Where You Are

“I thought you were supposed to communicate with each other?” Cassie asked Mom once, years ago, after Dad stomped rigidly out the front door. “Isn’t that what your whole, like, career is based on telling people to do?”

Brynn and I eavesdropped from around the corner. We stared at each other in mute acknowledgement of Cassie’s direct hit. Cassie was often Dad’s advocate, though Mom usually told her to stay out of it. This time she merely sighed. “Yes, but there are exceptions. When you find yourself about to say something that crosses a line, something that could cause irreparable harm, sometimes the best you can do is just not say that thing.”

“Dad would never say something like that,” Cassie huffed.

Mom laughed once, no amusement in the sound. “Exactly.”

I do have a paper due tomorrow, but the body of the paper is done; only the citations page remains. Inadvertently, I’ve instituted my own version of walking around the block, because there are a load of words threading through my skull right now and none of them are easygoing or objective.

I don’t fault Reid for his multitude of casual hookups. I’m a guy—I’ve had plenty of my own and I’m not that big of a hypocrite. What I fault him for are the two times I know of that he actively encouraged a girl to fall ass over elbows for him—as Brooke would say—when he had no intention of sticking around. I could excuse what he did to Brooke as immaturity, if he hadn’t done the same thing to Emma recently. As soon as he doesn’t get what he wants, he’s out screwing as many girls as he can run through.

Emma seems to think that because he’s playing nice at the moment, he’s above suspicion. Like he took no for an answer where she was concerned. But I watched him that night everyone went out—the calculating gaze he leveled on her. If this was two hundred years ago, I’d have contemplated taking him outside and beating the shit out of him for looking at her like that—and that pinky swear thing he did with her would have guaranteed it.

***

My paper submitted, I’m unofficially finished with college. At one time, I considered pursuing graduate degrees and becoming a professor like my parents, but that was a year or so ago, before I began getting more steady work as an actor. Standing in front of a class droning on about analytical symbolism and rhetorical theory while striving for tenure and churning out research? Strangely, some of that is appealing. But I enjoy acting more, and I don’t need to reach Reid Alexander status to feel successful doing it.

It’s almost 11:00 p.m. in San Diego, but Emma has to be up early to get to the studio. As sure as I am of her, as sure as I want to be, I don’t want to think about the fact that I left her hurt and angry tonight, with no one to talk to but Reid Alexander. Not my brightest move.

Damn.

I didn’t ask her about her interview in San Bernardino. I didn’t find out if the drive to San Diego in Reid’s bright yellow Matchbox car was as uneventful as he’d predicted. I didn’t tell her the end of the story where I’m the TA in her literature class, and she’s the student who forgot to turn in her paper on time…

I hadn’t batted an eye at the photo and story of Reid kissing her at the airport. She told me it was on the cheek (the photo angle made it impossible to tell), and over so quickly that she didn’t even feel it.

I know how the paparazzi play their games.

And I do trust her.

So she should trust me when I tell her there’s nothing between me and Brooke but a strong, committed friendship.

I pull up the photos again, and read the short blurb.

Is another undercover romance blooming inside the School Pride cast? Brooke Cameron (of Life’s a Beach fame) was spotted cozying up to costar Graham Douglas late Wednesday in the doorway of his Manhattan brownstone. They spent a long evening catching up, we presume, as Ms. Cameron left the home alone and none the worse for wear after a visit lasting a bit over three hours. Cameron and Douglas play Caroline Bingley and Bill Collins, respectively, in one of the most highly anticipated teen hits of the summer.

Me: I’m sorry for bailing on you so early. Skype tomorrow at 9?

Emma: Okay

Me: Miss you

Emma: Miss you too

Chapter 22

Brooke

Reid: Bullseye. She was pretty much in tears.

Me: Goooooal!

Reid: You are completely deficient in empathy, aren’t you?

Me: When required, yes. So did you comfort her?

Reid: Offered. She stayed in her room.

Me: Losing your touch?

Reid: My touch is as intact as ever, thx.

Growing up in the suburbs of Austin meant playing soccer. I got stuck in the goal far too often during the first couple of seasons, and since my team sucked ass, I was repeatedly scored on. I often left the field crying and wiping snot onto my sleeve. My coach—another player’s father—took my tears as typical feminine weakness, patting my shoulder and telling me not to cry—all we’ll show ’em what-for next time.

Coach Will missed the point. I wasn’t dejected; I was pissed as hell that my team didn’t have a single player who deserved to call herself a defender, including his incompetent, stuck-up daughter. What my coach failed to understand was that as much of a girl as I appeared to be—fat blonde curls tumbling from my ponytail, the ribbons in my hair and threaded through my shoes perfectly matching my uniform—I was in actuality a carnivorous monster who wanted to chew up the field with my custom-ordered pink cleats.

I was six.

By age seven, my father had me enrolled in summer soccer camps run by actual adult soccer players, and my natural abilities began to shape into skilled aggression. When fall rolled around, Dad demanded that they put me on a better team with a coach who wasn’t “an inept dumbshit who couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground.” The first game of the season was against my old team. I scored three goals and fouled my ex-coach’s daughter with a perfect ankle-hooking trip that left her face-planted in the middle of the recently muddy field.