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“Because of the kissing?” I ask, only partly kidding.
“Maybe.” Wanda shrugs and grins. “No, not really. A blight wiped out almost all the chestnut trees in the East. A few were resistant.” She pats the trunk. “Some of us stand stronger than anyone thinks we can.”
Is that a meaningful look? Is she metaphor-ing me?
Wanda slides in behind the wheel of her car. “I’ll see you at the Harvest Ball. And again when the art show opens. And at the play. Can’t wait to see what you and Dexter come up with. You’re going to work well together.”
Is that a wink? A meaningful look and then a wink? Wanda Chamberlain might have missed her calling. Chamberlain Trust is nothing compared to Fairy Godmother. I watch her drive away, and I turn down the sidewalk toward my apartment. I don’t get far before I hear my name.
“Wait up a second,” Dexter calls. I stop.
“Are you following me?” I ask, and I hear the flirt in my voice.
“A little. Maybe. Mostly because I wasn’t sure you were going to be able to extract yourself from Wanda’s grip. I wanted to be nearby in case you couldn’t escape on your own.”
“Did you think she was going to take me away?”
He ducks his head. “I would hate it if you got abducted by an octogenarian.”
“You’ve been saving that word up, haven’t you?” I ask.
“Are you impressed?” he asks.
I try not to be, but he’s acting so much nicer than usual, and he was so charming in that meeting. I decide to change the subject. “When Wanda says ‘walk with me,’ she really means it.”
“You two are adorable. You’re just the same size.” Is he blushing? “I mean, the same tallness.” He holds his hands up somewhere south of shoulder-height. Then he lets them drop.
I don’t want this to end with him thinking I’m offended. “Hey, I guess I never told you what I like about your script.”
He grins. “You told them,” he says, and gestures back to the Hall where we had the meeting.
“I wasn’t sure you were listening to me in there.”
He looks back at me, his face surprised. “Course I was,” he said. “I mean, I have to pay attention to the competition, even if it’s just a little competition.” He makes another gesture with his hands to remind me I’m short. Yeah, thanks.
“You really think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”
He shakes his head and gives a little laugh. “Sometimes you have to fake it.”
“Until you make it?” I ask.
“I’ll let you know.”
What does that mean?
“So, the script?” He prods my arm gently with his elbow.
“I love the accessibility of it. I don’t know who half the characters are or what play they’re from, but I feel like I know something about them from the lines you wrote.”
“Mostly I didn’t write the lines,” he says. “Like it says in the introduction, I just lifted and rearranged them from Shakespeare’s plays.”
I glance up at him before returning my eyes to the path we’re walking. “I wasn’t much of a Shakespeare scholar. I have never read one of his plays all the way through.”
“You’re not really supposed to, you know,” he says. “Plays are meant to be watched. Listened to. Not read.”
“No, I was supposed to. Assigned to. Often. And I didn’t. But. Now I feel marginally better about being a slacker in my literature classes,” I admit.
He nods knowingly. “And you still got excellent grades. Good-looking people get away with stuff like that. I should know.”
