The Law of Tall Girls

by Joanne Macgregor

  I was relieved when the rehearsal ended at twelve-thirty. Leaving Doug to nail down the production details with the technical and backstage crew, I changed out of my costume and left with Jay and the rest of the cast.

  “I vote we all go out for lunch,” said Zack. “How about Jumping Jim’s?”

  “Again?” Wren said.

  “Peyton can get us her staff discount.”

  “I’m in,” said Liz.

  “Me too,” said Angela.

  “Yeah?” Jay asked me.

  “Um …”

  I did not want to go to Jim’s, no sir, no ma’am. Tori worked every Saturday, and I’d had enough of her prying eyes and sarcastic comments. So far, I hadn’t reported any of my three dates with Jay to Tori. I felt a powerful urge to protect what was developing between Jay and me from the ugliness of the bet.

  “I was hoping to take you to lunch, and spend the afternoon with just you,” I told him softly.

  “We’re out,” Jay told the others, grinning broadly.

  “Are you two a thing now?” Wren said, wrinkling her nose.

  I glanced at Jay. “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Aww, man. I thought I was in with a chance there,” Zack complained.

  “In your dreams,” muttered Jay, and he linked his arm through mine and drew me off to his car.

  ~ 32 ~

  We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening together — another extraordinary aspect of that day.

  As we drove to the Inner Harbor district, we got to talking about movies. I knew more about classic old films, while Jay was the expert on actors. As a souped-up red Camaro sped past us and shot through a just-red traffic light ahead, Jay declared a movie quiz.

  “Best movie car-chase sequence of all time?” he asked.

  “You go first,” I said, playing for time, trying to remember any car chase at all.

  “Okay then, I’d have to say Drive.”

  “And that would be …”

  “The one with Ryan Gosling playing a getaway driver. The opening sequence was so clever — no crashes, no mad music, just those close-ups of him thinking and scheming. Your turn.”

  I’d thought of one. “The Bourne Identity.”

  “The red mini racing through the streets of Paris? That was a classic, too. Let’s call it a tie — one hundred points each.”

  “This is a competition?”

  “Hey, you heard my father on the critical importance of competition,” he said with a wry grin.

  “He’s on your case about playing sports a lot?”

  “He doesn’t understand me. Or Jack either. He just wanted a girly-girl and a boy’s boy and instead he got … us.”

  We left the car in a parkade and headed toward the waterfront, strolling through the throngs of tourists and Christmas shoppers.

  “And your dad’s not happy about your studying drama next year?” I asked.

  “He hates it. He says the chances of me succeeding are next to zero, and I should study something as a ‘backup’. He thinks I should do programming or accounting.”

  “No!” I said it so fiercely that Jay quirked a brow at me.

  “You feel strongly about that, do you?”

  “Yes.” The thought of this awesomely gifted person burying his brilliance under a boring bushel of debits and credits was too dreadful to think about. (Sorry, Mark.) “Anyway, you’ll make it big time — no two ways about that.”

  “You’ve seen the future?” he asked, grinning.

  “I have. Spoiler alert: you win the Oscar for best actor in 2021.”

  Admiring the rich, burnt-orange coat of a woman walking ahead of us, I promptly decided to include a garment in that precise color in my fashion range. Perhaps a button-down shirt, with extra-large cuffs and pointed collar.

  “Do you get on with your father?” Jay asked.

  “We’re not close — I hardly see him. My folks divorced when I was six years old, and we’ve just seen less and less of each other with every year that goes by.”

  “Why did they —”

  “I’m getting cold. This okay for lunch?” I indicated a nearby seafood restaurant.

  “Sure.”

  The hostess who showed us to a table with a view over the harbor gave me an astounded look and exclaimed, “Why, you sure are tall! How tall are you?” And without waiting for an answer, added, “You know, you should wear flats, honey, the heels on those boots just make you even taller.”

  Stand on something and say that to my face, lady.

  I gave Jay a what-did-I-tell you look and took my seat, fitting my legs between his under the table. Soon we were sharing a bucket of succulent shellfish, and back to talking about the movies.

  Jay fished a massive crab leg from out of the bucket and cracked it open with the tiny mallet that had come with the silverware.

  “Okay, here’s a quiz question for you,” I said. “Best onscreen murder?”

  Jay narrowed his eyes in thought while he sucked at the leg and pulled the tender white meat out between his teeth. I stared at his buttery lips, aware of a tautening in the pit of my belly.

  “I bet we’re thinking the same scene,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  What had we been talking about?

  “Psycho,” he said.

  Oh yeah. Murder.

  “The shower scene?” I checked.

  “No contest.”

  “The original Hitchcock, though. Not that awful remake.”

  “Of course!”

  We chatted easily as we made our way through the spicy shrimp and steamed clams. He told me that his first-round Julliard audition would be at the end of January next year, with final callbacks if he got through (which I knew he would) in March. I learned that Jack was in love with one of the guys on her oil rig, and that their mother had been a champion ballroom dancer when she was young.

  Jay didn’t learn too much about me, which was intentional on my part. After all, what wasn’t a secret wasn’t very interesting. He asked how my portfolio was coming on, and I told him, “Great,” while realizing that this lunch had probably cost me the equivalent of fabric for several of my garments.

  I didn’t regret a single clam.

  After a long lunch with several refills of coffee, we strolled around the harbor. It was a chilly day. The heavy gray clouds had crowded out the sun, and already the light was beginning to dim. I was glad I’d worn my parka (men’s department, Bargain Box Outlet Store) and, whatever the restaurant hostess thought of their heels, my boots. Jay looked warm — and dead sexy — in his black turtleneck sweater and leather jacket, but when he saw me rubbing my cold ears, he insisted on buying us a couple of warm beanies — black for him and ruby red for me. “To match your lips,” he said.

  We passed two panhandlers, wrestling drunkenly for possession of a bottle of cheap wine. They hung onto each other, moving in unsteady circles like a four-legged crab, too tanked to do much harm.

  “Best movie fight scene?” Jay demanded.

  “If we’re counting gunfights, then Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Definitely.”

  “Butch who and the sun what?”

  “How can you not have seen it?” I was appalled. “The gunfight at the end — it’s a classic!”

  “Fight Club is a classic,” he countered.

  I shuddered. “Okay, I’ll see your Fight Club and raise you some serious magic: Voldemort versus Dumbledore in Order of the Phoenix.”

  “There were some pretty cool special effects,” Jay conceded. “But I’ll call you. The Matrix — Neo versus Agent Smith.”

  “I can live with that,” I said, earning myself one of his glorious smiles.

  They did something to me, those smiles. They cracked open my heart and filled me with sunshine and color and warmth.

  “Hey, how about a trip across the bay?” Jay suggested

  Ten minutes later, we were sitting on the benched seats of the harbor water taxi, along with a crowd of othe
r travelers — tourists and locals headed home after a long day. The skipper maneuvered the boat away from the mooring and headed out into the bay. Bands of colored light trembled on the rippling surface of the water, reflected from the waterside bars, clubs and crab joints, which were fully lit up in the gathering gloom of the evening.

  It was freezing cold out on the water, and when Jay pulled me close, I snuggled gratefully up against his warmth, resting my head on his shoulder and my cheek in the crook of his neck. He smelled of nothing but himself.

  “This is special,” I said, surprised to hear myself speak my thoughts out loud.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Nothing.”

  This beautiful moment wouldn’t — couldn’t — last. I hugged the happiness tight inside me, so I’d still have the memory when the magic ended. Life had taught me that it always did.

  The boat docked at Harbor Point and most of the tourists disembarked, probably headed for the restaurants in Little Italy.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked when we were moving again, this time headed past Pier Five toward the massive aquarium with its triangular glass roof and its World War II submarine tethered to the jetty outside.

  “Best onscreen romantic couples.”

  Oooh, he’d been thinking about romantic couples?

  “Okay, how about Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind, or Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights — any version,” I said.

  “Hmm, so you like crazy-intense, kinda scary love?”

  “Is there any other kind? Your turn,” I said, then quickly added, “No, wait. I’ve changed my mind. The best onscreen couple ever — Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca.”

  “You sure like your movies old.”

  “That’s because they knew how to make clever, stylish movies back then. And they knew about romance, too.” At his skeptical look I said, “Fine, you name a great romantic couple from recent movies that can stack up against Scarlett and Rhett, or Rick and Ilsa.”

  “Define recent.”

  “This century.”

  “Bella and Edward,” he said, laughing, and when I pulled back to give him a look, added, “Or are you team Jacob?”

  “Be serious.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, romance is serious business.”

  “Well? I’m waiting for your modern classics,” I challenged him.

  “Katniss and Peeta? Tris and Four? Schmidt and whatshisname, the Channing Tatum character, in 22 Jump Street?”

  “Bromances don’t count. Do you give up? Do you agree that the best movies are the old ones?”

  “I’ve got it!” Jay said, snapping his fingers.

  “Oh yeah?”

  He made the sound of a drumroll.

  “Anytime now,” I said.

  “Shrek and Fiona.”

  “I’ll admit, they are a pretty good couple,” I said grudgingly.

  “What do you mean, ‘Pretty good’? They’re awesome, and I won. Hallelujah, hallelujah,” he sang the movie’s theme tune.

  “Eh, not so fast. If we’re allowed to submit lovers who aren’t real —”

  “Peyton!” Jay stopped singing abruptly, gaped at me as if shocked to the core, placed a hand over his heart and said in a voice that throbbed with emotion, “Just because they’re animated doesn’t mean they’re not real.”

  “My bad. Forgive me.”

  “It’s not me you should apologize to,” he said with an injured sniff.

  His face was pulled into taut, sad lines, and he wiped away what I could’ve sworn was a real tear. Had I really upset him?

  “Jay?”

  “Gotcha!” He threw his head back and then doubled over in that full-body laugh that I adored.

  I punched him, none too gently, on the upper arm. “You really had me going there!”

  He was still chuckling when the water taxi drew up at the final stop. It was only when we climbed out from under the boat’s canopy and onto the dock that we realized it had started drizzling. We set off for the parkade at a brisk walk.

  “Who were you going to suggest? For the couple?” Jay asked.

  “Belle and the Beast from Beauty and The Beast.”

  “To avoid being beaten up again,” said Jay, rubbing his arm as if it still hurt, “I’ll declare it a tie.”

  At that moment, the icy rain picked up and began to pelt down. We glanced at each other and then, by unspoken mutual agreement, set off at a run toward the nearest bus shelter, about fifty yards down the street.

  And it was there, under the arced protection of its roof, that the most special, extraordinary thing of the day happened.

  ~ 33 ~

  The rain hammered on the roof of the bus shelter. Standing in our small dry spot, surrounded by a deluge of water and noise, we might have been alone in the world — a boy and a girl with rain-spotted clothes and wet hair, and a sudden charged intensity in the space between them.

  Jay pulled me close and tucked my icy hands inside the warmth of his jacket. He gazed down into my eyes, his own golden-green gaze so intense, I felt my cheeks growing warm.

  Eventually, he spoke. “Best movie kiss?”

  I had to clear my throat to find my voice.

  “Hmm … That steamy scene with Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster rolling around on the beach in From Here To Eternity?”

  “Is this another movie from prehistoric times?”

  “Smartass.” I snorted. “What’s got your vote?”

  “The one between Tris and Four in Divergent, where they were both angry and totally hot for each other. Definitely a winner. Unless you’ve got another contender?”

  “I do!” I’d just remembered my favorite kiss scene ever. “The Spiderman one. The original with Toby Maguire, not that recent rubbish.”

  “Remind me?”

  “It’s raining, and Spidey and Mary Jane are in this dark alley where he’s just rescued her from a bunch of rapey thugs, which is dead-romantic right there — the rescuing, I mean, not the thugs.”

  Jay gave a small laugh.

  “And then he hangs upside down against the wall —”

  “I remember now! Her dress was kinda see-through. And wet. Hot.”

  “And then slowly, slowly she peels his mask down just enough to expose his lips, so he’s just all mystique and mouth. And then she leans over and softly kisses him, with her hands on the sides of his face. Oh!” I sighed deeply. Just remembering it made me swoony. “It’s hands down the best. Ever.”

  Jay cocked his head, giving me an enigmatic look for a long moment. Then he went around to the side of the bus shelter, climbed onto the trashcan and pulled himself up onto the roof.

  Laughing, I stepped out and turned to look up at him. “What are you doing?” I asked, blinking in the rain.

  Jay rolled up the neck of his black turtleneck sweater and tugged his beanie down over his eyes, then lay down on his back on the top of the shelter and dangled over the edge, inching backward until his covered face was level with mine.

  I gasped in delight.

  Fingers trembling, I took the edges of the neck of his sweater and slowly, slowly peeled it back until just his lips were exposed. I leaned over and took his bottom lip between mine and sucked it gently, then nibbled his top lip. Jay groaned, and the tautness in my belly melted into a heavy ache. I covered his mouth with my own and then, finally, we were kissing.

  It was all kinds of wonderful. Soft and gentle at first, then harder, wilder. Fevered. The wind was back, stealing my breath, roaring through my head and filling my body with whirling, rushing currents of now and here. And my heart was expanding — wider, lighter, higher in my chest, so that I felt like a balloon ready to lift off and float up into the night sky, and it was only Jay’s lips that kept me connected to the earth.

  When we came up for air, he yanked off his beanie, flipped backward off the shelter roof, and stood before me, his green eyes heavy-lidded. Then we kissed right side up — deeper
, fiercer, longer. I let my hands do what they’d been craving for months, to run up the hard bulges of his arms, to push my fingers through his hair, to scrub my knuckles along his jawline and press my fingertips to the curved lines at the sides of his eyes.

  His hands were on me, too — the one in the small of my back pulled me tight into him, then moved lower, pressing my ass against his hips, so that I could feel the hardness of him. He pressed a line of small kisses along my throat, while his other hand moved up along my spine and tangled in my hair, then moved lower to cup the swell of my breasts. And I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t hold back the moan of pleasure. I —

  A horn sounded behind me, harsh and loud. I yelped and leapt apart from Jay. The bus had arrived and was waiting with its door open. I guess it had already been there for a while, because several grinning faces were pressed up against the wet windows, watching us. A few were even cheering or clapping, but the driver looked unamused.

  “You two plan to get on the bus before one of you gets knocked up?” he called, and cursed when Jay waved him on.

  We were alone again, but the wild magic of the moment was broken. We couldn’t carry on making out on the street, and it was probably time to get home. Plus, the rain which had cut us off from the rest of the world had stopped.

  But the moment was also not broken, because although there was an easing of the expectant tension between us now that the first real kiss had happened, there was also an exquisite increase in whatever it was that connected us. It was there in our hands when they effortlessly found each other as we ran down the wet streets splashing through puddles. It was there in the laughter we shared when we were inside Jay’s car, and in the look we gave each other when we pulled up at my house, before we kissed again.

  Even once I was back home, in my bed and on the verge of falling asleep, I still felt connected to him by that indefinable link. And I knew, just knew, that wherever he was, grabbing a snack in that neat kitchen perhaps, or dozing off under the posters of Les Mis and Othello, he was thinking of me, too.