If I'm Being Honest(92)

I walk up to him. “Excuse me,” I say, and he raises his brown-nearly-black—and very nice—eyes to mine. “You wouldn’t happen to know a very unabashed brunette in a medieval dress who recently fled into the bathroom, would you?” I go on.

He grins, obviously finding this description amusing. “Do I ever,” he says. “Why?”

“She’s having a costume crisis,” I reply. “She needs your help—urgently, it looked like.”

He laughs, hard, and I feel like I’m left out of the joke.

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll see what I can do.”

I could go into the theater and wait with Brendan for the performance to begin. But I’m kind of invested in whether this girl’s going to free herself from her tangled dress. I follow the boy into the bathroom.

The girl is contorted, craning her neck to see a knot of straps on her back. The boy pauses in the doorway. I notice the way his gaze drinks her in.

“This looks familiar,” he drawls.

“Don’t even start with me, Owen,” she fires back, a note of humor in her exasperation. “This is entirely your fault.”

“How, exactly?” The boy—Owen—replies. He glances hesitantly around the bathroom and, finding it empty except for the girl, crosses the room and begins straightening her dress, spinning her to face him.

“You’re the reason I’m late.” I catch the fondness in her eyes even though her words are accusatory.

“You’re the one who, uh, insisted in the car we . . .” He blushes, and I do the same, picking up on why this girl who’s clearly in the play was nearly late to her own performance. I wander to the sink and wash my hands very slowly, pretending I’m not eavesdropping.

“God help me,” the girl chides, gently this time. “A year together and you still blush like the first day I flirted with you. No wonder I can’t keep my hands off you.” She runs one down his chest like she feels she needs to demonstrate. Owen throws a glance behind him, toward me. But the girl doesn’t appear to care. “Of course, I might have more self-control if you hadn’t surprised me and flown here from New York just to watch this sure-to-be-disastrous performance. The things a gesture like that does to a girl . . .” She gives Owen a meaningful look. “In conclusion,” she says dryly, “your fault.”

The amusement fades from Owen’s expression, replaced by something softer. “I go to all your performances, Megan,” he says. “And I missed you.”

“You made that very clear in the car.” Megan eyes him, flirtatious and goading.

Owen’s cheeks flame brighter. I find myself liking this girl and her forwardness. I feel like we’d be friends. He gives the dress a final determined yank, and the fabric comes free.

Megan grabs Owen’s wrist and checks his watch. “Crap,” she breathes. “Carly’s going to kill me, or force me to cast only freshmen in my next production. I don’t know what’s worse.” She smashes a quick yet heated kiss to Owen’s lips, then tears herself—a genuine effort, from what I can tell—from him and races from the room.

I’m left alone with Owen, feeling distinctly awkward for having overheard everything. “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just, um”—I scrounge for a non-sketchy excuse—“I didn’t know if you’d need help,” I finish lamely.

“What?” Owen holds open the door for me. “Oh, no, Megan delights in embarrassing me with shameless public flirtation. It’s basically how our entire relationship started.” From the way he says it, I understand he enjoys her efforts just as much. “Sorry you had to be dragged into it. She really does have a shocking lack of sympathy for innocent bystanders.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “She’s definitely entertaining.”

“That’s an understatement.” He glances up at me like he’s just remembered something. “Don’t listen to a word she said about the play being a disaster. She’s going to give a great performance. She always does. I’m taking a gap year to write plays in New York, and I spend every cent of the tips I get waiting tables going to her performances. And it’s not just because she’s my outrageous yet beautiful girlfriend.”

“Who’s she playing?” I ask, finding his compliments of Megan charming.

“The lead. Not that she wanted to, of course . . .”

Intrigued, I feel my eyes widen. “She’s Katherine?”

Owen’s eyebrows rise. “You’re familiar with the play?”

“You could say that,” I mutter.

“Well, you won’t be disappointed. The Southern Oregon Theater Institute was going to put Macbeth on tour. But once the professors saw the depth Megan brought to Katherine in her performance, they changed their minds. I already caught the show at a college theater festival in New York, and it completely changed the play for me.” His expression takes on a wistful quality, a faraway contemplation. It only makes him cuter. “It even got me thinking about writing a new play drawn from Shakespeare in which Katherine has her own reasons for remaking herself.”

I nearly choke on a laugh. “Give me your notebook,” I tell this young playwright who’s probably barely older than I am.