Teacher's Pet Read Free Page A

rehashing your audition to death while praying they liked you enough to see you one more time.
    This was not his high-dive moment.
    This was the hit-the-bottom-of-the-pool-and-momentarily-feel-like-you’re-drowning moment.
    A haiku:
    The pool is so deep
    And I can’t breathe now at all
    Fucking auditions.
    Maybe he should take up swimming again. It could help with his audition jitters, and would probably be better than his poetry.
    The elaborate clock on the wall sliced through seconds at a depressingly slow pace. Two hours had passed since the audition and he was on bourbon number four. Getting drunk before a callback was a death knell, but waiting for this callback was harder than all the others. Also, he was a good drinker.
    Greg Ficcus was a god among playwrights. Heaven Under Fire on Matthew’s resume would jettison him to the next tier of NYC stages. No more off-off-off Broadway venues, no more dinner theaters tucked behind strip clubs or in the shadier parts of town—this was the real deal.
    No more bartending. No more judgmental questions from his friends and family. No more pretending everything was going exactly to plan on Facebook or around other actors during cattle calls. Life as he knew it would be radically different, a thing of beauty, repayment for all the years he had slaved away in shitty jobs for the passion boiling away under his skin.
    And his goddamn phone was silent. It was like the Theater Gods had bestowed their only favor already. Jerks.
    Half the pub tables around him were full of other actors from the audition, nervously chatting over waters and plates of celery sticks. A few celebratory squeals had sounded through the room about thirty minutes prior, but the place had gone quiet since then.
    Happy hour was rapidly approaching, along with the promise of too many people in suits and heels to drown out the sound of his ringtone.
    Matthew scratched his hands across the top of his head and tried to settle his nerves. It wasn’t just that this could be his breakout role; this was his last real chance to finally make it. Bartending at twenty-nine was so cliché and embarrassing. Particularly when someone from the old company wandered through. It made him long for a quick death to pour top-shelf drinks for former colleagues.
    Every student loan payment reminded him of the path he took, the soul-crushing amount of money and time put into a degree that now did nothing more than sit on the floor, too painful a reminder to hang up just yet.
    Living in the city wasn’t cheap and his savings were looking more pathetic than the wilted salad at the next table.
    Maybe Lynn really was too much of a distraction. He had tried his damnedest to keep focused, to let the scene unfurl in his mind and breathe life into it, but she was a thorn in his performance.
    Jesus, he got an erection in the middle of the scene. Way not cool.
    The mere thought of the kiss made his balls draw up tight and he had to carefully adjust himself on the seat to keep from rubbing across the seams of his pants. That kiss was going to haunt him for the next week. At least.
    They didn’t just kiss, they had made out during a professional audition. It was blatantly disrespectful and he’d been sabotaged by his own dick. That was going on his tombstone when he keeled over of the embarrassment.
    But fuck. He would do it again in a second.
    College-aged girls were so exciting, so full of life, in comparison to the hardened, older actresses. They’d been ridden hard and spit out by the theater community for so long, it was like riding a unicycle, falling over sloppily every way you turned.
    Fresh faces were so rare these days, but how he loved them. Matthew wanted to take her unburdened spirit and bathe in it.
    Maybe even fuck her, loudly, in it. Nailed it!
    Lynn was a taste of the fountain of youth and she was sinfully delicious. Except that she cost him his last goddamn audition of the summer, maybe of his life—if he was feeling