Page 5 of No Interest in Love

“Don’t make me throw something at you.”

I bite my retort. When Shay threatens something, she means it. I’m grateful she hasn’t threatened any ball chopping yet. So I roll over and snap off the chick flick, which is only about halfway through. I know how it’ll end, though. They all end the same. Miss Leading Lady and Mr. Kickass Lead get together after he apologizes over something stupid he did.

“Hey, speaking of…” Shay says, breaking my train of thought. “You need to run over your lines.”

A folderflumpson my bedspread, and I ignore it. “I’ll get right on that…tomorrow morning.”

“No,” she says, as expected. I reach for the sheet to pull it over my head, but she’s quicker, ripping it from the mattress altogether. “Now.”

“Patience really isn’t your thing, is it?”

She lets out an impatient sigh, proving my point, but I don’t call her out on it. I know she’s making me work because it’ll probably take me all damn week just to get all the lines and words in the right place in my head. But we don’t say it out loud. We never do. She doesn’t coddle, which I appreciate, but she doesn’t get frustrated either. Despite our polar opposite personalities (I’m way more fun than she is), we mesh well work-wise.

“The studio already knows you can do comedy,” she says, referring to the zombie parody I starred in. “They need to know if you can do romance.” She picks up the script she knocked from my bed and holds it out. “Honestly, I’m curious if you can do romance too.”

I can’t tell if she’s just making an excuse to make me work so late or if she really means it. But I take the papers from her outstretched hand anyway and stand up. “Oh, I can do romance. It’s one of my natural talents.”

She rolls her eyes and goes to turn around, but I pull on her wrist. Her body bumps against mine, all her right parts lining up with my right parts, which surprises me some because she’s so much shorter than I am.

I keep my eyes intently on hers, leaning down and pushing our comfort zones. Hell, if I can act the part with Shay, I can act it with—

“Um…no,” she says, setting her small but firm hands on my chest. “You’re not practicing with me.”

“Then who do you suggest I practice with?” I drop my arms, giving her space, since I’m not acting anymore.

She looks around the room as if some genie woman will appear and grant me a line partner. When her eyes land on the corner of the room, she tilts her head, ponytail hitting the bare skin of her shoulder, then marches over and grabs…

“A lamp? Really?”

“If you can make me believe you’re in love with the lamp, you can make me believe you’re in love with anything.”

She sets it in front of me and then bounces on her bed, lying on her stomach as she pulls out another copy of the script. Those front-desk people must be really accommodating.

“You’re serious.” I laugh as I adjust the lamp to a lower height and tighten it back up. It’s still taller than her, but probably the same height as Carletta (in my fantasies. I don’t actuallyknowhow tall Miss Sure Thing is. That information is easily accessed, but my interest in her hasn’t been fully piqued until just recently). “You want me to kiss it too?”

“Were you planning on kissing me?” she says with a hint of superiority in her voice. I give her a grin over the lampshade.

“Did you want me to kiss you?”

“Are we doing that thing where we answer a question with a question? Because don’t you know I’ll win?”

Damn it, she’s got me stumped on a question to fire back at her, so now I’m the one rolling my eyes and going, “Yeah, yeah.”

She smiles in victory and looks back at the script. “I’ll be the lamp’s voice, if that’ll help.”

“Probably not.”

“It’s always the guy who chases the girl,” she says in a complete monotone, jumping right into the opening line. I hurry and glance at the script so I can hit my cue and make this lamp’s wires short out with my mad romantic skills. Go figure—she chose the scene that I have the least amount of lines in. “Even when the girl makes a massive mistake,” Shay keeps reading in a flat voice. I can see why she didn’t go into theater.

I close my eyes and try to picture the scene with Carletta. Miss Sure Thing. Try to fast-forward my mind to Friday, when I’ll be doing this for real.

Shay keeps reading Carletta’s lines. “The guy runs after her and gives one of those really embarrassing speeches. But I couldn’t letyoudo that…I’m the one who messed things up. So this is me chasing after you. This is me giving you a really embarrassing speech. Because after everything we’ve gone through this week, I didn’t want to risk you…notchasing me.”

A crunch pulls my eyes open, and I catch Shay chewing a very large bite of the green apple she’s eating. I try not to laugh and push myself into the zone.

“You did mean what you said,” I say, but Shay doesn’t start her next line. It’s her silent way of saying I did something wrong. Letting out a deep sigh, I give the script a much better look this time. It’s too late for this shit.

“You did mean what you said,” I say again, brows pulling inward. Shay takes another loud bite of her apple, but otherwise stays just as quiet as before. Damn it. The words on the paper start to fuzz, probably ’cause of the chlorine residue on my contacts. But it says the same damn thing.

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