Chapter 12 #2
“Oh, Miranda.” My mother sighs. “I know we raised you in the theater, but not all things revolve around you. We thought it would be nice for you to have someone you know here. Someone you work with.” I hope to God that Nick doesn’t clarify that part. I can’t handle any further humiliation.
I am at a crossroads. On one hand, I do not want my parents to know anything about my sex life, ever.
Telling them exactly how well, how intimately, I know Nick would take us far past the usually very tight and tidy boundaries of our relationship.
On the other hand, if I told them how this man has used me, how he got me fired .
. . If I’m honest, I am not completely certain that they would be sympathetic enough to do anything.
They might even blame me. I am hit by a rush of .
. . what? Clarity? Suddenly I am very tired and very sad, because I have parents who don’t even know me.
They have no idea about the world I have come here from, about who is or isn’t in my life.
We have spent my whole life playing within a confined space, like the taped-off stage we rehearse on.
Suddenly my disappointment in them is so palpable that I can’t go on.
“He’s not a good guy,” I say. “He’s not here for the reasons you think. And it’s going to be a shit show.”
They look at me like I’m the disappointment. “Well.” My mother sniffs. “We certainly hope you’ll be able to maintain your professional composure while he’s here.”
I turn and fling the door open. A couple of the fairies are in the hallway, and scatter innocently. “It’s community theater,” I hiss back at my parents. “Nothing about this is professional.” My mother looks shocked, and I can hear her outcry as I storm away.
The thing I don’t want to admit, to Nick or anyone, is that I actually fell for the guy.
I know. So incredibly predictable. It’s your classic secretary-and-CEO scenario, the powerful man and the underling, no promises made, no labels given, but a feeling, right?
An innate understanding beyond words. We loved each other, right?
It was really something, right? He wasn’t the smartest man I’d met, or the most talented, or the best looking, even.
He was definitely the richest, the most famous, and say what you like, but those things cast an extra sheen on everything.
It was the idea that I could get underneath those things, literally and figuratively, to access a version of him that was only mine, only visible in early-morning light, in whispered confessions and soft gazes and tenderness that vanished the second he stepped out of his apartment, a precious bubble that was only ours.
What little I had of him was mine, and it was real.
And then it was denied, cast out, completely dismissed.
Needless to say, I am outraged he’s here, even if he still smells like a fever dream.
Luckily the rest of the rehearsal is the first scene with Helena and Lysander: I don’t actually have to deal with Nick.
It’s our second rehearsal with this scene, and I have that first big monologue.
I hear him laughing in the back of the room.
I can hear him watching. It’s the first audience reaction, and I hate myself for being glad that he’s watching, that he’s seeing me do well.
After rehearsal, I march straight up to him.
“Didn’t know you could act,” he says. I think he actually believes this to be a compliment, despite our working together as professional actors.
“Meet me outside,” I say. His eyes light up.
“With pleasure.” He beams.
Out back, behind the dumpsters, I corner him.
“Okay. So you have clearly swindled my parents,” I say.
“What? No!” he says innocently. “I just really love Shakespeare.”
“Name ten Shakespeare plays,” I say.
“That’s a trick question,” he says. “He only wrote six.”
“That’s Jane Austen, idiot.” I’m surprised he even knows that.
He laughs and leans in. Close. Too close. “You know, I didn’t know how fiery you could be. Where was that girl in the city?” He steps toward me. “I like her.” I push him away, holding my arm out, barring him from further invasion. I don’t want him near me.
“No,” I say. “You don’t get to do that, not here. I can’t do anything about you being here; it seems you have ingratiated yourself pretty well, especially financially. And I don’t want to be the reason that two seasons of the company lose funding.” I step back. “But I have some rules.”
“Seriously, there’s some super interesting dynamics happening here, and I have to say I’m really feeling it—”
“Stop it!” I want to shake him, punch him, but people are around, walking to their cars, already curious about what is going on here. “Why are you here, Nick? What do you want?”
“I feel bad about . . . you. I was an asshole.”
“You are an asshole.”
“I am an asshole. And I treated you like shit. And I got you . . .” Fired. I fucking knew it. “And I’m sorry.” He looks up from under his long, perfect eyelashes, a look I know well, a look he knows works on me. I say nothing. I do not move. “And fuck, Mira, are you going to make me say it?”
“I’m an actual person, you know.”
“I know, and I am realizing by the second what a remarkable person you are, and I’m stupid, and I’m sorry, and I miss you.” He looks at me straight, for the first time all day looking at me like an actual human. “I really miss you. I want you back.”
People always wonder if celebrities are actually that attractive, how much is makeup, or lighting, or editing.
Nick Nolan, up close, is not an objectively perfect-looking man.
Not like Theo, who looks sculpted from gold, who is so purely beautiful it’s actually insane.
Nick Nolan has an expensive haircut and a good colorist, making those seemingly sun-kissed streaks in his hair appear natural.
He has a personal trainer and a really good dermatologist. I can neither confirm nor deny his use of Botox.
Nick Nolan’s eyes are 10 percent too close together, and if you isolate his features, objectively, individually, they are borderline unremarkable.
Nick Nolan is five eleven, but he has the sort of perfect body that extensive training and juice cleanses can buy.
But what Nick Nolan does have in spades is charisma.
He has star quality. He knows what people want from him—his attention—and he can administer it so deftly that you don’t even realize his effect until it is suddenly, ruthlessly, taken away.
I’m one of the lucky few who know this. But I also know how he looks when he’s asleep. I know how vulnerable he really is. I know how every inch of his body feels against every inch of mine. I no longer want to know these things. I was trying to forget him, and now he’s here. This is a problem.
I know unequivocally, whatever his presence might be stirring up in my body, that I cannot let him near me ever again.
I take a deep breath. It occurs to me for the first time that I have options here.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “This is how it’s going to go.
First of all, nobody is going to know about our personal history.
” Except I’m absolutely going to tell Theo all of it, of course.
“It’s pretty clear already to them that I don’t like you, but I can play it that you were a diva on set, and you can prove me wrong by doing your whole schmoozy thing, and everyone can fall in love with you, and I’ll be the bad guy.
” I raise my eyebrows to make sure he’s listening.
“Okay . . .” he says. He is at least smart enough to know that telling people we were together at all means telling them I dumped him.
“I don’t seem to be able to do anything about you being here. So, fine, be here. But nothing is going to happen between us. You will not get me back.” I say it like I mean it. I am a good actress.
“I’ll die trying,” he says, doing that one smile that he knows undoes me. It threatens to, I’ll admit, but I press on.
“You and I will not hang out socially. You will not flirt with me. You will not look at me unless the script tells you to. You will stop texting me. There is nothing here. If you insist on spending your summer in North Lake doing Shakespeare, I can’t stop you.
But”—I lean in—“I know you. You’re going to get bored, and you’re going to bail.
It’s what you do. I give you two weeks. Thou spotted and inconstant man. ”
“Huh?”
“It’s from the play, stupid.” I walk away, feeling victorious.
I have, however, made two grave errors.
One, I have forgotten that under the golden retriever demeanor, Nick Nolan is a fucking pit bull.
And two, I have forgotten to consider fairy magic.