Bittersweet (11 page)

Maxine folds her arms. “You do
get
the significance of a first impression, right?” she asks. “Johnny Lincoln needs to fully appreciate the real me.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it,” I say, grinning wryly. She tuts, and we clamber into the van. It takes me a while to get used to the stick shift, and Max grips the dashboard exaggeratedly as we lurch forward.

“So this is going to be kind of fun, right?” she begins brightly, eyeing me warily once we’re on our way. “I mean, a new gig for JJ’s, you’re all pioneering and whatnot, and… Well, you look fantastic if I do say so myself. What say you check out some of the other talent at this rehearsal shindig, see if you can really rub ol’ whatshisface’s, well, face, in it?”

“I’m just there to do a job, Maxi. In and out.” I clumsily change gears and she goes back to staring wide-eyed at the road ahead of us.

“OK. Yeah. In and out. Cool,” she repeats. “Anyway, all of that douchebaggery aside, I’m super excited about seeing this whole juggernaut coming to life. All the actors, the scripts, the prep. Man! And Dogwood High, center stage? So weird, right? I mean, look at this place,” she says as I signal and swerve a little sharply into the high school’s almost-empty parking lot. There are some Screen/West vans parked up, and a couple of blacked-out SUVs, which no doubt transported the actors’ precious behinds over here for the rehearsals.

“God, it is weird to be back here. I half expect to see Denny Smith and his meat-headed cronies leaning on his Camaro over there,” I say as we climb out of the van.

“Right? And Riley, Kim and Ashley doing that terrible double-dutch with the jump ropes because it was, like, their
thing
senior year?”

I laugh, remembering.

“The most random thing ever,” Max says, shaking her head.

Staring around at the empty lot, I get hit with a wave of nostalgia. I think about Jeff giving me a ride in his pickup to school on a Monday morning. Sometimes, if his dad was away on business and he had the house to himself, I’d lie to Joe and say I was staying at Maxi’s, but instead I’d go to Jeff’s house and we’d—

“You want to open up this door? I don’t want to break a nail,” Max says, interrupting my thoughts. Way to distract myself from thinking about one asshole guy by thinking about another major asshole.

“Yeah, you’re going to be a real big help with that attitude,” I say, but slide it open and we each pick up a tray of food to carry through to the auditorium where Blaine told me the rehearsals would be happening.

“It feels naughty being in here,” Maxine says with a giggle as we walk down the empty, echoing hallway. “Jesus, there’s my freaking locker!”

I glance at it and chuckle at the dent that’s still there in the door—it provided the perfect resting spot for Max to lean her head against during make-out sessions with whoever was flavor of the month, or sometimes week.

“Man,” I mutter. “I feel like exactly the same chick. Three years, and it’s like I never left.”

Max adjusts the tray in her hands as she clops along in her heels. “Hey, none of that. You’re a strong, intelligent, catering professional with the world at her feet,” she tells me, and I nod.

“Uh huh,” I say uncertainly, but then we reach the auditorium doors. I turn and nudge the swinging door open with my hip, and we’re greeted with the sound of people chattering and milling about. I notice a long table set up in the middle of the room with chairs all around it. Guess this is what Max informs me is called the “table-read.” I scan the room quickly, both hoping to and desperately hoping not to see Greg, but then Blaine Denton spots me instead.

“Cathy! Hi!” he calls.

I smile over at him—and then, just over Blaine’s shoulder, I see someone turn around at the sound of my name. Someone tall and gorgeous, pushing dark hair back off his forehead. Greg stares at me for a moment with an unreadable expression, then turns back around to talk to a guy with a headset.

“Um, where do you want us to set up?” I stammer quickly, and Blaine leads me and Max over to some tables at the far end of the auditorium.

“So this must have been your high school, huh?” Blaine says while tapping on his tablet. “Good to be back?”

“Mmmhmm,” I murmur distractedly. I glance back to where Greg is standing, but he’s not paying any attention now, laughing and chatting instead with his buddy. I turn to look at Max, but
she’s
busy scanning the auditorium for Johnny Lincoln.

“Jackpot,” she hisses, but I grab her arm before she wanders off.

“Uh, we’ll go finish unloading the stuff,” I tell Blaine, who gives me a thumbs-up now, as he seems to be talking on a hands-free device. Or he’s having a breakdown. Either is possible.

I drag Maxine quickly back to the parking lot.

“Did you
see
him?” she says.

“Yes, and he practically looked right through—” I begin.

“He looks even freaking better in real—” she says at the same time.

“Oh,” we both say together, and then laugh.

Maxine purses her lips. “So you mean
Greg
…?”

“Yeah. He just blanked me.” I heave the pot of Sloppy Joe Johnson’s mix out of the van. “But whatever. Not what we’re here for.”

“Yup.” I feel Maxine looking at me, but I nod at the supplies we need to take in, and decide I’m going to keep my head down until it’s all offloaded. If Greg’s going to pretend I don’t exist, I’ll just have to do the same with him.

Turns out hauling food out of the van and carrying it through the high school is a pretty good workout, and I have to stop and glug down some water before I can get started lighting the burners for the hot food. As I do, an older woman with vivid-red hair claps her hands and calls, “OK, sorry for the delay everyone. Chris is still working on those line rewrites so we’ll resume after lunch. Thirty minutes.”

People start milling closer to the catering tables, and I snap my fingers at Max, who’s giving Johnny Lincoln a come-hither look from across the room.

“Hey, matter at hand?” I whisper, and together we try and look professional as we finish setting up the buffet. One or two of the actresses I don’t recognize eye the spread with some skepticism, but the crew guys in shorts and baseball caps tuck in. I try to keep my eyes down as I serve things onto plates, but even so I get no sense of Greg. Guess he’s continuing to pretend I don’t exist.

“Is this vegan?” a dark-haired, willowy-framed girl asks Maxine, pointing at the potato salad.

“Um… Um…” Maxine stammers, and I look up properly, realizing it’s stupid Bethany Damn Keeler. Of course.

“It’s not, I’m afraid,” I interject curtly. “But we have some salads over here, or—”

“Oh, hold on, are those sloppy joes?” Bethany asks. Her voice is a lot less high-pitched than when I’ve seen her interviewed on TV being all giggly and cutesy. “I love that stuff. I’ll have some of the mix. No bun, of course.”

“Of course,” I murmur dumbly, then spoon some mix onto her plate. Max and I exchange a glance and I try not to smirk, remembering Hal’s joke last night.

“Just goes to show, you should never assume,” I whisper as she walks off, and Maxine chuckles, but then her face suddenly gets serious.

“Oh. Hold up. I’m going after her. Um … for recon purposes,” she says, then abruptly turns and walks off, leaving me to serve on my own as she makes a beeline for the drinks table Bethany has strolled toward. A tall, impossibly broad-shouldered Johnny Lincoln is standing by it, picking out a diet soda. Suddenly her ditching me makes sense.

In the back of my pathetic mind, I foster a sudden hope that Bethany’s seen the error of her crew-guy-dating ways and focused in on a big-time actor now instead. After all, didn’t Clarissa say that Bethany had insisted on staying in the same building as her co-star? Hope begins to rise embarrassingly in my chest, and I watch them closely. There’s no sign of Greg anywhere nearby. I could have totally jumped to conclusions the other day. Maybe they’re just friends. Or, less appealingly, maybe she was just using Greg for sex. Can’t say I would blame her…

I feel heat rising in my face just thinking about Greg like that, here, now. I shake my head and focus instead on watching Max sidle over to Mr. Lincoln. She manages to interrupt him and Bethany, beaming a blinding smile his way, and it’s looking good—but then the redhead director taps Johnny on the shoulder and pulls him into another conversation. Max is left staring at Bethany, and they both give each other a look of barely masked disdain before turning away. I can’t help chuckling, and Max is quickly embroiled in a conversation with a sandy-haired, muscle-bound actor type. I hope she’s remembering Todd in all this Hollywood madness…

I serve a few more people, but just as I’m finally starting to relax and consider the gig a success, I hear a deep voice behind me that, in spite of everything, makes goosebumps break out on my bare arms.

“Cathy.”

I turn slowly. Why does he have to be so goddamn beautiful? Greg stares down at me, with that familiar little crease between his brows. He shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” he says.

Hey? Again?

“I’m busy,” I say, clenching my jaw.

“I know. I just wanted to … uh, say hello.”

“Yeah, hi.”

I glance up at him. He steps aside as I reach over to pick up some of the abandoned plastic plates on the table. I think I hear him sigh. I try not to breathe him in, try not to let him get a sense of how quickly my heart is racing. I try to focus on being angry. He hovers as I busily scrape things into other things.

“The food’s great, by the way,” he says. Is he actually doing small talk? I stop clearing things and turn to face him head-on.

“Greg, let’s not… I don’t really want to chit-chat. I mean, you said you’d see me
at the restaurant or whatever
, and this is whatever, right? So we’ve seen each other, we’ve said hello, let’s just—”

“You seem angry.”

My jaw actually drops. “I seem
angry
?” I notice a couple of people look around at us, and lower my voice. “Gee, what makes you say that?” I shake my head, disbelieving.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and I make the mistake of looking up into his eyes. They’re wide and sincere and vivid blue. He takes a step closer to me and draws in a long breath, but then the frown is back on his face. “Look, anyway, I thought you considered what happened just a one-night thing.”

“What?” I frown myself. “What are you talking about?”

He glances around, then back into my eyes. “All the stuff about how you’d never had a one-night-stand before? I kind of assumed that meant you saw that—
us
—as … just…”

“Just sex?”

He stares at me, a strange sequence of expressions crossing his face. Finally he speaks again.

“I shouldn’t have come over here,” he begins, then glances down. He seems vulnerable again, and it’s doing weird things to my insides. “I just saw you and I couldn’t help…” He stops again and sighs, shaking his head.

“Five minutes, main cast, five minutes,” shouts the director lady.

Greg looks up at me. “This was a mistake. I think it’s better if we—”

“You think it’s better if we pretend none of that ever happened, right? It’s cool. No feelings, no meaning. Got it,” I say.

He reaches over and touches my arm, sending prickles of sensation over my bare skin. “You want to let me finish a sentence?” he says quietly.

“Are you
capable
of finishing one?”

His fingertips brush up my arm, our eyes still locked. When he speaks, his voice is low. “God, Cathy, if you really think I didn’t feel anyth—”

“Greg, can I talk to you for a sec?” We both turn and see Bethany, beckoning one long finger to him from a few feet away. She tosses her bouncy hair over one shoulder. Greg’s hand instantly drops to his side.

“Yeah, sure,” he calls over to her.

Great. That was one sentence I definitely
did
want him to finish. He turns and looks back down at me, his voice still lowered.

“This is a bad place for this conversation,” he says. “Anyway, I… Look, forget it. It’s pretty clear you think I’m an asshole, right?”

I shrug, and I see the ghost of a smile on his lips. His lips… I glance down at them, then back up into his eyes, and see memories playing in them. I bite my own lip and swallow as his eyes trail downward too.

“I have to go,” he murmurs.

“Yup, apparently so.” I try not to sigh too obviously.

But he doesn’t say anything more, just turns away and strides over to Bethany without a second glance back at me. He’s getting good at that.

“Who’s she?” I hear her ask him in a pathetic attempt at a whisper. She reaches over and clutches Greg’s forearm possessively. I look away, just as I hear him say—

“Nobody.”

The wind rushes out of my lungs and I take several deep breaths, then continue clearing up with shaking hands as Maxine comes back over to me.

“C, this is so freaking amaz—” She breaks off as she sees my ashen face. “What happened?” She looks over at Greg and Bethany murderously. “What did he say to you? I swear to God, I’m going to—”

“Max, leave it alone.” I force a smile. “Lesson learned. Cathy and one-night stands don’t mix.”

Maxine folds her arms. “Uh huh. Well then, let’s get this stuff loaded up and get the hell out of here,” she mutters, still shooting daggers at Greg.

“Back to table, please, leads! Lead actors, back to table!” the director shouts, clapping her hands together. I focus on gathering up trash and stacking trays, but I feel Max’s hand grip my arm suddenly.

“Ouch!”

“Cathy…”

“What?”

I look up at her and then follow her gaze to the actors sitting down around the long table in the center of the room. Bethany slides into a seat and then I watch as… As
Greg
settles in beside her, picks up a script, and takes a sip of water.

“OK, Greg, let’s take it from the top of scene three,” the director lady says, nodding in his direction.

Of course. Of
course
.

He’s in the fucking cast.

“I can’t believe I didn’t realize!” Maxine exclaims, not caring now about my driving skills or lack thereof. “I mean, there was all this talk on the blogs about some Broadway actor that they poached straight from a play, but I never saw a picture and I… Wow, I should have thought about it. I mean, jerk or no, Greg is way too freaking hot to be, like, a grip or whatever.”