Page 55 of First Impressions of You

“Really?” There’s no judgement on his voice, only pure curiosity.

I smile despite myself. “No. I want to be in a movie adaptation of a book. There’s something so exciting in knowing there are passionate fans eagerly waiting for the movie.”

“It doesn’t scare you? The expectations they might have?”

“My turn,” I remind him. “If you don’t have a dream role, do you have one you’d hate doing?”

“I’d never do another kids’ show like School Hallway,” he says bluntly, the answer ready and loaded. He leans forward, placing his elbows on the table. The distance between us significantly shorter while I get more restless. “Did you watch School Hallway?”

I scoff. “You really are that conceited, aren’t you? No, Winter, I didn’t.”

His question reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask for a long time. “Why does everyone call you Davis?”

“Because that’s my name.” I give him a pointed glare. He sighs. “I was seven when I first started on School Hallway, and kids can be pretty mean at that age. They’d make fun of me because my name was Winter. I got tired of the puns and jokes, so I started going by Davis. Once the director and EPs started calling me that, everyone followed suit. I’ve been Davis ever since. In public, at least.”

I open my mouth to ask him why he introduced himself as Winter to me, but he shakes his head. “My turn. What made you move to the US?”

“I wanted to study acting.”

That’s the short answer, but that is all he is getting. He glances at me, knowing there’s more to it, but he doesn’t insist.

“Why did you choose me for this exercise?” My question catches both of us by surprise. Asking it feels dangerously close to talking about yesterday, and neither of us seems eager to do it.

“Emily told us to form pairs. Didn’t you hear her?”

“I heard her fine. But you didn’t need to pair with me. Seriously, why me?”

“Because I had to,” he argues. “She said she wanted us to get to know our scene partners better. You know damn well she came up with this whole thing because of us.” He leans forward again, meeting my gaze. Those amber flames dancing in his eyes and making me hot. “Even if I didn’t need to. What if I just wanted to?”

I feel like I’m walking on a tightrope. A soft breeze could threaten my balance. I shouldn’t have asked that. I shouldn’t have opened this door. It’d be too easy to jump right into a conversation about yesterday, and our plans to forget all about it would go up in flames.

“My turn,” he says, adjusting his stance in the chair once again. I brace myself, but then he does a one-eighty, changing the topic completely. “What made you want to be an actress?”

“I, uh…” The question catches me so off guard I stutter. He doesn’t hurry me. He doesn’t show impatience. He just waits.

I’m not sure what to say, so I spit out the most mediocre answer. “I like acting.”

Even I know this is a cop-out, so when Winter cocks his head at me, I make sure to hold his stare.

“It’s an answer. An honest one.” I use his words from before, even though they’re not one hundred percent true.

He takes a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. “Alright, your turn.”

“What made you want to be an actor?” I return his question.

“I didn’t,” he confesses so quickly I’m not sure he really meant to say that. Even he looks surprised by the words that come out of his lips. He scratches his stubble, then rests his hands on his legs.

“I remember doing these plays at my parents’ house,” he continues, his gaze lost in a memory far in the distance. “I’d get my sister, and we’d put on a show for them right there in the living room. I was the older one, but I’d always let her take the lead. Somehow, I always ended up being the mailman, the one pulling her invisible chariot, or her son.” A tiny smile appears at the memory.

“I loved acting, playing different people, imagining different lives so much that when my father asked me if I wanted to try doing it at a special place with some cameras around, I felt like I’d just found a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.”

I watch him perfectly still. The air has shifted between us. I don’t dare say anything. It feels like we’re under a spell that might break if I move so much as a finger, and for a reason I can’t explain, the last thing I want is for it to break. His story is eerily similar to mine. I can almost see myself playing the same way with Olivia in my parents’ living room.

“A year later, School Hallway premiered, and I became a professional actor.” I wait for him to continue. I see there’s more to the story than that, but he doesn’t, and I don’t insist. In the last ten minutes, I’ve learned more about him than I did the whole time we’ve known each other.

I’m not sure what to say next, so I just nod. There’s more I want to know. I want to ask if he liked it. I want to ask what he meant when he said he didn’t want to be an actor. I want to ask if he regrets it. In the middle of it all, I forget to be scared about the topic of yesterday coming up.

“What really made you want to be an actress?” he asks again, but this time I feel compelled to be more honest in my answer.

---