The Audition

She made it to the studio with minutes to spare, heart hammering as she checked in. Mike, the sound engineer, led her to the booth.

"Callie's already inside," he said. "She'll be voicing one of the leads. Primary narration is already recorded — today we're just doing the character dialogue between the two romantic leads."

Inside, a woman was already there, adjusting her mic. Callie. Late twenties, elegant bone structure, long auburn hair in polished waves, reserved expression that made her seem a little untouchable. Skirt and blouse, perfect posture. She looked like she was born with a stick up her ass — the kind of woman who probably never had a bad hair day or a single financial worry in her life. And yet the second Dakota saw her, the attraction hit like a slap. Sharp, immediate, and completely distracting. Fuck. Not now.

"Callie," Mike said by way of introduction. "Dakota, you'll be reading opposite her."

"Dakota," she said, offering a small wave, trying not to squirm.

The audition started. They dove straight into the scenes.

"You don't get to look at me like that and then walk away," Dakota read, trying to keep her voice steady.

Callie's reply came smooth and controlled. "Then stop making me want to."

Dakota swallowed, pushing through the next line. "You think this is easy for me? Wanting you this much?"

Callie leaned slightly toward the mic, her tone low and precise. "Then stop fighting it. Let me have you."

The lines got hotter from there — heated arguments that turned into something much more intimate. Dakota's ears burned as she delivered each one, hyper-aware of how awkward it felt to say this kind of thing to a woman she was suddenly, inconveniently attracted to. Every time Callie's voice wrapped around those words — cool, commanding, almost too perfect — it sent a little jolt through her. She tried to focus on the page, on the performance, but her mind kept drifting to the woman across from her. The polished waves of auburn hair. The way her skirt hugged her hips. The reserved expression that made Dakota want to push just to see what happened.

Callie pushed back on one of Dakota's deliveries, her voice cool. "Try it again. Less snark, more surrender. She's supposed to be falling apart for her."

Dakota bit back a retort and tried the line again, the words feeling far too real in the small booth. The attraction and the irritation were fighting for space in her chest, and the need to pee wasn't helping.

Afterward she barely remembered to thank Mike before bolting for the bathroom. She locked herself in a stall, yanked her jeans down, and finally, finally sat.

No toilet paper.

Dakota stared at the empty holder. She could see a pair of expensive-looking boots in the next stall.

"Excuse me," she called, voice tight. "Could I trouble you for some toilet paper?"

A perfectly manicured hand slid a wad under the divider.

"Thanks," Dakota muttered.

"You're welcome."

That voice. Dakota froze. It was her. Callie. From the booth.

Mortified, Dakota stayed perfectly still until she heard the other woman wash her hands and leave. Only then did she finish, wash up, and slip out like a criminal.

Outside, waiting for her Uber, she was certain she'd bombed it. The lines had felt clunky, her voice had wavered, and she'd spent half the audition trying not to squirm. She leaned against the building, arms crossed, already drafting the polite rejection email in her head.

Her phone buzzed.

Dakota stared at the screen for a long second, then let out a short, disbelieving laugh as the Uber pulled up.

Dakota let herself into the apartment and headed straight for the bathroom without even turning on the lights in the main room. The pre-period cramps had been building all day and she was done pretending she could power through them. She ran the tub as hot as it would go, stripped down, and sank into the water with a long, shaky exhale that turned into something dangerously close to a whimper.

The heat hit her lower belly like mercy. She closed her eyes and let her head rest against the cold tile, one hand pressed low on her stomach like she could physically hold the pain in place. For the first time since she'd woken up to that email, her body wasn't in crisis mode. The relief was almost embarrassing.

She could pay rent.

That single fact kept circling back around in her head like a dog that had finally caught its own tail. She wasn't going to have to text Jess some vague "hey can you cover me for a couple days?" message. She wasn't going to have to sell plasma or pick up a last-minute catering shift that would leave her smelling like shrimp cocktail for three days. She was going to get paid to read smutty lines into a microphone with a woman who—

Dakota made a face at the ceiling.

Callie.

She sank lower in the water until it covered her shoulders, the steam curling the loose strands that had escaped her bun. The image of her was still sharp behind Dakota's eyelids — that perfect posture, the way she'd stood in the booth like the room had been built around her. Auburn hair falling in those smooth, expensive-looking waves. The skirt. The blouse. The way she'd looked at Dakota like she was something to be evaluated.

She looked like she was born with a stick up her ass.

And Dakota had still felt it. That stupid, immediate, full-body oh the second she'd walked into the booth. It had hit her so hard and so fast that for a second she'd actually forgotten about the cramps. Like her body had recognized something her brain hadn't caught up to yet. Which was ridiculous. And inconvenient. And probably a sign that she needed to get laid by someone who wasn't going to make her question every life choice she'd ever made.

She reached for the cheap body wash on the edge of the tub and started scrubbing at her arms harder than necessary.

The writing had been terrible, too. Not in a fun, over-the-top way. Just… tropey. Predictable. The kind of dark romance that hit every beat like it was checking boxes off a list. Like lesbians written by a straight woman. The dominant one being cold and withholding. The submissive one being mouthy and secretly desperate for it. The inevitable moment where the tension cracked and someone got pinned against a wall. Dakota had read enough of that shit in her own spare time to know the formula by heart.

But saying those lines out loud, across from her?

That part had been different.

Dakota let her head tip back against the tile again, eyes closed. She could still hear Callie's voice in her head — smooth, precise, a little cool even when the words were filthy. Then stop making me want to. The way she'd delivered it like it was both a command and a concession at the same time. Like she was giving ground she didn't actually want to give.

It had made Dakota's stomach do something complicated.

She shifted in the water, wincing as another cramp rolled through. The heat was helping, but not enough to erase the memory of how her body had reacted in that booth. The low, warm pull low in her belly that had nothing to do with her period and everything to do with the way Callie's voice had wrapped around those lines. The way her eyes had flicked up every so often, cool and assessing, like she was measuring Dakota and finding her… interesting. Maybe. Or maybe just adequate.

Dakota made a quiet, disgusted noise in the back of her throat.

She was doing it again.

This was the part she hated. The part where her brain started spinning out possibilities like some sad little hamster on a wheel. Maybe she's not as straight as she seems. Maybe she's just guarded. Maybe that whole "too-good-for-this" thing is an act. She'd been here before. More times than she wanted to admit. The slow realization that the woman she'd been reading as "maybe a little bit queer, maybe a little bit into me" was actually just… straight. Or bicurious in the most exhausting, temporary way. Or already in a relationship with some guy who "didn't really get her" but who she was definitely still going to stay with.

Dakota had a whole graveyard of those stories. The girl in college who used to hold her hand when they were drunk and then act like nothing happened the next day. The one from the acting workshop who kissed her once in a parking lot and then spent the next three months pretending it had never occurred to her. The bartender who flirted like it was a competitive sport and then got a boyfriend two weeks later like it was the most natural thing in the world.

She was so fucking tired of being the person other people practiced on.

And yet here she was, sitting in a too-hot bath, replaying the way Callie's voice had sounded saying Let me have you like it was something she actually meant. Like it wasn't just lines on a page. Like maybe, if the circumstances were different, she could have meant it.

Dakota pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until she saw stars.

"Get a grip," she muttered out loud, the words echoing off the tile.

She wasn't going to do this. Not again. Not with someone she was going to have to see every day in a professional setting. Not with someone whose entire vibe screamed I have never once had to wonder if I was making things weird for another woman. Callie probably had a rotating cast of very polished, very appropriate men who took her to very nice dinners and never once made her question her entire identity at two in the morning.

Dakota didn't need that kind of complication in her life. She needed a paycheck. She needed to show up, do the job, collect the money, and go home. She did not need to spend the next however-many weeks staring at auburn hair and wondering if the woman attached to it had ever once thought about kissing another girl.

She could control this.

Tomorrow would be different. Professional. Detached. She would read the lines, do the work, and keep whatever stupid, inconvenient spark was flickering in her chest locked down where it belonged. She was good at that. She'd had years of practice.

Dakota let her hands drop back into the water and stared up at the water-stained ceiling.

It was fine. She was fine.

She just needed to get through tomorrow without making an idiot out of herself.

That was all.

The water was still steaming. She reached for the tap with her foot and turned it on again, letting more heat flood in around her legs. The cramps were still there, but they felt more manageable now. Manageable enough that she could think about other things.

Like how tomorrow she was going to walk back into that studio like nothing had happened. Like she hadn't spent the entire audition hyper-aware of every time Callie's eyes flicked toward her. Like she hadn't felt that ridiculous, traitorous pull in her gut every time the other woman's voice wrapped around another filthy line.

Like she wasn't already bracing herself for the possibility that Callie might be exactly the kind of woman Dakota had spent years trying to stop falling for.

She closed her eyes again.

Tomorrow would be different.

She would make sure of it.