In the Spotlight (18 page)

“Yeah, but you aren’t wearing your costume,” Josh countered.

“It isn’t done yet,” I said.

“Still,” Josh replied.

I rolled my eyes at him. “I brought you out here to help you cool down.”

“Not working,” Josh informed me. “This tux has to be made out of double thick wool or something. It’s making me itch like crazy. And could it be any hotter under those stupid stage lights?”

“You are a whiny one,” I snickered. Josh frowned at me.

Apparently, nothing about this situation was the least bit funny to him, which, incidentally, wasn’t my fault. I had nothing to do with costumes for this show. “Come here,” I instructed, taking his hand again. This time we both noticed what I had done, and the ever clichéd jolt of electricity zipped up my arm. I dropped his hand fast. Josh just stared from me to the space where are hands had spent a nano-‐-second joined together.

He took a step toward me, and looked like he wanted to say something, but I cut him off. “Roll up your sleeve,” I said, quickly.

Josh looked amused, but did as he was told. “Now put your wrist here,” I continued, pointing to the metal banister. “My junior high drama teacher showed us this trick. If you put the inside of your wrist on something cold, it helps cool you down.”

Josh pressed his wrist against the banister near mine, and actually closed his eyes in relief. “That’s actually a little better,” he admitted. His eyes flickered open and he smiled at me. “Thanks.”

The smile must have been what did me in because I felt my stomach get all quivery and I’m sure I blushed. Thank goodness for the copious amounts of stage make-‐-up caked on my face. I worked up a small smile in return. “No problem.”

Just then, the stage door burst open and a frantic looking Kaylee jumped out. “There you two are!” She gasped. “You need to get on stage. Now!”

Chapter Eighteen

Waking up with a sore throat made me shriek, which I immediately bit back for fear of further damaging my voice. I must have shrieked loud enough to alarm Mom, though, because she came rushing in looking quite alarmed.

“I have a sore throat,” I whimpered.

Mom put a hand to my forehead and clearly failed to see the enormity of the situation. “You don’t have a fever,” Mom said. “But I suppose you should stay home to be on the safe side.”

She gave me a list of one hundred and three instructions for my sick day. Okay, not that many, but there were a lot, including no boys in the house and no going to school. Really, Mom? What boys would I have over? And if I snuck off to school, what trouble would I be in exactly? When everyone had left I took a shower, changed into my Josh baseball t-‐-shirt—which still smelled like him— and went to the kitchen where I made some tea with honey.

I texted Kaylee and Maggie and Josh before I settled down to watch mindless daytime TV. Maggie texted me during third hour that Jenny was saying this would be her big break, and she hoped I didn’t recover too quickly. My stomach tightened when I thought about Jenny filling in for me at a dress rehearsal. With my luck, today would be the day they rehearsed the kiss. I turned off the TV

and roamed around the house aimlessly.

Kaylee arrived during lunch with some Throat Coat tea from Ms. Bard. “She swears this will make your throat feel better by tomorrow.”

She left quickly just in case I was actually contagious. Mom called to check on me during her lunch hour. When I told her that I was feeling better and thought maybe I should go to school for the afternoon, she told me that I should go take a nap. I did lie down after drinking two cups of the Throat Coat tea, which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

I couldn’t sleep, though, so I tried reading. When I realized I was reading the same paragraph over and over, I tried TV again.

The reality was that all I could think about was Josh kissing Jenny.

It was torture. And why hadn’t Josh texted me back yet? I hated daytime TV. All that was on was soap operas and talk shows. The soap operas were absurd. When I was little and Grandma was slightly normal, I spent my summers watching soap operas with her. I loved the wild drama and the elegant romance that I didn’t understand. Grandma felt it was a good lesson in sex education.

Mom would have been appalled had she ever found out.

The talk shows were either disgusting or whiny. Maybe they suited me more, as I felt pretty whiny today. I checked my phone at least a dozen times, even though it buzzed when I got a text message. The only text I got was from Maggie asking how I was doing. I dragged my butt off the sofa after another round of channel surfing and made a cup of Throat Coat tea.

I decided to order a sappy romantic movie from cable. As I curled up under a blanket, I decided to text Josh again. What to say, though. I clutched my phone, emotions warring within me. My desperate love almost won out, but finally frustration and jealousy surfaced. I quickly typed ‘have fun with jenny’, and sent it before I could think too much about it. Then I ordered my movie and snuggled down on the sofa.

I fell asleep about halfway through the movie. I dreamed that Josh and I were in a car driving somewhere. He looked tense and I felt tense. Suddenly he stopped the car and got out. I opened my door and followed him. We were in a meadow filled with flowers. Suddenly the car was gone, and we truly were alone in the middle of nowhere. The beauty of the scene overwhelmed me, but when I turned to Josh, he was dancing around in the middle of the field with Jenny. Josh sang the Eric Carmen mix to her, and she gazed up at him with such adoration it made me sick. Then Josh leaned down and kissed her. And broke my heart.

I woke up to the sound of the front door slamming shut. My breath hitched in my throat and I realized that my cheeks were damp with tears. Had I been crying in my sleep?

It was only a dream.

It was only a dream.

It was only a dream.

I chanted the mantra over and over.

“Hey,” Hayley called from the kitchen. “How are you doing?”

I rubbed the tears off my cheeks and replied, “Okay. How was school?”

Hayley came into the living room laden with milk and cookies. Plopping down in an armchair, she shrugged. “School,”

she said. “Our cheer practice got cancelled today, so Mike drove me home after play practice.”

“Is it that late?” I gasped looking at the clock. Sure enough, it was almost dinnertime. Mom and Dad would be home soon too.

Then what Hayley said registered in my sleep-‐-addled brain and I asked, “So you stayed for play practice? Did you see everything?”

Hayley dunked a cookie in milk and practically swallowed it whole. “Yeah,” she said. “That Jenny is way into Josh.”

“Oh?” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

Hayley laughed. “Whatever. I know you care. Don’t worry.

Josh isn’t interested in her. You can tell.”

I swallowed. That was good anyway. Still, I was a masochist and I needed to know. “Did they, um, did they rehearse the kiss scene?” Eating another cookie, Hayley practically choked as she giggled hysterically and spit out huge chunks of cookie. “I knew you’d ask that,” she said. “Mike told me how that’s the one scene that keeps getting pushed off or rewritten. Why doesn’t Kyle want you to rehearse it? Does he like you still? That’s creepy.”

“Hayley!” I chucked a throw pillow at her. “Just put me out of my misery. Did they rehearse it or not?”

Reading my exasperation, Hayley shook her head. “Not even close. Although Jenny did lobby for it pretty hard. Apparently she thinks you’re totally down for the count and she’s going to get to star in the show now.”

I sighed with relief. But then my snarky text to Josh drifted back to me. I’d sent it without really thinking. And now I felt the regret that I should have felt before I did it. I grabbed my phone and checked to see if anyone had texted me. Nope. Well, if Josh couldn’t even be bothered to text me back to yell at me, I wasn’t texting him to apologize.

“What are you watching?” Hayley changed the subject, grabbing the remote off the coffee table. She clicked around until she found some mindless show that we watched until Mom and Dad got home from work.

My throat was pretty much better, but Mom still insisted that I eat chicken soup and Jell-‐-O for dinner. And it wasn’t anything homemade, just from a can. Not that I’m complaining, but everyone else was having Chinese take-‐-out and it smelled a whole lot better than my food tasted.

Hayley had brought home my homework, so after dinner I made yet another cup of tea and went upstairs to my bedroom to poke at that until bedtime. I felt sulky because Josh still hadn’t texted me. Not that I could blame him. I had been kind of rude.

I finished my homework by eight-‐-thirty, and I didn’t want to go to bed yet. So I pulled out a silly romance novel Grandma had given me for my birthday. If I couldn’t have my own romance, at least I could live vicariously through the characters in my novel. I pulled up the musical’s playlist on my I-‐-pod and popped my ear buds in my ears. That’s probably why I didn’t hear the knock on my door. And that’s probably why I nearly had a heart attack when I looked up and saw Josh holding a paper bag standing in my doorway grinning. He took in my current state of relaxation, my choice of reading material, and my choice of attire, and grinned wider.

I sat up and pulled the ear buds out of my ears. “Hey,” I said somewhat breathlessly.

“Hey,” Josh echoed taking a few more steps into my room.

“Your mom said I could come up as long as the door stays open.

She said she didn’t want any funny business.”

I blushed. “Well, um, okay.”

Scintillating conversation, I know.

“How are you feeling?” Josh asked, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot.

I scooted over. “Do you want to sit down? I feel a lot better. I don’t think I’m contagious or anything.”

Josh was on my bed before I could blink. We sat side by side, but not quite touching. I tried to remind myself that we’d done this before on his bed. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” he said. “Nice shirt.”

I blushed again, but laughed at the same time. “Shut up. You know you’re never getting this shirt back. I like to sleep in it.”

A strange look crossed Josh’s face, and if I had been in a romance novel, I would have said that his eyes darkened with desire. He cleared his throat. “Uh, good book?” He asked huskily.

“I’ll lend it to you when I’m done. Maybe you’ll be able to learn a thing or two,” I answered, surprising myself with my flirtation.

That made Josh laugh. “I brought cheesecake,” he announced, pulling two take away containers from the paper bag.

He handed me a fork. “I thought you could use some after a sick day.” My heart caught in my chest. Why was he so nice to me? I sure as heck didn’t deserve it, not after the cruddy way I’d thought about him and the nasty text I’d sent him. I took a bite of the cheesecake. It was heavenly. I sighed.

“I’m really sorry about the text,” I said, not daring to look at him. My cheesecake had never been so fascinating.

Josh put his hand on my knee to get my attention, and did it ever! The intimacy of the gesture and the fact that we were sitting on my bed nearly made me faint. I looked up at him, barely breathing.

“We didn’t rehearse the kiss,” he said, pointedly. I could barely nod, let alone talk, so he continued, “But don’t worry about the text. I get it.”

And he smiled and left it at that. My brain finally caught up with the conversation and suddenly went into hyper drive. What exactly did he get? What was he saying? Did he get how I felt about him? And if that was the case, did the fact that he wasn’t reciprocating mean he didn’t feel the same way? Was it possible I’d been wrong the whole time? Suddenly eating my cheesecake felt anything but appealing.

I was getting ready to put down the take away container when Josh held out his fork and said, “You have to try this.”

And he fed me a piece of his cheesecake, which happened to be tiramisu cheesecake, one of my absolute favorites. And that happened to be the exact moment when Mom walked by my bedroom door. She made a strange noise drawing both of our attention to her at once.

Josh cleared his throat and gave me a strange look, then said,

“Well, I think it’s time that I get going. Don’t want to be home too late. My mom might start to worry.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” I swallowed, wondering if anyone else could hear the hammering of my heart. “Thanks for coming by.

And thanks for the cheesecake.”

Josh took my hand and gave it a little squeeze. “I’m just glad that you’re feeling better,” he said. “Will you be in school tomorrow?”

“Definitely.” I could barely breathe as he lingered a tiny bit longer, until Mom cleared her throat. “See you then, I guess.”

“Do you want me to pick you up?” We both knew he was dawdling, and Mom was getting impatient, but I couldn’t make myself care.

“That would be great.” I grinned.

“See you in the morning then,” Josh said, finally letting go of my hand.

“Bye.” I sighed happily.

“Nice to see you again, Dr. Brewster,” Josh said with a smile as he left my room.

Mom lingered in the door. I could tell she wanted to say something, so I waited. Finally, she said, “He’s a nice young man.

You care about him quite a bit, don’t you?”

I squirmed uncomfortably. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I do.”

“Just be careful, sweetheart.” Mom sighed, turning to go.

That made me sort of mad, so I said, “You know, Mom, I’m not Harlow. Josh is a nice guy, and I’m a smart girl. I won’t do anything stupid.”

I left all of the stupid things I could do unsaid, sort of hanging thickly in the air between us. Mom looked slightly chastised. “I know you aren’t Harlow, sweetie, but it’s hard for your dad and I to let go of you girls.”

I sighed. “I get it. We’re your babies. And do you get that Harlow totally ruined your trust in us? Harlow makes crap choices.

I’ve seen her do it. But me and Hayley are good girls. We aren’t totally self-‐-centered. We care about this family. Hayley found a totally great guy, and I have too. But Josh and I aren’t even dating yet, so it might totally be a non-‐-issue.”