Virtually Mine: a love story (9 page)

Seeing him, Kate smiled warmly. “Charlie.
Hi. Didn’t you just do that yesterday?”

“Did I?” he squeaked. “Oh. Well, a clean
walk is a happy walk, so... Pretty flowers.”

Kate sighed as she unlocked her door.
“Yeah. My favorites.”

Charlie fought for words to respond.
“Dustin trying to make it up to you?”

Kate brushed a flaxen wisp from her eyes.
“No, it’s just...a teensy bit embarrassing is what it is.” Kate paused a
moment, then shifted to a more upbeat tone. “Garbage disposal is working great.”

Charlie stopped his sweeping. Any praise
that proceeded from those plump pink lips made his all but tone-deaf heart
sing. “You need anything else, man-wise, I mean manager-wise, you just let me
know.”

Kate smiled. “Thanks, Charlie. I’m going
to go put these down. It’s been a hard day.”

Charlie nodded understandingly and
resumed his sweeping. He found it easier to remain calm around her when he had
a task to do—something, anything to keep her simple attractions from driving
him absolutely wild.

The moment Kate disappeared into her
apartment, Charlie bolted back into his. Safely inside, he clutched his
pounding heart.

♥   
♥    ♥

A pile of tissues around her, M.J. dotted on calamine lotion as Kate entered
their apartment with the bouquet.
 
Unsuccessfully, M.J. stifled a sneeze.

With
a concerned look, Kate approached her roommate. “
Are you sick?”

M.J. gathered her tissues. “Not exactly.
Turns out I’m allergic.”

“To flowers?”

M.J. hung her head. “Dogs.
 
I mean, I knew I was as a kid, but I thought
it was like chicken pox or acne or whatever, and I’d have grown out of it. Come
to think of it, I never completely grew out of acne either. A pity, you might
think, but it does blend quite nicely with the hives.”

Kate wandered toward the sofa. “So, are
you going to quit the dog walking business?”

“Heck, no.” M.J. popped an allergy pill
from its cell pack, and then read over the directions.

“What are you going to do?”

“Mainline allergy caps if necessary. And
if that results in daytime drowsiness, gastric distress, or occasional dry
heaves—believe me, this guy’s worth it.”
 
Again, M.J. sneezed.

“Why don’t you just tell him?”

M.J. flopped back on the sofa. “That my
mouth turns to mush at the sight of him? That I want to lick the spoon he eats
his breakfast from?”

“How about just that you like him?”

“See, you...you could do that.”

“You could do it,” Kate insisted.
“Anybody could do it.”

“Anybody with a face like yours and a bod
like that and, by the way, where on your thighs did you hide that half gallon
of ice cream?”

“M.J., you’re beautiful!”

“Uh-uh,” M.J. answered. “I’m the crack
up, the best bud.
 
I’m the go-to girl
for a favor.”

Kate sat down by her roommate. “You’re a
lot more than that.”

M.J. shrugged. “I’m okay looking. I know
that. But romantically, I have to grow on guys. I have to dig deep, send out
tillers and rhizomes, and make myself impossible to get rid of. Face it. I’m the
Bermuda grass of eligible women. And I’m almost thirty. Did I mention that?”

A look of surprise crossed Kate’s face.
“You said you were twenty-five.”

“I also lie about my weight. Go figure.”

Kate wished she could encourage M.J., but
it was hard to know just how to do that. The phone began to jingle in Kate’s
bedroom, so Kate rose to answer it. “M.J.—the right guy—he’s going to notice
you.”

“Rob is the right guy,” M.J. called after
her. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

♥   
♥    ♥

Charlie paced nervously, his
ear to the phone. Under his breath, he tried out what he might say. “
Hi,
Kate...no, she’ll...okay...I can do this. I’m from the country, the country
boy... I’m... Southern, I’m—
”

Suddenly, he heard that Kate had picked
up.

“Hello.”

Don’t panic
, Charlie
pleaded with himself. He took on a light twang, making himself more comfy in
Brad’s confident persona. “Well, hey there Katie, this is Brad. I was hopin’
I’d catch you in.”

The line was silent for a moment. What
Charlie wouldn’t have given to have seen Kate’s face, but knowing she was on
the other side of the firewall their apartments shared would have to be close
enough. He glanced at her photo on his computer screen, then down at his phone
jack, calculating that they were actually just a couple of yards apart.

“Brad from the...I mean, you’re my—”

Charlie didn’t want her to have to finish
that sentence. The last thing he wanted was for anything about this time he had
with her to seem anything less than real. “Is it okay if I call you Katie?
 
I just always loved that name.”

“Sure,” she replied. “Okay. That’s
actually what my Daddy calls me, and all my friends back home in Virginia.”

“Then Katie it is. Katie and Brad. Has a
nice ring, doesn’t it?”

Charlie couldn’t see Kate’s expression,
but he could hear the smile curling in her voice. He was glad he’d paid such
close attention whenever they had spoken.

“Yeah. You sound so...familiar to me.”

Charlie straightened, worried. “I do?”

“Yeah, you sound like almost all of
Crozet. Everybody’s so warm and friendly there. I had to work to lose my
accent, coming here. I’m liable to go back to it talkin’ to you.”

Greatly relieved, Charlie eased into the
country boy persona. “Never met a gerund dropper I didn’t like.”

Again, Kate paused. “That’s... You
actually know what a gerund is. This is crazy. Most people don’t know this, but
I’m a total grammar geek.
 
It’s kind of
my secret obsession.”

“You, too?”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

♥   
♥    ♥

 
There was always something about washing her
face before bed that felt good to Kate, but on this particular night the
sensation of the warm water and suds was all the more soothing. She didn’t know
exactly what was happening inside her, only that something in that satisfying
phone conversation had seemed like more than a compensated exchange with an
Imaginary Boyfriend. Her mind ran with the prospects.

Brad’s picture, Kate knew, was of a real
guy. She reasoned that he also knew what she looked like, since he had the real
photo she had submitted of herself. Even if he were being employed to call her
among his stable of clients, she felt special. She decided that it was
somewhere in the remote reaches of possibility that something genuine was at
play.

Though they stood at their side-by-side
sinks wearing pajamas, Kate noticed as M.J. began to apply eyeliner. “You going
somewhere?”

“Nope,” M,J. answered. “Just wondering if
maybe I should change it up. For Rob. You think?”

Kate toweled her face dry. “I’m probably
the wrong person to ask about makeup.”

M.J. leaned close to the mirror. “Since
you don’t need any.”

Again, it was hard to know just what to
say. The closest thing to cosmetics Kate ever wore was lip gloss, and that was
mostly for the sunscreen. “I just mean...I think you look great without it. Any
guy you get is going to see you without it eventually anyway.”

M.J. capped the eye pencil. “Not if I get
the permanent kind.” M.J. stretched her mouth open and smeared the liner on her
lower lid. She backed away from the mirror, checking the results. “So, are you
going to tell me about your call, or do I have to install a bug?”

Even though it was only M.J., Kate could
feel a blush rise to her cheeks. “I don’t know. He’s... It’s almost like
he’s...real.”

M.J. sighed nostalgically. “So was Jimmy
Carmichael.”

“It was the first time I talked to him
and it’s like...he completely gets me.” Kate reached for a towel. “He sends my
favorite flowers, he’s got the cutest little accent, which you know I love and,
okay...guess how he puts himself to sleep at night.”

“He names all the prepositions in
alphabetical order.”

Kate looked at her roommate, agape. “How
did you know that?”

“Because that’s what you do. He probably
got it off your profile.”

Kate took M.J.’s suggestion in, more
puzzled than ever. “That’s what’s kind of wigging me. Most of it...I never put
it on the profile.”

seven

♥

K
ate was purposely late for
Antonio’s class. It wasn’t like her to be tardy. By and large, she made a point
to be punctual, if not early. But knowing that Dustin and Wissy would be
putting up their scene didn’t make the idea of showing up at all for this
particular class attractive.

Still,
there was something that drew Kate to the theater. Whether it was a sense of
responsibility or a punishing curiosity, Kate found herself wandering into the
darkened space and easing into a seat behind her teacher and peers, just as
Dustin and
Wissy took the stage, scripts in hand. They waited for Antonio’s cue to start.

Dustin shuffled his feet. He looked up at
Wissy with a chagrined expression. “I’m sorry,” he read. “I don’t mean to... I
know that thing that happened between us yesterday, it was unprofessional.”

Wissy stepped toward Dustin coyly,
playing against the written words. “What were we thinking? We just won’t let it
happen again. That’s all.”

Dustin took a step closer. “We should
draw boundaries.”

“And stick to them.”

Dustin brushed a tendril away from
Wissy’s cheek. “Absolutely.”

Ever the coquette, Wissy gazed longingly
into Dustin’s eyes. “Because, we don’t want to let this interfere with our
working relationship.”

“There’s that,” Dustin replied,
millimeters away from her.

Kate squirmed in her seat at the back of
the theater. The innocence of her own portrayal of this character was far from
Wissy’s take on it. It was one thing for Kate to contemplate what was going on
between Dustin and Wissy outside of class, but it was quite another to see it
play out right in front of her, sparking like the fourth of July.

Their kiss started softly, and then grew
in its intensity. Kate wanted desperately to avert her attention, but somehow,
she couldn’t help but watch. With each bewildering moment, the knife sunk
deeper into her heart.

Mercifully, Antonio cleared his throat to
curtail the scene, but Dustin and Wissy continued to kiss, lost in the moment.

Hot tears brimmed in Kate’s eyes.
Finally, she tore her gaze away, unable to watch any longer.

“Well, then,” Antonio interrupted. “Very
good.” Antonio turned to the class. “Who can tell me why that scene worked?”

♥   
♥    ♥

“It’s the chemistry. Plain and simple,” Samantha intoned as she handed another
day’s pay to Eric. “You’ve got it with the lens, they imagine it’s with
them—three hundred fifty-eight of them by last count—all across this nation. I
have a proposition for you, Eric.”

Eric marveled as he spotted his sizable
take, especially since he’d only agreed to this job to fill in the financial
blanks between acting gigs. “I’m listening.”

“Our license with you is domestic, but my
instinct is that you could have global potential.”

“As in around the world? That globe?”

Samantha sashayed past her desk toward
Eric. “I thought it might be interesting to discuss it over dinner. Say eight
o’clock. My place.”

Immediately, Eric’s radar went up.
Everything in him told him this didn’t seem to be an entirely business-oriented
proposition. “Your place. That might be—”

Sam moved closer, toying with him. “Are
you as bored with take-out as I am, Eric?
 
I’ll cook.”

Eric swallowed hard, his mind racing.

Samantha held his gaze, her meaning
plain.

Eric cleared his throat, stalling for a
way to redirect. “Well, no, actually I...I think I’d rather just keep my
position with you...domestic, I guess.”

Smoothly, Samantha retreated a bit,
completely unruffled. A shrewd expression arched across her brow. “Darling, do
you know how many there are of you, how many beautiful faces with
underdeveloped talent and sub-par personalities populate L.A.?”

Eric raised his hands apologetically.
“Hey, I’m not looking to rankle anybody. I just need this job.”

“And you only have it because you are an
unknown,” Sam reminded. “The minute you become known, you’re useless to me. Did
you realize that?”

“No, I—”