The Option Play, page 8
“The image consultant.”
Kellen nodded. “He thought we should go back and behave as if nothing happened.”
“Will people believe it? Believe that we…” I gestured between us, pointing at his big chest and then back at my own. Was it even going to be possible to fake a connection there, between our hearts? It hadn’t been at my house over dinner.
“People will believe anything. They’re unsophisticated and credulous. It won’t take much to fool them.”
Mercy, he thought that about our fellow humans? Well, a lot of them hadn’t been very nice to me for the last few weeks. Maybe they really were unsophisticated and whatever else he’d just said.
Kellen started to cross to the bar but I still hesitated as I watched him get farther away. Just because he was paying me, it didn’t mean I needed to do this. It still felt so weird that this was happening anyway! I’d sat at dinner tonight lying to my parents, pretending that this big, silent guy was my boyfriend, and I’d really underestimated the guilt I’d feel about it. It wasn’t hurting them to think that Kellen and I were together, not really—except that yeah, it would hurt them a lot if they knew that their daughter wasn’t being honest with them. Mercy. I ran my lip between my teeth, thinking.
I watched Karma’s back get farther away from me, closer to the neon circles of the sign. Then he stopped at the curb and turned around. His face was in the shadows as he paused there on the sidewalk, but he was clearly waiting and watching me too.
He wasn’t afraid to go into the bar again, but why would he be? Most people had thought that he was lucky, or that he deserved whatever sexual stuff they imagined that I’d been doing to him that night. Not too many of the comments had been criticisms of him, although there had been a few about lewd behavior in public or about him picking “nicer” girls. A couple people had even said that it wasn’t fair that I was getting all the blame for it—but, of course, I’d been the one who’d ended up mostly naked, so it was understandable. Kind of.
I thought about everyone in the Silver Dollar, how they were having fun together, and I felt excluded and alone. They’d all just stood there holding up their phones, watching instead of stepping up to help me, trying to get attention or famous off my humiliation. And that suddenly made me so mad, I wanted to spit! Why would I be afraid of those people, the ones hiding behind their dumb little screens? I wasn’t, not anymore.
I walked fast across the street, and as I did, I powered off my phone. Not just silenced, dead. “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to go in there and say that everyone can kiss our booties,” I told Kellen.
“Do I actually have to use the word booty?”
I squinted and moved my head, trying to see his expression. “Wait a minute, was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?”
He shrugged and turned to look towards the bar. “We don’t have to wait in the line, do we?”
“You’re a Woodsmen player. Have you ever waited in a line around here?” I held out my hand. “I know I initialed a clause about this in the contract your lawyer sent. We’re allowed to hold hands.”
A car drove by, splashing us with light, and I did get a glimpse of the look on his face. It showed surprise, total surprise. “I suppose that we should,” he said. He put his big palm on top of mine. It covered my whole hand and then slowly, he curled his fingers around, holding on. “We should go in.”
“Yeah. We need to start telling the people in there what to kiss,” I agreed. “Booty.”
“I’m not saying that word.”
I was laughing as we walked past the bouncer and into the Silver Dollar.
Chapter 5
I tried to keep the smile on my face as everyone, every single person in the packed room, turned to look at us, from the bartenders to the girl hanging on a chair and looking like she was close to puking, and including the other girl who was already holding her hair. And it wasn’t an exaggeration that a wave of whispers went through the crowd, because I could hear it even over the music as the conversation faded and died out. I felt like I was on display again, like I was standing here naked. The confident feeling I’d had about booty-kissing was gone, left somewhere behind me on the sidewalk.
Kellen was saying something and I looked up at him. “Huh?”
“I’m assuming you don’t want a drink,” he repeated.
“No. No way.” But I went with him to the bar and the guy came immediately to take his order. And they cleared a table for us, too, and still holding hands, we walked over to it. I kept my gaze just above all the heads so I wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.
“When I was a kid, I had an ant farm,” I remarked as we sat down. It was easy to hear me because the volume of the bar had increased slightly, but it wasn’t anywhere near a normal Friday-night level. “I’m sorry I had that, now. It must not have been very nice for the ants to have me staring at them through the plastic. This makes me really understand their feelings.”
“Ants don’t have feelings. They wouldn’t have the higher-order thinking and awareness to care about you watching them.”
I still felt bad about it. “Before, when we went out as Wonderwomen together, it was kind of fun when people looked at us,” I remarked. “I didn’t mind it. I didn’t go after attention, like some of the girls, but it didn’t bother me. It didn’t seem so, um…”
“Concentrated.” But Kellen was calmly sipping his drink, like the concentrated attention didn’t really bother him very much.
“Do you care? Do you care that everyone’s looking at us?”
“I thought that was why we were here,” he answered, and sipped. “I don’t usually go out,” he continued after a beat.
“Why? Do you have better things to do? Other fun stuff? Or is it because of the concentrated attention?”
He drained his drink and I blinked. That had gone down fast. “I told you that I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me, not at all. Didn’t I say that?” He looked at the ice that was left in the glass and swirled it around. It was quiet enough that I could hear the cubes clinking.
I watched him. “But you think it’s weird. Don’t you? Don’t you feel like one of my poor ants?” He didn’t answer me and I fought the urge to stare back at the crowd, to check and see who was looking at us. Or maybe to stick out my tongue, but they would have posted that, too.
“It was strange coming here,” Kellen said. “I don’t mean this bar, I’m talking about when I got drafted by the Woodsmen. I wasn’t used to the attention at all.”
“Not in college? Weren’t you the star of campus?”
“For the first two years, I wasn’t very good. I was fairly terrible, actually, until I realized that I had potential and devoted myself to improvement. Anyway, the football team was an afterthought at my college. We definitely weren’t stars.” He shook his head. “It was more like people enjoyed looking down on us for spending our time on a sport instead of academic pursuits. They thought it was ridiculous that we were interested in something so plebeian.”
“Something so what?”
“Common. Low,” he explained.
“There’s nothing wrong with football. They were jerks to think that,” I said, and he shrugged. “What about high school? Wasn’t it a big deal there that you were on the team then?”
“Not really.”
“How’d you get started playing?”
“Probably the same way you started in dance.”
“That’s so annoying,” I told him. “You’re really good at avoiding questions, but it’s super irritating.” I huffed an angry breath. “At least look at me when I’m speaking to you!”
But Kellen’s eyes were directed across the bar. “That’s the guy who ripped your dress,” he said.
I looked too, and yeah, it was my ex. Brown was here with his friends, his gang. And so was my friend Shae, along with the Wonderwomen rookie who’d been in all their pictures. She was sitting on Brown’s lap, laughing. I swallowed, noticing that his hand was on her thigh. Upper thigh.
“That’s Brown,” I said, and heard myself issue a big, sad sigh. “He used to be my boyfriend. Did I tell you that? He was pretty mean, but isn’t he cute?”
“I don’t have an opinion. Who’s the girl with her tongue in his ear? She looks slightly familiar.”
But at that moment, I couldn’t answer him, because it was Shae. It was my friend, Shae, she was the one who now had her tongue going down his throat.
“Caitlyn. Hey.”
I turned my head sharply. “Did you just snap your fingers at me? I may work for you, but—”
“Stop staring at them.”
I did. “That woman is my former friend, Shae. She always thought he was so handsome. I guess the two of them have gotten together now that I’m out of the picture.”
“Why’d you two break up? You and Beige.”
“Brown,” I corrected. “Um, we had different goals. We wanted the relationship to move in different directions.”
Kellen nodded. “I see.”
“What? What do you think you see?”
“You wanted to get serious and he ran. Is that correct?”
“No! Well, kind of,” I admitted. “If you have to know, then yes, I wanted to get a little more serious, make more of a commitment to each other. Like, I wanted us to be exclusive, so we wouldn’t see any other people.”
“And what did he want?”
“To keep seeing other people and have me sleep with him, too,” I said miserably. “And now he’s with Shae.”
“You’re with me, aren’t you?”
“Not really. We have a contract that spells out hand-holding! And you’re not relationship material, either.”
“Why the hell not?” he demanded.
“Ok, dirty mouth, where do you see yourself in five years?” I demanded right back.
“No one can predict the future.”
“Don’t be a jerk! Use your imagination and answer the question.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “If I can, if I’m physically able, I’ll still be playing football. I’d like to be in Florida with Teddy Hayes as my quarterback. I’ll have a place on the ocean, with a big gym and access to the beach. I’ll surf every weekend.” He blinked and looked surprised again, and so was I. I hadn’t really expected that he would answer the question and it looked like he hadn’t expected to either.
“Ok, well, that sounds great, and it’s exactly what I meant about you as relationship material. Nowhere in that description of your future did I hear anything about a wife and a family. Even a girlfriend. Even a dog. You clearly don’t plan to settle down.”
“Not all women want to. I could have a relationship with someone from that group.”
“Or you could keep paying me,” I noted, and he frowned.
“If you keep saying things like that, eventually you’ll let something slip. That will make everyone think worse of you and make me look—”
“Desperate and sad,” I filled in.
“What? I look what? I’m neither of those things.”
“Sure, whatever. But you’re right,” I said. “I’ll stop talking about our fake-relationship contract. Oops, sorry, that was the last one. For sure.”
Kellen still seemed a little grumpy but he nodded. “You don’t look like you’re going to cry anymore.”
“Did I look like that?” I glanced toward Brown’s table and caught Shae’s eyes on me. She turned her head quickly and laughed, then stroked his hair. “You witch,” I muttered.
“You’re giving her a real advantage.”
“How so?” I asked, interested.
“She can tell how much you care and so can he. It’s reinforcing their behavior,” he told me. “Any indication that it’s affecting you gives them power, whether you’re smiling or you’re crying. Don’t give them anything.”
“So what should I do? It’s impossible not to look at them!”
“It’s not impossible. I saw all those awards so I know you were serious about dancing. That’s similar to a sport in that—”
“Similar to a sport?” I echoed. “It’s exactly like that! It’s just as tough as football. The Wonderwomen work just as hard as the Woodsmen. Practices, workouts, lessons,” I said. “And almost everyone had another job too, or they were like me and going to school. Wait, why were you putting down dance?”
“I wasn’t,” he told me. “I was trying to say that dancers must be able to push through pain.” Pause. “Maybe not you.”
I refused to be insulted and didn’t bother to answer, except to stick out my tongue at him.
“Am I incorrect? Don’t dancers do that?”
“Yeah, sure. You’re talking about mind over matter stuff, but that’s never been my strength. When I tried out for the Wonderwomen, I almost fell apart because of the pressure. I would have without my friend Gaby and all her support.”
“The pressure to wear an orange bikini top?”
There was so much doubt in his voice, his words had turned into a question. “It’s an orange halter top! And yes, there was a lot of pressure because it’s a serious, hard thing. And I don’t want to hear another word from you about that.” I puffed angrily. “What were we talking about?”
“Change your focus. Do that now.”
Actually, I had almost forgotten about Brown and Shae, what with all the arguing we’d been doing. “What should I focus on?”
“What about the guy you’re with?” he suggested, then stared hard at me with his own focus totally laser-like. “You have some of that salad dressing on your lip.”
“I do?” I’d gone up to my room before we’d left but I didn’t remember checking myself in the mirror. I used his cocktail napkin to swipe at my mouth. “Did I get it?”
Kellen reached across the small table and wiped with his thumb. “There.”
“It’s really good dressing,” I mentioned as I put on more lip gloss. “You should have had some yourself. It would have been much better than plain, dry, tasteless vegetables. And you didn’t have any of the chicken or the ribs, either.”
“I’m a pescatarian,” he told me.
“What?”
His gaze drifted to the ceiling and he seemed very bored. “That means—”
“I know what it means! Why didn’t you say anything before you came over for dinner? We could have had something that you would have eaten, then. A fish, for example.”
He shook his head. “I’m very specific in my diet with salt, sugars and other carbs, and types of fats. I only use certain oils. I had dinner before I went to your house.”
“Seriously? We really could have made something for you, something good that fit with your diet thing.” A burst of laughter erupted from the corner where Brown and Shae sat. I looked over before I even realized that I had and saw them together, her head thrown back and his nose buried in her cleavage. I also saw so many other faces in the bar still turned in our direction.
“No, here.” Kellen put his index finger on my jaw and turned my face back to his. “Change your focus.”
“I just want to go,” I said. “This is too hard.” I shook my head at myself. “No, I have to do this.”
“We can leave in fourteen more minutes.” He showed me his watch, where a timer was counting down. “The average time for a date in an American bar is twenty-three minutes.”
“That’s it?” I asked, then tilted my head and stared. “How did you know that?”
“I researched it. We should at least stay for twenty-three minutes, but you can’t sit there looking like you’re about to cry again.”
“Then talk about something to distract me, like you did before when you said the dumb stuff about dancers,” I urged. “Tell me something about you, about yourself.”
“I didn’t say anything about dancers.” He thought for a second. “All right, I’ll tell you about my college experience. Your mom wanted to know about that.”
“Great! I’ve always wanted to know about life in one of those places.”
“What places?”
“You know,” I said, waving my hands. “The schools they use in movies and they’re so pretty, and you think that all of them are like that, perfect and clean and stone and fancy. They’re, like…”
“Collegiate? I don’t watch movies. I didn’t visit schools before I committed to mine, either. I’d only seen one other American university.”
“Huh.” Another loud laugh sounded and I recognized that it was Shae. I barely managed to keep my eyes forward. “Go ahead, talk,” I told him.
For the next twelve minutes and thirty-nine seconds, which was the time we had left according to his watch, he talked to me about college. Specifically, he talked about his major in college: quantitative economics. He listed the classes he’d taken year by year, and then went into depth about something named “econometrics.” That had to do with modeling, which was not what you would have thought, although he certainly could have been a model in the more traditional sense (wearing cute clothes and walking on a runway to show them off). His kind of modeling was about math and involved regression, which I didn’t think meant people not acting their ages. He also mentioned something called “heteroscedasticity.”
I listened to him talk and tried to ask questions but mercy, I sounded like an idiot. Because to start with, I didn’t even know what quantitative economics was, let alone the hetero-thing. I asked him to say that word several times and nodded like I understood what he meant by it, but really? No. Was it something to do with sexuality? Was he afraid to admit he was gay, and that was why he’d needed to get me under contract? What a shame that he felt he had to hide and pretend to be heteroscedastic.
“And your major is dance,” he mentioned, then said it again, slowly and with meaning. “Dance.”
“Are you making fun of it again? I’m good at it, and it’s what I like to do.”
“Wouldn’t it be like if I’d had majored in football?” he asked, and I didn’t want to admit it but the question made sense. “You should major in something that you could carry into a career, that would give you some kind of direction,” he went on. “What do you want to do after you graduate?”
