Page 80 of Lessons in Timing

“Robin! Hey, Finch!” I glanced up to see nothing but a big mass of red as Maggie shoved an enormous bouquet of roses in my face.

“Look what yourfriendbrought you.” She smiled at me over the flowers.

Suddenly I wasn’t hot anymore; I was cold and shaky andstressed.

“S-Skyler brought those?” I gripped the pillar, hoping its solidity would act as a good influence on my spine. I hadn’t seen him before the show, but he’d said he would come. Was he still here? Could I catch him?

“Tall, gorgeous brunet?” She shook the roses at me, sending a few petals flying. “He made a run for it, but there’s a card, I think.”

I took the roses from her and dug through them till I found a folded piece of paper; it was a bit ragged, like it had been torn out of a notebook. I flicked it open with one hand:

bloody incandescent job titch.

A.

P.S. I’ll be at the office

I stared at the note for a few moments, then managed a broken smile. “They’re not from him.”

Maggie’s face fell slightly, as if she actually felt bad for me this time. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said—”

“Don’t worry about it.” I grinned at her and took a deep whiff of the roses, trying once again to pretend that it wasn’tdespairflooding my bloodstream.

Why would Skyler bring me roses? That was the kind of thing your millennial employer did, not your totally and completely uber-platonic friend. We obviously weren’t meant for each other—he was meant for Jessie’s Girl, and I was meant to die alone. To suffer in silence with grace and stoic bravery like Olivia de Havilland or Jennifer Aniston.

I struck a pose. “Roses from a handsome man are roses from a handsome man, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “By any other name ...”

“Shut up. Here, hold these.” I shoved the flowers back at her. “I gotta go find Armand and drive him home. See you at Squeaky’s.” We always went out to this crappy all-night greasy spoon after opening night, and this would be the first time I’d be attending as part of themaincast rather than a lowly chorus person. And that meant I could bring people, didn’t it? What if I invited Skyler? And in the residual heat of the performance we—

I shot him a text before I could talk myself out of it.

Backstage, a few minutes later, I changed into my street clothes, trying not to notice how trulyheinousI smelled, then got my bag and bustled out of the stage door. It had justclicked shut behind me—

When someone grabbed the front of my shirt andyanked.

My feet all but left the ground, and next thing I knew, my back was against the wall and I could smell the Jager on Terri’s breath.

I’d forgotten.

In all the excitement and stage jitters and Skyler jitters, I’d actually forgotten Terri’s threat.

“That was quite a performance, Flinch.” He was so close to me, but the shadows meant I could barely make out his face, only the glint in his blue eyes. The world had become limited to Terri’s hand clenched in my shirt, Terri’s shoulders crowding out the light, Terri’s forearm pressing me so hard into the wall some of the joints in my back cracked.

But this couldn’t be happening.

No one was watching now.

And it wasn’t a joke. Terri was going to hurt me,reallyhurt me.

Still, none of this seemed real—I was coming off one of the highest highs I’d ever experienced, and the thought that Terri had been here the whole time, justwaiting—

I didn’t even struggle. I didn’t scream. I just stared up at Terri in utter disbelief. “What are you doing?”

He grinned and drew his fist back like a cartoon villain. “What’s it look like?”

“It looks like you’re stalking me,” I said. He blinked, apparently forgetting to throw the punch, so I kept going. “Like you bought a ticket and watched a two-hour play starringme, for the sole purpose of jumping me afterward and ... and what? What’s yourplanhere, Ter?”