The more I tried not to think about him, the more I thought about him.
It was absurd, really. I reminded myself constantly of all the things I didn't like about him. His bafflingly strong interest in football. His utter lack of modesty. His frankly unhealthy obsession with his ex-girlfriend's cats, whom she had left in his care after making good her escape to New York.
But none of this knowledge changed how much I thought about his eyes. His wit. His charm. His intelligence. His surpassing skill as a performer, and his voice, warm and sweet as spiced mead.
I hated my thoughts for writing shitty romance novels about him in my mind, but what could I do? I couldn't get away from him. We were both actors, it was a small town, and there were only so many performance opportunities. My own skill as a performer was not easily dismissed, so we were often cast opposite each other. In our first play together, I had found myself playing a character who was madly infatuated with the character he was playing. I found him charming and easy to work with, perhaps a little overly-concerned with his method, but that kind of dedication to performance was attractive in itself, in a way. It wasn't until first dress that I came to the sudden realization that I was not just acting, but actually madly infatuated with him.
It was the damn pants. The costumer had unearthed a pair of faux-snakeskin trousers, and since the character he was playing was drunkenly full of himself, the pants seemed a natural fit for the role. The pants also were an equally-natural fit for his ass, and he knew it.
After catching myself stealing admiring glances all through the dress rehearsal, I realized with a sinking feeling that I was developing a full-blown crush on this impossible man. I disliked the feeling immensely, as it made me feel powerless and under his control, so I tried to ignore it. When that didn't work, I tried writing sonnets. When that didn't help, I tried remembering how to flirt, as I was rather out of practice. When I'd botched that, too, I tried to avoid him, but avoiding another actor in the same company is harder than avoiding rain in the Pacific Northwest. Failing all of this, I settled on trying to hate him as much as possible.
I was miserable through the remainder of the run of that show, and well into the rehearsal process of the next. Misery, I reasoned, was much easier to deal with than awkwardness. Occasionally, I caught myself smiling too much at him and laughing too loudly at his jokes, but I would withdraw into my script as soon as possible to flee the upwelling of feeling. Rehearsals weren't nearly as fun, and I struggled with learning the role in a way that I usually did not, but I persevered in the practicality of my hatred, carefully hoarding negative facts about him, stacking them carefully as a wall between myself and my feelings for him. He didn't read very many books. He posted too many selfies on Facebook. He always looked slightly anxious in his pictures, with grimacing smiles that never reached his eyes. He spent more money on unnecessarily fancy headphones than the contents of my entire paycheck. It was an admittedly very flimsy wall, but I did my best.
I must have been less than subtle about it, because he took me aside after rehearsal one day, pulling me into the relative privacy of the hallway near the dressing rooms. I inwardly cursed myself for not making some sort of excuse, but I had been too startled by the request to do anything but mutely follow him.
"Look, Sarah." He paused, the corners of his eyes crinkling in thought. "Have I done something to piss you off?"
I'd somewhat expected this question, considering my carefully-practiced coldness towards him. Even so, my prepared explanation sounded lame and flat to my ears. "I'm sorry if I've seemed distant or unkind. I'm just going through a rough patch lately. Thanks for your concern, though, Ben. It's sweet." I turned to leave, prepared to make my escape. This conversation was rapidly headed towards awkward truths I felt were better avoided.
His hand on my shoulder brought me up short. The unexpected contact was difficult to bear. "Are you fucking with me?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
This reaction was far off the script I had written for this inevitable conversation in my head, so my only response was to gape at him and his hard blue eyes. "What?" I asked stupidly.
"During the last show...I mean, did you intend to lead me on?"
I tried very hard to keep the blush from creeping into my cheeks. "Ben, that was just my character. The director asked for all that cleavage."
"The director didn't ask for you to put that cleavage in my face, though. Nor did she ask you to flash me what was frankly a very unnecessary amount of leg backstage every night." Perhaps in response to the furious blush creeping into my cheeks, he amended, "Not that I didn't enjoy it."
