Playing With Her Heart (16 page)

I was a crazed animal,
beseeched with need.

And it makes no sense
how I could have wanted him so badly, but be so terribly in love with
the man I’m meeting for coffee in an hour. The perfect man for me.
Patrick with his music, and his songs, and the duets we sing together
so well. Patrick who wants to be my friend first. Patrick who I’ve
loved for so long.

All Davis wants is to
fuck me.

I have to focus on
today, on the here and now. Not on the other night.

I turn back to the
mirror, appraising my appearance. I’m wearing jeans, red cowboy
boots and a scoop neck top. My hair is down and I tuck it behind my
ears, because it’s the only way I can wear it that doesn’t remind
me of Davis. Of how he can’t keep his hands out of my hair. How he
likes my hair up, how he likes my hair down, how he can’t stop
touching me. Here with my hair tucked primly, I don’t feel like the
woman who’s playing two men.

“Um, no. What are
you? A schoolgirl? Let it free!” Kat threads her fingers in my hair
and makes it wild again. “Never tuck your hair behind your ears on
a date.”

“It’s not even a
date. We’re just friends,” I say, as if that makes what I’m
doing okay.

She rolls her eyes.
“Yeah. Go have fun with your
friend
. I’m going to go call
my
friend
Bryan,” she says, sketching air quotes, “to see
if he wants to come over and be friends.”

“I mean it, Kat. How
much more platonic could it be? We’re going out on a Sunday
afternoon. It’s not that way with Patrick.”

She fixes me a serious
look. “Make it that way then, Jill. Make it the way you want it.
Now’s your time.”

I grab my coat, my
purse and my phone and catch the subway, those last few words still
echoing.
Now’s my time.
Because I’ve done my time, right?
I’ve beaten myself up over Aaron. I’ve read his letters thousands
of times. They’re branded in my brain. They’re tattooed on my
heart. They’re alive in my head, eating away at me.

I close my eyes as the
train rattles under the city, and Aaron’s written words ring in my
ears.

I fucking love you
so much.

Do you have any idea
what it feels like to love a person this much?

It’s killing me to
be without you.

I press my fingers
against my temple, as if I can squeeze out the reminders of him. The
memories I’m dying to bury for good. I still don’t understand it.
He was so good to me the whole time we were together. Captain of the
swim team, president of student council, the model upstanding guy. He
was unimpeachable, and he was crazy about me. If I’d loved him as
much as he loved me, would things have been different? Would I be
different? But it’s so hard to know anymore. All I know is that
love should be free from the kind of weight and hold that Aaron had
on me. Love should be perfect and pure.

The train pulls into
Seventy-Second Street and soon I’m walking to a coffee shop where
I’m greeted by the blazingly beautiful smile of Patrick, the very
reason I’m no longer in that dark, awful place I lived in after
things ended with Aaron. He’s the reason, he got me through and
he’s here now, wearing jeans and a navy blue pullover, his
honey-gold eyes twinkling when he sees me.

He wraps me in a hug
and his arms feel warm and safe around me, as I always imagined
they’d be. Yes, this is the opposite of all my lonely days and
nights. This is the beginning of the end of feeling like the worst
person in the world.

For the next hour, we
drink lattes and chat about our favorite shows, then our favorite
movies, then our favorite songs, and it’s all such standard
getting-to-know you stuff, and it’s fun. Really, it’s fun. When
we finish and leave the cafe, he tips his forehead to the end of the
block. “There’s a great indie bookstore on Seventy-Third. Want to
pop in?”

“Of course.”

Once inside, he stops
at the first table and taps a celebrity tell-all tale from the latest
reality star du jour. “God, I love these books,” he says and
grabs it, and opens it to a random page. He adopts a high-pitched
voice to match that of the starlet.
“But spending the summers in
Lake Como with my movie star boyfriend isn’t as glamorous as
everyone thinks it would be. My iPhone has spotty reception there, so
it’s hard for me to keep up with Twitter.”

He chuckles deeply. “I
have to get this.” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Don’t tell anyone though. It’s my addiction. A total vice. I
eat these books up like they’re candy. It’s junk reading, but I
don’t care. They make me happy.”

I bring a finger to my
lips. “I won’t breathe a word.”

“What about you? What
do you like to read?”

I bite my lip and look
away. Do I tell him the truth? That I read red-hot racy romance
novels? That I love stories with sexy alpha males who border on
bossy? That I crave tales of men who work hard and fuck hard and say
dirty sexy things to their women? There was a time when I went for
the sweeter stuff. But lately, I need the heat way up to get off.

Yeah, maybe I won’t
tell him all this. Especially considering all I needed the other
night was a man who doesn’t even want me. A man who won’t even
take me out to dinner, much less for a coffee. Not that I’d even
want to go out with him. Not when I have a chance with Patrick.

“Oh, you know, this
and that,” I say evasively.

“C’mon, now,” he
says in a teasing voice. “You can tell me.”

This is what I wanted,
right? To get to know him. To let him get to know me. I hesitate,
though, because I don’t know how it would feel to speak the truth.
To open up. Even about a little thing like what I read. But it’s
not really a little thing. It’s a big thing, because it has
everything
to do with who I am now. With
why
I am this
person. I read these books because it’s all I’ve allowed myself.
Because I’m terrified of getting close to another person again.
Because I’m petrified of a twisted kind of love.

Because make-believe is
more than a job. It’s a way of life for me.

“Elmore Leonard.
Get
Shorty
is not only an awesome movie, but a fantastic book too,”
I say, because he’s my brother’s favorite author. I’m using his
lines too, telling Patrick exactly what Chris has said to me about
Elmore Leonard. A wave of self-loathing pounds me because I’m lying
to Patrick over something so minor. Would it be so hard for me to
tell him the truth about something as innocuous as what I read? But
even as I try to get the honest words past my lips I’m layering on
another little white lie. “And Carl Hiassen, too. He just tells the
craziest stories and they suck me into his world.”

More lines from
Chris. More lies to Patrick.

“Do you have his
newest?”

I shake my head.

“Let me get it for
you then. As a gift.”

“Okay,” I say in a
strangled voice. But he doesn’t notice, because he’s grabbing two
copies of the Hiassen from the shelves and happily heading to the
counter with books to buy. Soon, he’s presenting me the book, and a
part of me is over the moon because Patrick Carlson—the love of my
life—is giving me a gift, but another part of me feels so unworthy.
He’s such a good guy, and I’m so messed up.

“So your homework is
to read this, and next time we get together we can talk about it. I
bought myself a copy too. But it might have to wait a few days
because I’m going to have to tear through this memoir first.”

I clutch the book
against my chest. “Thank you. I can’t wait for our book club,
Patrick.”

At least that’s the
truth.

At least, I think it
is.

* * *

My heart pounds and my
legs burn, and my breath is visible in the frozen morning air. It’s
Monday, still early in the dawn, and the sun is barely peeking over
the wintry New York horizon.

I turn around and run
backwards for several paces.

“Almost there,” I
call out to my crew of mommy warriors as we run behind the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are a resilient group, decked out in
nylon running pants and fleece jackets. This group is my most
advanced set, and they’re the ones training for the upcoming 10K to
raise money for breast cancer research. It’s their third year doing
it, and if they improve their times they’ll land more matching
money from corporate sponsors. “Keep up your pace. Keep your elbows
at your side, and don’t forget to breathe.”

I flash them a smile
and I turn back around as we run towards the reservoir in Central
Park. The women are quiet in the home stretch and so am I, as I let
the running do what it does: wash away the little while lie I told
yesterday. I run it off, and leave it all behind me.

I tell myself I’m
starting over. That I’m a new kind of person starting a new kind of
life, one where I don’t feel so damn responsible for all that went
wrong. Maybe this new me likes Carl Hiassen.

I should give Carl a
chance, right?

When we reach the end
of the reservoir, I raise a fist in the air, encouraging all of my
ladies as they slow down and finish a hard morning run.

“You’re amazing.
You’re going to do great on Saturday.”

I hug them all, and
soon we go our separate ways. As I walk across Eighty-Sixth Street
towards the subway, I fast forward to tonight. To the next private
rehearsal. Should I wear my hair up or down? Should I wear that black
V-neck sweater that hugs my breasts just so? Or maybe the navy blue
one since it matches my eyes? Wait, I know what to wear.

My red sweater with the
little buttons up the front.

I bet he likes red.

Then I realize I’m
about to walk into traffic because I’ve been daydreaming about
tonight. I stop at the curb, and press the crosswalk button, and tell
myself to stop thinking about Davis.

Davis

I unlock the stage door
to let myself in. I’m the first to arrive, and I’ll be the last
to leave.

I use these moments
before the stage manager, choreographer, music director and cast
arrive to walk through the theater, a more intimate setting than many
others on Broadway. It’s not as small as some playhouses, but it’s
not a cold, heartless theater like some of the newer ones. It’s the
perfect size for a show like this since
Crash the Moon
isn’t
about the extravaganza and spectacle; it’s about the relationships
between the characters, about lives changing, hearts breaking, and
passion. This theater is the
only
one that can handle the
intensity and the sexiness of this production.

I head down the center
aisle, trailing my hand over the creaky upholstered chairs that
theatergoers will pay top dollar to park themselves in soon. Tickets
went on sale last week, and Don emailed to tell me the show is
already sold out for the first two weeks and counting. That’s 1,600
seats filled every night with people expecting to be blown away by
this show. I tap the stage for good luck then turn to the empty
house, picturing it full of faces, chatting, eager for the show,
brushing up on actors’ credits in the Playbill then tucking away
phone, closing purses and focusing as the overture to the newest
Frederick Stillman show begins.

Four more weeks to get
it ready.

My thoughts are
interrupted when Shannon marches across the floorboards, clipboard in
hand. “Alexis called. She has a cold and can’t make it in today.”

“Color me surprised,”
I say dryly.

My stage manager rolls
her eyes. “Shocking. I know.”

“Does that make it
two missed rehearsals already, Shannon?” I ask, though I already
know the answer.

“Indeed it does.”

“Remind me not to
tell Don that I told him so when this keeps up during the show.”

She laughs once. “Of
course. Should I let Ms. McCormick know she’ll be playing Ava
today?”

“Yes. You can give
her the new pages when she arrives. Same for Patrick. Give them an
hour to read them over first and we’ll have them on at ten.”

She nods. “Absolutely.”

Minutes later, the
actors trickle in and I work on a scene with two of the supporting
cast members first. Then the stage manager calls Patrick and Jill to
the stage.

I’m instantly hard
when I see what she’s wearing. Tight jeans and a red sweater. She
looks edible in red. Then I notice it has tiny little pearl-shaped
buttons on it. I can hear the sound of them clattering across the
floor if I were to rip it off her.

It’s going to be a
long fucking day, watching her rehearse this scene with Patrick.

* * *

Shannon has one hand
pressed against the stage door later that evening. “Alexis called.
She’ll be back tomorrow. She said she—her words—
simply
cannot wait
to rehearse the new scene.”

“I’m so glad she’ll
grace us with her presence.”

“If we’re lucky,
she might even try to reconfigure the blocking,” Shannon says in a
deadpan voice as she zips up her coat. The weather forecast earlier
today called for snow after midnight. Shannon taps the doorframe, as
if an idea just took shape. “Maybe you could nail down some of the
blocking tonight when you work with Jill. So there’s no wiggle
room.”

I tamp down the
mischievous grin that’s forming. I’d certainly thought of that
myself, but hearing the suggestion from my stage manager makes my
task tonight feel all the more necessary.

“Good idea, Shan. Now
go get home so you can curl up by the fire and watch the snow fall.”

She raises an eyebrow.
“Maybe we’ll even have a snow day tomorrow,” she muses. “Oh
wait. Davis Milo never allows snow days.” She swats me playfully on
the arm.

“You don’t allow
them either.”

“You got me there.
But I learned my merciless ways from you,” she says, then tosses
her scarf around her neck with a final flourish. “I’m off into
the tundra.”