Chapter 3
WE SAT IN A CIRCLE OF CHAIRS, IN A SMALL ROOM, WITH FLOOR-TO-CEILING windows that beautifully showcased the prewar building next door.
The walls in the classroom were white, the floors were painted black, the ceilings were high, and I was out of my element.
It had seemed so ridiculous that I was accepted into Bronwyn School for the Arts that I’d continued to say “We’ll see” with a shoulder shrug and a head shake whenever someone in Vancouver asked if I was really moving to New York.
Rory had driven me to Seattle for the audition seven months earlier.
I cried the whole drive home, believing I’d absolutely tanked my comedic monologue that I had decided to write myself.
I was Humpty Dumpty trying to coax all the King’s men into touching me inappropriately while putting me back together again.
It was a big swing for a prestigious school.
“What was I thinking?” I scream-cried the whole way home, while Rory suppressed his smile. I could see his face contort, choking down his laughter as I explained how I accidentally made eye contact with the school’s director and flirted with him in character, calling him a “dirty little pervert.”
“What was I thinking?” was also the last thing Rory said to me before I left. I gripped my chest, trying to protect my heart, which I could physically feel breaking every time I thought about him.
I looked around the room of student actors as we all introduced ourselves, sharing our names, ages, hometowns, and one fun fact. There were about twenty of us in our group.
“Hi, I’m Zoe Reyes. Twenty-one. I’m from Connecticut and I hate cheese.
” Zoe had emerald eyes and long, dark-brown hair pulled back into a clip.
She was gorgeous, with thick curtain bangs and a tight green V-neck shirt that showed her curves with precision.
Her voice was raspy. We made eye contact, and she pulled a small, uncertain face, then chuckled at her silent admission of nervousness.
Somehow, she oozed sex appeal, and all she had said was “I hate cheese.” I liked Zoe instantly.
She was cool, but the likelihood of her connecting with a Canadian who wore a Bionator and headgear until she was ten felt improbable.
“I’m Lucas Martin. Twenty-four. I’m from Paris.
I can get anyone underage into a bar, guaranteed.
” Lucas’s quick but playful tone, combined with his rolls-off-the-tongue Parisian accent, brought everyone to attention.
He wore a soft-blue long-sleeved shirt rolled up, showcasing his strong, tattooed forearms. His dark-brown, almost black hair was styled with a side part but also pushed casually behind his ears.
He was leaning forward, arms pressed into his thighs, and his eyes penetrated every person in the circle.
He was clean-cut, but you could tell he had to shave every morning and maybe every night to stay that way.
I could have sworn I heard Zoe from across the circle exhale a noise through her nose when his stare connected with hers.
She then shifted, uncrossing and then recrossing her legs, and I wondered if she had just accidentally come in her seat.
I pulled a face while looking at Zoe, silently communicating, You good, girl?
A surprised expression spread across her face, and she slowly shook her head. Nope.
I snorted, then my eyes shifted to the person sitting next to Zoe. He was looking at me, not Zoe or Lucas, and his eyebrows popped upward when we made eye contact.
Shake it off, Ellie. You’re up.
“Good to know, Lucas, because the drinking age in Vancouver is nineteen, but here, sadly, I’m only twenty.
Also, I’m Ellie. McCain. If you see a cougar, it’s probably been stalking you for forty-five minutes .
. . I think. So, yup. That’s the thing I’ve chosen to say.
” I looked over the room and could see everyone barely listening as they prepared their own answers. All but three: Zoe, Lucas, and . . .
“I’m Ben Winters.” Ben’s voice was deep, but soft. He sounded like he knew what it was like to camp under a tarp. He kept his forest-green eyes on mine. “I’m twenty-three. From Seattle. Think of it as a better Vancouver.”
My face snapped into a frown. The. Gall.
Ben held my gaze, refusing to turn away as the next person stepped up to the plate.
They could have been speaking another language.
I genuinely have no clue who they were or what they said.
I was so immediately in my own head. I scrunched my nose and squinted suspiciously at Ben.
I popped two fingers toward my eyes, then pointed them at whoever was talking, encouraging Ben to pay attention to that person. Whoever they were.
Beneath his crossed arms, Ben’s chest lifted with a silent chuckle. My eyes shifted back to Zoe, sitting beside him. She was mirroring the exact contorted expression that I had given her when she unintentionally groaned for Lucas. Girl. You good?
I tried to keep my focus on the class but found myself studying Ben from across the circle instead.
He had dark-blond, thick, slightly wavy hair.
I suspected that it took him forever to perfect his “casual, just-out-of-bed” strategically messy coif.
He looked more formal than anyone else in the group, wearing a crisp white button-down shirt that had a couple of buttons open at the top, revealing a hint of his muscular chest. I would have put a thousand dollars down that this Seattleite grew up playing hockey or football—one of the cool kids.
He caught me looking at him, and his lips twitched.
Crap! I wasn’t ogling. I really wasn’t, and he probably thought I was.
He lifted his fingers to meet his eyes and threw them out at the teacher, this time telling me to pay attention. My face burned, but his silent laugh kept me grounded.
At the end of the orientation, our Acting Technique teacher, Jess Munch, a sixty-year-old silver-haired goddess, encouraged us to memorize the face of each person in our group.
She said we would be together day and night, leaning on each other, sharing our darkest secrets, trusting each other, using each other, and needing each other for the next two years.
She said we’d become more than simply the best of friends.
We’d love each other and be bound by this moment because this was the moment we found out who we were.
I didn’t know how to feel. In theory, that all sounded great—if it had been with the people I grew up with, like Kara and Jacob Griffin, or my sister, Hannah . . .
Don’t think about the Campbells, Ellie.
I looked around the room at all the students gathering, talking, and laughing with each other. It felt like such a performance. Everyone was already performing whatever version of themselves they’d decided to be at Bronwyn but hadn’t yet become, including me.
I caught Zoe’s eye from the drinks table. She waved at me, then mouthed, What are we doing?
I mouthed back, I have no fucking idea. My face twisted the second I said it.
What the hell was that? Why did I swear? Is that a thing I do? My first sentence to her, and I swear?
It was just another performance, but I had no idea the part I was playing. I was starting to sweat from so much trying. I guess Jess Munch was right: I was already finding out who I really was, and apparently, I was a moron.
The evening was over, and Ben finally made his way to me. Instead of officially introducing himself, he simply said, “You hungry?”
Ben and I walked into the brightly lit pizza place across the street from the school.
The display case featured enormous, tourist-size slices covering all the basics from cheese to pepperoni to meat lover’s and Hawaiian.
There were a couple of specialty slices ranging from shrimp and lobster to turkey, stuffing, and cranberry.
Ben leaned over the counter but kept his body open to me so I could view the display case. He pointed at the “Thanksgiving Special” and grimaced. “That can’t be good, right?”
“Who knows, but do we try it now or wait for Thanksgiving?” I said, then ordered a spicy Hawaiian with a drizzle of hot honey and chili oil.
“You just told me everything I need to know about you with that order,” Ben said without looking at me. “Can I get the one with mushroom ragù sauce?” he asked the guy behind the counter.
“Seriously? Blech.” I gave the hardest stink face imaginable, and the worker threw up his middle finger at me, causing Ben to chuckle.
My jaw dropped. Seriously?! The worker turned his back to me, and I leaned in to Ben. “That guy just fingered me.”
Ben’s laugh blasted throughout the small space. “What? Jesus. Don’t say that again.”
“What?” I could feel my own laugh bubbling from within as I pulled out my card to pay for my slice. Ben swatted my hand away and handed his card to the teller, steamrolling me.
Ben turned back to me. “You said that guy fingered you.”
I pointed at the server, disgruntled. “He did! Did you not see that?”
“Is that a Canadian thing?”
“Is it an American thing to just finger people?!” I spat out defensively.
“Oh my god, Ellie.” Ben laughed again, covering his face this time.
“Girl. Stop saying that,” a stranger behind us in line said with a giggle.
“What’s going on? He’s the asshole here!” My face tightened with confusion.
Ben looked me straight in the eyes. “He gave you the finger. Gave. You. Or he flipped you the bird. It’s not ‘He fingered me.’ How do you not know that?”
“I’m not saying anything wrong. What I’m saying is normal.” I started to blush, but I carried on, deciding to be stubborn. The guy handed us our greasy pizza on paper plates, and I said it once more for good measure, with my hardest stare. “You fingered me, and I didn’t like it!”
Ben and the stranger in line both laughed. I smacked Ben’s shoulder with a smile but refused to give an inch, like the McCain I was raised to be.
“Come on. I asked Lucas if he wanted to meet us here in a bit, too.” Ben tilted his head to the side so I would follow him to a seat along the window bar.
“How’d you feel about tonight?” I asked as we took our seats.
“I don’t know. I kinda can’t believe I’m here,” he answered honestly, folding his pizza in half. “I helped Lucas move a couch through the East Village the other night, and it felt like I was in a movie.”
“Oh, do you know him from before?” I took a bite of my pizza.
“We did the summer program together and were invited to join full-time. So, yeah.” Ben took off his jacket and draped it over another barstool.
“I thought I was going back to Seattle to my girlfriend and our dog, because I moved here for six weeks on a whim, but then I had two weeks to decide if I was going to throw my old life away and start again. It wouldn’t be the first time, so I went for it. ”
“Wait! Let me guess!” I said excitedly. “You were an athlete who got injured and became an actor.”
Ben stared me down, bothered. “Well, that was disturbing. Am I a cliché?”
“Football or hockey?”
“I don’t like this,” he paused, then narrowed his eyes at me. “D-1 baseball. Pitcher. Torn labrum.”
I nodded, somewhat proud of myself, taking a sip of water and watching Lucas and Zoe scurry across the street, heading toward the pizza place to join us.
“Anyway, yeah. Take a guess as to whether or not my girlfriend and I decided to stay together and do long distance,” he said sarcastically, with his mouth full of food. With his low register, it sounded a lot like garbled gibberish.
I snorted out some water from my nose and grabbed a napkin, muttering, “Jesus Christ.”
Ben smirked at my reaction. He shook his head again as he dipped his pizza in some ranch dressing. “What’s his name?”
“Rory,” I grumbled. “You?”
“Sasha,” he groaned.
“Is that the girl or the dog?” I asked, and he laughed. Ben lifted his slice of pizza in my direction for a cheers, and I reciprocated by tapping it with my own.
“Where are you living?”
“In a studio on the Upper West Side. Looking for a roommate, so if you know anyone . . .”
“Yeah.” Ben laughed again, with his mouth full of ranch dressing this time. “Me. I’m staying on a family friend’s couch in Dobbs Ferry until I get my shit together.”
I scoffed. “Okay, Stranger Danger, you can’t live with me.” My mouth was jam-packed with pineapple.
“Why not?”
“Because you heard the worst version of what I said earlier instead of assuming the best. You saw that guy finger me!” Ben choked on his pizza.
“You went negative. Now I can only assume that there’s a ten percent chance that you might murder me.
My parents would be so annoying if I picked a murderer to live with.
They think I’m going to, and I can’t prove them right.
I just can’t. I’m too stubborn. If you don’t kill me, that would. ”
Ben turned to me, analyzing me. “Fair enough.”
Two minutes later, Lucas and Zoe pulled up a seat next to us. My dad joined us an hour later. And Ben was my roommate by the end of the week.