Page 11 of Method Acting

Chase was too busy looking at me, apparently.

“Oh,” he said, giving his head a bit of a shake, then looking at the menu as if he’d never seen it before. “Uhhh. Yeah, iced coffee, double shot, and a club on rye, thanks. Oh, and a bran square with raspberries and a bottle of water.” He rubbed his belly and his eyes caught mine. “I’m hungry.”

Christ.

They paid for their order and I started on their drinks while I pretended not to notice how Chase kept looking over at me.

Jimmy gave him a decent elbow. “Dude, the fuck?”

“I’m just looking at something,” he replied. “Shut the fuck up.”

Tate gave me a quizzical once-over before shooting Chase a what-the-fuck look. I couldn’t hear exactly what he said after that but it was clear they were talking about me.

Because Chase had called out to me across the courtyard just half an hour ago and now he was here, turning his head to look my way.

Well, he did say to leave “convincing people he could like me” up to him.

It must have been convincing because his friends were giving him shit.

Though it was more of a “why him?” kind of ribbing.

Like he could never be interested in someone like me.

I was soooo not his type.

But he was putting in some effort to make it look convincing, so maybe I could do the same.

I put their drinks on the end of the counter. “Jimmy.”

Of course Chase stood up. “I’ll get them,” he said, quickly dashing over toward me.

“Which one’s mine?” he asked.

“The one with your name on it,” I replied.

He grinned. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

I noticed over his shoulder that his whole table was watching us. So I gave Chase half a smile that was more glare than pleasant, and I leaned over the counter so it would look to our audience like we were having a private conversation.

“You might wanna take it down a notch,” I murmured, “or they’ll think you’re having a medical episode.”

Chase laughed and I rolled my eyes, turning back to my work while he took the drinks back to his table.

Mason clocked out and it was busy enough for me that Chase didn’t try to intervene, though I did catch him looking my way a few times.

Jeez. Dial it down.

A while later, I just happened to look up one time to see them leave. Jimmy gave Chase a shove out the door and they laughed as they headed across the street. And I managed to finish my shift and get back to my room and not give Chase Soria one more thought.

Not even when I had my nose in my psych textbook for most of the night. And not even at breakfast... because I definitely didn’t look for him.

And I most certainly wasn’t disappointed when he never showed.

I did have a sociology of theater class that was an actual distraction because, for one whole hour, I didn’t give Chase Soria, or his character Dominic, one thought.

It was a blessed sixty minutes because as soon as I walked out of the lecture hall, I heard a very familiar voice yell out to me.

“Hey, Amos, wait up!”

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