“Sounds great,” he said.
I went through the back of the shop and up to my flat above it. It wasn’t just to drop off laundry. I wasn’t kidding when I told Andrew I’d have to take care of myself, and it took all of two minutes to bring myself to climax despite already coming once that morning. Just thinking about sex with him did me in. When I was cleaned up and clear-headed, I sent Andrew a text. Congratulations, you just starred in my quickest jerk off session ever.
His reply came through when I was on my way to get breakfast. I read your text and almost crashed the car.
I dialled his number. “Are you okay?”
He laughed. “Yes, I’m fine. But I still hate you.”
I grinned into the phone. “No you don’t.”
His voice was much softer when he replied. “No, I really don’t.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Look at you, all grinning away to yourself,” Lola said with a smile. “I take it you and Andrew…?” She trailed off suggestively and waggled her eyebrows.
I looked up from the delivery orders I was marking off against the invoices. “Andrew and I had our first fight.”
She stopped, and her smile turned to a look of confusion. “What?”
“Well, I guess it was a fight. It was kind of… I’m not sure, to be honest.”
“But you made up?”
“Oh, yeah,” I answered, slowly nodding my head. “Relationships are weird.”
“What was it about?”
I launched into full disclosure of how the whole night went, from seeing Lance at the bookstore up to me getting out of the cab and refusing to let Andrew walk away.
Gabe nodded sympathetically. “I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go mow down Lola because she’s pissed at me and won’t talk about it.”
“Too pissed off to talk,” she amended, not so gently.
“It’s what relationships are,” Gabe said. “Weird, hard, and a lot of work.”
“You make it sound like a job,” she replied. “Is it not worth it?”
Gabe smiled at her and said, “Lola, my sweetest love, I would endure the wrath of eternal hell in exchange for just one day with you.”
She grinned at him, then looked at me. “See? That is what we like to call a correct answer.”
She gave Gabe a kiss on the cheek and shoved a make-up kit into my hands. “You ready?”
“Yep.” Then I amended, “I am ready for you to drive me to find this Yanni guy. I am not ready to die in a car called Cindy Crawford.”
Lola glared at me. “I hear the buses are running on time.”
I laughed and headed for the door. “Andrew said something similar this morning.”
Pol’s Academy of Acting and Film was small, and if the first college looked like a university, this looked more like a government department office or even a health clinic. It was older, clearly had less-to-no funding, or could have possibly been a volunteer-run class. Even wearing Andrew’s old trousers and a simple T-shirt, I was overdressed. If Yanni had left the first college for this one, whatever the reason, it couldn’t have been good.
The size and administration held one thing in my favour: trying to find someone shouldn’t be hard.
After a quick look around, I found a class roster on the corkboard in the main admin area. No names of students of course, but teachers and the names of classes and the times they were run. I hung around and waited as students came in and out, and class after class finished, but I didn’t see anyone that resembled him. When I’d been there for a few hours, one of the students—a young guy of about eighteen with long hair and holes in his sneakers—took pity on me. “You look lost,” he said.
I gave him my best friendly smile. “I’m actually waiting for someone. I’m not even sure if I’m in the right place.”
He looked around. “Well, this is Pol’s, and all there is to it. It’s not like you can get lost here.”
I laughed and acted a bit nervous. “Do you know a Yanni Tomaras?”
The guy looked at me for a second. “Yeah, I think so.”
I sat back and sighed, giving my best impression of someone who was happy to sit and wait. “Well, at least I’m in the right place.”
Then the guy called out to someone else. “Hey Gary? Seen Yanni today?”
The guy called Gary replied, “Nah, not yet. He’s in at four for improvs, I think.”
I checked my watch. It was half past two. “Okay, sweet,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Sure thing,” the first guy said as he walked out with his group of friends, seemingly not giving me another thought as they walked out discussing the class they’d just finished.
So I waited.
And sure enough, at five to four a guy matching Yanni’s description came in. It was him. It had to be. Tall, olive skin, and green eyes, good looking, despite the sadness in his features. I was just about to stand and approach him when some girl called his name. Yanni. He turned, and they made small talk as they walked into a classroom.