by Leisa Rayven
I don’t think he’s faring much better, because his breathing is choppy and uneven. He grunts in frustration before saying, “This isn’t working.”
I open my eyes.
He’s staring at me. “You’re too close and too far away.”
Just then, the intercom above the door crackles to life and the stage manager says, “Ladies and gentlemen of the Romeo and Juliet Company, this is your fifteen-minute call. Fifteen minutes until places. Thank you.”
I’m certain my face is the definition of panic.
I’m not ready. Not even close. I’m unfocused. Characterless.
Where the hell is Juliet? I can’t find her.
I scramble to my feet and pace. “We should have started earlier. We’ve been here all afternoon, for God’s sake!”
“Taylor, calm down. We can do this.” His voice is remarkably peaceful.
“No, we can’t,” I say as I shake out my hands and roll my head. “There’s not enough time.”
“Just breathe.”
I walk over to the door and press my forehead against it as I drag in uneven breaths.
I can picture the audience, filing into their seats, flicking through their programs. Full of excitement and anticipation for a performance that isn’t going to suck. They’re going to be disappointed.
“I have to go,” I say as I grip the door handle.
“Where?”
“Away. I need to do … yoga … or something.”
I turn the handle.
He covers my hand. “Taylor, stop.”
I pull the door open, but he slams it shut.
“Holt! Open the door!”
“No. Calm down. You’re freaking out.”
“Of course I’m freaking out!” I say as I turn to face him. “The show’s starting in less than fifteen minutes, and I have no idea what the hell I’m doing!"
“Taylor—”
His hands are on my shoulders. I ignore them.
“It’s my first big role. Erika said directors and producers from Broadway are going to be in the audience.”
“Stop—” He frames my face with his hands. I ignore him.
“There are reviewers out there, for frick’s sake! They’re going to say I killed the show. Me. Killed it dead.”
“Cassie—” He strokes my cheeks. I ignore it.
“They’re going to print stuff about how terrible I am, then the whole world is going to see how much of a fraud I—”
Then he’s kissing me.
I can’t ignore that.
He pushes his weight against me and groans as he sucks gently at my lips. I draw in a noisy lungful of air as my whole body blazes to life.
I hear myself moan, then I’m kissing him back, frantic and desperate, trying to find solace in his delicious mouth.
He freezes before pulling back and staring at me in shock.
“Oh … dammit.”
We’re both breathing heavily, staring at each other.
“You kissed me.”
“I didn’t mean to. You were freaking out. I wanted to make you stop.”
“By putting your tongue in my mouth?”
“I didn’t use tongue.”
“I’m still freaking out a bit. Maybe some tongue is warranted.”
He sighs and looks down. His hands are still on my face, his body still pressed against me. “Jesus. I just lost our bet.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Fuck.”
“If you insist.”
He pushes away and runs his hand through his hair.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your ten-minute call. Ten minutes, thank you.”
Panic grips us again.
We have to do something. Now.
“I have a crazy idea,” he says.
“Does it involve your tongue?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
He grabs my arm. “Come here,” he says and pulls me over to the couch.
He sits and tugs me toward him. I understand what he’s trying to do and place my knees on either side of his hips. I sink into him and mimic our position in the death scene. As our bodies connect, we both expel groaning sighs.
I bury my face in his neck and just breathe, and all of a sudden, every ounce of panic melts away.
He makes a noise and tightens his arms around me.
“Best focusing exercise ever,” I murmur into his skin.
I push my fingers into his hair and massage his scalp. He moans and slumps down as his hips push into me.
“Fuck, yes.”
The churning in my stomach eases, replaced by tingling expectation.
He squeezes me tighter, and I marvel over how well we fit. He knows how to hold me, and I know how to soothe him. It’s instinctual. Our bodies talk to each other without us having to say a word.
It makes no sense for us to not be together. I wish I knew what keeps holding him back.
“Are you ever going to tell me about your ex?” I ask.
“Which one?”
“Any of them.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“So you’re just not going to date ever again?”
“That’s the plan.”
“It’s a dumb plan.”
His arms tighten around me. “Better that than to inflict myself on someone again.”
“Nay, gentle Romeo,” I say, borrowing Mercutio’s lines, “we must have you dance.”
He strokes my back. “Not I. Believe me, you have dancing shoes with nimble soles. I have a soul of lead so stakes me to the ground I cannot move.”
The intercom crackles again. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your five- minute call. Five minutes, thank you.”
We stay wrapped around each other for as long as we can, exchanging energy. By the time the next call comes, I feel like I’m a part of him.
I’m eerily calm.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Romeo and Juliet Company, this is your call to the stage. Please take your places for Act One. Thank you.”
We silently unfold ourselves and stand. He takes my hand before opening the dressing room door and leading me downstairs.
Backstage, everyone is in their positions. Tension and expectation are thick in the air. A few people look at us as we pass, and they raise their eyebrows when they see Holt holding my hand.
I don’t care. I feel like an electrical transformer, buzzing with energy. I glance at Holt, and his face is calm but intense. He has the air of a superhero, all restrained strength and disguised power. Where his fingers are wrapped around mine, there’s a thrumming of energy, and I know we’re ready. Our characters are just lingering beneath the surface, waiting to inhabit us as soon as we walk onstage.
Then the lights change, and everything goes quiet as we hear the opening lines of the prologue.
“Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene. From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life.”
As I exhale with excitement, Holt pulls me into a dark corner behind a curtain and turns to me, every inch my Romeo.
“Ready?” he asks quietly.
“I’m amazing,” I say with absolute confidence.
I hear the sounds of the Montague and Capulet boys fighting, and I know it’s almost time for his entrance.
He stares at me, eyes glittering from the stage lights. “Me too. Let’s show them a Romeo and Juliet they’ll never forget.”
All I can do is nod, because he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
He leaves me to take his place on the brightly lit stage, and just like that, the make-believe is real.
TWELVE
NEW ROLES
Present Day
New York City
By the time Holt and I return to our table after our bathroom encounter, there’s a jazz combo playing in the corner. The plaintive sound of the sax
wafts over to us as the smoky-voiced singer launches into the first verse of “Nature Boy.”
“There was a boy … a very strange, enchanted boy …”
I tune her out.
Don’t really need to add any more emotional layers to my night.
Holt’s looking at me, and by the prickle of nervousness that runs up my spine, I know he’s about to say something that’s going to make me uncomfortable.
“Dance with me,” he says quietly.
It’s not a question.
“Uh … why?”
He smiles and glances over at the few couples on the dance floor before looking back at me
“Because I have things I need to say to you, but I don’t want us separated by this damn table.” He takes a sip of wine and looks at his fingers. “I want to be close to you.”
Just the thought of it makes me angry. Not because I don’t want to dance with him, but because I want it so badly it hurts.
I take a swig of wine. A big one. It’s pointless. There’s not enough wine in the world for this.
I watch in slow-motion horror as he stands and walks around to my side of the table.
“I don’t think we should,” I say.
He holds out his hand. “Please, Cassie.”
I look at his hand. His perfect, warm, Ethan hand. Then I look at his face. There’s such fragile hope in his eyes, I find it impossible to say no.
I press my palm against his, and our fingers curl around one another. They fit back together more perfectly than they have any right to
He leads me to the dance floor and pulls me into his arms. I sigh without meaning to.
“Do you remember the first time we danced together?” he asks, his mouth near my ear.
“No,” I say, because I want to hear his version of events.
“It was the night we shot that commercial for the supper club on West 46th Street, remember? You, me, Lucas, and Zoe were cast. We were all supposed to be young, hip, and in love.”
“Yeah, but I was partnered with Lucas, and you were with Slut Barbie. She was all over you like a rash.”
“You were jealous as hell.”
“Says the man who spent the night acting like he wanted to tear Lucas’s arms off.”
“He touched your ass.”
“He was your friend.”
His gaze drops to our clasped hands. “I used to think that anyone who touched you like that wasn’t my friend.”
“You tried to punch him out.”
He pauses for a few seconds before saying, “I’m not proud of how I acted that night. It made me realize you deserved so much better than an insecure, jealous asshole.”
I remember his jealousy well. At first I thought his possessiveness was sexy. By the end, it was just one more nail in our coffin.
“That night,” he says. “I wanted so much to be different. More than anything, I wanted to be different. But I wasn’t.”
He twirls me around and pulls me back, arm strong around my waist.
“So you destroyed us.”
He tightens his arm around my waist. “I thought I was cutting the cancer that was me out of your life.”
“I never saw you like that.”
“I know, and that was the problem. You couldn’t see the damage I was doing even while it was happening.”
We dance for a while, lost in our own thoughts.
After a few minutes, he pulls back and looks down at me. “You know, when I begged Marco for this show, I hadn’t even read the script. I didn’t care what the role was, as long as it was you and me onstage together. Then I saw you for the first time in too many years, and … our whole past came rushing back. How it felt to be near you. How you could drive me insane with a single look. I was hoping that when you saw me, you’d remember we had good times, too. That you’d missed me as much as I’d missed you. But you were so angry—”
“I had reason to be.”
“I know,” he says, still swaying with me even though the music has stopped. “I expected it.”
“And deserved it.”
“But when we rehearsed the kiss, I—”
He stops and brushes my hair away from my neck, grazing my skin. “I guess there was part of me that hoped kissing you would wash away all the bullshit I’d put you through. That I could tell you without words how I felt, and you’d just magically forgive me.”
“It’s not that easy.” I fist my hands in his shirt, because I want to push him away and hold him closer at the same time.
“I realize that. But you know what kills me?” Frustration is sharp in his voice. “What slays me every day I come to rehearsals? Is that I can be there, in bed with you, kissing you and pretending to make love and … I still miss you. Because it isn’t real. And I want it to be. So fucking badly.”
I try to swallow and can’t. I want to look away, but it’s impossible.
A kaleidoscope of regret fills his eyes. “Cassie, I felt like a ghost while I was away from you. Now, I want to feel real again.”
He searches my face, but I can’t look at him anymore. All the fault lines inside me are flaring to life.
My throat is too full of emotion to speak. He nods in understanding before pulling me back into his arms.
We start to sway again. We’re not actually dancing, just rocking side to side. Not moving forward or backward. Just moving.
Like most of our time together, we’re treading water.
Trying not to drown.
Six Years Earlier
Westchester, New York
The Grove
Opening Night—Romeo and Juliet
There are times in every actor’s life when the enormous mess of possibility and make-believe is distilled into a crystal-clear point of clarity.
When the line between imagination and invention blurs, and talent and conviction converge for a brief, shining moment.
Tonight is one of those nights.
The moment I stepped onstage, my transformation was complete. Juliet inhabited me completely.
Now, I’m living her reality, and as the play wears on, my voice says her words, my body feels her emotions, and my brain struggles to understand that the man I’m looking at is real, perfect, and mine.
He’s under my balcony, drawn here by his need to be with me. I’m embarrassed he’s just overheard me lamenting about how much I love him, but I wouldn’t have him unhear it for all the world.
He climbs the trellis, his face dark and determined.
“How camest thou hither?” I whisper down at him. He’s being so reckless. “Tell me, and wherefore? The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art. If any of my kinsmen find thee here—”
He jumps onto the balcony with a thump and smiles while I look around nervously.
“With love’s light wings did I o’er-perch these walls,” he says as he walks forward. “For stony limits cannot hold love out, and what love can do that dares love attempt. Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.”
He touches my face, then leans forward to brush his lips against mine. Featherlight but heavy with desire.
“If they do see thee,” I say, breathless against his mouth, “they will murder thee.”
“Alack,” he says as he runs his thumb across my cheek, “there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords. Look thou but sweet, and I am proof against their enmity.”
There’s a drunken roar from inside my house and I push him back against the wall, into the shadows.
“I would not for the world they saw thee here,” I whisper. My hands are on his chest, caressing him. He’s watching them in awe.
“I have night’s cloak to hide me from their sight,” he says as he places his hand over mine and presses it more firmly over his heart. “And but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate, than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.”
He’s looking at me, torn and passionate, and I don’t know how I tho
ught I was truly alive before I met him.
This is what love feels like. To no longer belong to yourself. To be pulled from what you know into what you feel.
No wonder people live and die for this feeling.
Time passes in a blur, and over the course of the next couple of hours, my world is altered. Completely upended. Everything I’ve known is now rewritten by my need for him.
We ignore everything and everyone to be together, and just when I think we’ve outwitted our disapproving parents and friends, I wake up to find him gone.
Dead.
Just as quickly as he gave my life new meaning, my life without him instantly amounts to nothing.
So I choose to die. To swallow down my hurt like poison, take his dagger, and join him.
It’s only as I sink down onto his still-warm body that I feel the peace being a part of him brings. I close my eyes and inhale. His scent is the last thing that registers as I become still and silent.
I float in semi-consciousness, but a huge percussive cacophony makes me stir. For a moment I’m confused.
I open my eyes and see Holt’s neck, his pulse beating strong and fast. The roar of the crowd bombards me, and it’s then I know for sure we’ve been amazing.
I feel amazing.
Bulletproof.
High as a kite and dizzy from it all.
The curtain falls. Holt folds his arms around me and sits up while urging me to my feet.
“Come on,” he whispers as he drags me offstage. “Bows.”
He holds my hand in the wings. My heart pounds fast and loud as our castmates file onstage to take their applause. The audience whoops and whistles. When the main characters appear, they get louder and more appreciative.
Holt and I walk out together. My feet move confidently, even though the enormous cheer that greets us is completely surreal. I present Holt, and he bows, beaming. I’m so proud of him, I feel like crying.
Then it’s my turn to bow. My body is tingling all over, electrified by the adrenaline of my performance and being with him. The audience screams their approval, and I’m so full of happiness, I feel like my skin is going to burst right off my body.
Holt takes my hand, and as we bow together, the audience explodes out of their seats. Their cheering and whistling is almost deafening.
I look at Holt in disbelief. He smiles, radiant and stunning.
