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“Pressure’s on.” Sam nodded. “I get it.”
The Sarah Brown situation was constantly looming in the back of Leo’s mind. If Sarah were a real person and not a fictional character in the musical they were putting on, he would hate her. Both the headliner and understudy had conveniently dropped out of their production of Guys and Dolls after casting. The vocal ranges were so wildly different between Sarah and Adelaide, the other female lead in the play, that Leo couldn’t in good conscience snag the understudy for Adelaide to fill the role. He had called some people from the original audition, but anyone who was remotely decent had already found a use for their extracurricular time and was unavailable.
“Sorry,” Leo groaned. “I’m exhausting all my options here.”
“I am but a frog without a princess to kiss.” Sam shrugged, trying to play it off as a minor deal, but Leo knew it wasn’t, despite Sam’s acting skills.
Like Leo, the only reason Sam was attending Fletcher University was to study under Alejandro Moreno. Their professor, a renowned director, had once been called a “trailblazing pioneer in his field” and dubbed sixteenth place in an edition of People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” Sam was headlining Fletcher’s winter production of Guys and Dolls as Sky Masterson, a high roller gambler and the romantic counterpart to Sarah Brown. Without a Sarah, Sam had no one to practice lines or scenes with. Wes couldn’t even be a stand-in because he was busy practicing his own lines as Nathan Detroit. The three of them were itching to be part of a show with Moreno’s name on it again, and Leo especially. This would be his first time claiming the role of assistant director after three years under Moreno’s tutelage. That is, if they could find a Sarah Brown.
“I’m just spitballing here, but what if—”
“If you’re going to suggest the karaoke bar again, I might use myself as a punching bag,” Leo harrumphed.
“Come on!” Sam looked at him with pouty puppy dog eyes.
“No. This isn’t one of your romance novels. We aren’t going to find the perfect Sarah Brown just waiting to be discovered at a bar where everyone scream-sings and slurs their words because they’re sloshed.”
“What if we just go for fun? The new bartender at the Hot Mic is, well, hot. You could let off a little steam?” Sam gave Leo a suggestive pump of his eyebrows.
“Stop trying to set me up with every person that breathes. And you don’t even like women!”
“I can objectively see when a woman is hot and your type. Dark hair? Tattoos?” Sam’s mouth quirked because he knew he was right. That was exactly Leo’s type.
“Fine.” Leo gave in but raised a finger. “But it’s not because of the bartender. This is strictly a work outing that will fail miserably.”
Three
PIPER
Piper’s planner was a lost cause. The pages had dried and stuck together by the end of the school day, but, like her mother before her, she was never without a backup planner. And so she sat at her dining room table in the small bungalow she rented close to campus with a tub of Umpqua ice cream and a set of custom highlighters and calligraphy pens, ready to rewrite all of her events and assignments in a tasteful and colorful display of organization. There was something so relaxing about seeing her entire life laid out on paper. Everything could be broken down into a check box and a completed task. If only her personal problems were that easy.
With the first spoonful of her coffee-flavored ice cream suspended in front of her mouth, Piper’s stomach growled in anticipation. She made it about an inch away from her lips when the glob of ice cream made a break for it and slid off the spoon directly into her lap, joining the other stain from earlier that morning. “Oh, fuck me!”
“I’m sorry, but I am just not interested in you that way.” Piper’s roommate, Thea Galanis, said dryly as she plopped down beside Piper with her own heaping bowl of ice cream, her springy, dark curls bouncing with the movement.
“No one is,” Piper groaned.
“Oh, come on, now! That’s not true. Todd’s just a little bitch. Didn’t I warn you about him?”
Thea was the type of friend who told it like it was. If you were dating a scumbag, she would tell you right to your face to make better choices.
“You did, but he was nice to me.” Piper looked down at her hands with a sheepish expression. “Kind of.”
“Why is being occasionally nice the only qualifier for men now? Did he give you mind-blowing orgasms? No. Did he ever buy you flowers or carry your bag? No. He made you pay for all your dates, Piper. I’m down for splitting a bill, but you know he’s here on his daddy’s money and could afford to pay for your food occasionally. You deserve better.”
“Right now, what I need is for my dress not to look and smell like cream, sugar, and mistakes. I think I’m going to call it and change into sweatpants.”
“I know exactly what to do!” Thea slapped her hand down on the table, and Piper flinched.
Thea was a fixer, and it was both exhausting and wonderful. She would be a fantastic therapist someday. Piper did her best to school her facial expression into something remotely grateful, but all she wanted to do was crawl into a hole for a bit and not come out until the next day. Thea wasn’t the wallowing type. As a matter of fact, their friendship meet-cute had taken place when Piper’s first college boyfriend dumped her at a bar during their second semester of freshman year. Thea, who was sitting on a stool at the counter behind him at the time, had heard every word. She promptly dumped her drink into his lap with an “oops, it looks to me like someone had a little accident” and proceeded to pull Piper out onto the dance floor.
Since then, they had been inseparable. Through every breakup and late-night study session, Thea was a constant. Even after she met Yuri, her boyfriend, Thea made plenty of time for Piper. Piper was still Thea’s emergency contact despite Yuri knowing Thea’s body way more than Piper ever would. (The walls were thin, and they weren’t quiet.) The only thing Piper didn’t talk about with Thea was her parents. After several attempts to get Piper to open up, Thea backed off the subject. What Piper lacked in vulnerability with her friends, she made up for with acts of service. It was the least she could do.
“All right, let’s hear it.” Piper waved Thea on, knowing that she would have no choice but to comply with whatever the plan was.
“Drumroll please,” Thea said dramatically. Piper sat back in her antique chair, waiting while Thea put on a show, using her fingers as drumsticks and rolling her tongue to make a popping drum sound. Thea finally finished when Piper let out an exasperated sigh after waiting entirely too long for her theatrics to end. “We’re going to that karaoke bar I told you about last week!”
“Nope.” Piper popped the P and flipped open the cover of her planner to drown herself in more work. She would have said yes if the reason they were going was for Thea alone, but she knew that was not at all why Thea had suggested it.
