Chapter 14
“I’m here,” I say to Hannah as I near the dance hall’s back entrance, the siding washed orange by the setting sun.
“Already?”
“You really need a hobby.”
“Bugging you is my hobby.” She sighs. “Call me tonight?”
“It’ll be late,” I say, then remember the time difference. “Yeah, give me a few hours.”
“Hurry up. I’m so bored.” She drags out bored like it’s a life sentence, then gets off the phone.
Inside, it’s dark and quiet, no sign of Artie. Nothing but the scent of old wood and the blessed chill of artificial air.
Roy, you beautiful bastard.
I tap out a quick text to my director: You here? But before I hit send, I catch light seeping from beneath the office door.
“Figured I missed you,” I say, nudging it open. “Maggie’s hard-fucking-core when she—”
Wide eyes blink up at me from behind an oversized desk. A slack-jawed teenage girl stops her chair mid-spin, a sheet of blue paper pinched between her fingers.
“Shit. Shoot.” I wince. “Sorry. Thought you were Artie.”
She lets out a nervous giggle, then tosses a long dark braid over her shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m—wow. You’re Holden Shaw.”
Biting back a smile, I slip my phone in my pocket and lean against the doorframe, arms folded, eyebrows raised. “And you are?”
“Loretta,” she says. “I’m a friend of Maggie’s. Well, Maggie’s friend’s little sister. Not little. I’m almost fifteen. And I’m not sure they’re actually friends anymore.” She blows out a breath. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Loretta.” I step inside the small room and hold out my hand. Years pass before she takes it.
“Thank you,” she says, then hides her face behind the paper. “I mean, me too.”
I grin as I sink into the chair across from her. “They’ve got you on grunt duty, I see.”
“Um, yes. Just some printing.” She picks up a jar of pens and moves it to the other side of the desk, then back again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I’d be this nervous. I wasn’t when I practiced.”
“You practiced meeting me?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Not Magnolia, that’s for sure.” I rest my ankle on my knee, stretching the denim that’s still a little damp and a lot stiff. “What do you mean she used to be friends with your sister?”
Loretta tugs at the end of her braid. “The casting call was the first time they’d spoken since high school.”
“What happened?” Jesus Christ. I’m interrogating a kid about a woman who’d probably like to string me up by my balls, and worse, I’m annoyingly invested in her answer.
“Something about Ben coming out. Maggie’s brother?” She shrugs. “Guess it was a big deal back then. It was in the Chronicle and everything.”
“The Chronicle?”
“The Austin Chronicle. It’s a newspaper. In Austin.” Her ears go pink, and she spins around to fuss with the printer. “You were looking for Artie, right? He’s helping Jean unload her car. She brought Schumacher’s.”
“What’s a Schumacher?”
She looks at me like I have two heads. “Only the best barbecue ever.”
My stomach growls at the mention of food, and I’m on my feet as Artie’s Come and get it! echoes through the hall.
“You heard the man,” I say to Loretta, still planted in her chair. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“Pretty sure that was for you.”
“He doesn’t even know I’m here yet.” I rock back in my waterlogged shoes, the squeak drawing another giggle from my new friend. “Come on, Miss Loretta. Let’s get some of this ‘best barbecue ever’ and you can spill the milk on my new dance coach.”
She snorts a laugh. “I think you mean tea.”
“Tea, milk, dirt…”
“Okay,” she says, closing the laptop in front of her.
She pulls on a red hoodie and meets me at the door. I hold it open, the smoky tang of barbecue hitting me as we step out.
“So, what is it you want to know?” she asks, her big brown eyes flicking up to mine.
The little voice in the back of my head answers. Everything.
Loretta’s sister picks her up before I can dig for more intel, which is probably for the best since I’ve got my own sister to deal with.
By the time I call Hannah back, it’s after nine, which only gives us twenty minutes before she has to go down for dinner.
“Hardly worth it,” she keeps saying, even as she squeezes every last second out of the call.
Later, stretched out on the motel’s scratchy sheets while a booze-fueled game of Cards Against Humanity rages next door, I remember what Loretta said about Maggie’s brother being in the Austin Chronicle.
A quick Google search on my phone kicks back a five-year-old human-interest piece called “Out of the Closet and Into the Fire.” I slip in the earplugs Gabi gave me and begin reading the story of Ben’s coming out—or forcing out, rather—and how Maggie ended up collateral damage.
“Standing up for me made her a target,” Calhoun says of his sister. “The school turned on her. Her best friend since kindergarten turned on her. Then Mom died.”
He pauses here, his voice catching as the words settle.
“Her death affected us all deeply, but for Maggie—if ever a girl needed her mother.”
“If ever a girl needed her best friend,” I whisper past the lump in my throat. Fuck. No wonder their falling-out stuck.
Calhoun describes his sister as being the “bright light” of their family. “She had something, you know? She had this—this spark. But it dimmed with the loss of her best friend and died with our mother.”
He adds that while the years since have brought healing for both of them, his sister’s “spark” has yet to return.
I don’t know Magnolia well enough to confirm her brother’s “spark” theory, but the girl definitely has something. Something that intrigues me every bit as much as it frustrates me.
You’re only frustrated because she got to you today, and now you can’t stop thinking about her.
“It’s just guilt,” I say into the darkness as the glow fades from my phone.
I screw up plenty, but I’m rarely called out.
Today, I was.
I wake Thursday morning feeling a little more charitable toward my dance coach, which is pretty laughable considering she barely speaks to me on our long walk to the slab. True to her word, we are “strictly teacher-student, nothing more.”
Which means I probably shouldn’t care about her essay, or whether it’s to blame for the red rims around her eyes. But for some inexplicable reason, I do. And when I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay, “Up late?” is what tumbles out, earning me a practiced glare. “I just mean, you look tired.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Gee, thanks,” she says, smiling tightly as she gets into dance position. “Can we just get on with it?”
Maggie’s no-nonsense approach works for the second day in a row, and while I’m nowhere near ready for a single take, I’m kind of, sort of confident I can fake my way through it. If it comes to that.
By Friday, I’m carrying a knot of anxiety I chalk up to too much caffeine and not at all to the extra eyes we’ll have on us. Barrett said to expect him late afternoon, which means early evening if we’re lucky, and I use that word loosely.
Reservations aside, Maggie’s still itching to meet him, so I push our practice to after lunch.
I prefer the seclusion of the slab, but today I’ve been asked to stay on set, even though it won’t actually be a set until Monday, because Artie wants to go over a scene before the almighty novelist decides to roll in.
Outside, the crew’s busy setting up, the racket coming straight through the walls, impossible to tune out. We’ll have to blast that damn song ’til our ears bleed if we want to focus.
Maggie taps her blue boot on the hardwood, nerves as frayed as mine. She’s dressier than normal, in dark jeans and a flowy cream top with sleeves that seem to float when she moves. The shirt’s loose. Relaxed. Unlike the rest of her.
Unlike me.
“When do you think he’ll get here?” she asks for the second time.
“Sometime this evening, like I said.”
“You haven’t said.”
Pretty sure I have, but we’re both jumpy, so I let it go.
“You up for this today?” I gesture between us. “You seem…”
“Tired?” She gives me a look. “I’m fine.”
“Finish your essay?” The words are out before I can stop them, but she actually smiles.
“I did,” she says. “Emailed it to him this morning.”
“I thought you wanted to give it to him in person.”
She twists a lock of blonde hair around her finger. It’s down today, curled in ringlets, no doubt for Barrett. Guess the clothes are too, now that I think about it.
Her hand falls to her side. “Figured I’d do both. I’m hoping he’ll recognize my name.”
“Well, your name isn’t easy to forget,” I say, and fuck me. Do I need a muzzle? Because the smile she just gave me vanishes like smoke.
“I didn’t want to use Magnolia,” she says stiffly. “But you’re right. It’s memorable. Embarrassingly so.”
I’m about to object when the door behind me opens and someone shouts for the PA with the keys.
Maggie’s gaze drifts over my shoulder. “We should probably get some practice in before you’re called away.”
For now, the hall’s ours. Empty but for a few crew members and Artie, who mostly stays backstage. Maggie’s managed to loosen up, but I’m still—how did she put it?—wound tighter than a two-dollar watch. I can’t concentrate. Can’t hear myself count. But we keep at it.
By the time Gabi shows up, the sun’s dipping low. Artie calls us to the stage, and the weight pressing down on me eases a bit.
“Would you like to meet her?” I ask Maggie, whose eyes have been locked on my costar since the moment she walked in. “Hello? You in there?”
She jerks her head toward me. “Sorry, it’s just surreal, you know? Seeing her in the flesh.”
“You didn’t have that reaction the first time you saw me in the flesh.”
“You were a jackass.”
“How do you know she’s not a jackass?”
“Is she?”
“Nah,” I say. “She’s the real deal. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
Maggie pulls her phone from her pocket. “Artie’s waiting. I’ll just read.”