Did it?
Theresa made another sound through her pins, apparently in agreement, and Lainie tried to look less appalled than she felt. Did people really see her as being temperamentally compatible with Richard?
Maybe they both needed to re-evaluate their life choices.
She left Chloe to her dreamy gyrations and cut through the wings, doing her best to ignore the sounds of the understudies’ rehearsal taking place on the stage. It made her uncomfortable, listening to someone else reading her part. She started to nitpick her own performance, which was a bad idea a few hours before curtain.
On her way down the stairs to the principal dressing rooms, she almost walked into Will, who was coming up without looking, his eyes fixed on his phone. Probably sexting with the fangirl, she thought, examining her feelings on the subject. She was relieved to find she wasn’t remotely jealous. She wasn’t even angry anymore. There was merely a certain relief at having dodged a bullet, and an underlying shame that she’d ever entered into such a shallow relationship in the first place.
“Whoops,” she said when she trod on his foot. “Sorry, Will. Excuse me.” She went to move past him, and he glanced up sharply from his phone. His large hand shot out and wrapped around her upper arm, bringing her to a halt so swiftly that her feet skidded off the step. She swayed in his hold like a pendulum dangling from a clock and made a noise best transcribed as “Eek.”
Will shoved his phone into his pocket and returned her to an upright position. She would have thanked him if he hadn’t left his hands on her waist, and if he wasn’t looking at her as if she’d just crawled out of a compost heap.
“What do you think you’re playing at?”
She blinked. “I said sorry.” She fumbled around and located her spine, adding pointedly, “I wasn’t the one gawping down at my dirty text messages instead of looking where I was going.”
A faint flush ruddied his cheeks. Bingo. “That’s what this is about, is it? How things ended between us?”
“Technically, things didn’t ‘end’ between us. Not in the traditional sense of the word, where one person decides they want out of the relationship so they strap on a pair and man up about it. But minor detail.” She raised an eyebrow, wondering if his nostrils had always flared so aggressively when he spoke. “To which ‘this’ do you refer?”
“Cut the crap, Lainie. You know what I’m talking about. You get your knickers in a twist about Crystalle and—what? Decide to revenge-bang Troy?”
“Her real name cannot possibly be Crystalle. Have you seen her driver’s license? I bet you a fiver it’s something like Joan.”
“Richard-sodding-Troy.”
“Or Mabel.”
“Would you shut up about Crystalle!” Will blew out through his mouth and pushed a rough hand through his tumbled black hair.
It was funny, really. On paper, Will and Richard would sound almost interchangeable. Hair—black, eyes—blue, build...distracting. Surprisingly fit, both of them, for men who would rather be seen dead than sweating in public. In person, however, they didn’t look remotely alike. Richard’s hair was curly and his face was far more sculpted. He looked like a carved mask she’d seen in the British Museum. Will was pure Calvin Klein pretty boy. He was aesthetically the more handsome, but Richard was sexier. Women would probably want to tack Will’s two-dimensional face to the wall of their office, but they’d rather have a three-dimensional Richard, mussed and sleepy, against their pillow.
Had she just admitted to finding Richard sexy?
She wondered when to expect the remaining signs of the apocalypse.
By comparison, her mind hastily backtracked. Comparatively speaking, when the alternative was Wee Willy and his revolving bedroom door, Richard was...not unattractive.
She had to go. She clearly needed a power nap and a strong coffee before the show.
“We are no longer personally involved, Will,” she said, narrowly avoiding a slip of the tongue and calling him ‘Willy’ to his face. She dodged around his restraining arm. “It’s none of your business who I get involved with.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” he retorted, following her to the bottom of the stairwell. They stood looking at each other in the dim hallway. A door opened and then closed again somewhere down the passage. Will’s breathing was quick and agitated, a loud rasp in an otherwise quiet stillness.
After a moment, he relaxed the tension of his shoulders, apparently with an effort. “Sorry.” He sounded stiff, the apology dragged out of him. “You’re right. You can do whatever you want.”
“Thank you,” she said dryly. “Now, if you don’t mind...”
“I still think you can do better.” Will’s mouth twisted into a grimace, and she was forced to remember why she’d liked him in the first place. “Than both of us, I suppose.”