Chapter 29
SUTTON
“You weren’t kidding about the selection this semester,” Quincy mutters, making a note in the journal she cradles against her tan slacks. “Using auditions as midterms is brutal. I don’t envy you picking Desdemona or Iago.”
“I’m thinking Schroeder for him,” I tell her, pointing at the pale kid down front chatting with a couple of Curators.
His brown eyes find mine for a moment, and he gives a slight smile, clearly still riddled with nerves from his earlier audition.
“He wasn’t bad,” she agrees, taking a sip of her bottled green tea. “Although not super villainous. Don’t you think that requires a certain aura?”
“A little coaching would push him over the edge, I bet.”
We sit through half a dozen more auditions, each of them worse than the last. I’m struggling to keep my eyes open when Elle finally appears at the stage stairs, wearing a brown dress with a cream-colored, long-sleeved shirt beneath.
Flanked by Meg and Lexington, she giggles at something the pair says, and I suck in a silent breath against the sight of that smile on her face.
For him of all people.
Shifting in my seat, I watch as she leaves them and takes her spot in the center of the stage.
I don’t know why it matters or why my eyes can’t help but catalog everything about her—the exact way her hair falls over her shoulders, the neutral expression she maintains, how her chest puffs out proudly when she clasps her hands behind her back, waiting for her cue.
I’m in trouble here.
“Elle Anderson, reading for the part of Desdemona,” she announces, the clarity in her voice and its projection more than a little startling.
I’m so used to her low rasps and stolen words that this mask is a new one.
“‘O good Iago, What shall I do to win my lord again? Good friend, go to him; for, by this light of heaven, I know not how I lost him.’”
The blood ceases movement in my veins as her voice, strong and bold, erupts in the auditorium. My pen slips out of my hand as I take her in, admiring the way the stage lights illuminate her silhouette, basking her body in an ethereal glow that adds to the scene.
A hush falls over the audience. It grows so quiet I can hear a drop of water fall off a pipe backstage.
There’s no pause needed for adjustment, no warm-up necessary. Elle slips directly into Desdemona’s lines as if stepping into her skin. She flips the hair off her shoulder and cuts across the stage, commanding our attention as she continues.
“Here I kneel: If e’er my will did trespass ’gainst his love, either in discourse of thought or actual deed, or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense, delighted them in any other form—’”
“Next.” I barely manage to squeak out the word, my mouth dry and chafed. She almost doesn’t hear me, and I scrub my numb fingers over my pants, trying to regulate my breathing.
Her presence up there—I’ve never seen anything like it.
She’s a breath of fresh air, and I can’t keep watching from this distance.
The auditorium falls silent once more. Quincy glances at me.
“Um,” Elle says, squinting out at the room. At us. Me. “Is there a problem?”
“I said next,” I snap, my fingers trembling slightly. Discomfort burrows in my chest like a breeze caressing bare branches, and I swallow over the sensation, desperate to ignore it. “We’ve seen all we need to.”
“But I didn’t get to finish my mono—”
“Everyone got sixty seconds. Yours are up.”
Her hands ball into fists at her sides, pink staining her flushed cheeks, and she stomps off the stage. Quincy looks at her watch but doesn’t say a word.
Idly, I make notes in my folder about the auditions, scrubbing beneath my chin as Elle’s voice travels up the rows of chairs, taunting me.
“—really unfair that you didn’t get to finish,” Lexington says, his poorly veiled attempt at comfort making my head throb. “You were the best of the class, Elle, honestly. I’d never leave you so…unsatisfied.”
She laughs, and when I lift my chin, I curse myself for doing so. She’s already staring right at me, awareness radiating from her body. As she smothers a knowing smirk, I break my pencil in half and avert my gaze.
Quincy’s stare bores a hole in the side of my face, but I will myself not to take the bait. Fucking Andersons.
Did that kiss really mean so little to her?
My mouth is dry when I get up, dismissing the students for the day. I don’t stay to chat with Quincy about the potentials or go over our expectations for set and costume design, instead taking the side door to the theater department and heading for my office.
I’m completely unsurprised when Elle’s somehow already there, swinging her legs from my desk, leaning back on her palms. Her hair falls in waves, hovering above an open planner and a jar of highlighters she must have turned over when she hopped up there.
Exhaling, I toss my briefcase onto the green suede chair in the corner of the room and reach for my tie, loosening the knot. “Should you really be in here right now?”
“Well, given you cut my audition short, I thought maybe we could discuss why.”
“I heard there was a student waiting for the opportunity to… What was it he said? Leave you satisfied?” Running a hand over my jaw, I round the desk, doing my best to ignore her presence.
“You know, I wouldn’t have pinned you as the jealous type when we first met.”
“It’s not jealousy,” I lie, though I’m not sure why. “I’m merely suggesting that perhaps your time would be better spent chasing after people your own age.”
“You’re two years older than me,” she points out.
When I cock an eyebrow at her, she shrugs.
“Yeah, I was curious, so I looked you up. Physically twenty-seven. Spiritually, I know you’re batting one billion.
But back to my audition. Did Quincy put you up to this?
Don’t think I didn’t notice you using her as your co-casting director.
She probably wants me to have a nonspeaking part. ”
I roll my eyes, slotting a folder into place on the wooden organizer sitting on my filing cabinet. “No, your sister didn’t put me up to anything. She didn’t even want to be here, but I managed to convince her to help out since my usual partner is on sabbatical.”
“Why her?” Elle’s voice grows small, and she toys with her choker, looking down. “Why are you always running to her?”
“Because, Elle!” I throw my hands into the air, exasperation coloring my tone and making me dizzy. How does she not get this? “I don’t… Have you ever considered that maybe I gravitate toward her to get to know you better?”
She narrows her eyes. “Quincy doesn’t know anything about me.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.” I meet her gaze. “You think nobody notices you unless you’re on a stage putting on a performance, but some of us are still watching even after the mask comes off and the curtain falls, Elle. Some of us like what’s underneath more.”
She purses her pretty pink lips, tilting her head. I bend down to the minifridge beneath the desk and take out a water bottle, unscrewing the cap and downing a drink. The bottle crinkles with the sudden loss of fluid, and I pull off with a gasp, unaware of how parched I was.
A metaphor if ever there was one.
Elle tracks the movement of my hand as I drag the back of it across my mouth. “How come you never drink?”
“What?”
“Well, the night I met you at Lethe’s, you were just sitting there with your wine. You never tasted it,” she says. “And in here, there’s no hidden bottle of scotch, no decanter of whiskey like a lot of the other professors seem to keep. I was just wondering why. Is it the migraines?”
“Alcohol can exacerbate them, yes.” My expression flattens. “Did you go through my things?”
Again, she shrugs. “I got bored waiting. Guess you took too long working through your frustration of seeing me with someone else…someone promising to make me happy for the first time in years.”
“You came the night we met,” I point out. “Seemed pretty fucking happy to me.”
She grins. “That isn’t what I meant. Lexington was going to let me finish my audition is all. Said I could go back to his dorm room in Cadmus if I wanted. So he could get the full effect.”
Irritation spills into my blood. I set the bottle down, slowly edging my way back around the front of the desk.
“Is that so?” I ask, though it comes out much rougher than I intend. Almost a growl.
She nods, shaking out her hair and lifting her face toward the ceiling. “You know what they say. The early bird wins the leading actress.”
“I don’t think that’s the phrase.”
“Nobody asked for your opinion—”
Slamming my hands on either side of her hips, I grip the edge of my desk until it feels like my fingernails might splinter against the wood finish. She jolts, her hazel eyes widening as her face falls forward, level with mine when I lean in.
The scent of vanilla and honey is overwhelming, but I don’t pull away yet.
“I believe you did ask my opinion,” I tell her, moving so I can feel her breath skate across my lips when I speak.
An indirect coupling of sorts that has to satiate this hunger I have for her, or else I might snap further.
“You want to know why I cut off your audition. Right? That’s why you’ve broken into my office again and are sitting on my desk in this short little dress, waiting for me like a decadent dessert desperate to be devoured. ”
“Your alliteration is impeccable—”
“You should know better than to assume I’d ever cut someone off because of petty feelings or to be mean,” I continue.
“I didn’t end your audition early because I didn’t want to hear the rest. In fact, I could have sat there through the night listening to only your recitation of Desdemona fantasizing about how to win her husband back, even after he’s been cruel to her.
If I never hear another rendition of a monologue again, I will be satisfied. ”
That goddamn word again. It causes heat to flicker in her gaze, making the nerves in my chest pull tight.