I bit my tongue and smiled. “I hope so, too.”
“Okay,” I said to Olivia as we got ready for bed a little later, digging through the pile of clothes I’d dumped on the floor and unearthing a pair of boxer shorts to sleep in. “Did it seem to you like Kristin’s gonna strangle me with a pair of pantyhose if it turns out I’m not as good as you guys?”
“What?” Olivia asked, pulling her T-shirt over her head. All her clothes were already folded neatly in the bureau. “No, why?”
“I dunno,” I said, grinning at her across the room. “You find me bashed over the head with a platform sneaker, I wouldn’t look too far for the culprit, you know what I’m saying?”
“Oh, stop,” Olivia told me. “You’re gonna be fine.”
There was enough of an edge in her voice this time that I looked at her curiously. “Hey, crabby,” I said, twisting a hair elastic around a messy bun to sleep in. “You okay?”
Olivia sighed. “Yeah,” she said, sitting down on the mattress. “Sorry. Just nervous, I guess.”
I nodded; I got it. After all, this had been her dream as long as either one of us could remember, and it was real now, our first rehearsal just hours away. Of course her nerves were kicking in. “You’re gonna be fine, too,” I promised, climbing into my own bed and pulling the unfamiliar covers up. “This is us, living our lives forward!”
Olivia smiled at that, flicked off the bedside lamp. “Junia would be very proud,” she agreed.
A few minutes later, I heard Liv’s breath get deep and even across the room. I waited for sleep myself, staring out the hermetically sealed window and watching the moon creep across the unfamiliar sky. But the longer I lay there, the more uneasily I found myself replaying my short conversation with Liv in my head. I didn’t have a Plan B if I crashed and burned in Orlando. It didn’t matter whether I belonged here, really: I had to make this work or go back home.
Sleep wasn’t coming, that much was obvious; my stomach growled, reminding me that all I’d eaten for dinner was a few handfuls of fat-free popcorn. Finally, I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of denim shorts and a T-shirt, then let myself out of the apartment as quietly as I could.
It was after ten now, but still hot and sticky, the sweaty concrete smell that all of Orlando seemed to have hanging heavy in the air. Cars whizzed down the wide, busy street beyond the parking lot; across four lanes of traffic was a strip mall housing a grimy-looking Kmart and a liquor store, plus two empty storefronts like a pair of missing teeth. Most of the people who lived in this complex were college kids, a fact evidenced not only by its cracked facade and the beer cans and cigarette butts floating in the pool, but also by the huge bank of vending machines at the near end of the parking lot.
When I got to the bottom of the steps, I saw there was a blond guy about my age already down there, balancing an armload of Gatorades and chips in the crook of one elbow while he punched the keypad with his opposite thumb. I kept my distance while he finished up, arms crossed warily over my chest. The Coconut Palms didn’t seem particularly unsafe to me, on top of which this guy didn’t look like a serial killer—cargo shorts and a crisp white T-shirt, immaculate Adidas shell tops on his feet—but I wasn’t an idiot. In the harsh white glare of the parking lot floodlights, his hair was a messy yellow-gold.
I’d planned to wait him out, but he was taking forever, adding a couple of chocolate bars and a package of pretzels to his vending-machine haul. Without entirely meaning to, I sighed. The guy looked up and saw me, his expression turning from surprised to embarrassed, a sheepish grin appearing on his face.
“Oh, gosh, sorry!” he said, stepping aside immediately. He had a nice smile, I could give him that. “I didn’t see you there. Me and my roommate, this is how we grocery shop. Here you go. It’s all yours.”
“Thanks,” I said, edging past him and digging a dollar out of my shorts pocket. Up close he was taller than me by nearly a foot. I rubbed my crumpled dollar back and forth against my thigh to flatten it out, then fed it into the machine, which spit it right back out immediately. A pair of grubby, homeless-looking cats eyed me dubiously from the curb.
“That one’s tricky,” the guy said from behind me. He’d stopped a few feet away, lanky arms still laden with junk food. “You gotta sweet-talk it a little.”
“I got it, thanks,” I said, sounding harsher than I meant to.
“Sure thing,” the guy said, nodding earnestly as I tried again with absolutely zero success to get the machine to take my stupid dollar. I sighed, picking at the corners of the bill to straighten them out, feeling a hot, irrational embarrassment over the crappy condition of my money.
He must have been able to read my mind, or more likely I wasn’t being particularly subtle, because he set his stuff down gently on the curb and held one big hand out. A tangle of brightly colored friendship bracelets looped riotously around his wrist. “You mind if I try?” he asked.
Something about his general bearing—like, here was a person who was used to getting what he wanted, who had no reason to expect otherwise—made me want to say no to him, to struggle it out on my own. But it was late, and I was hungry. “Be my guest,” I said.
He held either end of the dollar and rubbed it back and forth over the corner of the machine for a minute, then fed it into the slot with almost surgical precision. The hair on his arms was a pale golden blond. Of course the dumb vending machine took it right away this time, beeping happily like it was a robotic dog or something and he was its master.
“Thanks,” I said, stabbing at the buttons on the keypad until the machine whirred to life and a Twix bar chunked to the bottom. I bent down and snatched it out.
“No problem,” the guy said easily, scooping up his vending-machine groceries. The back of his shirt rode up a tiny bit, revealing a strip of tan, smooth skin. “You live here?” he asked.
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re a stranger,” I pointed out.
“Sorry,” he said immediately, that same dopily sheepish expression crossing his pretty face. “You’re right, that was invasive. I didn’t mean it. I’m Alex. I live up in two-two-eight.”
I nodded, tearing into my Twix bar and taking a huge bite, swallowing without hardly bothering to chew. “Dana,” I allowed, after a moment of consideration.
Alex smiled then. “Dana,” he said, like he was committing it to memory. “Nice to meet you.”
I smiled back; I couldn’t help it. “Nice to meet you, too.”