Three Girls And A Leading Man by Rachel Schurig Page A

very
clean, and surprisingly put-together. His walls were not the institutional
beige of most apartments of this caliber; instead they were painted in soft
blues and grays. I wondered if he had painted them himself, and allowed myself
a smile at the mental image of Nate at the home goods store planning his color
scheme.
    I wandered into the bedroom. Nate
had a large queen-sized bed, neatly made up with a blue and green plaid
comforter—another surprise. While I occasionally made my bed while
cleaning my room, I rarely did so on a regular basis. I pictured him getting
ready for work, rushing around in an unbuttoned dress shirt, making some coffee
and grabbing some toast to eat. Then taking the time to make his bed before he
left. The thought made me smile.
    Then again, maybe he had only made
the bed because he knew I would be here tonight.
    I walked back to the living room.
Nate was sitting at his dining table, deep in conversation on his cell phone.
He waved to me as I entered and rolled his eyes a little in apology.
    I walked over to his bookshelf,
examining the titles. You can tell a lot about a person by the books they keep
on their shelf. His was eclectic, a mix of classics and modern thrillers.
    My attention was caught by a
leather-bound photo album on the bottom shelf. I picked it up and went over to
the couch. Opening to the front of the book, I found photo after photo of    Nate smiling up at me. He looked younger in
most of them, and I suspected they were from his high school and college years.
Pictures of Nate with an older couple (his parents?) in front of a Christmas
tree, Nate dressed in a ski suit on a white-covered slope, Nate standing with a
group of guys in shorts around a bonfire. A typical, middle-class life of a
fairly happy and popular guy.
    As I flicked through the pages, I
began to notice a trend. There were a lot of pictures here of Nate with women.
A few looked like they could be friends, or even his sisters. But there were
several shots of reoccurring females, arms wrapped possessively around his
waist.
    Hard
for you to fall for someone, eh? I thought to myself. It sure didn’t look
that way. From this photo album alone I could pick out at least five females
who had almost definitely been Nate’s girlfriends. All within the last few
years.
    It wasn’t that I was jealous. It
really didn’t matter to me who he had seen, particularly not before I had even
known him. But it did serve as a reminder—he’d been around this block
before. However he might act like I was special or different, whatever he might
say about a lack of girlfriends—all of that was possibly, probably even,
an act. A line. Designed to make me feel special and get past my guard.
    As I carefully returned the album
to its shelf, my own phone rang. Not wanting to disturb Nate’s work call, I
headed back towards his room before I answered.
    “Hello?”
    “Hello, Miss Duncan? This is Jenner
Collins.”
    It felt like my heart stopped for a
second before it began pounding much more rapidly then it had been. “Hello, Mr.
Collins,” I said, struggling to keep my voice steady.
    “Please, call me Jenner,” he said
easily.
    “Only if you call me Annie,” I
said, in the most pleasant voice I could muster, all the while screaming on the
inside for him to get on with it.
    “Well, Annie,” he said, “I’m
calling to offer you the role of Jillian in my production of The Curtain and the Window .”
    My fingers immediately went numb
and I was sure I was about to drop the phone. Was this real? Surely I was
dreaming. Jenner Collins—Jenner Collins!—could not possibly be on
the other end of my phone offering me a role in his play. It just wasn’t
possible.

    “Annie?” he asked. “You still
there?”
    “I…I…yes, I’m here,” I stammered,
my throat dry. “Sorry…I…” Pull yourself
together! I ordered. Don’t you dare
blow this.
    “Sorry, Jenner,” I said, my voice
stronger now. “This comes as a pretty big shock