Playing With Her Heart (9 page)

With every word crisply
enunciated, because Ava is through with all their ups and downs, she
commands, “Then be in it.”

“I will if you’ll
stop pushing me out.” I step closer to her.

“I never did that and
you know it,” she says, fixing me a tough stare, but she doesn’t
back away.

I pause. Breathe. Let
go of the anger. “Ava, I can’t stand this fighting anymore.”

She raises her eyebrows
playfully. “Let’s do something other than fight then.” Then,
her eyes soften. She reaches for my face with tentative fingers. “You
have something on your…”

I frown, puzzled by the
words that don’t fit. “That’s not the next line. The next line
is
I have something in mind
—”

She cuts me off. “No,
I was going to say you have a sesame seed right here.” She taps her
chin lightly to demonstrate.

“Oh.” I swipe once
to wipe it off.

“You missed,” she
says softly, and now we’re done with lines. It’s just us.
“Davis,” she adds, and it’s halfway to an invitation because
she’s talking to me now, not Paolo, and she’s
still
got
that seductive tone in her voice. I want to hear her say Davis in
other ways. I want her to say my name because she can’t not.
Because she’s reaching for me, and pulling me deeper, and because
I’m doing things to her that drive her so wild she says my name in
a breathless, fevered way.

I want her to say my
name to ask for it, to plead for it, to beg for it.

She sweeps her thumb
across my chin gently. I hitch in a breath as she touches me. “I
got it,” she whispers, flicking the errant sesame seed quickly to
the floor. I don’t know if she’s Jill or Ava anymore, but I don’t
care because now she’s running her thumb across my jawline, and the
barest touch from her makes me hard.

“Did you find any
more?” I ask, in a low, hoarse voice.

She shakes her head,
her hair moving with the slightest swoosh, enough that I catch a
faint scent of her pineapple shampoo that already is
her
scent
to me. The one that will always make me think of her. Now she’s
running her index finger across my lower lip, and that’s it. That’s
all I can take.

“Jill,” I warn.

“What?”

“If you keep doing
that…” I let my voice trail off.

She keeps doing it,
tracing my lips with her finger, obliterating all my willpower. I
place my coffee and bagel on the stairs then grab her wrists, walk
her two steps backward. She’s up against the concrete wall. Her
lips are parted and her eyes are full of lust. I hold tight to her
wrists as I capture her mouth with mine.

She lets out the
tiniest little whimper at the first touch of my lips. I want to kiss
her hard and hungry, because she makes me feel that way. But I want
her to know I’m in control, that I’m leading now, not her.
Without breaking my hold on her wrists, I trace her lips with the tip
of my tongue, slowly, torturously. She tries to deepen the kiss,
grappling at me with her sinfully delicious mouth but I take my time,
tormenting her with my tongue, leaving her no room to think of
anything else but how she’d feel if I were doing this to her in
other places.

I move to her jawline,
kissing her there, then teasing my way to her earlobe, flicking my
tongue against her skin. “Is that what you wanted me to do?” I
whisper.

“Yes,” she pants.

“Is that why you
touched me?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been thinking about me since that day in my office?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

She inhales sharply,
then whispers in a ragged voice. “Yes.”

I let go of her wrists,
and they fall to her sides. I untie the belt of her jacket looped at
her waist, then undo each button on her coat, letting the fabric fall
open. “I hate winter,” I say. “Too many layers.” Then I pull
back to look at her. She’s wearing a V-neck sweater that makes her
breasts look fantastic. Her nipples harden under my gaze. I finger
the bottom of her sweater, careful not to take this too far, but
dying to know what her skin feels like. I lift the fabric, and run my
fingers across the soft skin of her stomach.

She shivers,
practically vibrating with sexuality. It’s as if her body is on a
low hum, waiting for the right person to turn her all the way up, all
the way on. So I give her what she wants, slanting my mouth against
hers and kissing her hard and rough, so she’ll still be able feel
me later when she’s all alone. She responds instantly, grabbing my
hair, pulling me closer, tangling her tongue with mine. It’s a
hungry kiss, as I explore her mouth, tasting her lipstick until I
nearly lose my mind with the need to know more of her body.

Every inch of her.

Her hands drop to my
waist and she tugs harder, as if she’s trying to erase any distance
between us. I follow her cues, giving her what she wants, rolling my
hips against her. Her hands are on my ass in a second, grappling and
yanking me against her. She pushes back, thrusting her body against
mine, and it takes all my self-control not to hike up her skirt, to
touch her under those tights, to learn exactly how much more she
wants.

Instead we kiss like
that, frenzied and fast, bodies smashed together, but never quite
going too far. At some point we pull apart for air. She’s breathing
heavily but she’s smiling too, and everything about her is starting
to lower my defenses, from the sweet curve of her lips, to the glow
in her blue eyes, to her talent and the way she was meant to play
this role. It’s eating me alive not to ask her to have dinner with
me. To start something with her. To take her out, and romance her,
the way I want to. I let that sweetness she has work its way through
me, and I tell her something I shouldn’t be saying.

“I wanted to cast you
as Ava. I wanted you over Alexis.”

Her eyes widen. “You
did?”

“Yes,” I say and
more words pour out because I want her to know what I see in her. I
want her to know that she’s my discovery. I found her, I called her
in, I chose her. “You were my first choice, Jill. The producers
insisted on Alexis because of her credits,” I add, taking a chance
that she won’t think me weak for not having the final say. But I
risk it. “But I wanted you and only you as Ava.” I leave a quick
kiss on her neck that makes her shudder before I speak again. “You
can play her, and you will play her. Hell, you
are
her. I can
feel her pain in you. Her secrets. Her sadness. How wounded she is.
Most of all, I can feel her hope.”

She bites her lip and
breathes out on the last word. I think her cheeks might be turning
red. Slowly, as if she’s enchanted, she brings her hand to her
heart. “Really?”

I nod. “You’re
going to be such a big fucking star, Jill. I want the world to know I
discovered you.”

“Thank you,” she
says. “I’m so happy to have this chance so early in my career to
work with you.”

Her eyes are filled
with such genuine happiness, and it’s a look I immediately
recognize, one that sends me back in time right along with her words.
So early in my career.
I can picture Madeline, how thrilled
she was when I called her in for an audition after seeing her in a
tiny little workshop production, how over the moon she was to be cast
in one of her first shows, how hopelessly we fell in love as we
worked together on
World Enough and Time
three years ago in
San Diego.

It breaks me, the way
Jill looks at me now the way Madeline did then. I know the ending. I
can’t go there again, because she is all my weaknesses.

I shake my head. “Fuck.
Rehearsal is about to start. I can’t be late. And we can’t keep
doing this.”

“Right,” she says
in a shaky voice.

“We just can’t,”
I repeat, because I’m the one who needs convincing.

“I know,” she says,
with resignation now. “This has to stop. The show is too
important.”

She thinks it’s
because of the show. But it’s more than that. “Jill. I don’t
date actresses,” I say in a firm, harsh voice that’s more for me
than for her. It comes out more cruelly than I intended.

She rearranges her
features, erasing the happiness, erasing the aftereffects of what we
just did. “Well, that’s fine with me. Because I’m in love with
someone else anyway.”

She adjusts her coat,
pulling it closed and walks up the stairs.

“Then you really
shouldn’t kiss me like that,” I call out to her, and this time I
intend it to sound harsh.

She gives me one sharp
cold stare before she pushes open the door to the stairwell. “You’re
right. I shouldn’t.”

Jill

When rehearsal ends I
head for the ladies room to reapply my lip gloss. If I can catch
Patrick on the way out, I’m going to ask him out. I can’t keep
falling into my director’s arms when the man I’ve been waiting
for is here at last. I push this morning into the trunk of forgotten
memories, then lock it up and throw away the key.

There. Done. Gone.

As I smack my lips
together, one of my cast mates, Shelby, pops in. She’s a few years
older and a chorus girl too. She’s an amazing dancer and has a sort
of ballroom flare to her moves, all hips and sexy sway.

“Hey there,” she
says. “The whole cast is going out to Zane’s for drinks. Want to
join?”

The whole cast. Yes,
that’ll be my chance!
“Sure, that sounds great.”

“Cool. I need to grab
my bag, so meet me by the elevator.”

I leave the restroom
and head for the elevator. I spot Davis talking to Alexis inside the
doorway of one of the rehearsal studios. Her hand is on his arm, and
something flares inside me when I see them. I try to look away, but I
can’t. She’s like a villain in a Marvel comic book, all
over-the-top campy, and she has these hideous long red fingernails
that she’s digging into his arm, as if she owns him.

“Of course you’re
the best, Alexis,” I hear him say in a low voice. “You know
there’s no one I’d rather have as Ava. No one in the whole wide
world.”

She loosens her grip
and then pulls him in for a wide embrace.

What the hell? He told
me this morning I’m the one he wanted to cast. He seemed so
incredibly sincere. Was he lying to me? Or is he lying to her? Or is
he playing us both?

Ding, ding, ding!

I can hear the bell
going off in my head, because I’ve figured him out. He thinks we
are all fragile little flowers who need praise like we need the sun.
So he gives it to us, and that’s how he coaxes out such great
performances. Insidiously clever, and totally Machiavellian.

I have to hand it to
him. I was fooled. I wanted his words to be true. I want to believe I
was his first choice. A hot rush of anger floods my veins, and I’m
dying to march up to him and tell him not to toy with me ever
again—neither with kisses that I can feel for days, nor those words
that undercut. But I won’t give him the satisfaction on either
front, so I don’t look at them as I walk by, stepping into the
elevator with Shelby.

“That dance number
was brutal,” Shelby says, stretching her neck from side to side, as
I force myself to eradicate Davis and his puppeteering ways from my
brain. I don’t have any extra mental real estate to devote to him.
“I thought I was going to die.”

“Yeah, totally,” I
say, even though it’s not true. The dance number was all cardio,
and I’m kind of like a wizard at cardio. But I also really like
fitting in. So I even tack on an addendum, “I think I might
collapse later because of that number.”

Shelby gives me a
pointed but playful look. “Drinks before collapsing.”

“But of course.”

At the bar I look
around for Patrick, but he’s not here yet. Alexis has joined the
crew, though she’s off in the back of the bar with her publicist,
so I hang out with the other chorus members at some tables we’ve
pulled together. I down a beer and we talk about the show, and other
shows we’ve done. When Kelly Clarkson’s “Catch my Breath”
starts on the bar’s sound system, a group of us grab our imaginary microphones and start to sing along, loud and boisterous and
totally on pitch. When the number ends, the other bar goers clap and
cheer, and some even hoot and holler.

I head to the bar to
order another beer. As I wait, I take out my phone and text my
brother Chris in California. We talk—okay, we text—every day, and
I like to keep him up to date on my life. Maybe it’s my way of
making up for the things I never told him about Aaron. We were close
growing up, and he always looked out for me, but somehow I was never
able to get the words out, to sit him down, to tell him what I’d
done and all that had gone wrong. The least I can do is give him
details of my life now that I’m living on my own in New York City.
It’s like I’m making up for my silence years ago.

Rehearsal is great.
But director is strange.

I send off the note,
wondering briefly why I brought up Davis since I’ve got him figured
out. Right? There can’t be any more to him than a master craftsman
who knows how to use each tool perfectly. We are the tools. And boy,
did he know how to manipulate me by telling me I was the one he
really wanted for Ava, and then saying the same thing to Alexis.

Chris writes back
quickly.
Define strange.

But I don’t know how
to define strange and I don’t even know why I wrote to Chris about
Davis. I make something up.
You know, like Broadway director
strange.

He replies:
I
know this may shock you, but I know nothing of Broadway directors.
BTW, I’m probably coming to NYC next month for a work trip. Can you
make some time for your big bro?

I nearly squeal. I
haven’t seen Chris in a year.

Yes!!!!

I put my phone away and
Shelby joins me at the bar, pushing a hand through her dark, wavy
hair. “On a scale of one to ten, how hot is Patrick Carlson?”