“My apologies. I’m here,” I reassure her.
In front of me, Jill stands shaking. Or bouncing. Or bounce–shaking.
“Yes,” I tell Ms. Kim, straight-faced, when she asks about the earlier noise. “That was her. I don’t think you’ll need to call her with the news.” Eyes widening, she presses her hand tightly to her lips. “I’ll be in touch about the details.”
Signing off, I study my new actress. Those eyes are tearing up now, but when she drops her hand, she flashes a smile that could launch ships.
“This is the best thing that has ever happened to me professionally. Ever. Thank you, Mr. Milo.”
“It’s just Davis.” I pocket my phone.
“Davis,” she says, the way some women say “chocolate.”
I don’t know why I gave her my first name. Most actors I’ve worked with have called me Mr. Milo. You don’t call your doctor by the first name, or your teacher, and the same applies to your director, as far as I’m concerned. But, from her, Davis sounds right.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do before the show opens. Rehearsals start in a month, and you’ll be shadowing Alexis Carbone, who’s been cast as Ava.” I revert to cool professionalism, though her genuine joy at being the understudy melts a tiny piece of my icy heart. I see so much entitlement in this business. A little gratitude makes a nice change.
Another tear rolls down her cheek, and I amend, A lot of gratitude. Then I do something entirely out of character. I swipe the pad of my thumb across her cheek to wipe away a tear. Her skin is soft, and I could get used to this.
“Can I take you out for a drink or something?” She looks so sweetly hopeful. “A coffee, or a bagel, to say thank you?”
I want to say yes. But that would be a huge mistake. Maybe if it were daylight. Or I wasn’t so attracted to her. As it’s not and I am, she is absolutely off-limits.
“That’s not necessary.”
“Right. The bagel sounded really lame, didn’t it? And where do you get a fresh bagel after six p.m.?” Her self-deprecating humor tests my resistance. “And coffee? Argh! When did coffee become such a cliché?”
“I don’t know. But you can get it twenty-four/seven.” I almost keep a straight face but give in to a grin, which she mirrors.
“Screw coffee. What if I bought you a drink to say thanks?”
“I swear you don’t have to take me out for a drink, Jill. I’m just happy you’re going to do the show.”
She holds up a hand to say she’s backing off, though she doesn’t, really. “Then I’ll go to Sardi’s by my lonesome. I vowed if I ever landed a Broadway show, I’d go there to celebrate.” She tips her head toward the restaurant, a Broadway institution. “And I’m already there. So, it’s fate.”
The neon green sign flashes, beckoning tourists and industry people as it has for decades. The place is venerable—it’s the heart of the theater district and teems with history, having hosted theater royalty for dinner and drinks for nearly one hundred years.
She’s clearly waiting for me to give in. A cab squeals by and stirs a quick, cold breeze that blows a few strands of blonde hair across her face. Brushing it away, she arches an eyebrow. “The breeze is blowing me to Sardi’s.”
Turning on her heel, she saunters to the door and then inside. It feels like a challenge. Maybe even a dare. I know better, but follow her anyway.
She’s not easy to resist.
I find her at the hostess stand, telling the black-jacketed maître d’ that it’ll be just one for the bar, and I place a hand on her back so she knows I’m here. “Actually,” I cut in, “that’ll be two.”
Her eyes meet mine as I touch her, but her gaze is steady, and she doesn’t seem to mind the contact.
“Right this way, then.” The maître d’ guides us past tables full of theatergoers, men in jackets, and women in evening dresses, chatting about the shows they’re about to see. There’s a table with two guys who look like Wall Street types dining with their wives. Jill walks past them, and one of the guys lingers on her much longer than he should. The woman with him doesn’t notice, but I do, and I give him a hard stare. He turns back to his plate of shrimp instantly.
At the bar, I pull out a stool for her. She thanks me then shucks off her coat and crosses her legs. They look as good in jeans as they probably do out of them. She has that kind of figure—athletic and trim. Probably flexible too. This woman might be all my weaknesses, dammit.
A caricature of James Gandolfini hanging above the mirror behind the bar distracts me. I give the actor a salute to say thanks as I sit down.
The bartender comes over. “What can I get you tonight?”
I look at Jill, letting her go first. “Vodka and soda. Belvedere, please.”
He nods. “And you sir?”
“Glenlivet on the rocks.”
“Coming right up.”
Then she turns to me, her blue eyes sparkling and full of happiness. “Do you have any idea how happy I am?”
“Yeah,” I say, playfully. “It’s kind of written all over your face.”
“Well, I’m not going to hide it. I think I might light up Times Square tonight. And now I’m having drinks at Sardi’s with my director!”
“Don’t tell anyone. I don’t want word to get out that I’m consorting with the talent.”
She leans in with a pout and kind of shimmies her shoulders. “Oh, I get to keep your secrets already.”
My breath hitches. I know it’s the excitement of landing her first show that’s making her so flirty, so playful. But that unconsciously sexy way she has about her spells trouble. She could reel me in before I know what’s happened. Actresses are wonderful, and talented, and often too gorgeous to be real, like this one. Some are genuine, but a few are mostly attracted to what you can do for them, and you don’t know which is which until it’s too late.
“I have very few interesting secrets,” I say, bowing out of the banter. Thankfully, the bartender arrives with the drinks.
“One Glenlivet and one Belvedere.”
“Thank you,” I say. He nods and heads to take an order at the end of the bar.
I reach for my drink and see he’s given me hers and vice versa. “I believe this is yours.”
She takes the glass I offer, and her fingers brush mine. Such a quick touch, but it ignites something in me. When she bends to reach for her purse hanging on a hook under the bar, I watch her, memorizing the way she moves. I run my hand across my jaw. I need to get it together if I’m going to work with her.
She retrieves lip gloss from her purse and reapplies it, and now I wonder how her lips taste.
Finally, thank God, she tucks the tube away then holds up her vodka and soda.
“To your first show on the Great White Way,” I offer, and we clink glasses. I need an easy, superficial question so I can collect myself. “What was the first musical you ever saw?”
“Fiddler on the Roof,” she says and then hums a few bars from “If I Were a Rich Man.”
“You make a good Tevye,” I say dryly.
“You’ll keep me in mind for that role if you ever direct a revival?”
“Absolutely. You’ll be top of the list on my call sheet.”
“Can you even imagine what the critics would say?” Jill gestures wide as if she’s calling out a huge headline. “Hotshot director casts lady in iconic male role.”
“Hotshot director?”
A blush floods her cheeks, and she waves her hand in front of her face. “I didn’t mean anything . . .”
“It might strike you as crazy, but I’m one hundred percent fine with the hotshot title.” I take a long swallow of my drink. “By the way. I saw you in Les Mis.”
“You did?” She seems genuinely surprised.
I nod. “Yes. That’s why I called you in.”
“I thought it was the producer who saw me.”
I laugh. “No. Though I’m sure he took credit for it. I don’t think I will ever see that show again without pictu
ring you as Eponine.”
“Really?” Her blue eyes widen, and she seems so pleased with the compliment. I love that she’s not jaded, not full of herself. She’s still hopeful, and that’s attractive. It’s part of why I called her in after seeing that off-Broadway revival, where the show had been modernized into a rock opera. When she was on stage, I never doubted for one second that she was the character. That’s a tough thing to nail, but it’s what I want most in an actor. No, it’s the thing I want to feel. I want the walls of the real world to collapse around me, so I can believe in the illusion.
“Every actress who can sing wants to play Eponine,” I say. “But it’s incredibly hard to pull off feisty Eponine, love-struck Eponine, and then be dying Eponine on top of it all. Most actresses can handle one of the personas, sometimes two. You’ll see someone who can sing the hell out of ‘On My Own’ or fawn all over Marius and then do a damn good death scene. But they can’t manage the playful side of her. But you, Jill . . .” She’s looking at me with the glass held in one hand and her lips slightly parted as I talk about her. It’s more intoxicating than the scotch and threatens to cloud my cool head in a haze of heat.
I didn’t cast her because she’s fuck-able. I cast her because she’s fucking amazing. I need to keep it objective as I finish, “You were brilliant. You were stunning. You were everything and more.”
Her face lights up. I’ve failed miserably at being professional, and the best thing I can do now is not let on—to her or to anyone.
We chat about Fiddler, and as soon as she finishes her drink, I pay and say goodnight. Then I head to the boxing gym near my home in Tribeca and work out my frustrations on a punching bag. On my way out an hour later, I run into my buddy Ryder, who is headed in. He doesn’t box, but there’s a weight room attached to the gym. That’s his haunt, and he has the arms to show for it.
He lifts his chin in hello. “Hey, man. How’s it going?”
“Better now,” I grumble.
He smiles. He’s an affable guy. Ryder hosts a radio show about sex and dating in the city. “Took things out on a punching bag, I take it?”
“That’s my way.”
He laughs and claps my shoulder. “Someday, man, you’re going to find a good woman and you won’t spend nearly as much time pummeling the bag.”
I roll my eyes. “Yes. That’s my goal. I’ll call into your show when I do.”
He winks. “Can’t wait for that day.”
I flip him the bird as I leave. “You’ll be waiting forever.”
Because that just won’t happen.
6
Jill
The next night Kat swirls her straw in a chocolate milkshake, looking at the drink with disdain. “These milkshakes are not the same as they are at Tino’s Diner.”
“We’ll just have to keep trying all the diners in Chelsea and Midtown until we find a replacement,” I say to Kat.
“Hopefully before we celebrate your Tony for Best Actress in a Musical.”
Narrowing my eyes, I threaten her with a French fry. “I’m warning you, Kat . . .”
She is unimpressed. “You think I haven’t learned by now how to avoid your projectile potatoes?”
I brandish another one, not backing down. “Don’t. Jinx. Me. You know my rules.”
“You mean superstitions. Like how you didn’t even tell me you were auditioning until you got the callback. And now you’ve gone and won a role in a Broadway show.”
“With Patrick Carlson,” I say excitedly. Anybody would be thrilled.
“And in a Frederick Stillman show,” she gushes back. “I know he’s your fave.”
“And Davis Milo directing.” It seems important to mention him, give him his due, especially after our drinks last night. God knows what came over me, asking my director out for a drink. I was floating on cloud nine, and there he was, delivering the best news of my life, and there was Sardi’s, saying “Stretch this moment out as long as possible.”
Nothing to do with how the TV screen and glossy magazine pics don’t do him justice. They don’t capture his intensity. But in the bar with him last night, I understood why actresses (and some actors) go dreamy-eyed at the mention of him. Those are undress me eyes, the kind of gaze that holds yours as he walks across the room, all crazy possessive, and marks you with a territorial sort of kiss. The sort of kiss where he pushes you against the wall, cages you in with his arms, and claims you. I wonder what it would be like to be kissed like that.
“Do you think he’ll bring his Oscar to a rehearsal?” Kat muses, breaking my naughty reverie. I have no business thinking of Davis that way. He’s the director. Drinks, okay. Steamy kissing, no. “I love that movie he did where he won it. Ransom.”
“Want me to tell him you’re a fan?”
“Oh, please do.” She gives up on the milkshake, pushes it away, and rubs her hands together. “But what I really want to know are all the details about this audition scene with Patrick. What was it like to kiss the love of your life?” Her eyes widen dramatically. “Does he know you’re the same gal who once sent flowers to him and asked him out?”
“God, I hope not.” Fire rushes into my cheeks. “I hope he doesn’t remember.”
When I was seventeen, I saw a revival of Wicked at the Gershwin Theater. I’d just sung “Defying Gravity” in a high school concert, so I bought one nosebleed ticket and took the subway into Manhattan, happy to leave my real-life drama in Brooklyn and lose myself in dramatic romance for an afternoon.
In an act of Fate, or maybe Thespis, muse of the theater, I was there for one of those legendary Broadway moments—the lead actor had laryngitis, the understudy contracted a bronchial infection, and Patrick had been called in, stepping into the role with 48 hours’ notice. I perched on the edge of my seat the entire time, mesmerized, sure he locked eyes with me when he sang that gorgeous duet I knew by heart, “As Long as You’re Mine.”
Ironic how much I loved that love song, even though love was what brought my world crashing down with Aaron. Loving too much. Not loving enough.
Enter Patrick Carlson—stage presence for days, playing that bold and romantic character the audience longs for.
At curtain call, I clapped and cheered, then shyly joined the crowd of fans at the stage door. I waited, smoothing the sky-blue dress I’d worn, which matched my eyes, and when Patrick had signed dozens of Playbills and the crowd thinned until there was only me, I said hello.
He flashed the warmest, kindest smile I’d ever seen, and I felt a rush like I did on stage. I felt like a person who deserved a smile like that, and oh so confident. “Hi. I wanted to say you were amazing. I’m so impressed with how you pulled off this performance in two days. You were simply breathtaking.”
“That’s lovely of you to say.”
His hair was slightly damp, and his cheeks were red; he had a sort of glow about him. He looked like I felt after a great show, and it seemed like a kinship between us.
I held out a hand to shake. “I’m Jill. I’m an actor too.” Not that there was a comparison. He was a Broadway star; I was merely a theater student with only a few high school productions to my name.
He took my hand into his warm, strong grasp, to shake and I wanted to preserve that perfect moment forever. “That’s fantastic, Jill. How is it going? Tell me about some of the roles you’ve played.”
My insides fluttered as he leaned against the stage door of the Gershwin Theater, looking so relaxed in his jeans and a gray V-neck T-shirt.
“Well . . . I sang some of Elphaba’s songs in a concert last year in school.”
With a grin, he launched into the opening notes of the duet from that show, wordlessly inviting me to join in, and there we were, outside the theater, singing together, and now that was the best moment of my life.
Soon, he said he needed to get some rest since he had a matinee and an evening show the next day, but he walked me to the subway stop and I thanked him profusely, and he said he’d had a grand time.
&nbs
p; Grand. Yes, that’s how he said it. A grand time.
If I’d had a fainting couch instead of a subway seat, I would have swooned.
Emboldened, I sent him flowers by way of the Gershwin’s stage door—so old-school theater, even though I ordered them online—and included a note: “Hi. It was so fun meeting you. Would you like to get coffee sometime?”
I never heard back.
Seventeen-year-old me decided the flowers had never arrived. Patrick wouldn’t have ignored me like that, right? We were star-crossed, obviously. (Cue more swooning.)
Adult me isn’t surprised. Maybe he thought I was a stalker. Maybe I was, but at least it was from the cheap seats.
But that’s how I fell madly in love with Patrick Carlson. Not in a delusional way, but as a safe person to love when love had wrecked everything. The possibility of Patrick got me through so many days when I was shattered, nights when I felt cut off and alone. The fantasy of Patrick was damned good in bed—and still is, if I’m honest.
Which I should not be, or working with the real Patrick could get awkward.
“What if he does remember?” Kat asks, eerily on topic with my thoughts.
I shrug. “I’ll improvise. Broadway actress, remember.”
The next morning I’m up before the sun and out on the West Side bike path, my ponytail swinging behind me as I take my surefire cure for when the past drags me down. I run off my regret. I picture it unspooling behind me, layers of remorse that I peel away. Someday, maybe even soon, I’ll have let go of them all.
Reeve meets up with me after a few miles.
“Try to keep up,” I shout as he joins me mid-stride.
He rolls his eyes and keeps pace with no problem. I like running with Reeve because he runs like I do. Full tilt. Nothing held back.
“Can I say I told you so?” he says after the first half-mile.
“About not being able to keep up?”
“No, doofus. About the show.”
“By all means. Say it all day long.”
“Get me good seats for opening night.”
The Private Rehearsal (Caught Up In Love: The Swoony New Reboot of the Contemporary Romance Series Book 4) Page 3