Dedication: TotallyAwkwardKid :)

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Chapter 13 - ❝UST? Oh, Honey. It Stands for 'Unresolved Sexual Tension'.❞

"Mmm," Francesca groaned and shivered in delight as she threw her head back against the front door of her apartment, giving Angier better access as he kissed his way down the side of her throat.

"We really need to get going. If you'd have told me earlier, I'd have asked Tate to drop me off sooner." Angier mumbled in-between kisses, nipping lightly at her earlobe and sucking at the sensitive spot just below it that made her go crazy.

"Don't talk about . . . ngh, about Ta—ah," She broke off mid-sentence at a wicked swirl of Angier's tongue, giving him a full-body shiver, "About Tate, now."

"It's Tatum." Angier corrected as he gave her neck one last kiss and pulled back, fixing his hair with a few quick runs of his hand through it.

"What?" Francesca was confused as she adjusted her top and pulled her neckline up so as to not flash everyone the top of her bra, walking over to her room to probably touch-up on her makeup.

"I mean, just call her Tatum. You did it the other day, too. She doesn't like it when someone else calls her Tate. Only I call her that." Angier leaned against the doorframe of his Mate's room as he watched her wipe off her smudged lipstick and reapply it, brushing her hair once again for good measure, too.

Instantly, an image of Tatum's carefree, messy hair after a long day-out to the beach and her widely smiling face without an ounce of makeup popped up in his brain, and he banished those thoughts quickly.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to look perfect and put-together, He chided himself for comparing the two because if you asked him, there really was no comparison.

'Is it because you think our Mate is undoubtedly the prettiest, or the other way around?' His Wolf growled threateningly and Angier remained silent as he didn't have an answer to his question.

He didn't think he could answer that yet.

"Well, she's not here, now, is she?" Francesca muttered without moving her lips much as she also redid her eyeliner, and Angier wondered for a fleeting second when he messed that up.

Or, if he messed that up.

"No, but I am." He raised his eyebrows meaningfully as he turned around to walk downstairs and wait by her car, leaving her to lock up and follow suit.

He wasn't in the mood for another conversation about Tatum.

There was already a wide enough chasm between him and Fran as it is.

He sighed, leaning across the side of her little red convertible, wondering if this is how all Mates felt in the beginning.

Because aside from the physical aspect of it, their relationship was stuck in the middle of the two different worlds they were from.

And no matter how much he tried, the depressing reality was; his suspicion that Francesca was disappointed that he was her Mate, was slowly starting to seem less and less like paranoia and more and more like the truth with every passing day.

~

"What lady is that, which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?" Angier asked to the serving-man. Just as the guy was about to reply, there was a loud slam of something that sounded like a bunch of papers from the direction of Mrs. G, making all eyes turn to her in alarm at her sudden reaction. 

"Love! You're supposed to show love in your eyes, Wellington! Not this awkward whatever the hell you're doing!"

"Sorry, Mrs. G," Angier mumbled as he looked down.

"Let's break and be back in ten minutes!" Mrs. G called loudly as she threw the script down on the table with force, turning around to storm out of the room with a swish of her colorful skirt.

Tatum sighed.

She'd known that this would happen.

She'd known that Angier wouldn't even be able to pull off being in pretend love with her.

And it was only the first scene where Romeo laid eyes on Juliet.

She wondered how much more she'd have to endure as the play progressed.

"I'm really sorry, Tatum." Angier groaned, walking forward and squatting down at the edge of the stage to sit with his legs dangling from it. Tatum shook her head, following suit as she occupied the space to the right of him.

"It's alright, Ang." Tatum patted his arm awkwardly, not knowing if she should say the next part. She then chided herself for acting so stiff with the only person she used to be comfortable with for just about anything, deciding to plow ahead, "I get why it's so difficult for you. I mean, I know we're like family and everything to you, but try to remember that you've pulled it off effortlessly with girls you barely knew."

Angier bit his upper lip as he continued to look down, and so many emotions were warring with themselves in his downturned gaze that Tatum didn't know which one to address.

"I mean, all you'd have to do is maybe picture that I'm Francesca and channel what you feel for her." Tatum shrugged with a dry chuckle, ignoring the way her stomach clenched uncomfortably at the words. The joke apparently fell flat, because Angier did not laugh like she'd hoped he would.

Instead, the crease between his brows deepened. "We're not in love, though."

Tatum ignored the conclusion her mind jumped to at his words. He can't mean what she'd thought he did. "Of course, we're not in love, silly. I'm like a sister, remember? I just told you to pretend that I'm her. No big deal."

"No," Angier's voice was just a breath above a whisper as he swallowed, turning back once again to meet her eyes, his own sapphire orbs ablaze with emotion too intense to decipher, "I meant Fran and I. The Mate bond only points you to the person chosen by the Goddess. The rest of the way is in our hands. And me and her? We're not in love."

"Who's not in love?" Francesca threw her arms around Angier's neck quickly, pressing a hard kiss to his lips just as Tatum dragged her eyes away. Her mind was stuck on what Angier had just confessed, and she didn't know how to feel about this new piece of information.

Because it can either be interpreted as the two of them on the brink of falling, just waiting for that little push.

Or, that the fact that he actually said it meant that he was nowhere near falling because something had happened and he was probably worried about that.

Either way, When Tatum tried to envision the future, all could see was Angier surrounded by his and Francesca's pups as they lived in a house with a white-picket fence in the suburbs-like area of their pack, so she didn't understand why he seemed so worried about it.

Or maybe he doesn't belong with her . . .

Tatum hacked up that evil voice with a mental machete, shocked and disgusted with herself for even considering it. They were soulmates chosen by the Goddess.

And the Goddess can never go wrong, can she?

"Hm? Who were you talking about, babe?" Francesca prompted once again after Angier finally placed a hand on her shoulder to put an end to the eager spit-swapping, looking at him curiously. The man in question seemed blank in response, almost as if he couldn't even bother to come up with a lie.

What's wrong with him today?

Tatum shot him a look too quick for Francesca to have noticed, hurrying to explain, "He meant that it's hard for him to do the love part since he and I are not the ones in love."

"Oh." An undecipherable look crossed her too-pretty features and Francesca nodded slowly, "I get what you mean, babe. I guess Mrs. G should've also taken chemistry into consideration while choosing her leads."

Tatum remained silent at that and to her surprise, so did Angier. She would've thought he would agree happily, but surprisingly, he didn't.

"Ah, Mrs. G is back. Look, barely a handful of days of practice has gone by. You could maybe try and explain to her that you grew up together like siblings. She might see reason and assign a different role to one of you, then." Francesca shrugged nonchalantly at her own suggestion as she looked at the two of them expectantly, and Tatum was stupefied at her words.

She didn't know if the girl was being really serious, because in no way in hell was she giving up a lead role for a reason as shitty as that.

On the other hand, she didn't want to protest out loud and seem like she was too eager to do it either.

It was like a conundrum.

"I . . . I don't know, Fran . . ." Angier muttered reluctantly, looking in between Tatum and Francesca with reluctance and hesitation clear in his gaze. "Tatum really earned her role, so even if what you're saying is possible, it puts her in a fifty percent chance of her being replaced. And I don't want her to be punished because of my incompetence."

Tatum shrugged at the almost questioning look he then gave her, crossing her arms and looking away to show her disinterest in the whole ordeal.

"You're right, I totally get what you mean, but chemistry cannot be forced, y'know? If it's not there, then it's not there. So, just give it a shot. It doesn't hurt to try now, does it?" With that, Francesca pulled him down from the stage and dragged her protesting Mate by the arm down the aisle, to the middle row where Mrs. G had just taken a seat.

Tatum rolled her eyes and jumped off the stage as well, following the two. If Mrs. G was down to changing one of them, she had to say her piece to make sure that the one being changed wasn't her.

"Excuse me, Mrs. G. Can I please make a suggestion?" Francesca asked politely with a sweet smile.

Mrs. Gallegos was a plump Latin-American human woman in her 50s with a beautiful olive coloring and dark eyes to match. She preferred to dress in bright colors that were designed to make her look cheerful, but right then, even that didn't seem to succeed in its task. She looked up from the book in her hand with a tired frown, removing her glasses as she did so, "What's it now, Capulet-girl?"

That's another thing, Mrs. G rarely remembered the names of most of her students. She remembered exactly who was supposed to be playing whom though—obviously since she was the one who cast them all—and instead referred to everyone with the character names.

"The thing is, the two you've cast as the leads, Angier and Tatum, they've known each other forever. Angier is like a second kid to Tatum's parents. Since they're basically like siblings, there's no chemistry whatsoever between them and that's why they're finding it so difficult to do this."

Mrs. G looked between the three of them flatly for a few seconds, before raising an unimpressed brow, "You tellin' me that these two have no chemistry?" Mrs. G gestured between Tatum and Angier with her glasses, still looking at Francesca with little interest.

"Um, yes."

"I don't know if you're seeing the same two people that I'm seeing, Capulet-girl, but from where I'm sitting, I can see a whole lot of UST. I already made note of this on the day of the auditions and that's why we're all here. So before you go around giving excuses for your little boyfriend's lack of concentration, get your facts straight."

Francesca went pale at the harsh tone in Mrs. G's voice, her lips pressed together in a tight line as she was no doubt, resisting the urge to make a snappy remark, "UST?"

"Oh, honey. UST stands for unresolved sexual tension." Mrs. G put her glasses back on and turned her attention back to her book, a clear sign of dismissal.

Tatum rubbed her lips with her fingers as she attempted to cover the smirk threatening to overtake her face, turning away quickly to walk back to the stage. She ignored the way her stomach was fluttering and how her immature inner-self was jumping like a little devil at seeing the girl she envied so much, being told off.

Damn, that was definitely fun, She thought, giggling a little as she took the steps up.

But what she didn't understand was the fact that Mrs. G had just said that there'd been 'unresolved sexual tension' between them.

And from what Tatum had seen, there'd been none of that.

Nope, not even a little. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

So was it projecting on Tatum's part that had confused Mrs. G, or was there really something that Tatum wasn't seeing because of her denial?

The question would always remain a mystery that would haunt her mind and plague her thoughts.

'And me and her? We're not in love.' Angier's words from earlier added themselves to the mix of jumbled thoughts in her head, playing in a loop like a broken record.

And that just accelerated the beat of her heart, sending it thumping in an erratic tempo.

At this rate, her unrequited love for a guy who has already found his other-half would probably send her to an early grave.

She really needed to start doing something about it.

~ * ~

Question about You: How did you end up reading werewolf books?

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