THE SLOWEST BURN ~ wally clark x oc

~ then ~

Three months ago, in January...

WALLY

It's costume fitting day, and she looks gorgeous in the poofy yellow dress Belle wears during the "Tale As Old As Time" song. Even after spending every day going to Beauty and the Beast rehearsals after school, I never get tired of seeing her perform. At this point I could be her understudy. Give me the yellow dress and a wig, and I'm all over it. I fantasize about driving her home after rehearsal, and we're listening to the soundtrack so she can practice, and I'm making her laugh by singing all the other characters' parts in really bad French accents. We'd have a total blast together.

Kaitlyn isn't with anyone right now. She had a crush on this guy Ryan for all of last semester, and the idiot was completely clueless for most of it. Charley had to deal with me bitching about it for weeks last fall, until finally he and I were grabbing pizza from the cafeteria, and I pointed the guy out.

"Gay," Charley said after one look at him.

"No way," I protested. "He had a girlfriend for, like, a year. I have to hear Kaitlyn still compare herself to her." Which is ridiculous. Kaitlyn is one hundred times the catch that other girl is.

"I'm telling you... he's definitely gay," Charley insisted. "What can I say? We have the magical power to recognize one of our own, even if they don't know it yet themselves." He flashed a smug smile, and took a bite of pizza.

I was still skeptical, especially when eventually this guy seemed to start liking her back. He did theater too, so they saw each other all the time when they were in The Glass Menagerie, the fall play.

By the way, I swear to God, I could actually rock English class now after seeing all these plays. Give me a typewriter and I'll give you a fucking A+ essay about the metaphors in The Glass Menagerie. What's that, teacher? Why yes I did notice the correlation between Laura's fragility and the actual glass animals. Boom.

Also, Kaitlyn played Laura, so I was kind of invested.

And Ryan was the goddamn Gentleman Caller, so it wasn't too hard for her to channel feelings of attraction for him onstage. They started flirting outside of rehearsal, but he was still kind of standoffish. I wasn't too worried anything would actually happen.

But then- and thankfully I didn't see it- I heard a conversation about how they kissed backstage after rehearsal. She was upset though, because he didn't text her back for awhile, and then told her he wasn't looking for a relationship, that douche.

They left it at that, but still gave a fucking stellar performance together in The Glass Menagerie. Very metaphory.

But anyway, enough about last fall and the fucking Ryan kiss, and back to today's rehearsal. Kaitlyn is currently waltzing with Aiden fucking Jankowski, who plays the Beast. She's not even into him, and I'm still jealous he gets to hold her. The choreographer taught him how to guide her with a hand on her lower back. I imagine how I'd do it. I'd confidently take the lead, and she'd be helpless in my arms, I just know it.

I watch her gaze into his eyes as he twirls her around. It's the moment her character falls in love with him, but she's so hot that the way she looks at him comes across seductive rather than sweet... Annnnd now I'm daydreaming about hooking up with a Disney princess. Like, I want to tell the Beast and the singing teapot lady to get the fuck out of the castle, and pull Kaitlyn in for an epic kiss. Then I lean down to whisper in her ear what I want to do next, and she'd moan as I tear her dress like it's a romance novel and-

Ugh, stopppp. I need to chill.

...Unless...?

I decide to ditch the end of rehearsal and head to one of my, uh, secret places. I can be alone there to deal with these urges the way the typical teenage boy who's not having sex does: by myself.