He slings an arm around my shoulders. To the casual observer, it wouldn’t look like anything more than two buddies shooting the shit. A little high-testosterone male bonding. But to me, it feels—bigger. Intimate.
He squeezes my shoulder then releases me, leaving me feeling strangely—and uncomfortably—dissatisfied.
“Then we’d better get back to class. Even hockey gods can’t escape the wrath of Professor Frost if they’re late.”
6
Kolby
“Holy shit, dude. Did you hear the news?”
Ian slides into the seat opposite me at the Green Bean, a cup of what looks like his usual in one hand—a double-brewed iced coffee, year-round, even in Burlington in the winter—and a chocolate donut in the other. For a dancer who’s supposed to care about his body, the guy sure eats like crap.
Not that you’d know it from looking at him. If we weren’t firmly in the friend zone, he’d totally be my type. Tall. Leanly muscled. Flexible as fuck. Red hair that makes him stand out in a crowd. I love gingers. So do casting directors. They’re going to go nuts for him when he hits the Big Apple.
I wish I was as sure of my own chances.
“What news?” I ask, not wanting to think too much about the uncertainty of life after graduation. I’ve got almost two years before that happens. Plenty of time to figure out how I’m going to afford to move to New York, which is where I need to be if I want to be on stage. That’s where all the auditions are. And the agents. And casting directors.
In short, the opportunities.
I drag my brain back to the present. I’m genuinely clueless about what Ian’s hinting at. Of course, with him, it could be anything from a new ice cream flavor at Colleen’s Cookies and Ice Cream to a Lin Manuel Miranda master class.
“Courtney heard it from Quinn, who heard it from Josh, who got it right from Dr. Z.”
“Heard what?” I ask, getting a little irritated. I love Ian. Really, I do. The guy has a heart of gold, and he’s had my back since the first day I stepped on the Moo U campus. But sometimes his extra act gets a little bit old.
“The Space Sheep are shooting their next music video here. In Burlington.”
The Sheep are a local band that made it big. Think Grateful Dead meets The Who. I like their music, and it’s great that they’re paying homage to their roots by coming back home to film a video. But I don’t see how that affects Ian. Or me.
But like I said, Ian can get worked up over goat cheese ice cream. And yes, that was a real flavor at Colleen’s for a short time last year.
“Cool.” I take a sip of my coffee. Unlike Ian, I don’t have a usual. I like to mix it up depending on my mood. Today that mood is exhausted with a side of horny. Exhausted because I got a sum total of two hours of sleep last night. Horny because the reason for said lack of sleep can be summed up in one word: Adam. He keeps crashing my dreams, dreams that wake me hot and hard.
All of which clearly calls for something overly caffeinated this morning. Like the skinny mocha latte in my hand, with not one but two pumps of espresso.
“It’s not cool,” Ian says through a mouthful of chocolate donut, spewing crumbs all over his T-shirt. Which, appropriately, has the wordExtradisplayed across his chest in rainbow colors. “I mean, itiscool. But it’s more than that. It’s a fucking miracle.”
I hand him a napkin. “How so?”
He takes the napkin and wipes his mouth, ignoring the crumbs on his shirt. “The video is going to celebrate Pride. They’re transforming Church Street Marketplace into an LGBTQ paradise. They’re staging a parade and everything.”
“When are they shooting?”
“January. I think they’re going for a winter wonderland vibe.”
“Isn’t Pride Month in June?”
He shrugs. “Artistic license.”
“Let me guess. You want me to go stand in the freezing cold and watch the shoot with you. Or even better, they’re looking for extras, and you want to drag me to some cattle call.”
It wouldn’t be the first time. During spring break last year, he made me drive with him to Boston so we could audition to be extras in a Scorsese mob movie. We waited hours in line for the chance to get a split second of screen time hovering in the background behind the stars. Don’t get me wrong, either one of us would have leaped at that chance if we had gotten it. Spoiler alert: we didn’t.
“Yes and no,” Ian says.
“What does that mean?” I drain what little is left of my coffee. I wish Ian would tell me what this is about already.
