27
MIA
IT'S BEEN A LONG but fulfilling day at school, our second- to-last week of term, and I’m on the last leg of the night shift at Petra’s Bistro. The dinner rush is over, and I’m polishing tables, dreaming of what I’m going to spend tonight’s tips on. Maybe some mojitos at the Uni bar with Annie, seeing as it’s Friday. We can compare the amount of homework reading we have to get through between now and Monday. I have the Pedagogy of Acting manual and a play by Chekov. She probably has the existentialists or something.
“Mia?” I feel a shake on my shoulder. It’s my co-worker, June.
“Some guy over there, looking for coffee, but he wants it from you.” Her eyebrows are raised to full height, somewhat accusatorily. We both hate complications on Friday evenings.
I pull a face. “Where?”
She jerks her thumb back toward the tables in the corner obscured by the fat Corinthian pillars.
I crane my neck to see around the nearest pillar ,and my jaw slackens. This isn’t some random guy. This is the one and only guy.
Jack.
I stumble back and grasp onto the booth seat. “What exactly did he say to you?”
June gives an impatient shrug. “Wouldn’t take my order, wanted you to.”
There’s a split second when Jack notices me and his whole body seems to let go of its tension. I clutch at my chest where a heaviness is squeezing the air out of my lungs. Then, mechanically, I start to move. My legs somehow manage to get me to his table without buckling under me. Regret and excitement are warring for dominance in my head.
“Hello,” I say when I’m about five feet away.
The whole world seems to hold its breath. His so-familiar blue eyes sparkle as they search deep into mine. My gaze trails from his beautiful face down his neck and over his broad shoulders. He’s tanner, his hair has grown a few millimeters. His eyes have that same intensity, but his forehead and jaw are more relaxed. His chest still fills out his casual white cotton shirt to perfection. What did I expect in four months? It’s not fair that he looks so good. He reaches up to his glasses and adjusts them—a familiar nervous tic. “Hi, Mia.”
I nod dumbly. Nothing can prepare you for a moment like this, hearing that rich, deep voice again.
“Coffee. You wanted coffee.”
He waves vaguely at the cup, then shakes his head and motions for me to sit down opposite him.
I slide into the booth and sit ramrod straight, tucking my feet under me. I put the coffee jug on the table, something we’re not supposed to do, and wring my fingers in my lap, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t just drop in on a whim.
“I don’t expect anything…” His voice croaks. He coughs and tries again. “I just wanted a minute of your time, Mia.”
“You got it.”
“Right.” His gaze slides to something under the table. He reaches down and pulls out a wad of paper, which he then places on the table. It makes the whump of heavy document meeting wood.
“What’s this?”
“The script.”
He doesn’t need to tell me which one—his vulnerable glance at it tells me everything.
“OK.” I flick a stray hair off my face. “Did you come here to give me this?”
He slides it over the table to me. “Can’t trust the mail these days.”
“Huh.” I read the familiar title on the cover page: Aliens in Distress. Why the hell would I want to read this? But my gaze trails farther down to the author name. Jack Palmer. My gaze darts up to his face again.
“Just read it, Mia. And when you do, picture yourself as Seela.”
I push it back toward him. “I’ve enough homework this weekend.”
“For school?”
I nod.
The light in his eyes warms. “How’s that going?”
“Fine. But you didn’t come here to talk about school.”
He frowns. “Correct. I came here to give you this.” He nudges the script another inch toward me. When I fail to react, he shifts his chair and says, “I should go.”
I watch every flex of his muscles as he shrugs on his jacket, throws way too much cash on the table, rises, and weaves his way through the tables and out the door. I remain seated, frozen in time. All that’s left is the lingering, pine-fresh scent of his cologne that whisks me right back to Islas Las Aves.
Staring at the space he vacated, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. My heart is drumming like I’m on amphetamines. How could he crash into my life as if it was a normal thing to do and then whoosh just vacate it again? What kind of mindfuckery is this anyway?
Slowly, I flick to the first page of Act 1. Is this what he’s been doing since we last saw each other? What does it mean?
“You taking that tip?” June asks in a shrill voice by my shoulder.
“Uh…no. You have it.”
Last thing I want is Jack Palmer’s money.
“If you insist.” She reaches across me and pockets the notes. “Come on, let’s finish up and get the hell out of here.”
***
I HOLE UP IN Annie’s student apartment for the weekend and spend most of it reading, interspersed with a trip to the store, cooking and basic-level cleaning. The script meanwhile sits on Annie’s coffee table like a magical object sucking all the power out of the room, but still I persevere and get all my homework done first. I don’t want to go unprepared into Professor Wilcox’s Pedagogy of Acting lecture on Monday—I’ve too much respect for my teacher and the subject to allow that to happen. Also, I refuse to let this movie—or this man—derail my life again.
But once I do start reading, I’m smitten with Jack’s way with words. The pages flip by quickly. He’s transformed the movie into something funnier, wittier, and subversive but in a subtle way—it can be read on two levels. The banter between the sisters reminds me of Thelma and Louise. I could play either role and have a ball acting it out. But I lean toward Seela—she seems uniquely written for me, which I suppose she is, and I can easily imagine Janet playing the more phlegmatic Sola.
John Carter is a much more nuanced character now, with anti-heroic tendencies coming to the fore. Unlike the last cardboard cut-out, this version of Carter is someone I can actually envision the sisters Seela and Sola falling for.
“How is it?” Annie asks, peering over her Four Faces of Moral Realism. “Did I hear you chuckling over there?”
I sigh happily. “Damn good, that’s how it is. I had no idea he had this in him.”
“Well, they do say ex-actors have the know-how to create great scripts. It’ll be you next.”
“There must be some truth in that, because this here makes me want to leap onto a stage and start acting! If only this were the version we’d taken with us to the island.”
Annie wags her finger at me. “Is he throwing temptation your way? You’re meant to be studying.”
“Don’t worry, I got this,” I say in a breathy voice. “I’m not the mess I used to be when I met him first. I’ve learned how much I don’t know and weirdly, that’s given me confidence in myself.”
“Humility being the first step to self-assurance,” Annie says, sagely.
“What’s the second?”
“Uh, acceptance of one’s limitations.”
“So much fun,” I say wryly.
She nods and slips an old receipt into her book, closing it over, like she’s settling in for a long conversation. “What will you do about Jack? I mean, he’s kind of proved himself by coming back to you. By doing this.” She points at the script pages strewn across the coffee table. “It’s all for you.”
My chest buzzes with a happy feeling but I’m too cynical to believe her. “He wanted to transition to writing anyway. But yeah, I’ll call him on my next term break to let him know what I think of his work.”
“You’re going to make him wait four weeks?”
“I probably need more time than that, but yeah.”
“Then what?” she presses.
“Well, I’ll decide then. And when I do, it’ll be a choice, not an act of desperation.”
She’s quiet for a moment, chewing on this, as Annie does. “Choice is always good, Mia. Make the right one for you.”
***
TWO MONTHS LATER, on the Saturday morning after my mid-term exams, I’m standing outside Jack’s apartment block, script under my arm, shivering with nerves. Before I can entertain any second thoughts and run the hell away, I punch his doorbell. Now or never. I put way too much effort into my outfit and makeup to turn back now.
The buzzer sounds, and I can enter without him asking who I am. This way, he’ll be even more surprised when he sees me ,and I’ll get a blast of the raw emotion on his face when he opens. I push through the main door.
On the seventeenth floor, I traipse out of the elevator and slink up to his door. It’s closed, so I rap on it. There are muffled voices within. I cringe. What if he has someone sleeping over? Why didn’t I think of this beforehand? Oh God, I’ll die. I’ll run and never come back.
The door swings open, and I register a mop of unruly blond hair. It belongs to a man with a cute face and a fabulous body, clad in white, like a young Liberace or a freaking angel. OK, he’s actually gorgeous, and I don’t know any other man who can rock white pants, but he’s not Jack.
“Umm,” I say.
“Wait, I know who you are,” Blondie says with a frown that suddenly makes the family resemblance clear. “You’re Mia!”
I nod. “You’re Felix.” In a matter of split seconds, I feel we’ve already built a rapport.
“Come in.” His face breaks into a cherubic grin, the kind he’s probably used all his life to get his way with stuff. He cocks his head backward. “He’s in there being all mopey on his computer. Please, take him off my hands.” He holds the door open wide.
“Do my best.” I slip in past him.