The Weight of Words (The WORDS Series) (11 page)

Watching him chug his beer made my stomach turn. Frankly, so did the smell of the pizza. Despite my nap, I still wasn’t feeling back to normal. I grabbed my coat and mitts, hoping the fresh air would make me feel better.

“Hey, you,” I said to Matt. “Don’t drink too much tonight. We have a date in Swanksville tomorrow. I want you in fighting condition.”

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t be such a worry wart. Have fun at the
thee-ah-tah
,” he added with a mock snooty British accent.

“Oh joy,” I said. “See ya later, dude.”

I ventured out into the darkness, breathing deeply as I walked, filling my lungs with what passed for fresh air in Toronto. Crossing to the other side of Queen’s Park Crescent, I was approaching the front steps of Hart House when my phone vibrated in my coat pocket. Probably Matt checking to make sure I’d arrived safely. I made my way into the lobby, answering as I walked.

“Hi, Aubrey?”

It wasn’t Matt after all. It was Julie.

“Hey, bun-head, you running late?”

“Ha! I wish. I’m not running anywhere except back and forth to the bathroom. I just puked my guts out.”

“You’re kidding! Are you okay?”

“I don’t think it’s anything serious. It came out of nowhere. It’s like a flu bug or something. There’s no way I’m gonna make it tonight. I’m really sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Jul. I’m sorry you’re not well. Thanks for letting me know, though. I hope you feel better soon,” I added.

“Thanks. Can you tell Mr. Shmexy I’ll do the make-up assignment in April?”

“For sure. Don’t worry about that. You concentrate on getting better, okay?”

“Thanks, Aub. I’ll try.”

I switched my phone to vibrate and popped it back in my pocket, turning to scan the lobby again. I couldn’t see anyone else from class. It was only six forty-five and the play wasn’t starting for another fifteen minutes, but we’d been instructed to arrive ten to fifteen minutes early to get our tickets.

I sat glumly on a red velvet bench by the wall, toying with the idea of leaving and selecting the
Much Ado
option as well. In fact, I was standing up to cross to the door when Daniel walked through it, eliminating my opportunity to escape. He saw me at once and wandered over, hands in his coat pockets.

“Good evening, Miss Price,” he said.

And I swear I’ve never used the word before, nor can I remember ever needing to, but he sounded suave.
Suave
, for Christ’s sake.

“Hello, Daniel,” I replied coolly.

“Where’s your Miss Harper?” he asked, scanning the lobby as if she might materialize magically from thin air.

“She called to tell me she’s not well. Probably a flu bug. She won’t be coming.”

An uncomfortable expression flitted across his face. “Oh, I see.”

“Where’s everybody else?” I asked.

“Miss Harper
was
everybody else,” he said dryly.

“What? Only Julie and I were coming tonight?”

“It appears that most of your classmates had other plans for this evening,” he explained. “A certain Kap party seems to have been the destination of choice.”

I suddenly realized how my evening was about to play out.

The two of us.

Alone in a darkened theater.

This was not good.

“Well, here’s your ticket,” he said, handing it to me. “Did you want to check your coat?”

“Um, sure, I guess so.”

I removed my jacket, retrieved my cellphone and the small notepad and pen I’d brought, and jammed my gloves into the empty pockets.

He held out his hand. “Let me take your coat for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a little off balance.

Why did he always have to contradict my expectations? When I expected him to be happy and lighthearted, he was miserable and surly. Now, when I assumed he would be abrupt and irritated, he was kind and considerate. He was beyond confusing.

I watched him approach the coat check. He hadn’t changed out of his ratty jeans, but he was wearing a black, long-sleeved T-shirt instead of the wrinkly, button-down shirt he’d worn today. As he walked back to me, my eyes lingered momentarily over the hole in his jeans, right above his knee. I also noticed the way his shirt clung to his broad shoulders and chest. Lord, he was so hot. If there was a specific recipe for disaster, I felt certain the ingredients were currently lining themselves up quite nicely.

“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing for me to walk ahead of him into the theater.

I gave my ticket to the usher who handed me a program. We were sitting in the tenth row at the aisle. Daniel motioned for me to sit in the second seat, and he claimed the aisle seat. I did my best to angle myself away from him. As with last week’s tutorial, the proximity was overwhelming. Sitting this close, I swore I could actually smell his soap. Or was it his cologne?

Sandalwood
. There’s a word I had been storing somewhere alongside “suave.” What the hell was sandalwood anyway? In the dictionary beside the word, there would probably be a picture of me blissfully sniffing Daniel’s neck.

I snuck a sideways glance at him. He was flipping through the program, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. It was the single most erotic thing I’d ever seen. Recipe for disaster, indeed.

People were gradually filling the seats around us, and we had to stand a couple of times to let people by. Once our row was full—with the exception of Julie’s empty seat beside me—I tried to get comfortable, my left elbow bumping his right one in the process.

I apologized, feeling like a fumbling idiot.

“Not to worry,” he said. Then he shifted in his seat to face me. “You were quiet in tutorial today, Miss Price. I was expecting you to have a lot to say.”

I looked at him, and without missing a beat, I said, “Well, I’ve come to realize it’s best not to have excessively high expectations. That way you’re less likely to be disappointed.”

I turned to scan my program, feigning fascination with its contents. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was still looking at me. When the house lights dimmed and the stage lights came up, revealing a scantly lit scene which would introduce the ghost of Hamlet’s dead father, Daniel cleared his throat and faced the stage.

I kept my body tilted to the right, making a conscious effort not to touch him with any part of my body, when all I really wanted to do was plunge my fingers into the hole in his jeans so I could feel the soft hairs on his leg. Okay, maybe I wanted to feel something more than that, but I would settle for the leg as a starting point.

Focusing on the action on the stage took a superhuman effort. I could practically feel heat radiating from Daniel. Or was that me? I didn’t even know. After about forty minutes of trying to sit perfectly still and refrain from leaping onto his lap to straddle him, I began to feel even warmer. At one point, at the beginning of Act III, he leaned toward me to whisper, “This scene is phenomenal. Misogyny alert, Miss Price.”

As his breath tickled my neck, I shivered involuntarily. Two inches…that’s all it would have taken. If I’d turned my head
just so
, I would have been centimeters away from his divine lips. I tugged at the neck of my shirt and struggled to stay composed.

And then the nunnery scene unfolded. Hamlet hurled insults at Ophelia, and she cowered in fear. As he delivered his line, “I did love you once,” he plunged his hand between the actress’s legs, making her cry out.

Holy hell
.

She whimpered her next line, and he threw her violently to the floor, scoffing at her for ever having believed in his love. Daniel was right; their performance was phenomenal. It was sexy and angry and sad and dangerous all at the same time. I sensed rather than saw Daniel turning toward me. I leaned over slightly.

“They’re fucking incredible,” I whispered. I immediately felt the blood rush to my face as I realized I’d dropped the F-bomb right out of left field. He smiled before looking back at the stage.

That’s when I started to feel
really
warm. This time it wasn’t a
girly-bits-afire-take-me-now
kind of warm. I was actually starting to feel clammy. Then I got a strange sensation in my throat and mouth. Oh my God—I was going to be sick! I stood up, covering my mouth with my hand and clambering across Daniel’s legs to dash up the aisle. I ran to the washroom, making it into a stall with five seconds to spare before throwing up violently.

“Damn you, Julie,” I moaned, steadying myself on the sides of the stall.

I pulled a long stream of toilet paper off the roll and cleaned myself up, hovering over the bowl as I waited for a second wave. When a few minutes passed without further incident, I left the stall and leaned over the sink, soaping up my hands and running them under the cold water. My reflection in the mirror peered back at me, deathly white. The door opened as I was smoothing my hair back, and the usher who had shown us to our seats rushed in.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah, a little wobbly, but I’m okay. I don’t think I left a mess,” I said, gesturing behind me.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “Your boyfriend is outside. He seems pretty worried.”

My boyfriend? Sweet Lord.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I corrected her.

“Oh, well, do you want me to tell him you’ll be out in a minute?”

I contemplated asking her if there was a back door, preferably one that led outside straight from the bathroom, but I only nodded weakly.

How mortifying. I dreaded facing him, but I had no choice. I rubbed my fingers under my eyes, trying to erase the black mascara smudges. No use. I looked like…what was it Daniel had said about himself that first day we’d chatted?
I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards
. I tried to pinch some color into my cheeks and swished my mouth out with tap water. Then I put on a brave face and returned to the lobby.

Daniel was leaning against the wall, one hand in his pocket, the other massaging his temple. I crossed to join him, not exactly steady on my feet. He pushed himself off the wall, meeting me in the middle of the lobby. “Are you okay? Jesus, that came out of nowhere!”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I guess that’s what happened with Julie earlier. You might want to look for some hand sanitizer. I’d feel terrible if you got sick too. Oh, I feel kind of dizzy.” I pressed my hand to my forehead.

“Here, come and sit down.” He led me back to the red bench by the wall. “Lean forward. Put your head down between your knees.” I did as he told me. “Is there someone you could call to come get you?” he asked. I squinted at the carpet. I couldn’t think. “This is yours, right? You left it on your seat.” He held out my phone and slipped it into my hand.

“I don’t know how I’ll get back to residence. I don’t think I can walk that far right now.”

I looked up at him. He was grinding his jaw muscles, casting his eyes around the lobby.

“I guess I could drive you home,” he finally offered with an exasperated sigh.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” I snapped.

“It’s no trouble, Miss Price,” he said, trying to muster a gracious tone. “You probably shouldn’t be alone, though. Is there someone home?”

Matt was at the Kap house. Joanna would be at Stephen’s for the weekend. I scrolled through my contacts and was about to dial Matt’s number when another wave of nausea hit me. I handed Daniel the phone. “Matt. Call Matthew Miller.” I dashed back to the bathroom, my hand clasped over my mouth.

I dry heaved over the toilet bowl a couple of times, but nothing came up. I waited a few minutes, but the feeling passed. Again, I washed my hands and splashed my face before heading back out to the lobby. Daniel was sitting on the bench, staring vacantly at my phone.

“Did you get hold of him?” I asked.

“Yes. He was at a rather loud party.”

“Kap house.”

“Ah. Well, he sounded concerned and said he’d leave right away and meet you back at Jackman within fifteen minutes.” He was quiet for a few seconds before adding, “Is he your boyfriend?”

“Roommate,” I said.
Not that it’s any of your business
.

“Do you think you’ll be all right now? Will being in the car make you feel sick?”

“I think I’m okay,” I said, trying not to snap at him again, certain he was worried I might hurl in his Beemer.

“All right, let’s go.” He handed me my coat, and I reluctantly pulled it on. I was boiling. “You should do up your zipper. You’ll catch your death,” he said, gesturing to the front of my coat.

Okay, Mom,
I thought, but I zipped myself up anyway. We walked without speaking, crossing the paths to King’s College Circle. I must have been visibly shaky, but he seemed to be in his own world, making no offer to support me or prop me up. His car was sitting along the curb near the spot he’d parked in last week when I’d watched him—no, scratch that—when I’d
followed
him after class.