When it ended two and a half hours later, Megs thanked him, loaded up her bag, and walked back to her car. In a stroke of academic luck, their topic tonight had required enough mental energy to keep her from stressing about the dinner. But now that she was heading to the restaurant, her heart rate spiked.
She dialed Haley on Bluetooth in an act of desperation to kick her intrusive thoughts.
“Hey, stranger!”
Megs grinned. “How are you?”
“Busy as usual, but you caught me at home early tonight.”
“Good for you. I hope you’re soaking in the bath or watching a trashy reality show or something.”
Haley laughed. “Geez, I haven’t slipped that far. What are you up to?”
“Heading to this dinner for the narration competition.”
Haley gasped. “Oh, no way! Is he going to be there? The author?”
“Yep. Should be interesting.” Interesting was putting it mildly. Any famous person she’d ever met had been a head case. She could only hope that Oscar’s quirks wouldn’t make the night painful.
“K, you have to call after and tell me everything.”
“I will, but I doubt there’ll be much to tell. The whole thing is way more intense than I expected, and I don’t think I’ll be able to stay in it while taking courses and moving at the same time.”
“Don’t you only have tomorrow and next weekend left for the certification?”
“Yes, but Oscar’s events are on the weekends, too. And, in a strange twist, half of the people on the finalist list are apparently people Oscar knew as a young adult.”
“How do you know that?”
“Long story, but the professor that helped me record my audition is a final—”
“Hot guy from the coffee shop? The one you went to get burgers with?”
Megs groaned. “I should not have texted you details.”
“Wait, is he teaching that class you’re in? The one you wanted to drop?” Haley’s voice defied gravity by rising higher with each word.
Megs didn’t answer. Hearing Haley intimate the details of her past few weeks made her wonder ifshewas the one on a trashy reality show.
Haley groaned. “Oh, Megs. He is, isn’t he? That’s why you wanted to drop the class, isn’t it?”
“No! I wanted to drop the class because I didn’t want to spend three hundred dollars I don’t have.” She still didn’t know how she was going to come up with that.
“Nope, no way—you like him. I can tell by the way you’re getting defensive.”
Megs growled in frustration. “You’re impossible, you know that?”
“And you have a crush. Which, you absolutely should. He was adorable.”
“Can you not make him sound like he’s a toddler?”
“I knew you were thinking about jumping him right there in Green Mountain, that’s why I—”
“I was not!”She was. She absolutely was, with his hot glasses and collared shirt.
“—why I left,but it turned out he did the jumping for you.”
Megs let out an exasperated sigh. She was sweating. This was not the distraction she was hoping for. “And now he’s my professor and he barely looks me in the eyes, so we’ve come a long way.”
