“But that will be like three a.m.”
He shrugged. “I’ll be up.”
She grinned. “Okay, yay!” She opened the door but paused before actually leaving. “Come to the party if you want. It’s going to be in the lobby of the theater.”
“Did you just invite me to your party?” He made a show of acting shocked. “Did you just, of your own free will, invite me somewhere?”
“Once. I invited you somewhere once. Don’t let it go to your head.”
He wanted to kiss her goodbye.
Holy shit. He wanted to kiss her goodbye.
He didn’t, but it was a close thing. She slipped out and left him alone to contemplate the paradox of how someone’s mouth could be so sharp and so soft at the same time.
Chapter Fifteen
Hey. It’s Law. You want to have your cast party at the bar on Thursday?
Uh, what? Maya looked up from where she was doing a little tweaking of the set. Looked out at the empty seats. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like she had an audience who could help her interpret the text.
Maya: That’s a really nice offer. Why would you do that?
Law: Because I’m a nice guy?
Maya: No you’re not.
Law: Because I’m a patron of the arts?
Maya: No you’re not.
Law: Okay, forget it. I just thought you’d have more room to spread out, and you wouldn’t have to get the party catered if it’s here.
Was this because they’d kissed? Was he going to start being nice to her now? She didn’t know how she felt about that. She didn’t want things to get complicated, and with him, nice meant complicated. That kiss had been the result of football-related excitement. Maybe a little bit the result of the slight thaw in their feud, but that was it. It didn’t mean anything.
Law: Anyway, half the town will be at your party, so this way I’ll actually get some business.
Ah. That made more sense. This was a self-interested move on his part. But it would also save her a lot of money.
Maya: Sure, that sounds great. Thanks.
Law: First round of drinks on me.
And dang, he was back to being nice.
It had been a long time since Maya had been this nervous. She always felt a little twinge of anticipation before a show, but it was usually excitement more than nerves. It fed her rather than paralyzed her.
But as she peeked out at the packed theater on opening night, she almost passed out. There were the usual town denizens. Her parents and Rohan were in the front row. Behind them sat Nora and Jake and Sawyer—Eve always helped with costumes for Maya’s shows, so she was backstage.
And all the old meddlers. Her heart swelled.
But aside from all those folks, amazingly, there were also about a thousand people she didn’t know. The box office take as of this morning had been her highest ever, and from the looks of things, they’d had same-day takers for the unsold seats.
She motioned for the cast and crew to huddle up. “We have a full house.” A full house! That had literally never happened. The old theater was bigger than the current demand for it. There were murmurs of excitement, and Holden looked a little green around the edges.
“I know this afternoon was a little dicey.” That was understating it. They’d gathered to go through a couple of the roughest scenes, and they were…still rough. Holden had called for a line prompt twice, which was one thing at the best of times, but in a scene where rapid-fire back-and-forth banter was the whole point, it ruined the momentum. “But in my experience, a rough final run-through is always a good sign. It’s always when you’re struggling that suddenly, with the addition of a live audience, the play sort of bursts through.” Sometimes. Here was hoping. “All the ingredients are there. You’ve worked so hard. You’re all great, and I have so much confidence in you.”
Thank goodness she was a decent actor.
Everyone cheered, and her stage manager, a high-school drama geek named Ingrid who was responsible—and cheap—gave the two-minute warning. Maya pulled Holden aside. This was a bit of a gamble, but sometimes you had to trust your gut. “Holden, you know how we talked about how the Benedick-and-Beatrice scenes depend on pacing and momentum?” He nodded. “If you forget a line tonight, I want you to not ask for the prompt but make something up.”
“Really?” She had shocked him.
“Yes. Preserving the scene is more important than getting it exactly right. If you forget, throw something out there. Try to make it make sense. Then, hopefully, after my next line, you’ll be back on track.” Please, God, let him get back on track.
Let him not get off track to begin with? No, that was probably too much to ask for.
Where were a lake and a full moon and a wishing flower when you needed them? Where was a fortune cookie that read Your play is going to be both great and lucrative?
“Okay, no prob,” Holden said.
No prob.
Here was hoping.
“Places, everyone!” Ingrid called—and here went nothing.
Much Ado about Nothing was great.
Of course it was. Maya’s plays always were. She knew how to tell a story. How to keep you interested. And her shows often had flashes of humor you didn’t see coming—kind of like her.
Law often needled Maya about her penchant for Shakespeare, but he supposed there was a reason the dude endured all these hundreds of years later. As with every Shakespeare play Law saw, it took a while to adjust. When a messenger came running onstage to open the play, panting and talking about lions and lambs, he thought, as he always did, Huh? But invariably, once he stopped trying so hard and sat back and let the language and the spectacle wash over him, something would click in his mind. He’d find himself understanding what was happening before him—and invested in it.
The main couple was great—they were young and earnest, as the roles seemed to call for. Easily manipulated. Law rolled his eyes as the dude let himself get talked into believing his fiancée had been untrue. But the villain doing the manipulating was a force of nature. He was a teacher from an arts school in London who’d appeared in lots of Maya’s summer shows. He was evil but funny—Maya played him for laughs with his mannerisms and costumes.
But the stars of the show were Maya and Holden. Their characters purported to hate each other, but everyone could see they didn’t. Watching their cluelessness—they were easily manipulated, too—give way to realization was hilarious.
Maya’s performance was no surprise. Even though she always said she was a director first and an actor second, she was great at pretty much every role she attempted. He heard other people in town talking about how she lost herself in a role. How you’d forget it was Maya you were watching. That wasn’t the case for him. He was always aware, somewhere pretty close to the top of his consciousness, that he was watching her. The Maya-ness never faded. If anything, it intensified. There’s Maya playing Lady Macbeth, say, or, Wow, Maya can really belt it out as Mary Poppins. But at the same time, paradoxically, it never detracted from his ability to get swept up in the story.
Holden was also killing it. His cheerful, somewhat self-impressed demeanor allowed him to inhabit the role of Benedick, who shared those traits. And then, sometimes, Holden would bust out these pop-star dance moves that would have the whole place roaring with laughter.
But even as Law recognized how well cast Holden was, and how good a job he was doing, something wasn’t sitting right. Something heavy and bitter was accumulating in Law’s gut as Benedick and Beatrice bantered. He wasn’t sure if it was possible to fake that kind of chemistry, even for talented actors. He thought back to Maya and Holden goofing around at the bar the other night, and then, suddenly, in each other’s arms dancing.
But then he thought of asking Maya if she’d really been thinking of someone else that time she’d kissed him and of her looking him right in the eye and saying, No.
Man, he was so confused.
There was a standing ovation at the e
nd, a long one. He slipped out before it was over.
Chapter Sixteen
Maya was distracted as everyone swirled around congratulating her and each other. Her brain was glitching on the night’s best piece of news: the box office take was thirteen grand.
Thirteen grand.
That was twice as much as she’d ever made on a single show.
She had expenses on that, of course, but thirteen grand was better than her most optimistic imaginings.
“Hey, boss!”
She turned and was nearly flattened by a tackle-hug from her secret weapon.
“You were great, Holden.” He really had been. Everything she had seen in him when she’d first imagined casting him had come through beautifully. And more to the point, his name had drawn the crowd of her dreams.
“Did you notice I made up a line when I forgot?”
“I did.” She stifled a giggle. “I was there.” Standing right in front of him, panicking and praying that he’d right the ship. And he had. After responding to her “Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner” with “Fair Beatrice, I find I am not hungry,” she had been able to adjust her next line on the fly and they’d gotten back on track. “You handled it beautifully.”
He stuck his arm out. “May I escort you to the bar, fair Beatrice?”
The party was fun, and good for her ego, too, as everyone came up to fawn over her. But she couldn’t help wishing she had a fast-forward button so she could go upstairs for the football match. She’d avoided checking the score all day so she could preserve the surprise.
She kept looking around for Ben. He was here, obviously, but they hadn’t interacted yet. She wanted to tell him not to tell her the outcome of the match.
Holden bought her a glass of wine, her first. She’d been so thirsty when she arrived that she’d guzzled a couple glasses of water. “Heyyyy, boss. Beatrice. Bossy Beatrice. Ha!”
He was clearly well past his first.
“Hey now, don’t get too happy.” She tried to make it sound teasing, but she meant it. “We have a show tomorrow night. Stamina is important.”
“Yes, Mom.” He rolled his eyes.
He could be such a baby sometimes. She had learned his ways. He was used to getting what he wanted when he wanted. He lived in the moment and took the path of least resistance. She wasn’t sure whether that was because he was a celebrity or whether it was just Holden.
She sipped her wine. It was the wrong one. But whatever, it was fine.
“My agent got me an audition for Ryan Alexander’s new movie,” Holden said with a grin. “Not a lead, but a solid secondary character.”
“That’s…” She’d been going to say “great,” because that’s what she was supposed to say. But by all accounts, Ryan Alexander was a grade-A ass. The Me Too noose was tightening around him, to hear it told. That wasn’t even insider information—Maya’s Canadian stage circles didn’t overlap with the Hollywood studio–based film world. It was stuff she’d picked up reading the Hollywood Reporter.
Also, Ryan Alexander’s movies sucked. “I’d be careful of him, Holden.”
“Huh?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some shit hit the fan with him in the near future.”
“What does that mean?” he said peevishly, and suddenly there was Ben. He silently took the glass of wine she was holding and handed her a different one.
“It means he’s a misogynistic creep at best and a predator at worst,” she said to Holden, and then, to Ben, “Thanks.” He nodded and retreated.
“What does that have to do with me?” Holden said, his tone a touch belligerent. “He’s not going to prey on me.”
“Right. He’s not. Forget it.” There was no use in trying to reason with Holden—in general, but especially when he was drunk.
“No. You clearly have an opinion on the matter, like you do on everything, so let’s hear it.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant by “everything,” unless he was talking about the fact that she was the director of the play he was in and therefore it was literally her job to have an opinion, but she let it slide. “I just think that when you know someone is a bad person, you shouldn’t associate yourself with him. But more pragmatically, I wouldn’t want this to come back to bite you. Think of all those people who’ve had to apologize for working with Woody Allen.”
“I don’t know why you have to get so worked up about everything.”
Wow. And here she’d thought Holden was a happy drunk. She’d rather be fending off his advances, as annoying as they were, than fighting about this. “Can we drop it? You’re a really talented guy. You have a lot of potential as an actor. I just don’t want to see it wasted, is all.”
She started to turn away, but he grabbed her arm, which caused most of the wine to slosh out of her glass. Ugh. He was like a mosquito, a super-persistent mosquito who wouldn’t quit buzzing around, and—
“You will get the fuck out of my bar right now.”
—he was about to be swatted. But not by her.
The last thing she needed was Ben meddling in this. “It’s fine. We were just—”
He either didn’t hear her or was choosing to ignore her. He had Holden, who was protesting that he’d been misunderstood, by the arm. “How do you like being grabbed?”
She didn’t need a scene. She needed Holden to show up for work tomorrow without a monstrous hangover, to be charming and remember his lines—or enough of them, anyway—and to help her earn another thirteen thousand dollars. “Seriously, Ben. Back off.”
Ben let go of Holden, so that was something at least. “I invite you to leave my bar.”
“Or what? You gonna call the cops?”
Holden sounded like such a little boy. It was embarrassing. Anger flashed hot in Maya’s chest. At Holden for being such an ass, but also at Ben for making a scene. She had been handling it.
“No. I am going to walk twenty feet over there”—Ben hitched his thumb toward the bar—“and get my buddy the police chief to come have a word with you.”
“Dude, chill.” Holden rolled his eyes but turned to go.
“Sleep well!” she called after him. “Great job tonight!” She whirled on Ben. “What the hell was that?”
“What the hell was that?” he countered, making a flailing gesture in the direction Holden had gone.
“I asked you first! What gives you the right to swoop in like that?”
“He was treating you like shit.”
“So? You treat me like shit.” She regretted it as soon as it was out of her mouth, before the wince the vicious accusation triggered on his face. Her mind flashed back to that day at the dunk tank, when he’d steadied her as she was falling. Then to when he’d added her wine for intermission to his wholesale order.
“Okay, one, I do not treat you like shit. Defending myself against your relentless attacks is not the same as treating you like shit.”
He was right. But she couldn’t quite make herself retract her previous statement. She was still angry. What if he’d driven off Holden? What if Holden was so pissed—angry-pissed and/or drunk-pissed—that he couldn’t or wouldn’t do tomorrow’s show? Maya had never canceled a play, not since that first, ill-fated one, and she wasn’t about to start now. Especially on account of him. Again. “And what’s number two in your little speech?” What could he possibly say that would make this better?
He was looking around the bar instead of at her, which made her do the same. They had an audience—not the good kind. Everyone was staring at them. And it was quiet, except for the music coming from the jukebox.
Ben reached for her but his hand stopped an inch before it landed on her arm, and he sort of zoomed it out in front of him before retracting it. He could hardly take her by the arm when he’d just come out swinging because Holden had done that. The resulting arm flail made him look like he was doing a very bad modern dance.
It took some of the fight out of her, and when he jerked his head indicatin
g he wanted her to follow him, she was inclined to go. His earlier statement implied he had more to say. She wanted to know what it was.
So she followed him to the kitchen, goose bumps rising like they were back in the dunk tank.
“Two,” he said, whirling on her, “if I treat you like shit, which I don’t, it’s because treating you like shit is my job. Not Holden Hampshire’s.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. That was a ridiculous argument. Her amusement annoyed him, though. He scowled and advanced on her.
“So,” she said, still chuckling, “if you treat me like shit—”
“Which I don’t.” He punctuated the “don’t” by pressing his palm against the wall next to her head. That stopped her laughter.
“Hypothetically,” she squeaked. Squeaking was not a good look here. She made a concerted effort to lower her voice even as the goose bumps spread. “Run with me here. If you”—she poked his chest with her index finger—“treat me like shit, it means you have that market cornered? That’s what you’re saying? No one else is allowed to? You”—she poked again—“were protecting your turf, so to speak?”
“Exactly,” he snapped, wrapping his other hand around her extended finger and moving it away from his chest. He had done that move before—interrupting a poke by physically removing her finger. It annoyed her. “Except I don’t treat you like shit,” he added.
He was so annoying.
Also annoying? The way her nipples had hardened into stiff little nubs. The way her breath got shaky as he rotated the hand that was holding her finger, pried the rest of her fingers open, and laced his through hers.
The way, as he moved their joined hands to the wall on the other side of her head, she knew what was going to happen next.
The way she allowed herself to remain caged in, one arm pinned to the wall, like this was normal. Like this was something they did.
In the movies they would have gone from yelling at each other to making out in a matter of seconds. But she knew instinctively that wasn’t how they rolled. Their feud was a large, long-standing, heavy thing. Slow to turn. Like a warship retreating.
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