be constantly grabbing at it onstage. Can you
please tell your aunt she has to fix it?”

“She and I don’t have that kind of relationship,” I say.

“She’s your
aunt
.”

“But she’s
your
costume designer. I think you’d better give her your alteration notes yourself.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

“You’re welcome!” I say cheerfully.

She looks around to see if anyone’s going to back her up. Julia changes the subject, asking which casts are rehearsing in the theater today.

“I think we are,” Isabella says. Her eyes fall on Alex, who’s sitting at another table with Vanessa and Lawrence and some others. “It should be interesting.”

“You mean because you and Alex have to play opposite each other?” Julia says bluntly. “That happened to me once when I was a sophomore. I was going out with this guy, and then we broke up right before we had to do this huge love scene. It was the most awkward thing in the world.”

“We’ll be fine,” Isabella says. “It’s called acting, right?”

“I’m getting a muffin,” Marie says, standing up. “Don’t let me eat the whole thing, okay?” she tells Harry. “One bite, that’s it.” She heads off toward the buffet.

Isabella turns to him. “You need to talk to her,” she says. “Right now. Or else you’re just being mean.”

“Who died and made you Jiminy Cricket?”

“Harry . . .”

“I know, I know. Fine.” He gets up and goes after Marie.

“Talk to her about what?” Julia asks Isabella.

“Harry and Franny got back together last night,” Isabella says with a nod in my direction. “She can fill you in on any details.” She stands up with her tray. “I’m going to go over my lines. I’ll see you guys later.” She leaves.

“Really?” Julia says to me.

I nod sheepishly. Given the last conversation I had with her, when I was insisting I didn’t care at all about Harry . . . let’s just say this isn’t my proudest moment. On the other hand, Harry’s got it a lot worse right now. He’s taken Marie off into a corner and they’re talking. He looks apologetic. She looks furious.

Julia flings up her hands. “I can’t keep up with any of this. Everyone keeps changing partners. Except us. We’re the only stable couple.” You’d think they’d been going out two years instead of two weeks. She rises to her feet. “Come on, Manny. Let’s go somewhere where you can draw me a diagram so I can figure out who’s going out with who, because it’s all getting way too confusing.” She pats my shoulder. “You’ll probably regret this, Franny.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s your life.” She and Manny stroll away, leaving me alone at the table.

I sip some coffee and watch Harry and Marie. He holds his hand out—
friends?
She stares at it a moment, swats it away, then turns on her heel and strides rapidly across the floor and out of the dining hall.

Harry comes back to our table. “She changed her mind about the muffin,” he says blandly as he sits down.

“Yeah, I saw.” We sit in silence a moment. Then I say, “Just out of curiosity—you didn’t actually
like
her, did you?”

“Not in any meaningful way.”

“So were you just using her to make me jealous?”

“Of course not. That would be wrong.” He taps his fingers on the table thoughtfully, then says more seriously, “I don’t know . . . I wasn’t thinking that was what I was doing—it wasn’t deliberate or anything—but I can’t really explain it any other way. She got on my nerves, and I paid her a lot more attention when you were around to see and tried to avoid her whenever you weren’t.. . .”

“Yeah, that would be using her to make me jealous.”

“Is that bad?”

“Totally morally reprehensible. On the other hand . . . it worked.” I shift a little closer to him. “And I’m glad you don’t really like her.”

“Stay jealous,” he says. “I like you that way.”

“It’s all fun and games until I start boiling bunnies.”

“Back where I comes from, we calls that ste-ew,” he says.

“Nice accent,” I say. “You might want to reconsider the acting career.”

“There you go, shooting me down again.” He waits a beat. “You know what that means.”

“Time for me to build you back up?”

“Past time, I’d say.”

“What did you have in mind?”

He considers. “The practice rooms should be empty. We could sneak into one and make out until you have to go to work.”

“What kind of girl do you think I am?”

He leans forward and puts the back of his hand against the back of mine. Just kind of presses it there. And he says, “
My
girl?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s go.”

I
t’s a good thing we grab the chance to be alone that morning, because free time becomes scarce that week. At rehearsal, we’re running through the play in its entirety, starting over again as soon as we’ve finished with the last scene and Charles has given us notes, breaking off only to go to meals or to bed. Time is running out, and Charles’s temper is running short. He wants it to be good, and we’re all still occasionally flubbing our lines or forgetting the blocking.

I dash back to the workroom during the scenes I’m not in, and, depending on how much time I have until I’m needed again, I either work there until my next scene or bring some hand sewing back to rehearsal.

I have to give Amelia credit: she’s working like a madwoman, trying to get all the costumes for all the shows ready by the time performances start in five days, and her output is really impressive. It feels like every time I return to the Sweatshop there’s another rack of finished costumes that are neatly labeled and ready for the upcoming dress rehearsals.

So the days are crazy for all of us, but the nights . . . the nights are pretty sweet. When we’re done with rehearsal (which gets later with each passing day), Harry and I often walk into town and grab a late-night bite to eat or a cup of tea. Isabella joins us most of the time, and so do Vanessa and Lawrence.

We don’t hang out in the common room anymore. Things have gotten too awkward with both Marie and Alex.

For obvious reasons Julia and Manny continue to spend time with Alex, so I don’t see them at meals as much, but I see them plenty at rehearsals. They really do seem to be genuinely kind of devoted to each other, which is sweet, and I’m happy for them both, but poor Vanessa isn’t so lucky: she has a fling with a fellow cast member that doesn’t last long. “He has the worst bad breath,” she tells me afterward. “Like something’s rotting from the inside.”

“That’s so poetic.”

“Nothing poetic about that smell.”

Once the few remaining straight guys know that Isabella is free, she always has someone trailing hopefully after her. Even so, when she’s in the Sweatshop trying on her nun’s habit for
Measure for Measure
, she looks in the mirror and says grimly, “Suits me. Never knew I was a method actor, but I seem to be living the part.”

I get why she’s alone: most of the guys there are from small towns and seem way too young for her. She’s cursed by her own sophistication.

Lawrence pursues a couple of interesting possibilities but eventually drops them, disappointed. “The good news,” he tells me at lunch one day, “is that there are more gay guys in any single room here than in my entire high school. The bad news is that there’s still no one I’m all that interested in. Or at least no one who’s equally interested in me. I’ve decided to
save myself for Harry. Any signs he might be turning?”

“I’m doing my best for you,” I say. “If
I
can’t turn a guy off girls, who can?”

“Her,” he says, and points to Marie.

Marie.

After Harry broke up with her at breakfast (as gently and apologetically as he could, he swore), she went straight to Charles and told him that she couldn’t continue to act opposite Harry because he had made sexually inappropriate advances toward her, and she just wasn’t comfortable being in romantic scenes with him anymore.

It was a mistake to use the same unfounded complaint she’d used before, especially since the program had now been running for a few weeks, and Charles had pretty much figured her out. He’d also seen her basically throwing herself on top of Harry just the day before. He told her that he would take her concerns under consideration, and later that day pulled Harry aside to get his side of the story, which Harry said was pretty much “she got pissed off when I picked Franny over her.” “That does sum it up nicely,” I agreed.

Charles and the other graduate-student directors had a meeting with the head of the program to figure out what to do. They came back to Marie as a group and told her that they had some concerns about the truthfulness of these serious accusations. And they said they all agreed that the safest course of action for all concerned (especially her, since she seemed to be in constant danger of attracting unwanted advances) was
to keep some distance between Marie and the other actors. So they were removing her from the cast and giving her a job helping out backstage.

Julia and Vanessa told us later that Marie went ballistic when she heard this, threw a fit, said her parents would sue the entire program, accused all the directors of being sexist and misogynistic (even the females), and said she would go home if they didn’t give her her role back. She recounted all this to her roommates that night, alternating between self-pitying sobs and spitting fury.