Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 159976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 159976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Prince Paris is in his penthouse somewhere in the city and horns honk in the distance, beyond the park, as Romeo’s hair whips in the wind next to me.
My friend. I walk out to the stage, stand in the middle, and close my eyes.
My best friend. The true other half of his soul.
I swirl around the stage, Mercutio’s famous monologue rolling off my tongue, because I’ve had it memorized for years. Mercutio is large—a one-person party—and she dominates every scene she’s in, the coat spinning with me, my head tipped back, and my eyes still closed as the character slowly swells in my stomach.
“This is the hag,” I go on, feeling my eyes grow wild with fire as I gaze at my friend, “when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.”
I sweat, inhaling and exhaling hard. “This is she.” I shout. “This is she!”
“You’re good,” someone calls out.
I freeze, my breath stopping, and then I whip around, seeing Callum Ames standing behind me. He wears fitted black pants and a dark blue Polo, all of his dusty blond hair flopped to one side.
I narrow my eyes. “Better than you.”
He grins, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I’m white, rich, and male. I’ll succeed no matter what.”
“You’re male,” I say. “You’ll succeed no matter what.”
He has zero interest in this play and not an ounce of talent. Why else did she give him this role?
He cocks his head, studying me. “Do you really think that’s what stood in your way?” He steps toward me slowly. “Don’t you think Lambert would’ve given that role to say…Clay, if she’d asked?”
I unbutton the coat but keep my eyes on him as he continues to move closer. Callum and Clay deserve each other. Both rotten human beings who won’t realize the snake in the other as long as they distract themselves with how beautiful they are together.
Callum continues, “I have no doubt you’ll pull yourself up out of the swamps and truly live a life that makes you happy, Liv, because you deserve it,” he says, stopping a few feet before me. “You do. You’re better than us, and don’t think I don’t know that.”
I’m glad.
“But it won’t be here,” he tells me. “And it won’t be soon.”
I remain quiet, letting my eyes flit left and right to make sure he’s alone. He always seems to travel with backup, and while he’s never tried anything, he will.
“Why do you think Clay hates you so much?” he presses but doesn’t wait for an answer. “Because she knows this is the last time that she’ll ever be more than what you are.”
“She was never more or better.”
“She would’ve gotten Mercutio,” he retorts.
I clench my teeth, and I know he sees it, because his smile grows.
He’s right. They wouldn’t have said no to her, or probably anyone else at this school.
And I can lie to myself all I want and say that I need this part to get some experience under me before I apply as a Theater major in college, but the truth is, I’m hungry. I want to be seen before I leave this fucking place.
By my brothers. By this school. I can’t leave Marymount or St. Carmen a nobody.
Someday, I’m going to be a voice to others and relay how I barely had any friends. How Clay Collins made it so I never belonged here. How her mother renovated the fucking locker room showers three years ago so I didn’t ogle their naked daughters.
“Do you want the role?” he asks.
I lift my eyes to his.
He tips his chin. “It’s yours.”
“If I consider your offer,” I add the unsaid, because I know exactly where he’s going with this. We’ve had this conversation.
But he just laughs quietly, dropping his gaze and inching closer. “Oh, you’ve had time to consider it,” he taunts. “Now, I need an answer.”
I gave you my answer.
“She’s pretty,” he whispers suddenly.
I pause.
“Soft, blonde, young... Lips that taste like a milkshake, and that’s not even half as good as the taste of her tongue.”
My stomach coils and knots, wanting my boot in his face. Picturing that entitled smile covered in blood.
“And she’ll want everything you do to her,” he says.
I toss the coat on a nearby chair and start to move around him, but he steps in front of me and pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket, holding it up to me.
“You do this,” he says, clarifying. “And I will get you this part.”
He hands me the paper, and I hesitate, not for a second indulging his offer, but my curiosity has the better of me.
Unfolding the paper, I see it’s a check. From Garrett Ames.
To the school.
In the note, it reads For the theater department.
I stare at the twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation which, I assume, is Callum’s angle here. Lambert gets some play money for next school year if she lets me have the role I want. And Callum will take care of it, if I give him what he wants.