The dance was on the Rosewood campus, which made things so much easier and gave us more time to get ready, since we didn’t have to worry about getting downstairs in time for the bus. But still when we all congregated in Brooklyn and Emmie’s room, things got a bit hairy as they always did when a bunch of girls were all trying to get ready at the same time. Thankfully Emmie had to leave early to go get the gym ready for the dance, giving us each a bit more room.
The girls assured me I looked good, but a whole day’s worth of thinking about going to the dance and facing all those guys again after what had happened at the talent show made me more nervous than I cared to admit.
Although it did help to know my friends and Abe were on my side. So the plan was to stay fairly close to them, which felt a bit cowardly, but after what had happened, I felt like I deserved to want to stay close to the people who had my back.
Speaking of Abe; what would Abe think of the dress? I’d wondered that several times throughout the day, and then pushed the thoughts out of my head, because of course the dress was fine and he’d approve. And what did it even matter?
When we got down to the gym at around seven-thirty (because only freshmen show up right on time at seven). My nerves were pretty shot, but I put on a smile and joked around with my girls as we entered the gym. Of course Kaylee spotted Declan immediately looking tall and cute in his suit, so we made our way over to where he stood with the guys: Dave, Miles, Carson and of course, Abe.
Despite the nagging insecurity, I held my head high as I glided over to the boys. They all wore suits and looked good, but I did have a second to notice that while Declan was probably the tallest by a bit, Abe was definitely the biggest with those broad shoulders that really filled out his jacket. His hair was tied back and he looked good. Really good, especially when he smiled at me which did something to my insides that I wasn’t willing to analyze.
“Hey,” I said, to no one in particular as we reached the group. I didn’t make eye contact with any of them, instead watching as Kaylee reunited with her boyfriend.
Declan embraced her and glanced over toward where the teacher chaperones were standing before he gave her a kiss. She held onto his arms and he leaned down and whispered in her ear, making her smile that special smile that was reserved just for him. It was so cute and intimate; it made me want to put my boyfriend plan back into action.
“Hi,” Abe said from right beside me; I hadn’t even noticed him sidle up and that he was so close made me jump a little.
I turned to him. “Hi.”
“You look really nice,” he said.
I looked down. “So, is this dare-approved?”
He smiled but shook his head. “I told you that you didn’t have to worry about that anymore.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want to cop out.”
He screwed up his face. “Well...I technically didn’t get to finish my magic show. So does that mean I need to do another one?”
“No,” I said. “I think you’re probably good. You certainly showed off your awesome magic skills.”
He snorted. “Hardly. Just a few cheap store-bought tricks.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “You made my dress disappear. You’re the best magician ever!”
He cringed at that, but the corner of his mouth kicked up.
“Too soon?” I asked.
“Probably,” he said.
“Your show really was good,” I said. “You have a great stage presence and you really had the audience in the palm of your hand. You know, until I distracted them.”
“Thank you,” he said. “It means a lot that you think that.”
I was about to say more about his act and how funny it was, but then I heard, “Hey Chelly.”
I turned to see Hunter standing there just behind me. I gave him a big smile. “Hi,” I said. The boyfriend experiment is back on, I thought.
“So,” he said, his eyes sliding from mine down my body. “You look good.”
“Thanks,” I said, throwing him a hair toss.
“Though I think you’re wearing too much. Especially after your performance. I haven’t enjoyed a school event that much in a long time. So, we going to get another show?” he asked, leering toward my chest.
“Piss off,” Abe said before I even had a chance to open my mouth.
Hunter looked up at Abe (because Abe towered over him by at least a head). “What?” he said, all innocence. “If she didn’t want people to look, she shouldn’t have made her dress fall down.” He did air quotes at the end of his sentence.
It was exactly what I’d been afraid of. Well, partly; I’d also worried that people would whisper about what they saw and how it didn’t live up to their hopes of a naked Chelly.
Abe took a threatening step toward Hunter. “What is wrong with you?” he asked.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said, angling my body around Abe because by now, he was between Hunter and I, blocking.
“Right. You never wanted people to see you,” Hunter said sarcastically. “Innocent Chelly Spencer. What are you going to say next: that you’re a virgin?” He snorted at that.
All I could do was stare at him, but he wasn’t even finished. And of course, it just got worse.
“Oh well, if I’m not going to get the real thing, at least I saved one of those pictures on my phone.”
“You son of a bitch,” Abe bit out and I swear, I’ve never seen him look so mad.
I opened my mouth to say something, but the tears threatened to come before any words would form. So I just gawked at the both of them stupidly.
“Oh right, Abe. Just because you’ve been in love with her forever, you have to jump to her defense.”
What?
I glanced at Abe, but he was glaring at Hunter. “Shut up, you...”
“Maybe she’ll give you a private show,” Hunter drawled, waggling his eyebrows.
And then it became just too much. I couldn’t deal with hearing even one more word, so I turned away and walked as quickly as I could out of the gym, ignoring Abe and my friends as they called my name.
Once I was in the hallway and the tears broke free, I kicked off my shoes and ran, wondering if my life would ever go back to normal. Abe had said there would come a day when the pictures wouldn’t matter but today was definitely not that day.
~ ♥ ~
I love my girls. I really do. But in that second, the last thing I wanted was any of them finding me and giving me the big lecture about boys being stupid and how I shouldn’t listen to Hunter, who obviously is a giant douche.
So instead of going to the bathroom or back to my dorm room, I went to the auditorium and let myself in with the secret key. I took a seat on the aisle in the fifth row and let it all out. I’m talking the ugly cry here. Then I realized I didn’t have any tissue to mop the tears up with, which just made me cry harder. About ten minutes later, I was cried out, but still a mess, so I sat there sniffling, feeling pretty sorry for myself while I also tried to sort out what had happened back there.
“Chelly?”
I could feel Abe standing beside me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him.
He repeated my name and I just shook my head.
“Does that mean no you don’t want to talk to me, or no you’re not Chelly?” he said.
Despite how horrible things were in that second, I still laughed.
“That’s better,” he said. Then, without asking, he squeezed past my knees and sat in the seat next to me. “You okay?”
“Not really,” I said.
He sighed. “Sorry. That was stupid to even ask. Obviously if you were okay, you wouldn’t have taken off like that. Here,” he said, a couple of tissues arriving into my field of view.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the tissues. “How did you know I was here?” I wiped at my face with the Kleenex, still not looking at him.
“I didn’t,” he said. “We all sort of scattered to try to find you and I’m obviously limited in the plac
es I can go on campus, so here I am. But I thought you might come here. I don’t know why, though.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “I mean, this is where it happened, right? Not like I want to revisit the scene of the crime.”
“Chelly,” he said softly, which made more tears come. I shook my head again as I pressed the tissues to my eyes.
“You can’t worry about him,” Abe said. “He’s a total dick. What he said doesn’t even matter.”
“It’s not just him,” I said. “It’s everyone. They all think I did it on purpose. Everyone thinks I’m a...” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Not everyone,” he said.
“The funny thing?” I looked up at him finally, the sad look on his face almost undoing me again.
“What?”
“I am a virgin,” I said and then exhaled loudly. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just told you that. How embarrassing.”
“Being a virgin isn’t embarrassing,” he said.
I glanced over at him quickly and then away. “Whatever, Mr. Experience.”
He laughed at that. “Right. I’m Mr. Experience. Not quite.”
“You’ve dated,” I said, looking at him sideways.
“Dated, yes. Not that much, though,” he said in a weird voice.
That made me look at him. Was he trying to say...? “You’re not telling me you’re...”
He nodded, though he didn’t look me in the eye. “Pure as the driven snow.”
“Come on,” I said, disbelieving. “How is that possible?”
He shrugged, his cheeks reddening slightly, which was just about the cutest thing ever. “Just never found someone I wanted to remember as my first for the rest of my life.” Then he looked at me.
For a really, really, really long moment, our eyes held and something twisted inside me. Because I felt the same about the whole first time thing. He really knows me, I thought.
He looked away first. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, digging into his suit jacket pocket. He pulled out a very broken iPhone.
“Oh, Abe, you shouldn’t have,” I said, laughing.
He smiled, but there was no laughter in his voice when he said, “It’s Hunter’s.”
I looked up at him realizing what this meant. “There will be more, you know.”
He nodded. “Probably. But now there’s one fewer.”
“Thank you.” I took the phone from him and noticed it was missing the battery and looked like its insides had been mangled.
He nodded. Like it was nothing. But it wasn’t. It was the opposite of nothing.
“Abe?”
“Yeah?”
“What Hunter said back there...”
He looked away which meant he knew exactly what I was asking about. I kind of hated making him uncomfortable, but I needed to know.
“I’d hoped maybe you hadn’t heard that.”
“Are you?”
He exhaled but didn’t say anything.
“Abe? Are you? Are you in love with me?”
The silence stretched between us so long, I thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he did. “Yes.”
One word. That’s all it took to make my heart go into freefall. It made no sense; he was the guy who hated my clothes. He was the guy who never got close, never asked me to dance, never seemed to want to be with me. And now he was telling me he was in love with me.
“For how long?”
He shrugged and he looked up toward the stage. “I don’t know. I liked you from the first time I met you, but...” He seemed to stall out, shaking his head.
“But what?” I asked, knowing I was pushing him and probably had no right to, but why stop now?
“Getting to know you...” His eyes flicked to mine and then away.
“I never knew. How did I never know this?” I asked.
He looked back at me, the right corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile. “I’m an actor.”
I smiled back at him. “A damn good one. You so got robbed at the Golden Globes that year. But what I meant was, why didn’t you ever tell me?” I thought back to all the time we’d spent together. The dare, the rehearsal, the talent show. He’d never let on. Maybe if I’d known...
He looked down at his hands fidgeting in his lap. It was mean to think it, but his nervousness made him so cute, I almost couldn’t stand it. “I always thought...”
“What?” I prodded.
He looked up at me. “You’re out of my league.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Right.” But I stopped laughing when I realized he wasn’t joking. “Wait. You’re serious.”
He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t have to; I could see it on his face.
“You’re telling me a rich, amazing-looking actor who has a book coming out and who is known as the nicest guy on campus thinks I am out of his league.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Me. A chubby girl who has done nothing with her life but be a disappointment to her parents?”
He looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. “What?”
My throat was getting tight at my admission and I wasn’t about to say it again. “Never mind, but trust me, I am so not out of your league. I don’t know how you ever got that idea.”
He stood up abruptly and for a second, I was scared I’d offended him, but then he held his hand out to me. “What?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
“Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Wary, but it was Abe, so of course I trusted him, I slid my hand into his and stood up. He led me up onto the stage and through to the wings where there was a big mirror just outside the wardrobe room. He flicked a switch on the wall, lighting up the area before he stood behind me and took me by the shoulders so we were looking straight at the mirror.
“What?” I asked, feeling really uncomfortable under his scrutiny.
His hands didn’t leave my shoulders, the weight of them grounding me. “Why don’t you see what I see?” he asked over my shoulder. I looked at his eyes in the mirror and suddenly he seemed so different the way he was looking at me. Is this what love looks like? I realized that all this time, he’d been hiding his feelings from me but wasn’t now. And the weight of this knowledge was sort of making me dizzy; I wondered if this was how Kaylee had felt when she’d discovered Declan was into her.
“What do you see?” I squeaked out.
He smiled broadly as his big hands slid from my shoulders down to my upper arms and then back. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”
“How is that possible?” I asked, my voice wavering. “You worked in Hollywood.”
“Don’t you get it, Chelly?” he said, turning me around to face him. “I think you’re physically beautiful, with your smiling eyes and that mouth...” his eyes drifted down to my mouth and I swear, I thought he was going to kiss me and God help me, but I wouldn’t have stopped him. But then his eyes returned to mine. “But you’re so much more than what you look like. The way you’re fearless and funny.”
I hardly felt fearless these days.
“And how you play dumb all the time but you’re so, so smart.”
I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “How do you know I play dumb? Maybe I am dumb.”
“An actor can recognize the same in other people.”
I lifted an eyebrow. But it made sense, especially when I thought about all the times he seemed to look right through me into my soul. Even then on some level I realized this guy knew me. That’s what made him so terrifying. But now...maybe Emmie had been right.
“Can I tell you a secret?” he said.
“Oh God, Another one?” I rolled my eyes, but smiled so he’d know I was joking.
“I always kind of loved knowing that you were doing it. I mean, I don’t like that you play dumb for whatever reason, but I loved that I always knew when you were doing it.”
“Always?” I said.
“Always
.”
“But wait,” I said, looking away from his really intense stare. “You and Brooklyn dated.”
He nodded.
“But what you said...” I couldn’t say the L word again. It felt too real all of a sudden. “How could you go out with her if you felt that way about me?”
“I did like her,” he said with a shrug. “But it wasn’t the same. And I didn’t think I had a shot with you, so...” he trailed off, not bothering to finish.
My heart pounded in my chest at all this honesty and knowing how he felt about me now. It felt so new and strange, this complete one-eighty of what I’d thought he felt. I almost felt naked in front of him, even though he was the one who’d done all the revealing. Maybe it was because of how he was looking at me, like he didn’t have to hide anything anymore.
I didn’t know what to say to him, but it suddenly felt really awkward. At the same time, it felt good. How is that even possible? How can feeling off-kilter feel...right?
“Do I?” he said all of a sudden, his voice soft as he looked down at me with those intense green eyes.
“Do you what?” I asked.
“Have a shot with you.”
I looked up at him. When did he go from being the funny, nice, friend-zone guy to the sexy, dreamy, intense guy who had crushed some douche’s phone to protect me and was now standing here, wanting to date me?
How had my friends all known he was totally dateable and I hadn’t had a clue?
I shrugged, trying to play it cool. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
He cocked his head. “What’s that?”
“We’re going to have to run an experiment.”
He blinked at me, his brow furrowed. “What kind of experiment?”
“One where you kiss me.”
He smiled and then pursed his lips like he was trying not to give away that he wanted to kiss me. Too late, I thought. You totally want to kiss me.
“And then what?”
“We analyze the results.”
His left eyebrow lifted.
“The scientific method,” I said as though he would know about my crazy plan to get a boyfriend using science. And that it wasn’t stupid.
“Of course,” he said. “What a logical way to go about this whole thing. See? I always knew you were smart.”
Acting Out Page 16