Shut it.

I pushed it away and felt the happiness.

We had already started to figure everything out, and when we looked at a calendar and compared the dates, we were stunned to realize that I would have to leave for New York in ten days.

Ten days.

We began to plan. First, I was pulled out of the showcase. We called my scene partner and explained, and being a true professional, he was happy for my new job and wished me luck. Holly knew another actor that could step in for me and partner with him, no problem.

Second, I needed a place to live. Holly called an agent she knew well in New York who worked a lot with stage actors and they assured me that they could find something temporary near the theater. Until then, I would be staying at a hotel.

Third, I had a house that I hadn't even moved into yet. I had most of my things in storage and the rest at Holly's. The contractors were almost finished with everything. In fact, Chad had given me a move in date of early next week. I would move in just to move back out again.

Most of the new furniture had already been ordered and was due to begin arriving tomorrow. Chad agreed to sign for all deliveries and I would worry about placing the furniture later, as long as they were moved into the right rooms.

Finally, I had to tell the Brit.

It wasn't as if we had known each other that long, and while yes, we seemed to be getting along famously, there had been no declarations. There had been no awkward conversations or uneasy confessions. We hadn't defined anything, simply because there was nothing to define. We were at the very early stages of whatever this was, and there really was nothing more to say.

Sure Grace, it's indefinable. Stop thinking about him for ten minutes, even five minutes. You can't do it.

It was true. He had gotten inside the walls and wasn't budging. Whether or not this was too early, this was going to suck.

Later that night, I had finished dinner. Holly was out with a client and I had the house to myself. Jack was working on his reshoots and I had missed a call from him earlier. His voicemail was sweet. I might have listened to it three times.

"Hey, Crazy. I have no idea what time I'm going to get out of here, probably pretty late. Lane, back off...no, you don't know her...oh, piss off, will you...sorry about that. Do you want me to come by tonight? It could be after two. Let me know. I don't want to wake you. Is it crazy that I want to see you, though? Ah, Nuts Girl...right then. Speak to you later...it's me, George, by the way." Click.

It's me, George, by the way...funny I did want to see him, no matter what time it was. Now that I knew I had ten days, I seemed desperate to see him as much as possible. I found myself being drawn to my laptop. I still had not Googled the Brit. It was time.

I started with images...nice. He really was so pretty. A lot of the expressions in all his pictures were somewhat weird. He did have a lot of pictures with that signature smirk, that Johnny Bite Down that I found impossible to resist. And why would I, really?

Then I moved on to the fan sites...there were a lot. Then I You-Tubed his ass. I watched his interviews, I saw his paparazzi shots and I saw the videos fans had made about him. I even watched interviews from when he was in His Better Half, which was the small independent film he had shot before being cast in Time.

As I watched, I became more and more sad. He was so freaking great. He was exactly the same way in real life as he was in all those interviews. He was so adorable with the press. I could tell he was really nervous but very honest.

I had no idea he had such a fan base. I had no idea these stories were as popular as they were. He'd had a nice respectable career up until now, but once he was cast as Super Sexy Scientist Guy? He really was about to be huge.

What the hell was he doing with me? Was he with me? Did I want him to be with me?

Of course you do.

Ah, and here was Jack out on the town. Mostly he was photographed with other scruffy hipster guys, all with ball caps as well. Did I miss the memo about ball caps? Then a few pictures with a brunette...wait a minute, there were more than a few with this brunette, and on separate occasions.

I found one with a caption.

"Newly cast Time hunk Jack Hamilton and actress Marcia Williams still refusing to acknowledge their relationship." Huh. Curious. Well, it's not as if he didn't have a past before me. I mentally pushed this tidbit away and resumed my cyber stalking.

It was late. I ran through the shower quickly, just in case Jack did come over. I put on the t-shirt that he had left behind; it was huge on me. I slipped under the covers and watched Golden Girls. I sent him a quick text before succumbing to sleep.

Hey, George by the way, yes. Definitely come over.

Gracie ***

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was being cradled to a warm chest and kissed repeatedly.

"Hmm? What?" I asked stupidly, opening my eyes.

"Shhhh, go back to sleep, Grace. It's just me," I heard my Brit say. I smiled through my sleep.

"Hey."

"Hey, yourself," he whispered, turning me on my side and pressing me into his nook. His hands slipped under my shirt and he ran them up and down my back. He kissed my hair and started to soothe me back to sleep.

"How did your reshoots go?" I started, but he stopped me.

"It's late. We can talk in the morning...go back to sleep," he shushed me again. This time I listened. I drank in his scent, my own personal S'more, and drifted back to sleep.

The last thing I heard him say was my name, whispered with contentment.

3:17 a.m.

I woke up hearing a phone vibrate on the nightstand. It was on Jack's side. He rolled towards me, away from the offensive sound, still asleep as it vibrated even louder.

"Ugh," I mumbled, crawling over him to turn it off. The sound was driving me crazy. I was laying across his chest, trying to get to it. In his sleep, his hands came up to my breasts and he muttered, "Fantastic."

I smiled through my own sleepy haze. He really did love my boobies. I grabbed at his phone and punched at random buttons to turn it off. The room fell blessedly silent.

Yawning, I started to put it back on his nightstand.

His nightstand?

I was putting it back on the nightstand, when I saw that he had gotten a text. Angel Grace and Devil Grace fought for 1.7 seconds...guess who won?

I opened the text, sent from "M".

Hey, where did you go? You disappeared.

I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye...

Marcia Dammit.

Chapter Seventeen.

I did sleep that night, but it was a thin sleep. I tossed about, not caring whether I woke him up or not. But he slept peacefully, totally knocked out.

I thought about what that text might have meant and I went through all of the likely reasons why this girl-the same one he'd been photographed with and publicly questioned about the nature of their relationship-would be texting him at such a late hour. There were many reasons, and most of them were innocent.

I, of course, chose to focus on the not-so-innocent.

Jack had left this Marcia in a bar somewhere after she blew him in the bathroom. Jack had left this Marcia in her bed after fucking her senseless and then telling her he was going to take a piss, but never returning. Jack had left this Marcia at a party, surrounded by all the other naked women he had schtupped that night, neglecting to say goodbye to her personally.

But in the end, I had to let it all go. He owed me nothing, we'd known each other for only weeks and I was leaving.

Of course, what I already knew about him told me that nothing like that had happened. I didn't really honestly think that he had been with anyone else, not in that way.

Still, I would like to meet this Marcia. If for no other reason than to stop referring to her in my head as "this Marcia".

I looked at him, slumbering quietly next to me, his body warming my bed. His arms were wrapped around my waist. His hands were on, as was quickly becoming tradition, my breasts. And I knew that he didn't want to be anywhere else.

Which was troubling because soon all this fantastic was going to have to end. And as all true Scarletts do, I decided to think about that tomorrow. I snuggled back into his arms and tried to put all of this out of my head.

Like I said, I slept, but it was a thin sleep.

I was up before Jack and decided to go for a run. I left him a note: George, I went for a run, be back in an hour. Coffee is downstairs.

If you wait to shower, I'll join you. Then, you know, we can be all kinds of naked.

Gracie I almost wrote "Love," but I changed my mind at the last minute.

Chicken shit.

Ain't nobody here but us chickens.

As I ran, I thought about how to tell Jack I was leaving. I knew he'd be happy for me and would realize what a tremendous boost this would be for my career. Hell, this would make my career. And we could work something out, right? I mean, he was crazy about me...at least, that's what it felt like. He'd still want to see me when I was back in town. And he'd probably be doing press in New York. We could get together then, right?

Who are you trying to convince?

Then I thought about working with Michael. Shit, this was going to be a nightmare. I knew that I could handle it, I could be a professional. A professional that wanted to remove his balls and wear them as earrings.

Gross.

Obviously, there would need to be some kind of air clearing ceremony, or at least some kind of ass kicking. But as the writer, he had some say in who was cast, and he must have been OK with working with me. Of course he was, he wasn't the one who was left with the smashed up mess of a heart.

I ran faster.

When I got home, I noticed that Holly's car was in the driveway. That was weird. She never came home during a workday. I let myself in the back door off the kitchen and heard her talking to someone. Jack must have been up.

I rounded the corner, ready to start kissing on the Brit, when I saw who she was talking to.

"Hey, Grace. Good to see you again."

"Michael! Hi! Holly, look, it's Michael!" I said, surprised into the defensive.

"Yeah, I thought it would be a good idea for the two of you to talk, ya know, hash things out," Holly said, offering me some coffee, obviously as a gesture of peace.

The air clearing ceremony would be starting earlier than I'd planned.

I took a moment to really look at Michael; yesterday all I could see was red. He was the same guy I had gone to school with. If anything, age had made him better looking. Curly brown hair, sweet face, deep brown eyes. I remembered those eyes. He was looking at me expectantly.

"Grace, until I talked to Holly, I didn't realize there was anything to hash out."

"Well, I'm not surprised," I started, walking towards him with my finger pointed straight at him. "You left my apartment, never saying a word about what happened, and then all summer you-"

"Uhm, guys? Let's be constructive here. Grace, why don't you take him out on the terrace and you guys can talk there. You don't want to wake our house guest," she hinted heavily, reminding me that Jack was still asleep upstairs.

"Humph. Whatever. Come on, O'Connell," I huffed, taking my coffee and the chip on my shoulder outside. He followed with a twinkle in his eye and a wink at Holly. I saw them both.

Once outside, I turned on him.

"So, let's get this out now and then not speak of it again, shall we?"

"Fair enough. Why don't you start by telling me why you're so pissed about something that happened so many years ago?" he asked, sitting in a lawn chair. I took the seat next to him.

"I don't know. To be honest, I didn't know I was still so pissed. But when I saw you yesterday, it brought all that rejection back and it just slammed into me," I answered, feeling good to finally be able to unload this on him.

"Rejection? What are you talking about? Is that was this is about? I watched you date countless guys, most of them jerks, all through school. And then you jump me at a party, I foolishly tell you how I'd felt about you all those years, and then when I don't instantly propose the next morning, you go back to treating me like your little buddy."

"My little buddy? You were out the door before I even had the sleep wiped out of my eyes! And then you were such a dick to me the rest of that summer!" I yelled, angrily brushing a piece of hair away from my eyes.

"Grace, did it ever occur to you that when I woke up that morning, after wanting to be there like that with you for three years, that I panicked? I mean, come on, you're Grace Sheridan! The fact that you were even interested in me was beyond the realm of possibility! And then when you invited me back to your apartment...oh man, Grace. That night was, well, amazing." He sighed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees in a way that was so familiar to me.

It was like ten years faded away instantly and we were sitting on the campus quad, arguing about Brecht and Stanislavski, like the pretentious theater brats we were. Or arguing about whether to use the fifteen dollars we had between us to buy the new "Toad the Wet Sprocket" album, or keep us in pitchers and chicken wings for two nights.

"If you felt like that, why did you leave? And why did things get so weird for us?" I asked, feeling a wave of nostalgia pass over me that was so strong I could almost smell the Drakkar.

"Because I was twenty-one. Because you were twenty-one. Who knows, who remembers? Because we were idiots." He laughed, and I felt myself begin to relax.

We stared at each other and I saw him, really saw him. I saw the boy I remembered, and now I saw the man he had become. The face was the same, but different somehow. More full, and the facial structure was stronger. His face was a little careworn and the laugh lines that were there, even in college, were etched a little more deeply. His hair was still curly and the eyes full of mischief. He was still the funniest guy I had ever known.

I thought about what he said. Did I treat him like a "little buddy" after we had sex? Maybe, out of self-preservation. And our friendship had cooled so quickly after that.