Page 70 of Broken Romeo
“My panties are none of your concern. But Dave hasn’t had any objections tonight,” she whispered back.
Damn. One, two, three, and I am down for the count. It was a comeback I never expected from her and it threw me for a loop.
Her large, cornflower blue eyes watched me intently as she smiled triumphantly.
A reminder that I wasn’t the one here with a date on my arm. I wasn’t the one crashing her friend group after one of her games… or shows… or whatever.
“Hey,” Duncan said, nudging me. “Didn’t you two have some sort of big theater thing this week?”
The waitress came over and set down a Coke in front of Kate that I didn’t hear her order and some more beers for the rest of us.
Kate nodded. “Auditions. For a modern Romeo and Juliet retelling.”
Dave snorted. “Sounds boring.”
She snapped her gaze to him, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were settled right on our busty waitress’s long legs.
Kate’s “Hm,” was short and sharp. Uh-oh. I knew that tone all too well. “Well, I think football’s boring.”
“What?” Dave cried.
Chris laughed and nudged his roommate. “Dude, you gonna let your girl do you dirty like that?”
Brandon rolled his eyes and stood to grab a handful of fries from the center of the table. “Ignore them, Kate. How’d it go? The try-outs?”
“They’re called auditions, numbnuts,” I correct him, to which Brandon responded by flipping me the middle finger.
Kate smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear, shrugging. “I don’t know. I guess it went fine.”
“Fine?” I repeated, incredulous. She had to be kidding. “You were the best Julie in the damn class. Keith would be crazy not to cast you as the lead.”
“Maybe,” she started to say. “But Professor Mc—”
Dave interrupted her, looking back and forth between us. “Wait, you two have class together?”
“That’s his easy A!” Brandon exclaimed. “Remember? He needed a free ride elective.”
Ignoring them, I continued looking directly at Kate. “Seriously. You were phenomenal. No one in the class could take their eyes off you when you were on stage.”
Least of all, me.
She shook her head and nibbled on a French fry. “But McCay doesn’t like me. She’s so hard on me that I doubt I’ll get any leads for a while.”
I tilted my head and after a quick glance at Addison, who had the decency to look sheepish, I leveled Katherine with a look. We both knew why McCay was hard on her… and it had nothing to do with Kate’s acting skills and everything to do with Addison’s little prank.
“McCay is just feeling you out still… after that memorable first meeting you had.”
Kate flung the fry at my face. “You had that memorable first meeting too, and she’s not tearing your performance a new one.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, because my audition sucked. Everyone knows I’m not going to be an actor. Like Brandon said, I’m only here for the easy A.”
Kate blinked, her hands falling to her lap. “You seriously think you sucked?” I opened my mouth to answer her, but she didn’t let me. “You’re an incredible actor, Holden. You’ve got this raw, natural talent that most people in our class would kill for.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right. I’ll probably be cast as Montague number three in the fight scene and that’ll be that. Fine by me.”
Kate shook her head, still staring at me in that incredulous way. “You’re crazy. They’re supposed to post the cast list any minute now, and you need to prepare yourself, Holden. You’re going to be a lead role in this show—Tybalt or Mercutio… or yeah, maybe even Romeo.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you mean ‘Tyler, Mercer, or Remy?’” I threw air quotes around the stupid modernized versions of the Shakespearian names.