Playing With Her Heart

by Lauren Blakely

  I turn around, and sweep up my hair with one hand. She loops the jewelry around my neck, letting the charm fall against my skin.

  She spins me around so I can face the mirror behind her door. “See? You look mah-velous, dahling! Simply mah-velous.”

  She’s so genuinely happy, in general, but also for me. Happy that I’m spending the afternoon with Patrick. She knows how long I’ve been in love with him, how I’ve hoped for this moment for years. And now it’s here and I try to ignore the hollow pit in my stomach. Only, it’s hardly hollow. It’s filled with all my guilt over what I did with my director the other night. I let him touch me. I begged him to touch me. I practically threw myself at him in the car, grabbing his shirt, and then pleaded with him to make me come.

  I was a crazed animal, beseeched with need.

  And it makes no sense how I could have wanted him so badly, but be so terribly in love with the man I’m meeting for coffee in an hour. The perfect man for me. Patrick with his music, and his songs, and the duets we sing together so well. Patrick who wants to be my friend first. Patrick who I’ve loved for so long.

  All Davis wants is to fuck me.

  I have to focus on today, on the here and now. Not on the other night.

  I turn back to the mirror, appraising my appearance. I’m wearing jeans, red cowboy boots and a scoop neck top. My hair is down and I tuck it behind my ears, because it’s the only way I can wear it that doesn’t remind me of Davis. Of how he can’t keep his hands out of my hair. How he likes my hair up, how he likes my hair down, how he can’t stop touching me. Here with my hair tucked primly, I don’t feel like the woman who’s playing two men.

  “Um, no. What are you? A schoolgirl? Let it free!” Kat threads her fingers in my hair and makes it wild again. “Never tuck your hair behind your ears on a date.”

  “It’s not even a date. We’re just friends,” I say, as if that makes what I’m doing okay.

  She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Go have fun with your friend. I’m going to go call my friend Bryan,” she says, sketching air quotes, “to see if he wants to come over and be friends.”

  “I mean it, Kat. How much more platonic could it be? We’re going out on a Sunday afternoon. It’s not that way with Patrick.”

  She fixes me a serious look. “Make it that way then, Jill. Make it the way you want it. Now’s your time.”

  I grab my coat, my purse and my phone and catch the subway, those last few words still echoing. Now’s my time. Because I’ve done my time, right? I’ve beaten myself up over Aaron. I’ve read his letters thousands of times. They’re branded in my brain. They’re tattooed on my heart. They’re alive in my head, eating away at me.

  I close my eyes as the train rattles under the city, and Aaron’s written words ring in my ears.

  I fucking love you so much.

  Do you have any idea what it feels like to love a person this much?

  It’s killing me to be without you.

  I press my fingers against my temple, as if I can squeeze out the reminders of him. The memories I’m dying to bury for good. I still don’t understand it. He was so good to me the whole time we were together. Captain of the swim team, president of student council, the model upstanding guy. He was unimpeachable, and he was crazy about me. If I’d loved him as much as he loved me, would things have been different? Would I be different? But it’s so hard to know anymore. All I know is that love should be free from the kind of weight and hold that Aaron had on me. Love should be perfect and pure.

  The train pulls into Seventy-Second Street and soon I’m walking to a coffee shop where I’m greeted by the blazingly beautiful smile of Patrick, the very reason I’m no longer in that dark, awful place I lived in after things ended with Aaron. He’s the reason, he got me through and he’s here now, wearing jeans and a navy blue pullover, his honey-gold eyes twinkling when he sees me.

  He wraps me in a hug and his arms feel warm and safe around me, as I always imagined they’d be. Yes, this is the opposite of all my lonely days and nights. This is the beginning of the end of feeling like the worst person in the world.

  For the next hour, we drink lattes and chat about our favorite shows, then our favorite movies, then our favorite songs, and it’s all such standard getting-to-know you stuff, and it’s fun. Really, it’s fun. When we finish and leave the cafe, he tips his forehead to the end of the block. “There’s a great indie bookstore on Seventy-Third. Want to pop in?”

  “Of course.”

  Once inside, he stops at the first table and taps a celebrity tell-all tale from the latest reality star du jour. “God, I love these books,” he says and grabs it, and opens it to a random page. He adopts a high-pitched voice to match that of the starlet. “But spending the summers in Lake Como with my movie star boyfriend isn’t as glamorous as everyone thinks it would be. My iPhone has spotty reception there, so it’s hard for me to keep up with Twitter.”

  He chuckles deeply. “I have to get this.” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t tell anyone though. It’s my addiction. A total vice. I eat these books up like they’re candy. It’s junk reading, but I don’t care. They make me happy.”

  I bring a finger to my lips. “I won’t breathe a word.”

  “What about you? What do you like to read?”

  I bite my lip and look away. Do I tell him the truth? That I read red-hot racy romance novels? That I love stories with sexy alpha males who border on bossy? That I crave tales of men who work hard and fuck hard and say dirty sexy things to their women? There was a time when I went for the sweeter stuff. But lately, I need the heat way up to get off.

  Yeah, maybe I won’t tell him all this. Especially considering all I needed the other night was a man who doesn’t even want me. A man who won’t even take me out to dinner, much less for a coffee. Not that I’d even want to go out with him. Not when I have a chance with Patrick.

  “Oh, you know, this and that,” I say evasively.

  “C’mon, now,” he says in a teasing voice. “You can tell me.”

  This is what I wanted, right? To get to know him. To let him get to know me. I hesitate, though, because I don’t know how it would feel to speak the truth. To open up. Even about a little thing like what I read. But it’s not really a little thing. It’s a big thing, because it has everything to do with who I am now. With why I am this person. I read these books because it’s all I’ve allowed myself. Because I’m terrified of getting close to another person again. Because I’m petrified of a twisted kind of love.

  Because make-believe is more than a job. It’s a way of life for me.

  “Elmore Leonard. Get Shorty is not only an awesome movie, but a fantastic book too,” I say, because he’s my brother’s favorite author. I’m using his lines too, telling Patrick exactly what Chris has said to me about Elmore Leonard. A wave of self-loathing pounds me because I’m lying to Patrick over something so minor. Would it be so hard for me to tell him the truth about something as innocuous as what I read? But even as I try to get the honest words past my lips I’m layering on another little white lie. “And Carl Hiassen, too. He just tells the craziest stories and they suck me into his world.”

  More lines from Chris. More lies to Patrick.

  “Do you have his newest?”

  I shake my head.

  “Let me get it for you then. As a gift.”

  “Okay,” I say in a strangled voice. But he doesn’t notice, because he’s grabbing two copies of the Hiassen from the shelves and happily heading to the counter with books to buy. Soon, he’s presenting me the book, and a part of me is over the moon because Patrick Carlson—the love of my life—is giving me a gift, but another part of me feels so unworthy. He’s such a good guy, and I’m so messed up.

  “So your homework is to read this, and next time we get together we can talk about it. I bought myself a copy too. But it might have to wait a few days because I’m going to have to tear through this memoir first.”

  I clutch the
book against my chest. “Thank you. I can’t wait for our book club, Patrick.”

  At least that’s the truth.

  At least, I think it is.

  * * *

  My heart pounds and my legs burn, and my breath is visible in the frozen morning air. It’s Monday, still early in the dawn, and the sun is barely peeking over the wintry New York horizon.

  I turn around and run backwards for several paces.

  “Almost there,” I call out to my crew of mommy warriors as we run behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are a resilient group, decked out in nylon running pants and fleece jackets. This group is my most advanced set, and they’re the ones training for the upcoming 10K to raise money for breast cancer research. It’s their third year doing it, and if they improve their times they’ll land more matching money from corporate sponsors. “Keep up your pace. Keep your elbows at your side, and don’t forget to breathe.”

  I flash them a smile and I turn back around as we run towards the reservoir in Central Park. The women are quiet in the home stretch and so am I, as I let the running do what it does: wash away the little while lie I told yesterday. I run it off, and leave it all behind me.

  I tell myself I’m starting over. That I’m a new kind of person starting a new kind of life, one where I don’t feel so damn responsible for all that went wrong. Maybe this new me likes Carl Hiassen.

  I should give Carl a chance, right?

  When we reach the end of the reservoir, I raise a fist in the air, encouraging all of my ladies as they slow down and finish a hard morning run.

  “You’re amazing. You’re going to do great on Saturday.”

  I hug them all, and soon we go our separate ways. As I walk across Eighty-Sixth Street towards the subway, I fast forward to tonight. To the next private rehearsal. Should I wear my hair up or down? Should I wear that black V-neck sweater that hugs my breasts just so? Or maybe the navy blue one since it matches my eyes? Wait, I know what to wear.

  My red sweater with the little buttons up the front.

  I bet he likes red.

  Then I realize I’m about to walk into traffic because I’ve been daydreaming about tonight. I stop at the curb, and press the crosswalk button, and tell myself to stop thinking about Davis.

  CHAPTER 15

  Davis

  I unlock the stage door to let myself in. I’m the first to arrive, and I’ll be the last to leave.

  I use these moments before the stage manager, choreographer, music director and cast arrive to walk through the theater, a more intimate setting than many others on Broadway. It’s not as small as some playhouses, but it’s not a cold, heartless theater like some of the newer ones. It’s the perfect size for a show like this since Crash the Moon isn’t about the extravaganza and spectacle; it’s about the relationships between the characters, about lives changing, hearts breaking, and passion. This theater is the only one that can handle the intensity and the sexiness of this production.

  I head down the center aisle, trailing my hand over the creaky upholstered chairs that theatergoers will pay top dollar to park themselves in soon. Tickets went on sale last week, and Don emailed to tell me the show is already sold out for the first two weeks and counting. That’s 1,600 seats filled every night with people expecting to be blown away by this show. I tap the stage for good luck then turn to the empty house, picturing it full of faces, chatting, eager for the show, brushing up on actors’ credits in the Playbill then tucking away phone, closing purses and focusing as the overture to the newest Frederick Stillman show begins.

  Four more weeks to get it ready.

  My thoughts are interrupted when Shannon marches across the floorboards, clipboard in hand. “Alexis called. She has a cold and can’t make it in today.”

  “Color me surprised,” I say dryly.

  My stage manager rolls her eyes. “Shocking. I know.”

  “Does that make it two missed rehearsals already, Shannon?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

  “Indeed it does.”

  “Remind me not to tell Don that I told him so when this keeps up during the show.”

  She laughs once. “Of course. Should I let Ms. McCormick know she’ll be playing Ava today?”

  “Yes. You can give her the new pages when she arrives. Same for Patrick. Give them an hour to read them over first and we’ll have them on at ten.”

  She nods. “Absolutely.”

  Minutes later, the actors trickle in and I work on a scene with two of the supporting cast members first. Then the stage manager calls Patrick and Jill to the stage.

  I’m instantly hard when I see what she’s wearing. Tight jeans and a red sweater. She looks edible in red. Then I notice it has tiny little pearl-shaped buttons on it. I can hear the sound of them clattering across the floor if I were to rip it off her.

  It’s going to be a long fucking day, watching her rehearse this scene with Patrick.

  * * *

  Shannon has one hand pressed against the stage door later that evening. “Alexis called. She’ll be back tomorrow. She said she—her words—simply cannot wait to rehearse the new scene.”

  “I’m so glad she’ll grace us with her presence.”

  “If we’re lucky, she might even try to reconfigure the blocking,” Shannon says in a deadpan voice as she zips up her coat. The weather forecast earlier today called for snow after midnight. Shannon taps the doorframe, as if an idea just took shape. “Maybe you could nail down some of the blocking tonight when you work with Jill. So there’s no wiggle room.”

  I tamp down the mischievous grin that’s forming. I’d certainly thought of that myself, but hearing the suggestion from my stage manager makes my task tonight feel all the more necessary.

  “Good idea, Shan. Now go get home so you can curl up by the fire and watch the snow fall.”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe we’ll even have a snow day tomorrow,” she muses. “Oh wait. Davis Milo never allows snow days.” She swats me playfully on the arm.

  “You don’t allow them either.”

  “You got me there. But I learned my merciless ways from you,” she says, then tosses her scarf around her neck with a final flourish. “I’m off into the tundra.”

  She opens the door, letting in a cold blast of air. I’m about to close it, when a voice I long to hear calls out, “Hold the door! My hands are full.”

  I push back on the door and see Jill practically sprinting down the alley, holding a cup of coffee in each hand. She says a quick hello and goodbye to Shannon as she passes her.

  “Good luck with the hair scene, Jill,” Shannon says. “Make sure you guys finalize the blocking.”

  “Hair scene. I’m on it,” she answers like a good soldier, following orders.

  Jill reaches the door, and holds up the blue paper cups.

  “Coffee.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I got you one,” she says, and there’s the slightest flutter to her voice, as if she’s nervous.

  She thrusts a cup at me, and I take it. It’s just coffee but still, I’m dying to break into a grin because it’s not just coffee—it’s coffee from her, it’s coffee for us. It’s a little something she did for our private rehearsal.

  “I’m impressed you can run and not spill the coffee.”

  “It’s all part of my marathon training. In fact, I teach that skill to the more advanced runners in my coaching group.”

  “But of course. Some of them probably even want to learn how not to spill a latte, or perhaps an espresso,” I say with a smirk.

  “We’re actually well past the how-not-to-spill espresso training. By the way, do you think you can let me in now?”

  I laugh, realizing I’m standing in the doorway and she’s outside, shivering, even with her coat on. I open the door wider, letting her in. I look briefly at the dark sky that’s brighter than usual, a sure sign the clouds are swelling with snow.

  “Looks like snow.” I let the door close behind us.
r />   “You better watch out then. I throw a mean snowball. My brothers taught me how to throw.”

  “I’ll consider myself duly warned for the vicious snowball attack.” We head down the backstage hallway toward the wings of the stage. As I watch her walk, her coat hitting just below her waist, I imagine her naked again. I love that I know what she looks like without anything on.

  I take a drink. The coffee is perfect. Just black. Nothing added to it. Exactly how I like it.

  “How did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “How I take my coffee.”

  “I took a wild guess. My roommate has this theory about guys and their coffee drinks,” she says as we reach the stage. She stops at the edge of the curtains.

  “A theory about men and coffee?” I raise an eyebrow. “Enlighten me.”

  She briefly looks at her shoes, then back at me. “Well, it’s just, she has this theory that the man who orders just coffee is, you know…” her voice trails off, and crimson starts to flood her cheeks.

  “Is just what?”

  “Just…” She can’t seem to finish the thought.

  “You want me to guess?”

  She shakes her head, her hair falling in a curtain around her face in the most thoroughly distracting manner. But she seems embarrassed, and the last thing I want to do is push her past her point of comfort.

  “Well, whatever the theory is, I will choose to take it as a compliment.”

  She raises her face, and meets my eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Do you want a tour of all the secret backstage passageways and doors before we start? Or did you check everything out already today?” I offer, hoping she says yes. I want to be able to do something for her that’s special, that no one else can do. To show her more of the things she loves—theater.

  Her eyes sparkle. “Secret backstage stuff. Like ghosts?”