Heartstopper (19 page)

“Are you okay?” Delilah asked beside her, sounding just like Megan’s mother.

“I’m fine,” Megan hissed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You looked flushed is all.”

Had she always talked so loud? “I’m fine,” Megan repeated, as Greg whisked by her, stopping at the front row beside Tanya.

“This seat taken?”

“Be my guest.” Tanya smiled as Greg sank into Ginger’s now empty seat.

Megan feigned indifference as Greg extended his muscular, long legs in front of him. She was thinking that if it hadn’t been for Delilah, and by extension, her mother—because if it hadn’t been for her mother’s stupid Golden
Rule, Megan would never have invited Delilah to share her copy of the script, and the seat beside her would have been empty—then Greg might have chosen to sit next to her.

She felt Delilah’s mouth drawing closer to her ear, felt her warm breath brush up against her skin, like a cat against a bare leg. “He’s such a jerk,” Delilah whispered. “I hate him. Don’t you?”

“No. Why would I hate him?” Megan asked, a touch too loud, and Greg turned his head toward her, as if aware they were talking about him. Megan felt her cheeks redden and a line of sweat break out along her forehead.

“Are you okay?” Delilah asked again.

Megan closed her eyes. If she asks me that one more time, I’ll kill her, she thought, focusing all her attention on the stage, listening as Ginger and Brian mechanically read their lines, then read them again after some direction from Mr. Lipsman.

“Thank you,” Mr. Lipsman said, when they were through, telling them they could take their seats, but to please stick around. “Tanya and …” His eyes scanned the room.

Not Greg, Megan prayed silently, although he was the logical choice. Please not Greg.

“… Peter,” Mr. Lipsman concluded. “Let’s hear the two of you, shall we? Oh, and Greg,” he continued unexpectedly as Megan held her breath, “I’ll be calling on you and Megan in about ten minutes, and I see you don’t have a copy of the script, so why don’t you go over it together at the back of the auditorium until I call you?”

Greg was instantly on his feet. “Coming?” he asked Megan as he walked past, continuing to the back of the auditorium without looking back.

Megan climbed awkwardly over Delilah’s legs. “Poor you,” she heard Delilah say as she raced up the aisle after him, then, “Mr. Lipsman, I don’t have a script now.”

Megan slowed her steps as she neared Greg’s side. His back was to her. She felt unsteady, light-headed, as if she might tumble over with the slightest shift in air currents. You’re being silly, she told herself, grabbing the back of the nearest seat to steady herself. He’s not even that cute. Look at him, for God’s sake. He’s like this big, dumb hulk. He probably doesn’t have a brain in his head. Except it wasn’t his brain she was looking at, she realized, her eyes glued to the curve of his buttocks underneath his tight jeans.

“This all right?” He pointed toward the last row, then slid into a seat before she had time to reply.

“Fine,” she said anyway, lowering herself into the seat next to him, and opening the script to the appropriate page. So far, neither had actually looked at the other.

“Could you bring the script a little closer?” he asked.

Megan transferred the pages to her other hand. “I think this is the section he wants us to read.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s what the others are reading.”

Greg leaned forward, studied the text. Seconds later, she felt his attention shift, and she knew he was looking at her. Staring at her, actually. Damn, she thought. I should have sat on his other side. My left profile is so much better than my right. Damn, damn, damn.

“So, you’re Kate, are you?” he said seductively.

“Apparently.” Megan was relieved her voice sounded as steady as it did.

“Yes, well,
apparently,”
he repeated, sounding just like David Caruso in
CSI: Miami.
“I’ve been sent to tame you.”

Megan felt her cheeks blush bright red. But instead of dropping her gaze to her lap and fiddling with the script, she cocked her head coquettishly to one side and looked him straight in his dark brown eyes. “Really?” she heard herself say. “You think you’re up for it?”

A slight pause. Brown eyes sparkled. Then: “Oh, I’m always up for it.”

What on earth was she supposed to say now? Megan wondered. She was reciting lines from a script she’d yet to read. Did she tell him she was new at this sort of thing? That she’d never been good at improvisation? That she was still a virgin, for God’s sake? That there’d been this one guy back in Rochester she thought was cute, but her family had moved away before their encounters in the backseat of his car could progress very far? That she found Greg almost unbearably attractive, and that her mother would have a fit at the very idea of the two of them together, which, of course, only made him that much more appealing in her eyes? What was wrong with her?

“You busy this Saturday night?” he was asking.

“What?” Had she heard him correctly?

“A bunch of us were thinking of getting together. Holding kind of a vigil for Liana.”

“A vigil?”

“Kind of.”

Was he asking her out? Was
kind of a vigil
the same thing as a date? “I’m not busy.”

“Good.” He reached over and closed the script she was holding, then he took her hand, began absently sucking the tips of her fingers.

Megan felt a charge, like an electrical current, travel from her palm to her shoulder and quickly pulled her hand away. “Don’t you want to study our lines?”

“Nah,” he said, leaning his head back against the seat and closing his eyes. “It’s in the bag.”

I
t’s in the back,” Rita was saying. “Behind the bar, turn right at the Budweiser sign.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to just get out of here?” Sandy checked her watch as she inched her way out of the narrow booth. “They’re obviously not coming.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’re ten minutes late. They’re not coming.”

“They’re only five minutes late. They’ll be here. You saw the traffic on I-95. It’s Saturday night, for Pete’s sake.”

“There’s always traffic on I-95. They should have been prepared.
We
were.”

“So they’re not Boy Scouts. Now go powder your nose, will you? They’ll be here before you get back.”

“And if they’re not?”

“We’ll order drinks, stick around another fifteen minutes, then head back to Torrance,” Rita offered.

Sandy nodded. “Order me a green-apple martini.” She headed for the washroom at the back of the popular, oceanside singles’ haunt, wondering why all these places looked so much alike. And it didn’t matter whether you were in Rochester, Torrance, or Fort Lauderdale, in the middle of a busy downtown street or surrounded by a white, sandy beach. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a bar was a bar was a bar. There was loud music, there were dim
lights, there were neon signs, there was booze, and there were a bunch of lonely men and women pretending to be otherwise. Restless men cheating on their boring wives, bored wives looking for a little outside attention, divorcées hunting for their future exes, teenagers pretending to be of legal drinking age, forty-year-olds acting like teenagers. The men looking to get laid, the women looking to be loved. What was that saying? Men dangle the possibility of love to get sex; women dangle the possibility of sex to get love? Something like that. Sandy was too tired to remember it exactly. What difference did it make anyway? The simple truth was that some people would go home tonight happy, and some would not. And then there were some who shouldn’t have gone out at all.

People such as herself.

What was she doing here?

Hadn’t she initially refused to accompany Rita to Fort Lauderdale? Hadn’t she insisted she had no interest in meeting some guy, no matter how nice Rita’s date had assured her he was, because, after all, Rita’s date was just some guy she’d contacted through an Internet dating service and was only meeting in person for the first time tonight? If he turned out to be a creep, chances were good his friend would be a creep as well, and Sandy needed another creep in her life like she needed a hole in the head. Hadn’t she told Rita she didn’t think it was a good idea to drive all the way to Lauderdale—all right, it wasn’t
that
far—when a murderer was on the loose, and that they should be home watching out for their children?

Except that their children didn’t want them watching out for them. Their children were the ones pushing them out the door. Too much hovering only made them more nervous than they already were, or so they claimed. And they were busy tonight anyway, going to this vigil one of the kids had organized for Liana, to which parents were
definitely not invited. Thank God, Sandy thought. The memorial service on Wednesday had been more than enough anguish for one week, and Sandy had had to deal with the continuing emotional fallout of Liana’s gruesome death both at home and in class. All that acting out: the anger, the tears, the frustration. Helplessness masquerading as restlessness. Restlessness growing into willfulness. Willfulness translating into noise. So much noise.

Selfish as Sandy knew it was, she’d had enough of teenage angst. She had enough of her own. She couldn’t answer their questions. She didn’t know why these things happened or if—when?—they might happen again. She didn’t know anything. Except that she needed a break, a time-out from grief and fear, even if it meant driving to the Atlantic Ocean to get it. Besides, it wasn’t as if she and Rita were planning to stay out all night. They’d be back in Torrance well before midnight, which was when Sandy had told Megan and Tim they had to be home. So, there was nothing to worry about, nothing to feel guilty for.

Except Sandy
was
worried, and she felt guilty as hell. As late as five o’clock that afternoon, she’d called Rita and told her she wasn’t going to Fort Lauderdale. And then Ian had phoned and suggested getting together next week to talk, and she assumed (yet again—how stupid could she be?) that he’d finally come to his senses and realized what an idiot he’d been
(she
was the idiot!) and he wanted to discuss coming back. She was silently rehearsing her already well-rehearsed response—he’d hurt her badly, things could not simply return to the way they’d been, there were obviously major issues they’d have to deal with, a marriage counselor was probably a good idea—when he’d said something about hoping they could keep their divorce as amicable as possible (was there a
bigger
idiot in the entire universe?), and she’d hung up without saying a word. Then she’d called Rita back and told her she’d changed her mind about tonight, and
now here they were, in the latest, trendiest bar in Fort Lauderdale, where the smell of beer and whiskey competed with the smell of surf and sand. Not only were they the oldest women in the room, by at least a decade, they were also the most overdressed. Who wears a silk cocktail dress to a bar these days? Sandy wondered, noticing that every other female in the room was wearing tight-fitting, low-rise jeans that highlighted their taut, bare midriffs. Of course, every other female in the room was under thirty, had never given birth, and wore a size two, not to mention dangerously high, open-toed stilettos, and see-through tops that exposed a shocking amount of amplified cleavage. The only thing shocking about Sandy’s cleavage, she thought, securing the top button of her red-and-white print dress, was that she’d considered showing it at all.

“Look at you—you’re gorgeous!” Rita had exclaimed with perhaps a touch too much enthusiasm when she’d picked Sandy up at her door.

Sandy waved the compliment aside. She was presentable—maybe.

“You’re gorgeous,” Rita insisted, as Sandy had been hoping she would.

“I’m not gorgeous. I’m frumpy and flabby and flat-chested.”

“Wow. That’s a lot of F-words.”

“You want another one?” Sandy asked sweetly.

Rita patted her freshly coiffed brown bob and blinked several times, as if it were a strain keeping her eyes open under the weight of all her mascara. “Come on. Our Prince Charmings await. Let’s get this show on the road.”

So now their show was on the road, but their dates were no-shows. Why was she surprised? Sandy approached the bar of trendy Miss Molly’s Ocean Bar and Grill, pulling back her shoulders as she neared a group of men approximately her age. Maybe I don’t look so bad, she was thinking. Hardly
gorgeous, but definitely presentable—maybe. She smiled as she walked past the quartet at the bar. Not one of them so much as glanced in her direction. “Well, yes, now that you mention it, I
am
waiting for someone,” she muttered to herself, pushing open the door to the tiny burgundy powder room. “Prince Charming should be here any minute.” She stood in front of the large, gilt-edged mirror behind the white enamel sink, pleasantly surprised by what she saw. True, she was unlikely to be mistaken for a woman in her twenties, nor was she as
gorgeous
as Rita insisted, but she was indeed quite presentable. More than presentable actually. “You look pretty damn good,” she told her reflection, tugging at a few wayward curls and reaching into her purse for her lipstick.

The tipsy sound of giggles from the other side of the door announced the impending arrival of several other patrons, and before Sandy could move out of the way, three young women, each closing in on six feet, all with long, straight blond hair and low-cut tank tops, blue jeans, and high heels, were crowded around her at the mirror. For an instant Sandy thought they might be triplets. It was only upon closer (and furtive) inspection that she saw that two of the girls had brown eyes while the third’s were brilliantly blue, and that one girl bit her cuticles to the quick while the others boasted long, French-manicured nails. It was also apparent that two of the girls had implants. And one girl’s smile was shier than the others’, possibly because her teeth weren’t as blindingly white as her friends’. Sandy decided she liked her the best.

The blue-eyed woman entered the stall behind them as the brown-eyed girls—was this really what Van Morrison had in mind?—began playing with their hair. “What do you think?” one asked the other. “Up or down?”