Three Girls And A Leading Man (11 page)

“That’s a good point,” I mused,
taking an onion ring from his plate. “I do have awesome friends. But my job
sucks. It would be one thing to make crap money and have a job I love, you
know? But to hate my job and be poor? That’s just depressing.”

“Then change it,” he said simply.
“If you don’t like your job, find a new one.”

“There aren’t a lot of theater
jobs,” I said, reaching for my shiraz. “I feel like I have to stick to where I
am or leave the business entirely.”

“No way,” Nate said, shaking his
head. “You’re way too talented. I bet you get that part in Jenner Collins’
show. Then everything will be different.”

I smiled at him, feeling
unexpectedly touched. He seemed so sure of his words, so confident in my
ability. I felt my stomach clench. I still hadn’t heard back from the theater
about my callback. A friend of mine from college was dating a lighting designer
who had heard a rumor that Jenner Collins was holding a final round of
auditions that night. The rumor, even coming third- hand, made me incredibly
nervous. If they were holding more auditions that must mean that they didn’t
find what they were looking for at my callback.

“Hey,” Nate said softly, grabbing
my hand. I looked up at him. “It’s going to be okay, Annie.” It was like he had
read my mind. The sincerity in his face made my breath catch.

“Let’s get out of here,” he
continued. “We can go back to my place for another drink.”

For once, I didn’t argue with him.
I was dying to see his apartment. Plus, the idea of being alone when I was
feeling so unsure about things was not appealing. Something about Nate’s
company made me feel calmer, less anxious. I had no desire to leave it so soon.

Nate drove the short distance to
Birmingham in his Ford Focus. As I settled into the passenger seat, I realized
for the first time that his car was less flashy than I would have expected.
When I mentioned this, he laughed.

“I work for Ford, Annie. What did
you expect me to drive, a jag?”

We pulled up in front of a modest,
clean-looking apartment building. Also not quite what I had expected. When he
had told me he lived in Birmingham I had pictured one of the rambling old
houses that line the streets around the downtown area, or one of the
ridiculously expensive lofts that marketed itself as being ‘urban’. This
building looked like it could happily exist in any small city in the area.

He led me up the stairs to a second
floor apartment, unlocking the door and allowing me to enter first into the
foyer. It opened directly into a spacious living room. Nate had furnished it
better than most guys I knew: he actually had things like end tables and framed
art on the walls. There was even a nice potted spider plant on the counter. Not
a cheesy movie poster in sight.

“So this is how an engineer lives,
huh?” I asked, looking around the room.

“Yup,” Nate said, throwing his keys
down on the side table. “There’s a special store we shop at and everything.”

“Hmm,” I said, walking around the
room to get a better look. “It’s much cleaner than I expected.”

He laughed. “Do I strike you as a
messy person?”

“Most guys are,” I said, picking up
a picture frame and peering down at it. “Who’s this?”

“Wow, you
are
nosey, aren’t you?”

“I’m just trying to get a feel for
it,” I told him. “How does a young bachelor live on the other side of the
poverty line.”

He burst out laughing. “You really
do think I’m a snob, don’t you?”

“Nate, you wear a tie to work
everyday,” I pointed out. “I mean, come on.”

He came over to me, wrapping his
arms around me and pulling me tight. “You like my ties,” he said, resting his
forehead against mine. “Admit it.”

“Never,” I murmured, raising my
face for a kiss.

“Nuh-uh,” he said. “No kisses until
you admit it. You like me in a suit.”

“Fine,” I conceded as he pulled me
even closer. “I like you in a suit.”

“Thought so,” he murmured, his
mouth inches from mine. Then he was kissing me, and any objection I may have
had toward his ties was long gone.

We were interrupted by the sound of
Nate’s cell phone. He groaned against my mouth before releasing me. “I should
get that,” he said. “I’m expecting to hear from one of my coworkers.”

As he rummaged through his jacket
pockets for his phone, I continued my exploration of his apartment. It was very
clean, and surprisingly put-together. His walls were not the institutional
beige of most apartments of this caliber; instead they were painted in soft
blues and grays. I wondered if he had painted them himself, and allowed myself
a smile at the mental image of Nate at the home goods store planning his color
scheme.

I wandered into the bedroom. Nate
had a large queen-sized bed, neatly made up with a blue and green plaid
comforter—another surprise. While I occasionally made my bed while
cleaning my room, I rarely did so on a regular basis. I pictured him getting
ready for work, rushing around in an unbuttoned dress shirt, making some coffee
and grabbing some toast to eat. Then taking the time to make his bed before he
left. The thought made me smile.

Then again, maybe he had only made
the bed because he knew I would be here tonight.

I walked back to the living room.
Nate was sitting at his dining table, deep in conversation on his cell phone.
He waved to me as I entered and rolled his eyes a little in apology.

I walked over to his bookshelf,
examining the titles. You can tell a lot about a person by the books they keep
on their shelf. His was eclectic, a mix of classics and modern thrillers.

My attention was caught by a
leather-bound photo album on the bottom shelf. I picked it up and went over to
the couch. Opening to the front of the book, I found photo after photo of
  
Nate smiling up at me. He looked younger in
most of them, and I suspected they were from his high school and college years.
Pictures of Nate with an older couple (his parents?) in front of a Christmas
tree, Nate dressed in a ski suit on a white-covered slope, Nate standing with a
group of guys in shorts around a bonfire. A typical, middle-class life of a
fairly happy and popular guy.

As I flicked through the pages, I
began to notice a trend. There were a lot of pictures here of Nate with women.
A few looked like they could be friends, or even his sisters. But there were
several shots of reoccurring females, arms wrapped possessively around his
waist.

Hard
for you to fall for someone, eh?
I thought to myself. It sure didn’t look
that way. From this photo album alone I could pick out at least five females
who had almost definitely been Nate’s girlfriends. All within the last few
years.

It wasn’t that I was jealous. It
really didn’t matter to me who he had seen, particularly not before I had even
known him. But it did serve as a reminder—he’d been around this block
before. However he might act like I was special or different, whatever he might
say about a lack of girlfriends—all of that was possibly, probably even,
an act. A line. Designed to make me feel special and get past my guard.

As I carefully returned the album
to its shelf, my own phone rang. Not wanting to disturb Nate’s work call, I
headed back towards his room before I answered.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Miss Duncan? This is Jenner
Collins.”

It felt like my heart stopped for a
second before it began pounding much more rapidly then it had been. “Hello, Mr.
Collins,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady.

“Please, call me Jenner,” he said
easily.

“Only if you call me Annie,” I
said, in the most pleasant voice I could muster, all the while screaming on the
inside for him to get on with it.

“Well, Annie,” he said, “I’m
calling to offer you the role of Jillian in my production of
The Curtain and the Window
.”

My fingers immediately went numb
and I was sure I was about to drop the phone. Was this real? Surely I was
dreaming. Jenner Collins—Jenner Collins!—could not possibly be on
the other end of my phone offering me a role in his play. It just wasn’t
possible.

“Annie?” he asked. “You still
there?”

“I…I…yes, I’m here,” I stammered,
my throat dry. “Sorry…I…”
Pull yourself
together!
I ordered.
Don’t you dare
blow this.

“Sorry, Jenner,” I said, my voice
stronger now. “This comes as a pretty big shock to me. I would be thrilled to
play Jillian.”

“Wonderful!” he said, sounding
amused. I wondered if he had some inkling of the total freak-out occurring in
my head. “I’m glad to hear it. Now, we’re on a very short rehearsal schedule,
unfortunately. Some opportunities have come up that are going to push the
production dates forward a bit. I’ll explain it all at rehearsal, but we’d like
to start tomorrow. Five o’clock. Can you clear your schedule?”

“Absolutely,” I told him, nodding
my head rapidly before I realized he couldn’t see me. “That won’t be a problem
at all.”

“Great,” he replied. “We’ll be
switching up rehearsal spaces for a few weeks until we can get into the theater
on a regular basis. My assistant is going to send you an email with the details.”

“That sounds good,” I said,
gripping the phone tighter. It still felt like it was about to slip out of my
fingers.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,
Annie.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” I
replied. “Thank you so much.”

We said goodbye and I ended the
call. I stared down at my phone in shock, still hardly daring to believe the
call had actually happened.

I don’t know how long I stood like
that, staring at my phone, before I finally heard the sound of Nate’s voice.

“Annie?” he asked, standing in the
doorway to his bedroom. “What’s up?”

I realized then that I was shaking.
Literally shaking. I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me. It was the
moment I had dreamt of my entire life.

“Annie?” he asked again, more
sharply. “What’s wrong?”

I looked up at Nate and felt the
urge to tell him, to scream it at him, to throw my arms around him and ask him
to celebrate with me.

Then it hit me. What the hell was I
doing? My life was about to change and I was in some strange guy’s bedroom? I
should be sharing this with Jen and Ginny, no one else. Not Nate, not any man.
I stood up, managing to control the trembling in my limbs.

“I got that part,” I said casually.
“Rehearsals start tomorrow.”

“Oh my God!” he said, his face
lighting up. “That’s amazing!”

“Yeah,” I said. “I better get going
though. Lots to do. And I need to get home to tell the girls.”

I saw his face fall, but I couldn’t
let myself worry about it. I knew what I was doing.

“Well,” he said, smiling again. “I
want to take you out to celebrate. This is really amazing.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,
Nate. I mean, I’m gonna be really busy. This is a huge deal for me, you know?”

“Annie,” he said uncertainly.
“What’s going on? Why are…why are you blowing me off?”

I plastered a look of surprise on
my face. “I’m not blowing you off,” I said. “I mean, it’s not like we’re in
some serious relationship, right? Wasn’t this all supposed to be just a bit of
fun?”

“Fun,” he said, his voice suddenly
tight. “Yeah. Fun.”

I chanced a glance at his face and
regretted it almost immediately. He looked so sad, so disappointed. I forced it
from my mind. I had gone too far with him already, way too far. If I didn’t end
this now, he would just do it soon himself. I knew that. It was the way it
always worked.

“Look, I’ll give you a call, okay?”
I asked, struggling to keep my voice light.

“Okay,” he said. “Sure. Whatever.”

I slipped around him and headed
down the hall to the front room. I found my purse and put my shoes on, then
paused for a moment, waiting for him to come back out. He never did. “See you
around, Nate,” I finally said, softly, before I left his house.

Chapter Fifteen

I spent the next eighteen hours
feeling incredibly annoyed. While I should have been bouncing off the walls in
excitement over the show, I instead found that I couldn’t keep my mind off of
Nate. I had clearly hurt his feelings and that didn’t sit well with me. I tried
to remind myself that it was no big deal, that I had been clear about what I
wanted in Vegas and he had no reason to be upset that I had stuck to it. But
for whatever reason, I still felt bad.

“Maybe you miss him,” Jen
suggested, when I confided this to her over the phone the next day. “Maybe
you’re feeling bad because you wish you would have stayed there last night and
let him celebrate with you.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “I left
because I wanted to.”

“Are you sure?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I
snapped, feeling my irritation peak.

“It means that I think you left
because you thought you should, not because you wanted to. I think you left
because you got scared.”

“What in the hell would I have to
be scared of?” I asked, feeling stung.

“That you might actually be falling
for someone,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous,” I told her.
“We barely know each other.”

Jen didn’t reply. I could tell she
didn’t believe me and wasn’t about to validate my lie with an argument. It was
classic Jen—taking the high road and making me feel like a baby in the
process.

“Anyhow,” I said, determined to
change the subject. “How’s your day? What’re you guys working on?”

“I was actually doing some prep for
the benefit,” she said. “Getting together a final guest list.”

The benefit. Wow. I had totally
forgot all about it. Between Nate and the audition, it had slipped my mind
entirely.