Playing With Her Heart

by Lauren Blakely

  The feeling of not wanting to be without her.

  I press a hand against the wall, and curse under my breath.

  “Are you okay?” She lays a hand on my arm.

  No. I’m totally screwed.

  “Yeah. Just need to get started. That little stunt cut into the day,” I say, pushing all my frustration onto Don, even though it’s with me. It’s with how I feel for her. I head for the stage, leaving her behind. I need to focus on getting this show ready, because that’s why I’m here. Not for any other reason.

  * * *

  Everyone is gone now. I’m sitting on the edge of the stage, and Jill’s walking down the aisle of the theater for one of our last private rehearsals.

  “Are you still mad at me?” she asks in a small, nervous voice when she reaches me. It’s the first time we’ve been alone today. The theater is quiet and her footsteps echo.

  “I was never really mad at you.”

  She holds up her thumb and forefinger. “Just a tiny bit?”

  I run a hand through my hair. “Just annoyed. In general,” I admit. “But I’m not anymore.” I pat the edge of the stage. “Come here.”

  She hops up on the stage and sits next to me. She fidgets with the cuffs on her sweater. Rolling them up. Pushing them down. “I was worried all day.”

  “You were?” There’s a part of me that’s glad she felt that way, though I know that makes me seem cruel. But it gives me a flicker of hope that maybe this isn’t a one-way street.

  “I don’t want you to be mad at me and think things with Patrick…” she says, but she doesn’t finish the thought.

  I want to ask if she’s still in love with him. I want to know if he’s still on her mind all the time. But I also know I can’t handle the answer if it’s yes. I can’t keep going there.

  “Jill, if you have a chance to act in a film when your contract is up, and that’s what you want, you should pursue it. Even if it’s with him,” I say, focusing on the professional side of things, though it takes every ounce of my strength to get those words out without sounding like a jerk.

  “Can I ask you a question? Why are you so nice to him? I know how you really feel about him. But you’re always so nice to him, like this morning in the hallway.”

  “Because that’s what he needs to perform,” I say, as if the answer is obvious. But it’s only obvious to me, because this is the way I work. This is the way I manage actors to get the best from them. “I know Patrick. I’ve worked with him. He’s one of those people who was born skipping, and he’s an amazing talent, and he needs to be happy all the time. That’s what he needs to give the best performances. And that’s what I want.”

  “The best performance?” She raises an eyebrow, as if she’s considering this for the first time.

  “Yes. Of course I want the best performance. Nothing less.”

  “So why did you tell Alexis that day at the studio that she was your Ava?”

  “You heard me say that?”

  She nods.

  “Because that’s what she needs.” I run my index finger along her face. Her skin is so soft, and it’s impossible not to touch her. A soft sigh escapes her lips.

  “So you give her what she needs?”

  “Look,” I say firmly. “Alexis needs to feel as if she’s the center of the universe. That’s how she gives the best performance that her fans love. But even though I told her she was meant to play Ava, that doesn’t change that you’re the one I wanted more for the part. But that’s what I had to tell her to get her to deliver for me.”

  “So you play us all?”

  I give her a look as if she can’t be serious. “Is that what you think I’m doing to you?”

  Jill

  I shake my head. Because I don’t want to think he’d do that. I can’t even contemplate that he’d toy with me. So I won’t believe it.

  “Jill, you have to know I’m not playing you,” he says in his cool and controlled voice. He’s the consummate pro now. The man who wins awards, and rains money down on the show’s backers. He’s not talking to me as a lover. He’s talking to me as a director. “But this is how I work, and every actor needs something different.”

  “What do I need then? As an actress?” I want to know how he categorizes me. He’s brilliant at his job, and I want to understand how he does it. How he knows what we need. How he makes us give it to him. How he drives us to work harder for him.

  “You,” he says, and he stares out at the audience, as if he’s finding the answer there in the vast expanse of empty chairs. In the row after row of red upholstered seats that will creak and groan with theatergoers in two more weeks. With patrons who will never know the blood, sweat and tears that were shed on the path to opening night, but will hopefully fall in love with the artifice that seems real. “You need someone to see you. To know you. To understand you. That’s what makes you so good in this role. Ava needs so many of the same things, and that’s why you connect with her character.”

  I am reminded of the day he told me the news. Of the time we had drinks and talked about what he saw in me when I played Eponine. Maybe it sounds vain, maybe it sounds egotistical, but it thrills me deep in my heart and soul to know that he admires my talent. That he thinks I have talent. That he thinks I’m more than good enough. This is what I’ve always wanted, to be able to move people with a performance. I want him to know that. I swivel around so I’m sitting cross-legged and I take his hand in mine. “It means the world to me that you gave me this chance. You know that right?”

  “Of course I know that,” he says in a calloused voice that surprises me. Maybe he’d rather not hear how much I admire his work. Maybe what he wants from me right now is something I’m not sure how to give.

  “Now let’s get to work because if I spend all night talking to you, we’ll never get this show ready. I want to work on the scene where Paolo finally breaks down Ava. Where he gets her to open up to him and admit all her truths about being alone her whole life and he helps her make the best art.”

  Breaks down Ava. Those words reverberate in my head. Paolo breaks down Ava, and there’s a voice inside me, a quiet little voice that’s asking if Davis is doing the same to me. If that’s how he’s getting what he needs from this actress.

  But maybe I want to be broken down too.

  * * *

  We are oddly silent as we pack up three hours later. I grab my coat and my purse and he gathers his phone and his notes, and the silence between us is full of unsaid things. As if neither one of us knows what happens next. Do we go our separate ways or do we find a way to reconnect when we leave the theater together? I want to say something, to ask a question, to make a joke. But I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what’s happening with us.

  Then my stomach growls loudly as if it’s an ornery creature begging for food, and he laughs deeply. It’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh like this, the kind of laugh that takes over your body.

  “Do I need to feed you?” he says in that playful way he has, and I can’t help but smile and crack up too.

  “Evidently, I could really go for a burger and fries. Would you care to take me out on another date?”

  His eyes light up, and whatever sadness filled the day is wiped out in that grumbling sound. I’d like to send a thank you note to my hungry belly for giving me a reason to spend more time with him. Time away from the play. “Yes.”

  At the diner, we talk more and I ask him questions about all the shows he’s done and he tells me about his productions, sharing stories and anecdotes. I love hearing him talk about what he loves, and as he does, I realize I haven’t thought about Patrick in a long, long time. Not the way I used to. I haven’t lingered on images of Patrick’s face. I haven’t sought him out like he’s the balm for my strung-out heart. I haven’t needed him as a drug anymore.

  A wave of understanding smacks me hard. That’s what Patrick has been. A drug. A good drug, a gentle drug. But a drug nonetheless.

  And I ha
rdly need my fix anymore. Because of this man here with me. This man is changing me.

  And I don’t know what the hell to do next.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks, as he bends his head to kiss my neck. A soft kiss. A sweet kiss.

  That you make me feel all sorts of things. That everything with you scares the hell out of me. That I don’t know how to hide or pretend this isn’t happening anymore.

  “That these fries are awesome. Did you know they’re my favorite food?”

  “Ah. You say that as if you let me in on your darkest secret. But I suspect that’s not what you were thinking.”

  “Chinese food is actually my favorite. Cold sesame noodles,” I say, then I look away and he pets my hair. “But, that’s not what I was thinking.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  I can’t tell him my darkest secret. I can’t tell him all that I’m feeling. I’m not even sure what this is, or what it could be. But I manage one small step.

  “You,” I whisper, and he leans his forehead against mine, sighing deeply as I trace the ends of his hair with my fingers. “I was thinking about you. I think about you all the time,” I say, and the admission terrifies me, but it also makes me feel lighter. Like I can start to have all the things I’ve denied myself. All the real things.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. So much it scares me,” I say, and my throat hitches, but I keep it together.

  “It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to feel,” he says in a soft, tender voice. It’s such a contrast to how he spoke to me back at the theater.

  I pull back and look at him, seeing him in a newer light than I always have. He’s always been heart-stoppingly gorgeous with his dark hair, ink blue eyes, and strong jawline. But he’s beautiful in a different way now. Because I know who he is, beyond the man in the second row of the St. James Theater who called me in for the chance of a lifetime. That chance still exists though, and I need to protect it. “We still have to be careful at the event this weekend, okay? I don’t want people to talk about me. We can’t arrive together, and we can’t leave together.”

  “Can I get you a dress though?” He looks so hopeful, like he’s been dying to do this for me.

  “You don’t have to do that. I can find something to wear.”

  “I know you can, Jill. I know you’re perfectly capable of doing everything on your own. And I know I don’t have to. But I want to do something special for you.”

  “Then I would love to see what you choose for me. But there’s something I have to do first before I go with you.”

  “What’s that?”

  I tell him what I need to do, and I think I might have made him the happiest I’ve ever seen him. Then he smothers me in a kiss that makes me forget we are in a public place. But there’s a part of me that no longer cares.

  CHAPTER 19

  Jill

  When I first saw Patrick perform in Guys and Dolls, it was exactly six months after Aaron’s final letter. Six months after his death. Six months of nothing but my own unflinching blackness, my relentless disgust over what I’d done. After he died, I made it through each day by going through the motions. By waking up and running. By going to school and running. By eating dinner and running. I’m sure my family thought they knew why I was wrecked. But they didn’t know the half of it. I mastered running when I was younger, and it was because I tried to run off all the things I could have done differently. To run away from the things I couldn’t stop.

  But then I made a choice. To keep going. To keep living. To move forward. And I did it when I saw Guys and Dolls. Maybe it’s weird in some ways that a musical would jolt me out of the pain. But maybe it’s not weird, because theater was always my true heart, my unfettered joy that couldn’t be touched by anyone. That could never be tainted, never be harmed. There I was, at the Gershwin Theater in the balcony, and the overture began, and I was transported, out of my world, and into a better one. The kind that only illusion, only artifice can bring. It wasn’t so much the role that Patrick played, but it was how he’d done it. How he took over, saving the show on such short notice. From his golden boy looks, to his save-the-day talent, I imagined him to be everything I ever wanted, and when he stepped onto the stage after only forty-eight hours of rehearsal, seamlessly becoming someone else as I so longed to do, I suspended disbelief. Because I needed something desperately. I needed something that was pure joy, pure goodness in my life, something I couldn’t ruin. So I latched onto him. To the possibility of a love that wouldn’t wound me, consume me, and ruin me.

  More importantly, the kind of love that wouldn’t ruin someone else.

  Love without pain. Love without fear. The kind that only exists from afar.

  I held onto him for the next six years. He became the brace that stabilized my foundation for all that time. Because I suspended disbelief not only for one night at the theater, but for the next six years of my life. Then when I met him, he seemed to be everything I always thought he would be—kind, nurturing, and most of all, so very happy.

  Now I no longer need him. So I don’t even look at Aaron’s letter when I return from my run the next morning, get ready for rehearsal and head to the theater. I don’t look at his last note to me because I don’t need to put my finger in the flame any more. I simply march forward.

  Even though my feet feel like cinder blocks when I reach the stage door. My stomach twists with nerves as I walk up the steps, because I’m ending six years of imaginary love. But it’s just the fear of letting go of my crutch. Of stepping out on my two feet again, and learning how to walk without help.

  Somehow I make it down the carpeted hallway and stop in front of his dressing room. The door is ajar, and I hear music playing. The Black-Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling.” My lips curve into a closed-mouth grin, because this is Patrick. He’s the happy guy. He needs to be in a good mood all the time, and he’s listening to one of the poppiest numbers in recent years to get himself there.

  Just do it.

  I take a deep breath and knock. He leans back, taps out a few beats on the wooden arms of the chair, and waves me in. “Jill! Come in.”

  I try to excise the feeling of walking the plank. But this is Patrick. Patrick won’t hurt. Patrick won’t be ruined. We only went out twice.

  “Hi Patrick. I wanted to thank you for the book, and the bowling, and the mini golf invitation,” I say quickly, the words piling up. I remind myself to breathe, to slow down. “But I can’t go to mini golf or anything else.”

  He tilts his head to the side, his golden-brown eyes casting me a curious look. As if my no doesn’t compute. “Bummer. I was looking forward to it. We could have had such fun.”

  “I know,” I say, and my heart hurts to have to say goodbye to whatever this might have been. But this was only ever some sort of hero worship on my part. “I had a great time with you. And I know I’d still have a great time with you. But I started seeing someone, and so I probably shouldn’t hang out like we’ve been doing.”

  “Oh.” He looks perturbed at first. I don’t think he’s used to being turned down. “But I hope we can still be friends,” I add quickly because that’s what you’re supposed to say.

  But then he snaps his fingers, and points at me. “You know, I’m not surprised. You’ve kind of had this happy glow about you.” He reaches for me, and with a soft touch, squeezes my hand. It’s such a friendly gesture, and that’s all. “And Jill, of course we’ll be friends. Because that’s how we’ll have a great show, right?”

  Right.

  That’s all we were. Even if I thought there was something more brewing, maybe being friends simply made him happy. Maybe I was a means to an end too. Yet another cog in the machinery that makes Patrick tick at that cheerful, chipper level he so desperately needs to perform. And maybe I’ll never know if there could have been more. I’ll have to be okay with that.

  Patrick was my shield. My bulletproof vest is gone now, and I need to learn to live without it.
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br />   * * *

  The cream-colored box from Neiman Marcus is so stunning that I don’t want to ruin the beautifully tied bow by opening it. But I’m the kid at Christmas, and I’m dying to know what he picked out. I tug on one end of the gold-trimmed bow, undoing the knot and tossing it on my couch. Excitement races through me as I wiggle off the top, then unfold the tissue paper carefully.

  I gasp, and bring my hand to my mouth.

  “Oh my God,” I say out loud.

  I’m home alone, and am grateful because I need to have a moment with this dress. I lift it up, reverently, because I’ve never had a dress like this, and then I stand, and hold it against me, running my hand along the sapphire fabric, savoring the hourglass shape. I’m about to go check it out in the mirror on my closet door, when I see a note in the box. Gingerly, I lay the dress down in the box, then reach for the note. It’s on stiff cardboard and I open it. Butterflies make a quick visit to my belly, but I shoo them away. I want to know what he’s written. I’ve never had so much as a text message from him, so I don’t know what to expect.

  For the most beautiful and captivating woman I know. And hope to know.

  Davis

  My heart leaps to my throat, and all my instincts tell me to shut it down. To run. To act. A million malformed ideas invade my brain on how to pretend, avoid, hide. My heart is beating rapidly, knocking hard against my chest like it wants so desperately to escape, to stop the flood of feelings this note has unleashed.

  But then I flash onto the show I’m doing in one more week. Onto the role I’ll be ready to step into at a moment’s notice. Into Ava. I picture the moments when she lets Paolo in. I see the scenes play out in my mind when she finally can move past the physical and accept all that he wants from her—for her art, for her love.

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and remind myself that I am like her. That she is strong. That she is brave. That she is more than the damage she’s done. I open my eyes, run my fingers over his words then tuck the note safely into my purse. This note won’t be locked away. This note will stay with me.