In the Spotlight (16 page)

“Hmmm,” Josh drawled. “I think she mentioned something about having a dentist appointment.”

“A dentist appointment?” Kyle repeated. “Seriously?”

“What? Don’t you go to the dentist every six months?” Josh asked with mock seriousness.

“What? Of course I go to the dentist,” Kyle said, annoyed. I almost giggled. Josh was too good at this.

“Well, did you think about calling her cell phone?” Josh asked. “That might be the best way to find out where she is.”

Kyle was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “I hadn’t really thought of that.”

“Did you think Hannah and I were skipping together? Did you expect to find us in various states of undress when I answered the door?” Josh was teasing Kyle now, but there was something sharp in his voice. I knew it was anger and frustration for all sorts of things that Kyle had done over the past few months. And Josh didn’t know about my incident with me and Kyle. He’d smash Kyle’s face if he knew about that.

“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me,” Kyle replied nastily.

“Hannah is such a little slut.”

Silence reigned from the entryway. Finally, Josh said in a low, even voice, “I think you better get back to school. And if I ever hear you say anything like that about Hannah again, I’ll break your face.”

And with that, he slammed the door. I fidgeted on the couch, while Josh remained in the entryway. When he rounded the corner, he shook his head. “He’s such a pretentious jerk.”

“I know,” I said, standing up.

“Hey, do you want me to make you a milkshake or something?” Josh asked suddenly.

I laughed a little. “We just finished lunch.”

Josh shrugged. “It’s never a bad time for a milkshake.”

“True,” I agreed. “You can make me a milkshake.”

We headed back into the kitchen. Josh rummaged around in the freezer for some frozen yogurt that he insisted was the best thing ever. He also pulled out chocolate chips, chocolate syrup, and some milk.

“You’re a chocoholic,” I giggled.

“You’ve learned my dirty little secret,” Josh agreed. “Would you mind grabbing the chocolate syrup for me?”

I grabbed the bottle off the counter where Josh had set it, and was pulling off the top when I squeezed it accidentally.

Chocolate exploded everywhere; on the cabinets, on the floor, and on my shirt. I groaned. Josh took one look at me and burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny,” I insisted, grinning in spite of myself. “We have to go back to school in half an hour. I don’t have time to go home and change.”

“I’ll go grab one of Jess’s shirts. She won’t mind if you borrow one,” Josh said.

“No!” I panicked. “If I wear one of Jess’s shirts people will know I was here.”

Okay, maybe that was irrational, but Jess would know I was here, and that was enough, wasn’t it?

“Okay, I see your point,” Josh nodded, ignoring my irrationality. “How about one of my baseball practice shirts?”

When I hesitated, he added, “It’s clean, I promise.”

I laughed. “That sounds great,” I agreed.

Josh ran upstairs, and returned with a baseball t-‐-shirt in the school colors. Josh’s last name was emblazoned on the back along with his number. I wasn’t sure this was any better, but I couldn’t resist. It was clean and it smelled like Josh. Did I mention it smelled like Josh?

“I’ll just finish our milkshakes while you change,” Josh said, giving me a funny look all of a sudden, like maybe he realized what people would think when they saw me in his shirt. “There’s a bathroom down the hall. Second door on the right.”

“Thanks,” I said taking the shirt. I pulled the shirt over my head. It was way too big on me, but tucked in to my jeans I thought it looked pretty cute.

When I got back to the kitchen, Josh was sitting at the island with our milkshakes in front of him. He stared at me with that funny look again. I hopped up beside him and grinned. “What, no two straws?” I asked, making a very lame attempt to flirt. Things were getting so murky. And I knew that this crush was a full blown case of unrequited love, even though I knew Josh liked me back, which made everything that much more confusing.

Josh grabbed my glass and my straw, and stuck the straw in his glass. He raised an eyebrow in a mock challenge.

“Great,” I grinned, leaning in to take a sip. Josh leaned in at the same time. We were closer than ever, even closer than we had been during play rehearsals since we never got to practice the kiss.

I never thought something as simple as drinking a milkshake could be so intimate.

“It’s really good,” I murmured.

“Yeah, really good,” Josh repeated.

I thought he was going to kiss me. We were so close. Inches away from each other. And he had this look, determined. But he didn’t. Instead, he sighed, and sat up. Glancing at the clock, he said,

“I guess we better get back to school.”

I looked up at the clock and had to agree with him. As we gathered up our backpacks, and Josh cleaned up our dishes, I watched him. He was such a mystery to me. I knew he liked me.

And yet…he seemed unwilling to make the first move. I wished I had the nerve to make the first move, but sadly, I was just as much of a coward as he was. Even though I thought I was right, what if I was wrong? The pressure was too much. I really wished that he’d just put me out of my misery.

Chapter Seventeen

I sat down heavily on one of the red auditorium seats in the first row, leaning my crutches against the chair beside me. Stupid curb that I stepped off of yesterday morning. Josh waved from his spot on stage, and I almost turned around to see who he was waving at. But instead of embarrassing myself, I gave him a small wave back. He looked like he was going to come over and talk to me, but Ms. Bard called the rehearsal to order.

Kaylee hopped off the stage with her assistant director’s binder and came to sit beside me. “You missed the victory dance,”

she whispered.

“What are you talking about?” I whispered back.

“Jenny,” Kaylee said. “When she heard you’d been injured and she got to rehearse with Josh today, she actually did a victory dance all around the stage. It was ridiculous.”

“Oh,” I said softly. Jenny. I hadn’t given her much thought before this whole ankle thing. Yes, I’d known she was my understudy, and yes, I had known she was in love with Josh. Most girls were it seemed like. Not that that bothered me. Still if she was that excited about my injury, it seemed like a good idea to keep her on my radar, as competition for my part if nothing else. But, my part as what? Kelly or as Josh’s girlfriend.

The idea jarred me as it always did lately, but my thoughts were quickly shoved aside as Ms. Bard arranged the scene. The scene was one that Josh and I hadn’t had the chance to rehearse fully yet. Kelly and Chad finally get the chance to dance at a school dance, and Chad confesses his attraction/love for Kelly. The song was a medley of two 1980s Eric Carmen hits,
Hungry Eyes
and
Make
Me Lose Control
. Even though I didn’t care much for Kyle or his style, I loved what he had done with these songs. He might have even been right about the 80s being an underappreciated time for music.

On stage, Jenny was preening, literally, as Ms. Bard explained what she wanted from the scene. Josh was listening thoughtfully, but his gaze kept sliding to me. I felt warm. Was I blushing? Suddenly Jenny suctioned herself onto Josh’s arm. She was gazing up at him with a sickening adoration that made me cringe.

Ms. Bard yelled, “Places, everyone! Places!”

People cleared the stage, the rehearsal pianist played the opening bars, and Josh began the scene. “May I have this dance?”

Josh’s voice was so perfect, so achingly sweet and uncertain. Even spewing out hideously trite and clichéd lines, I wanted to listen to him. “Absolutely,” Jenny breathed.

I watched Josh lead her to the center of the stage with a tightening knot in my stomach. As he began the first lines of the song, looking into her eyes, I realized I couldn’t handle this. I struggled to my feet, making quite a commotion with my crutches, but just not caring. I hobbled to the choir room before I let several tears of self-‐-pity slide down my cheeks. Seriously, what was wrong with me? It wasn’t like Jenny was really going to get my part. My ankle would be fine in a few days. The doctor had assured me of that. But was that what was bothering me?

After several long minutes of wallowing, I shook myself out of my funk long enough to realize that if I wasn’t going to watch rehearsal I should at least use my time productively. With my ankle out of commission, I wasn’t allowed to drive.

Pulling my history book out of my backpack, I decided to poke at our unit on the Cold War. We had fifty pages of reading, plus two packets with essays due by the end of the week. Normally history flew by for me, but this unit was so boring it threatened to put me to sleep just thinking about it. I read through several paragraphs before the choir room door creaked open.

“There you are.” I glanced up at the sound of Josh’s voice. I felt warm again. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Why’d you leave rehearsal?”

I closed my book and shrugged. “My ankle was bothering me, I guess.”

Josh raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything, just sat down next to me. He scooted away from me a bit, and I must have given him a strange look because he grinned.

“Give me your foot.”

I hesitated. What a weird request. What if my foot smelled?

Or what if my foot was sweaty?

“Come on.”

Still hesitant, I let Josh lift my foot onto his lap. I shivered as he tugged off my shoe and peeled off my sock.

Gently he began to massage my ankle. There was a sharp burst of pain followed by warm relief that spread quickly. I sighed happily. “How’d you know to do this?”

Josh smiled softly. “I’ve spent my fair share of time injured.

Physical therapists can work miracles when they have to.”

He continued to rub the pain out of my ankle as we fell into a comfortable silence that quickly turned tense, bordering on awkward. I cleared my throat nervously. “So, um, how did rehearsal go?”

“Oh, fine,” Josh said, suddenly concentrating very hard on my toes. “Jenny’s a very good dancer. Technically speaking, anyway.”

“Oh, that’s good,” I said, trying desperately to shove my massive jealousy aside. Why was I jealous? He wasn’t my boyfriend. And, okay, yes, we had been spending a ton of time together, and I had a massive crush on him. And even though I was pretty sure he liked me back, he hadn’t asked me out, which made me feel vaguely stressed.

Josh smiled this smile that said he had something he wanted to say, but wasn’t going to. It was almost like he was laughing at me, but in a nice way, not a mocking one. “Hmmm, yeah, it was good, I suppose,” he finally said. “It didn’t feel right, though.

Dancing with Jenny.”

My breath caught and my heart sped up. Instinctively I knew he was going to confess something. “Oh?”

“Jenny and I just don’t have the chemistry we have,” Josh said.

Blood rushed to my ears. I’m sure I was blushing furiously.

My whole body felt warm. “No.” I said. I had meant it as a question, but it came out as a firm statement that made Josh smile bigger.

“How does your ankle feel now?” He asked.

I flexed my foot and swiveled my ankle several times.

“Pretty good,” I acknowledged. “You’re amazing.”

Now it was Josh’s turn to blush. I kid you not, his cheeks darkened involuntarily. “So,” he said, “do you think you could dance on it?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, doubtfully. “Wouldn’t that make it worse?”

“Probably not,” Josh assured me. “I’ve played on a lot worse injuries and they’ve always been okay. I just…I just want to run through the
Hungry Eyes
scene with you. We haven’t had the chance to rehearse it yet all the way through. I just want to see how it feels with you.”

I’d never had anyone say something so nice to me before.

With Josh’s help, I got my sock and shoe back on, and stood. My ankle did feel a lot better, and even though I wasn’t super sure I should dance on it, there was no way I was going to pass on the opportunity to dance with Josh and be serenaded.

We got into position. “Just follow my lead,” Josh said. “We get to really dance however we want.”

I nodded, simply staring up into Josh’s eyes. He began the song, and instantly I was lost in his voice. My ankle was a distant memory, and all I could think of was that Josh sounded awfully sincere as he sang the words. Was this his confession of how he felt? Were these all the things he hadn’t been able to say to me?

“Isn’t this cozy?”

The spell was broken by someone’s voice at the door. Josh and I stopped mid spin, startled. I would have fallen down if Josh’s arms hadn’t steadied me. He kept his hand on the small of my back as we faced Kyle. His features a riot of emotions, anger and spite swirling with other things I couldn’t quite name. I was thankful for Josh’s support as I faced those intense emotions. I hated the way Kyle made me feel bad when I was doing absolutely nothing wrong.

“We were practicing a scene,” I said, lamely, hating the fact that I felt the need to apologize and explain.

Kyle smiled a sarcastic smile. “And, here I was under the impression that your ankle was preventing you from rehearsing today,” he sniped.

“It was, but Josh…” I began to say.

“What is your problem, man?” Josh interrupted me, glaring at Kyle. “Her ankle is feeling better. We probably shouldn’t have been dancing, but it’s not like we were committing a crime.”

Kyle glared back in a silent face off. Finally, he grumbled,

“Whatever.” He walked a few feet forward, and reached out to grab my arm. “Come on, Hannah, we have to go rehearse, too.” He hung on a little too firmly, and when he yanked on me, I stumbled, twisting my ankle again. As pain shot up my leg, I gasped. Josh lunged forward to keep me from falling. If I hadn’t been between them, I was sure Josh would’ve gotten in a good swing at Kyle.

Tears pricked my eyes. “I don’t really feel like rehearsing today, Kyle. I’m really tired. And I’ve got a ton of homework. Josh, do you think you could take me home?”