“Besides,” I stammered, gesturing out to the imaginary cityscape in front of us. “This is just the beginning. You speak as if this is the end.”
“Maybe I wish it was,” you said, your voice turning hollow and pained. I looked at you, forcing my face into an expression of concern as my eyes traced your profile, taking in your thick lashes, your perfect skin, the tantalizing curve of your mouth, which was trembling as you stared out into the empty seats, preparing to deliver the monologue that led to the part of the play I’d been waiting to practice ever since I’d taken my script home the day casting was announced. I’d chewed as much gum as I could stomach before we’d started rehearsal, but that had been at least an hour ago. I ran my tongue over the roof of my mouth, checking for any traces of the ill-advised vegan burrito I’d had for lunch.
“I just want to feel something,” you said, looking down at the “water.” “I want to feel something other than homesickness. I want to know something other than sadness. I want to see something besides my mother’s face as she lay dying. I want to touch something other than a sewing needle.” You looked up at me, raising a hand to my face and tracing a line from my temple to my Adam’s apple. I swallowed thickly, working hard to look confused and reluctant instead of crazy with pent-up lust. “I want to feel something . . .” you said again, starting to pull me in by the back of the neck. I started to close my eyes, ready to feel what I’d been waiting to feel since the first day we met, what I’d been imagining while lying in the dark on my slowly deflating air mattress every night for weeks, when—
“Cut!” Ethan yelled from the back of the auditorium. Fucking Ethan. I’d almost forgotten he was there.
You dropped your hands to the lip of the stage and turned away, letting out a slow, shaky exhale. I thought for a second you might be relieved, but then you glared out at Ethan with an expression of unmistakable contempt.
“What the hell?” you said. “I was in the zone. You couldn’t just let me finish my fucking lines?”
“It’s not your delivery, babe,” Ethan said, bounding down the aisle steps two at a time. He had taken to calling you exclusively babe or baby. “I just don’t think we need to rehearse the, um . . .” He frowned down at the script he had bound in a leather binder with a leather strap that tied around the front like something out of the nineteenth century. I was frankly pretty surprised he hadn’t written the thing out with a quill.
“The what?” you demanded, crossing your arms defiantly. “The climax of the whole play?”
“Climax is a strong word,” Ethan said, frowning. “If anything, the climax is when Rodolpho jumps off the bridge after Viola leaves.” Boroughed Trouble ended with a tragic suicide twist, which lent the whole art-imitating-life aspect a pretty creepy vibe.
“But that’s the end,” you said. “The climax can’t be at the end.”
“That’s what she said.” Ethan grinned. It made my skin crawl to think about his hands on you.
“Oh my God,” you groaned.
“That’s also what she said.”
“Please, seriously, stop.” You grimaced and covered your face with your palms. Ethan’s smile disappeared, and I had to admit, when I repressed the mental image of the two of you sucking face by the pretzel bowl, I felt kind of sorry for the guy. Any time he touched you, you wriggled away, and all you did during rehearsal was challenge him. Don’t get me wrong, I agreed with you—Ethan could be pretty pretentious, and the script sometimes read like a fanboy mash-up of his favorite scenes from classic plays. But that didn’t change the fact that he was the director, or that he was directing me playing some imaginary version of him meeting you, playing . . . well, basically just you. All while I fell for you in the process of rehearsing the play about you falling for him. It all would have been weird enough without the kiss Ethan had written into the script, but it was extremely weird with the kiss. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand it.
“I just think,” you said, your fingers—topped with bitten-down, gold-painted nails—migrating into prayer position in front of your lips, “That the kiss is a pretty important part. I mean, she ran onto the bridge to kill herself because her mom died of consumption and she’s stuck in some old-timey sweatshop making Prohibition panties—”