“I’ve just ... uh ... I’ve never felt anything like that before,” I offered, honestly.
He sighed. “Me either, Keri Ann. So I guess that makes two of us.”
S I X T E E N
I couldn’t remember the last time I had spent a day not working on something to do with the house. At about two o’clock —exactly two hours and fifteen minutes after Jack and I had kissed in the laundry room—I was clutching my sides with laughter at stories he was telling me about some of his first auditions. He had almost landed on the proverbial ‘casting couch’ and also once mistakenly ended up at a porn movie audition.
We were lying on the sun loungers by the pool, and periodically we would trade quotes from The Princess Bride trying to one up each other. I was taking my cover up off when he quoted that there was “a shortage of perfect breasts in the world”. That shut me up. I wasn’t going to win that one.
I was getting a very tanned front because I was too nervous to ask Jack to put sunscreen on my back. Despite that, I couldn’t believe how comfortable I suddenly was with him. I still felt like I was plugged into an electrical outlet in the sense that my nerves were aware of him at any given moment, but somehow having kissed him, and even though I wanted to do it again, as soon as possible, I felt like a small pressure valve had been tapped. Slightly.
“So why doesn’t Keri Ann Butler have a boyfriend?” Jack’s sudden question caught me by surprise. I looked over at him. He looked genuinely interested.
“Who’s to say she doesn’t?” I threw back at him, to cover my nerves.
“Your history of kissing, or lack thereof, for one.”
“Maybe I just have a hand-holding boyfriend.” I smirked.
“Sweetheart, I’m not sure what kind of men they make around here, but they’d have to be made of stone to settle for just holding your hand.” My insides flipped. He continued, “So do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Have a hand-holding boyfriend?”
“No.” I sighed. “I haven’t been that interested in anyone. Plus no one’s really asked, but that could also be because I have a protective older brother who I recently found out threatened anyone who might.”
“Seriously? Wow, what did he say when you told him about me?”
“He said, ‘Be careful.’ He could have been referring to me, or in fact, you.” I grinned.
Jack laughed, and then reached out and took my hand. It shocked me into silence. I looked at him.
He just closed his eyes, a dimple still showing, and turned his face back up to the sun.
I swallowed the large lump in my throat. What was he doing?
“So why did you want to act?” I asked to cover my reaction to his gesture. I was sure this was a classic interview question, but I was curious, and the silence was way too heavy with my hand in his.
He looked at me like it was the first time it had been asked.
“What?” I said, defensively. “And no, I don’t already know the answer to that question either.”
“It’s not that.” He shook his head. “I’ve never answered it honestly.”
“Really? Why?”
Jack let go of my hand abruptly, got up from the lounger, and stepped off the edge of the pool into the deep end. I flexed my hand, missing him terribly already. He propped himself up on his elbows as he seemed to consider my question.
“It’s just that I don’t want other people to be bothered. It’s the same reason I keep my mum out of the spotlight. They—other people in my life—didn’t make a decision to become a public figure like I did. Not that I really thought about becoming this famous when I started out. I just wanted to act. I loved it. I love it,” he corrected.
I nodded. It made sense to me. I actually found it kind of honorable that he would try to keep the insanity of his life away from others he cared about.
“So who are the others, apart from your mom?”
“Well, to answer your first question, the person who totally inspired me to pursue this, probably more than I realized at the time, was the headmaster at the school I was at in England. I guess you call them principals here.” He ran a hand idly across the surface of the water. “But Mr. Chaplin was the headmaster at the boarding school I was at. He taught math—or ‘maths’ as we called it—and he also put on these elaborate productions at school that people had to audition for and rehearse for months. We would perform six or seven times for all the parents who wanted to see it at the end of the year. It was usually sold out. They were musicals, mostly.” He grinned at my raised eyebrows. “Yeah, I can sing.”
“Wait, you used to sing in musicals? How come the tabloids haven’t tracked down any of those pictures? Or maybe they have ... Jazz would know.”
“Why would Jazz know?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. She is your biggest fan. She almost fainted when she found out about you this morning.”
A shadow passed over his face again.
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously, you don’t know her, but trust me, she’s been my best friend since almost the first day I moved here, she’ll keep it to herself. Besides,” I added, “if she tells anyone, she’ll have to share you.” I suddenly remembered Jazz was going to come looking for me at my place that afternoon. “On that note, I told her she could meet you, is that okay?”
He slunk down and dunked his head under the surface. When he popped back up, with water streaming down his face and body, I had to quickly look away before I embarrassed myself by drooling or something. He flicked the water from his dark, glossy hair with a quick shake of his head and leaned forward on his forearms again.
“Uh, yeah, I guess so.” He fixed me with a dark look. “But that means I have to share you. That’s not fair.”
Wow. I gulped.
“Do you know how many times a day you blush?” His dimple made an appearance.
I ducked my head in mock chagrin. “Yes,” I mumbled, but I couldn’t help returning his smile. “I can feel it.”
“It’s sexy as hell.”
“Uh ... um,” I stuttered, my cheeks even warmer. “Thank you? I think?”
He shrugged, like it was no big deal. Inside, I was dancing.
“Sooo back to the topic at hand,” I said, when my voice was steady. “You ... you sang in musicals? I’m not sure I can picture that.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t some flamboyant Broadway wannabe. I was shy and young. Mr. Chaplin was always trying to build confidence in kids, not that I recognized that at the time. He was so passionate about getting the kids you least expected and putting them in these parts that built character and confidence and respect from our classmates. I look back on that and realize what he did for me. In fact, what that school in general did for me.”
“Wait,” I said, doing the math and watching Jack carefully. “You said you left England when you were nine, so how come you were in boarding school at such a young age? How long were you there?”
Who put their kids in a boarding school in second or third grade ... or younger? My heart squeezed. There was such a slight tightening of his jaw I almost missed it.
He left the wall and stretched his body back doing a couple of strokes into the middle of the pool. “Oh well, it was just what some people did in England back then, and I wanted to go. We had some family friends whose son was there and loved it. He raved about it one summer, and I begged to go.” He shrugged as if that’s all there was to it and slipped under the water again. Something didn’t ring true about that last part, but I decided to let it go.