That could've gone better. A lot better. Especially the part where I almost tackled him in the train station.
I forgot myself.
The minute I saw him, every single ounce of emotion came rushing back. It's a wonder I didn't flatten him right to the floor.
He said he's fine, but he's not. He's clenching his jaw so tight it's making mine hurt. His words are forced and guarded. And he definitely doesn't want to talk.
At least not to me. He seems to talk just fine to his girlfriend. Of course, he has a girlfriend. It's not like he'd wait all this time for me. Especially not after I ghosted him. He'd need his head examined if he was still interested in me.
I need my head examined.
I try to glance slyly at him out of the corner of my eye. I'm on the fence about his long hair. It's a different look for him, for sure. There's something else that's different about him too, but I can't put my finger on it. I mean, it's Josh. He looks like Josh. But there's something that's not familiar at all. Maybe it's just the passage of time. I'm sure I've changed a lot since I was sixteen.
At least I hope I have.
I didn't like myself much at sixteen. That was a big part of the reason I ended up at Stagehands Theatre Productions summer intensive camp. My parents, encouraged by my doctor, thought that keeping busy and rounding out my skills would fix all my problems. That if I took a summer off from ballet, I'd be cured.
News flash: I was not cured.
Oh sure, I put some weight back on and stopped obsessing. That is, I didn't obsess about ballet quite as much. Mostly because by the end, I was thinking about Josh.
Josh was the first person I talked to at STP, outside of my roommate, Chrissy McMillan. Chrissy could be easily typecast as "mean girl number one" and would nail it every time. Mostly because she was a mean girl armed with a brilliant smile, adorable good looks, a killer singing voice, and venom in her words.
After her first batch of scathing, backhanded compliments and thinly veiled insults, I went to find the phone to call my parents. There was no way I was going to be stuck in that hellhole for eight weeks, sharing a room with Satan.
"What group are you in?" the voice behind me asked.
I turned, not sure of what he was talking about. "Say what?"
"Are you an actor or a musician? They're two very separate worlds here, and never the two shall meet. Like North and South Korea."
"Well, that's a terrible comparison. People die in North Korea. Or is it South Korea?" I was rambling like an idiot. "The Korea with the mean government. Nobody should be dying here. If they are, we're in the plot of an entirely different movie than I signed up for. I don't want to be in a place where I need the odds to be ever in my favor."
He shrugged. "You know what I mean. So are you an actor or a musician?"
It was my turn to shrug. "I'm neither. I don't belong here, and I want to go home."
He folded his arms across his chest and nodded his head knowingly. "Oh. Mean roommate, right?"
I folded my arms to match his. "No," I scoffed. "Like I would let some mean girl with perfect hair and creamy skin scare me off in the first fifteen minutes. It's like you said—here you have to be an actor or a musician. I'm neither. I'm a dancer. A ballerina, to be exact. I shouldn't be here."
"Then why are you here?" He dropped his arms and leaned on the desk.
"My parents … thought I should be more well-rounded. They thought working on my acting would help with the robustness of my dance performance." It's not like I was going to admit why I was actually there.
"Robustness?" He raised his eyebrows.
"Yeah, I don't know what that means either."
A sly grin spread across his face. "Well, Robust, it was nice knowing you. It turns out, you are an actor, and I'm a musician, and so we are sworn mortal enemies." With that, he did a deep bend, like something out of an old movie. And I should know because my mom was obsessed with old movies.
"You've got quite the flair for the dramatic yourself there … " I paused, not knowing his name.
"Josh. Josh deChambeau. Piano, guitar, and trumpet."
"Leslie. Leslie Ann Moose. Sidelined ballerina."
Josh nodded. "Leslie Ann Moose, I think you are a rule breaker."
