Chapter 8 #2
“Well, do you want . . .” Rory laughed quietly.
“I don’t know, a friend there? Or, like, I don’t know .
. .” He scrunched his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I can be your backup if you want? I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
” He laughed a little louder as my mom parked in front of us.
“Do you want me to come with you, and then we can hang out after or something?” He strung his sentence together as quickly as possible, and before I could wrap my mind around what was happening, my mom rolled down the window.
“Hey, Rory,” she said brightly.
“Hi, Mrs. McCain,” he said. His face slowly reddened.
“Um . . .” I looked back at Rory and swallowed. “That would be nice, but you don’t have to. I’ll be okay.” I tossed my golf bag into the trunk and opened the front passenger door. “Um . . .” I was about to say something else, but had no idea what.
“Sorry, Ellie-Bee. I’ve got a ton of stuff up front. Get in the back.” My mom shuffled paperwork around on the front seat, but without making space for me.
I opened the door to the back seat, and as I got in the car, Rory’s hand landed on my back, pushing me farther in. He jumped in behind me, then closed the door behind him. I whipped my head around, surprised by his hijacking.
“Whatcha doing, hon?” my mom asked with a smile.
“Rory?” I asked, trying to control my smile.
“You said it would be nice.” Rory clicked in his seat belt, and his eyebrows flew up his forehead nervously, looking at my mom. “Is it okay if I come, Mrs. McCain?”
“That’s on Ellie,” my mom answered, turning back around to face the front. She watched us through the rearview mirror. I snapped my lips together quickly. Rory and I had never hung out beyond Juniper before. He was taking us out into the real world. My heart heaved into my throat.
“Yeah, of course,” I mumbled, trying not to explode. Rory glanced over at me briefly as he slouched in his seat. “You’re crazy,” I breathed, and he laughed softly through his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. Another blush crept up his neck.
“Is this weird?” he asked, then flicked his attention to my mom, who was avoiding eye contact through the rearview mirror.
“Yes.” I laughed.
Rory covered his face with his hands and silently chuckled to himself.
My mom grabbed my backpack from the floor of the front seat and tossed it at my feet. “We’ll be there in twenty minutes. I have your clothes to change into once you get there.”
My chest emptied, and my stomach churned. “It’s a one-room studio, Mom, and we wait outside to get called in. It’s not like a normal audition space. There are no bathrooms.” My body went stiff. Rory was silent beside me.
Oh god . . . Oh god, oh god, oh god.
I was going to have to change in the car. I knew it. My mom knew it. Rory knew it.
I very slowly turned my head to Rory, and he kept his eyes forward. “I won’t look, I promise,” he whispered, trying to keep our conversation private. My eyes went back to my mom in the rearview mirror, and her face twisted with concern.
“There are some beach towels in a bag in the trunk. You can reach them, Rory. Lift a towel between you two so Ellie can have some privacy,” my mom instructed.
Rory and I looked at each other with our eyes deadened as he sluggishly swiveled in his seat and reached into the trunk to grab an extra-large pin-striped towel.
He bunched it on his lap as I dug into my backpack, grabbing my clothes.
My breathing became heavy, and my mom turned up the music to create an extra barrier between her and us.
“I’ll just do it quickly at a red light.”
After a couple of minutes, we crept up to our first red light.
Rory took a deep breath. “Cainey?” His voice trailed off. He refused to look in my direction.
“Rory, look at me,” I whispered. His brown eyes found mine, his face softened, and we both started laughing.
I wanted to say more, but didn’t know what to say.
We stopped at the light, and Rory dropped his head, closed his eyes, and lifted the towel.
He held it over the middle seat, separating us, and I quickly unbuckled and ripped my polo shirt off, then yanked on my T-shirt as fast as I could.
The light turned green, and my mom hit the gas, but Rory kept the towel between us until I gently touched his hand.
He brought the towel down and looked at me.
“Is this second base? Did we beat Hannah and Blair?” I joked, and Rory’s eyes widened. A stunned smile crept across his face, and his eyes darted to my mom in the rearview mirror to see if she was listening.
We approached the next red light, and he raised the towel again.
I unbuckled, lifted my ass, and shimmied out of my khakis with a grunt.
I reached for my jeans, and the light turned green.
“Oh shit,” I muttered, and could hear Rory laughing quietly from the other side of the towel.
I pulled on my pants but struggled momentarily as my mom started driving again.
“Ah! Crap!” I panicked, and Rory laughed a little bit louder.
I buttoned up and buckled in, and my body sank into my seat with relief. “I’m done.”
Rory crumpled the towel into his lap, taking a deep breath.
When we stepped out of the car at the studio and mixed into a sea of beautiful teenage girls, I realized that Rory experienced life on the outside every day.
He didn’t exist solely at the golf club, and probably had girlfriends, kissed girls, looked at girls, and dated girls.
He wasn’t mine, like I wasn’t his. My face must have shown the distress of my inner monologue, because Rory gently poked my side.
“Nervous?”
“No.” I felt rejected before I’d even stepped into the audition room. “You can’t come in with me when they call my name.”
“Why not?” His face fell. “Can’t I watch?”
Looking at Rory as he leaned against the brick building, lit up by the sun and removed from how I knew him, turned him into another version of himself, leaving me feeling lightheaded. I scanned the group of girls and noticed at least half of them were looking at him, too.
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“What are you going to do in there?” he asked curiously.
“I don’t know. They’re probably going to make me dance.
I can’t tell you how many auditions I’ve been to where I’m dancing in front of people judging me.
They want to look at my body to make sure it looks the way they want on camera.
Commercial auditions are weird like that.
It’s filling a quota. It’s not actually about me.
” I told Rory the spiel I often told myself.
I don’t know what came over me. I brushed my knuckle against the back of his hand. He reacted by taking his index finger and hooking it around mine. I looked down at our hands, and everything inside me seized.
I was called into the studio, and they asked me to do the same as always. I danced and they watched. But this time it was different. This time, I had backup.