“He was,” I said. Sulkily. “But he did trip over Cogsworthand knock over the set on opening night, so he wasn’t great at it.”
“So you two really did go to high school together?” she asked. “That wasn’t, like, a cute, manufactured backstory thing?”
Hmm. So she knew that little tidbit of INK lore, did she? Maybe she cared more about my history with INK than she’d let on.
“We grew up basically in each other’s backyards. I was the troublemaker, and Kallum was the kid who always went along with whatever wild idea I had.” (The wildest idea I’d ever had? That we should drive to L.A. and try out for a show calledBoy Band Bootcamp. Sigh.)
“We were sort of like Pinky and the Brain,” I said. “Any trouble we ever got in was always my fault. Luckily in high school it was mostly contained to pranking the theater teacher and the occasional heavy petting sesh on the cast sofa.”
“With each other?” Bee’s eyes were as round as saucers.
I laughed. “I wish.” I’d gone through a big Kallum crush phase, but it’d never gone anywhere. Kallum was pretty flexible as far as heteroflexibles went, but he was never trulyavailable.Starting with Kayla Schechter, he always seemed to be either falling in love, actively in love—or nursing some kind of post-in-love heartbreak.
“It’s hard to imagine Kallum being a theater kid,” Bee said after a minute. “I’d always assumed he’d played high school football or something.”
Kallum definitely looked like a former jock, but what could I say? The man loved to sing and dance. “He was the one who got me started in theater in the first place,” I told her. “Inmiddle school. I agreed to try out forOnce Upon a Mattresson the condition that he let me borrow his Game Boy Advance, and then somehow I made it into the cast. And I ended up loving it.”
Offstage, I’d been just another crappy student with a bad attitude. But onstage, I could be anyone. And when I sang—even silly musical songs that had nothing to do with my actual life—it sometimes felt like the words and the melodies were coming together to express a part of me I would have never been able to explain otherwise.
“Do you still talk to him?” Bee asked, and I didn’t bother hiding my sulk this time.
“Why are you so interested in Kallum?” I asked. My pout was more real than pretend, but the coy little smile I got in return was worth it.
“No reason,” she said, looking back down at her script.
But now her dimple was here to stay. And suddenly I wasn’t so interested in rushing through the reading so I could escape. I wanted to do everything I could to see that smile again.
“Hey,” I said, putting my fingers over the top of her script. “I meant to tell you that you were fantastic yesterday.”
She looked up at me, her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Really? You think so?” she said, and then shoved her face in her hands and groaned. “That sounded so needy. I’msorry.”
“We’re all needy here. Isn’t that why we’re performers and not test engineers for software companies?”
She laughed and peeked at me through her fingers. It was so flipping cute.
“And for real,” I said softly, “you were so good. You’ve got aknack for this, you know? For showing all a character’s corners and edges. No shade on Pearl, but that’s not the easiest task with the source material. And transitioning from theater to screen isn’t something everyone can do.”
God knows I’d had a hell of a time with it myself. It had taken countless music videos and eleventy million photo shoots to learn how to emote with the small, subtle precision that was so contrary to the big acting I’d been used to in theater. My early bad boy persona had been more John Travolta inGreasethan perfectly curated teenage apathy.
“I just...” She shook her head. “I feel so out of place here. This was Winnie’s role. You should be sitting here with the sweet and wholesome Winnie Baker right now.”
“Winnie isn’t my costar. You are. And you’re a fucking scene-stealer in the best possible way. Christmas-obsessed audiences everywhere are going to gobble you up. Five out of five Yule logs. Would costar again.”
She lowered her hands to reveal bright pink cheeks, which she seemed a little embarrassed of. She coughed a small cough, adjusted her script on the table, and then mumbled something that sounded likethank you shut up.
I grinned and nudged her foot under the table. “It’s true. I’ll remind you of it every day if I have to.”
And somehow, I managed to behave for the rest of our mini table-read. Even after she shifted and her knee brushed against mine, and the warmth of her skin seeped through my jeans. Even after she gave me a parting smile that was so big and bright, it felt like summer itself had come to Christmas Notch.
I wondered if she’d smiled at the person she’d spent the night with like that.
I wondered if they’d felt like they could move mountains afterward.
So anyway, I behaved, which was a very good thing, because it wasn’t until I got back to my room that I fully digested the fact that Bee hadn’t mentioned anything about porn or Bianca von Honey when she was explaining why she was here. In fact, no one had mentioned it at all that I could remember—not Pearl or Steph or Teddy.
Which must mean thattheydidn’t know.
Which meant it was a secret.
