“Oh. I’ll just…” John clapped the notebook closed and trotted down the stairs.
Tom turned back to Frank, who was gripping the edge of the aluminum chair so hard he looked like he would leave dents.
“I was terrible.”
Tom bit his lip. On the one hand, he didn’t want to lie to Frank, but on the other, he needed to bolster Frank’s confidence a little.
“Nothing we can’t change.”
Frank swallowed and unclenched his hands from the chair edge. “I’m not comfortable doing this. What if I freeze up onstage during the performance?” He gazed out the window into the deepening twilight of evening.
“Then we’ll run your lines until you know them backward and forward.” Tom reached out and touched Frank’s arm to bring his attention back to him. “Everyone gets stage fright at some point.”
Frank’s eyes widened, and his lips parted. “You never got stage fright.”
“Oh yes, I did.” Tom grimaced, the old memory still fresh in his mind. “I had one line in a walk-on role at the Hirshhorn Theater in New York. My first play there, a favor my roommate did for me when the previous actor in the part moved up from understudy.” He sat down in the chair beside Frank.
“I had to tell the king that a messenger approached from the west with news of the war. But I couldn’t get the words out.” Tom shook his head. “So I stood there, everyone in the theater staring at me, my heart pounding, my palms dripping, my mind a complete blank.”
“What did you do?” Frank frowned, but he’d leaned in closer.
“The actor playing the king said, ‘What’s that you’re whispering? A message from the west with news of the war?’”
“Oh God.” Frank winced.
“Yeah.” Tom chuckled. “I nodded like an idiot and slipped offstage.” He took a deep breath and rested his hands on his knees. “But we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen to you. What’s your work schedule like?”
Frank glanced at the stairs as if he wanted to escape after his castmates. “I work till six tomorrow and then a half day on Thursday—”
“Great. I’ll pick you up here at lunchtime on Thursday, and we’ll go to the lake.” It would do Frank good to get away, get positive associations with the play. Frank liked to run around in nature. The lake was the perfect place.
Frank swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “I thought you wanted to practice my lines.”
Time to pull out all the stops. Tom would use every acting lesson he’d ever sat through, and by the end, Frank would be the best actor in Waycroft Falls. Barring Gabriella Englebottom.
“I’ll give you an acting intensive. We’ll discuss the part on the way down, and then I’ve got exercises to start you on. I want you to shout if you need to, and the lake’s quiet on a weekday.”
Frank frowned, but Tom rose and headed for the stairs.
“Shouting?” Frank’s puzzled look surprised a chuckle out of Tom.
“You’ll learn.” Tom started down. “If there’s one thing the director always asks his actors for, it’s ‘louder.’”
Chapter Twelve
Frank chewed on the cuticle of his finger while he watched Mrs. Hutchins help her grandson choose a new picture book. He’d woken up in the middle of the night last night in a cold sweat, fretting about the trip to the lake. What if he couldn’t learn to act? What if Tom made him do something weird like walk around like a chicken? What if Tom made another move on him? Frank swallowed. What if Tom didn’t make a move on him?
More hammering echoed from upstairs. All day yesterday and today, Tom, John, and John’s crew worked on building the stage and sets in the attic. Every time Tom had gamboled down the stairs this morning, Frank had been afraid Tom would say it was time to go.
“Hey, you ready to go?”
Frank whirled around so fast his head spun. Tom looked gorgeous. A shine of perspiration matted his perfect blond hair to his forehead and gave his cheeks a rosy color. Tom wiped his face with his arm.
“That is, if you don’t mind sitting in a truck for an hour with me all sweaty.”
“N-no. I don’t mind.” Frank steeled himself not to back away from the tantalizing scent of Tom that filled the air between them. Frank groped for the bookshelf behind him, needing something solid to lean against. His wolf whimpered. It readied itself to pounce. Down, boy.
“Okay then. Let me grab our lunch, and I’ll meet you out front in ten.” Tom flashed his Broadway smile at Frank before sauntering away.
“Is he stealing you for the rest of the day?” Annie sidled up next to him behind the counter.
“Yeah.” Frank placed a hand on his stomach, sure the roiling must be visible beneath his shirt.
“You look like you’re going to the dentist instead of the lake.” Annie laughed and patted his shoulder. “Relax. My little brother isn’t that scary.”
“Sure.” Frank retrieved his backpack.
Annie waved goodbye. “Toss him in the lake if he gets too overbearing!”
Frank snorted and stepped out into the sunshine of a beautiful day.
John’s blue pickup roared up to the curb in front of the store. Tom leaned out the open window, tanned skin and sunglasses making him look like a surfer instead of a Broadway star.
“Hop in.”
Frank walked around the rumbling truck and opened the squeaky passenger side door. After he climbed in, Tom gunned the engine. They took off down Main Street, headed out of town.
“Did you bring your script?”
“Yeah.” Frank fished it out of his backpack, the pages creased where he’d been trying to memorize the lines. He’d walked up and down his apartment last night repeating the lines to himself after he ate dinner. Which hadn’t been a great idea. He’d been midway through a swig of soda when he’d choked on it as it went down the wrong pipe.
“Great. First, I’ll teach you a little about the craft of acting.” Tom grinned as the pickup jounced down the road. “Acting is basically lying, but everybody is in on it.”
“Okay.” Frank looked out the side window at the blurring landscape. He was a terrible liar. At least the lake should be pretty. Frank knew it was a local hangout, but he’d never visited it. He’d had no one to hang out with. He turned back to Tom, who was thumping his fingers on the steering wheel. Now he did. His inner wolf snuffled contentedly as Frank took a deep breath. They had the windows open, and the clean breeze ruffled through the cab, pulling Tom’s scent past his nose.
“There are a lot of approaches. Method acting involves pulling up an event in your past to color your emotions in a role. But you can also just imagine something like an event happening to you, or try to figure out how someone would react to a certain event.” Tom kept his eyes on the road. Frank could see the faint glint of stubble on his chin as an arrow of sunlight ducked under the sun visor.
“Since this play is about falling in love, you’ll want to think back to when you fell in love with someone.” Tom glanced his way, and Frank nodded, trying to concentrate on what Tom was saying while he smelled like sunshine.
“Okay.” Frank thought back to high school and his unrequited crush on Gerry Piven. Unrequited was a strong word. He’d never said two words to the senior, and then Gerry had graduated just as Frank finished up his freshman year.
“You’ve got someone?” Tom looked at him from the side.
Frank nodded and then realized Tom might not have seen him. “Yeah.”
“What were some of the things you felt, the thoughts that went through your mind at the time?”
“Ummm, not throwing up my lunch in front of him?” Frank’s cheeks heated. God, that was lame.
Tom cackled. “Seriously? That’s legit.” They left the highway and bumped onto a dirt road. “That’s good. Now when you’re saying your lines to Beauty, you’ll want to remember how you felt when you talked to your guy.”
“I, uh, didn’t talk to him.” Frank cleared his throat. He never realized acting would get so persona
l.
“Strong, silent type, eh?” Tom’s smile grew kinder. “This is still a start. We’ll try exercises when we get to the lake. Have you begun memorizing your lines yet?”
“When I wrote them, I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to say them.” Frank rubbed his knee through his jeans.
The truck turned onto a gravel drive, and then after a short trek down the tree-lined path, the lake spread out before them.
Frank stared at the water lapping at the sandy shore of the lake. They’d eaten a picnic lunch of sandwiches and soda, the view more than making up for the simple fare. It had been heaven, feeling the sun beating down on his head, the breeze off the lake cooling his skin while he listened to the gentle shush of the ripples. Insects droned around them, a continuous percussion broken only by an infrequent splash of a fish.
They had talked little during lunch. Frank had been too busy soaking up the scenery. Tom was pensive, content to chew and take in the Zen of the afternoon.
But as Frank had crumpled up the last of the trash into the plastic carrier, Tom had hopped up. He’d fetched a few flat rocks and sent them skipping across the placid surface of the lake until he handed one to Frank. Frank had joined him, letting the rocks skim the surface only to fall after a half dozen jumps.
“We need to warm up.”
Frank glanced sideways at Tom. The day wasn’t cold. “I’m fine.”
“To act.” Tom smirked and leaned over to touch his toes and then moved on to a few jumping jacks.
Frank halfheartedly joined in until Tom continued jumping, and Frank’s competitive nature kicked in. Tom counted, and then at a hundred, he stopped. Just to show off, Frank kept going another twenty while Tom panted.
“You win.” Tom laughed. “Now you get to do vocal exercises.”
“What?”
“Say O and then E. It will warm up your mouth.”
Frank repeated the vowels, his facial muscles moving forward and back. Tom joined in and then sped up. Frank struggled to keep up, his mouth moving faster until they were both making the sound of sirens, “Owee, owee, owee.”
“Great.” Tom stopped him. “Now try Gooda Buddha.”
Frank felt ridiculous, but he played along. There was no one else on the lake save for a lone sailboat in the distance. They ran through a dozen iterations of the phrase until Tom made a time-out gesture with his hands. He grabbed the script and flipped through the pages.
“Let’s take this line: ‘And pray what are your dreams? Do you run through the wilds and the woods seeking solace? Or soar like the crane, so high that the sky darkens to night in the midst of day? Or perhaps you dream of a lover, a man—not a beast, who will woo you with pretty words and false faces while your ugly daytime companion offers you only true love.’”
Tom backed onto a large rock and sat.
Frank found the passage Tom indicated and read the words in his regular tone. He glanced at Tom for reassurance.
Tom nodded, a look of concentration puckering the skin between his eyes. “Okay, now we’ll try saying them with different emotional keys. I want you to say the lines like you’re angry.”
“And pray—” Frank tried to muster up what he thought an angry person sounded like.
“Angrier. Think guy talking on his cell phone when he almost runs you down in the parking lot at the Quickie Mart.”
Ah. Frank visualized the scenario and began again. “And pray—”
“Better. Think teenager coming into the bookstore and ripping random pages out of the paperbacks.”
“And pray what are your dreams?” Frank yelled the words, thinking that was what Tom was aiming for.
“Good, good.” Tom stopped him. “But yelling something doesn’t mean you’re angry. What happens when you get angry?” Tom punctuated the question by poking Frank hard in the chest. Frank rubbed the sore spot. He shook his head.
“You don’t want to know.” He tried not to get angry. It caused problems. It caused him to get kicked out of his home. It was bad. His wolf backed up, looking for a means of escape.
Tom tilted his head, watching him. “Yes, I do. This is important.”
“It’s just a play.” Frank turned and walked a little ways down the shore.
Tom caught up to him and grabbed his arm. “It’s more than that.”
“No, it isn’t,” Frank growled. And maybe because they were talking about anger and it hit too close to home, the lupine snarl rumbled through his answer. Tom’s hand left his arm in an instant. Frank dropped his head to his chest. God, what was wrong with him? Making Tom scared of him was not what they needed right now.
“That’s perfect.”
Frank’s head shot up at Tom’s words, and he saw the grin wide on Tom’s face.
“Do you see how you reacted? Your voice changed. Your body language became rougher and tenser as if you were going to explode. That’s why we’re doing this exercise. I want you to recognize these cues in yourself, so we can find the right intonation for each of your lines.”
Tom beamed at him, the sun glinting off his hair and eyes like a CGI sparkle added by movie special effects. But as Frank watched, Tom sobered.
“And it is just a play for you. But I’d like for it to be successful. And I think it will be if you help me.”
The wistful tone of Tom’s words tugged at something inside Frank. He nodded and ran a hand through his hair.
“Okay.” Frank took a deep breath. “Do you want me to finish this scene?”
“Yeah.” Tom walked back to settle on the rock again.
“And pray what are your dreams?” This time Frank let the low growl of menace enter his voice.
“Do you run through the wilds and the woods seeking solace? Or soar like the crane, so high that the sky darkens to night in the midst of day?”
The rumble turned savage, and he bit down on the words.
“Or perhaps you dream of a lover, a man—not a beast, who will woo you with pretty words and false faces while your ugly daytime companion offers you only true love.”
He realized his heart beat hard and his fingers had cramped from where he held them in fists.
Tom clapped. “Excellent. Now let’s try happiness.”
“What?” Frank laughed. The lines weren’t happy. He wrote them; he would know. They were the exclamation of a frustrated lover. At least he could understand where anger might be a good emotion to express, but happiness? “That’s silly.”
Tom made a rolling motion with his hand. “I know it is. But sometimes saying the words with a different tone can tell you something you might not have known about the part. Just try it. And don’t forget your body language. If you’re saying them in a happy way, what might you be feeling at the moment?”
Frank looked down at the script. Huh. “Maybe I’m thinking about how free it feels to run through the woods?”
“What does that feel like?”
“What do you mean?” Frank contemplated his feet and the sensible sneakers that encased them. “You’ve run with me.”
He remembered that day, the buoyant happiness that had flooded him as Tom ran beside him. The kisses they’d shared after.
“I mean, do you like the way the wind rushes against you when you run? Do you like to feel the ground impacting against your feet? Do you enjoy making your heart beat against your chest and your lungs expand?” Tom paused until Frank nodded his understanding. “Those are all things you can use. Those sensory details in your life can inform a part you play onstage.”
The words wrung something in Frank, turning his perception of the play around. Before he lost the memory of their last jaunt in the woods, Frank tried the lines again.
“And pray what are your dreams? Do you run through the wilds and the woods seeking solace?” He remembered how good the stretch had felt, his muscles contracting and driving him over the ground so fast that straw and pebbles scattered in his wake.
“Or soar like the crane, so high that the sky darkens to night in th
e midst of day? Or perhaps you dream of a lover, a man—not a beast, who will woo you with pretty words and false faces while your ugly daytime companion offers you only true love.” Frank opened his eyes, unaware he’d closed them, his face turned to the sunshine, soaking in the golden rays.
“Perfect. Now what was different about the lines said angry and the lines said happy?” Tom waited for Frank’s answer, lips thinned as if trying not to spill the correct response. But his eyes danced.
Frank scratched his neck. “I guess when I said them and I was angry, I pulled in, like you said, and they were more ‘inside’ me. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” Tom nodded. “And when you were happy?”
Frank remembered coming back to himself, his arms wide, face stretching toward the sun. “I was more open, my voice lighter, and taking in everything around me.”
“Good, good.” Tom shifted to bring his leg up on the rock. “You’re an excellent student. Now let’s try saying the same lines as if you’re exhausted.”
Frank nodded. He might just get the hang of this.
Tom noticed that Frank started to flag after an hour. They’d spent most of the time on the dream lines, the scenes that had to be right to sell the show. And Tom had been pleased with Frank’s delivery. Now if Frank would do that in rehearsal, they’d be golden.
“Time for a break.” Tom didn’t wait to see Frank’s reaction. He shucked his shirt, jeans, and shoes, and still in boxers ran down the boat ramp to plunge into the lake. The shock of the water prickled down his skin and sent his blood coursing through his body. Tom swam through the coolness before surfacing and slicking his hair out of his face.
On the shore, Frank stood watching him, hands on his hips. Tom waved him in.
“Come on, the water’s great. I’ve been swimming in this lake since I could walk.”
“Can’t.” Frank’s grin was lopsided.
“Sure you can. Strip down to your big-girl panties.” Tom laughed. He’d been wanting to get another look at Frank’s gorgeous body again, and the lake proved too much of a temptation.
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