He recoiled as though I’d asked him if he wanted syphilis. “Uh, no thanks.”
Which kind of hurt, but I just nodded, suddenly not feeling quite so cocky anymore.
I thought we were done talking about it, but while he had shut me down, he still had some advice. “No tongue and keep it brief,” he said. “Don’t get caught up in it, it’s not a real kiss.”
“That should be easy to remember with a million people watching it happen,” I said, the thought of it making me even more nervous.
“You’d be surprised,” he said drily, which concerned me, but before I could question it, he said, “Kaylee okay with it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We talked about it and we’re good. She knows I’d never steal her guy. Plus, he’s totally in love with her and she totally overestimates my appeal.”
His eyes lingered on me for a second before he glanced over my head toward the wardrobe room and nodded before changing the subject. “When do we go on?”
“Fourth,” I said.
“That doesn’t give you a lot of time to change.”
I glanced down at my Romeo outfit. “I was just going to wear this.” I looked back up at him. “Problem?”
His eyes widened for a brief moment while I tried my hardest not to laugh. Finally, a grin broke out on his face and he shook his head. “You little devil.”
I looked at him innocently. “What? No. I’m your snow angel.”
“You...” but he didn’t finish, instead changing gears again. “Oh wait, I almost forgot...” He walked away from me and I was going to ask him if he was having a stroke but then I watched as he grabbed a box that I hadn’t noticed sitting on a table in the wings. He returned and as soon as he stopped in front of me, I remembered.
I looked up at him, unable to help the smile that crept across my face. “Is that what I think it is?”
He held out the box toward me. “See for yourself.”
Instead of taking the box, I left it in his hands, but lifted the lid to reveal...tissue. Sighing, I pulled the pieces apart to reveal exactly what I’d hoped it would be: a top hat. I smiled up at Abe. “It’s perfect.”
He was grinning down at me. “There’s more. Look underneath.”
I picked up the hat and placed it on my head so I could see what else was in the box. I pulled apart more tissue to reveal something black and satiny. I pulled it out and it turned out to be a pair of long gloves. “They’ll go perfectly with the dress,” he said as he swept his eyes down my body. “Or this outfit. Whatever.”
I laughed and opened my mouth to thank him, but before I got the chance, there was some static over the mic and then Emmie’s voice rang out that we all needed to check in and take our places because the show was set to start in fifteen minutes.
I put the gloves and the hat back into the box and shoved it at Abe. “Take care of this for now. I’ve got the dress ready in the wardrobe room; as soon as I’m done with the Romeo and Juliet scene, I’ll rush back and change. Can you be near there?”
He nodded.
“Okay, thanks. I’d better go.” I looked over at where Kaylee and Declan were milling around with the other cast members in the wings on stage right. “I’ll see you after.”
“Break a leg,” Abe said with a smile.
“Thanks,” I said before I turned away from him to join the others.
~ ♥ ~
The curtain was down and we could hear the roar of the crowd as they waited for the show to begin. The rest of the cast and I watched from the wings as Miles, the first act, made his way out to the middle of the stage. He was wearing a warm-up suit, the kind with a zip up jacket and baggy pants. He stood there with a huge grin on his face, waiting, while on the other side of the curtain, the dean welcomed everyone to the talent show. Then she passed off the mic to someone else who introduced Miles, even including his football achievements.
Good God. Sad, really.
I looked up at Declan. “What’s his act?” I whispered.
“No idea. He doesn’t have a football in his hand, so...” he shrugged.
We didn’t have to wait long before the music began.
“Oh God,” Kaylee said, echoing my own thoughts, even though I had no idea what he was going to do. But it was going to be bad. Very bad.
The song was that ridiculous “I’m Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO. You know the one with all the wiggling? That one.
Miles started pulsing with the beat as the curtain went up.
“What is happening?” I whispered.
No one answered, but it was a rhetorical question anyway.
The music thumped and then he started dancing around the stage. Like a lunatic. Then, when it got to that part in the song when the music stops and the guy exclaims, “I’m sexy and I know it!” Miles stopped and ripped off his tear-away pants, revealing an American flag Speedo that was so small it probably qualified as treason.
The crowd went wild.
His smile got even bigger.
I wanted to die of vicarious embarrassment.
“Noooooo,” I said, watching as he unzipped his jacket and pulled it off, too, revealing his bare chest. He threw it down on the stage and resumed his dancing around the stage, basically naked except for the Speedo.
Declan burst into hysterics beside me, even with Kaylee shushing him. Not that it mattered since the crowd was going so nuts that no one could have heard him anyway.
“Oh my God,” I said, not sure whether to laugh my butt off or be totally embarrassed for him. And then he started wiggling. It was...I can’t even. The crowd somehow got even louder.
“Well, at least it’s not football,” Declan said between breaths as he clutched his stomach. “What a tool.”
Kaylee shook her head. “Boy, did you dodge a bullet,” she said. “Can you imagine if you were dating that?”
I glanced over at her. “No kidding. Do you believe this?”
“It’s right in front of me, so I have to, but...”
But then the curtain started to come down and the music suddenly stopped.
Kaylee and I looked at each other. “The dean,” we both said at the same time. Because there was no way she would let some dude in a microscopic Speedo dance around on her stage. She had to be losing her freaking mind. We snickered at that, and I almost felt bad for Miles because I had a feeling the dean was going to rake him and the Westwood dean over the coals for it.
But Miles’s shortened act meant we were on sooner than anticipated. When the curtain was completely down, we headed out onto the stage, even though Miles was still standing there, seemingly unaware of what was going on.
“What?” he said indignantly. “I wasn’t finished!”
“Oh you’re finished,” I said.
He turned toward me and smiled, making a point of flexing his pecs. Ugh.
“Like what you see?” he asked in what I’m sure he thought was a sexy voice.
Okay, so maybe if his mouth hadn’t been working and he hadn’t just shamelessly done that ridiculous dance in front of a huge crowd of people in a tiny Speedo, I would have found his body pretty nice. But his mouth was working and that dance. Ugh. I mean, I was no stranger to liking attention, but please. Have some class.
I gave him a very, very slow up and down look and landed on the bathing suit. “Nope.” I said, looking up and watching his smile disappear as it sunk in.
“What?” he said. “Were you not watching?”
“Oh, I was watching,” I said with a laugh before I changed gears. “Now get off the stage and go change for your part of the scene, you’ve only got a couple minutes.” Although all he had to do was put on a long dress over his bathing suit.
Gag.
He huffed, but when Declan shooed him away he shuffled off the stage, muttering something about how he wasn’t appreciated in his own time.
Declan and I looked at each other and laughed which eased a bit of the tension over the upcoming kiss.
Kaylee gave us our marks a
nd reminded me of my first line. “You ready?” she asked us.
We nodded at her and she jogged off the stage into the wings to cue our intro. Declan and I looked at each other and took our deep breaths, waiting for the curtain to rise. At the first squeak of the pulleys, something drew my attention into the wings where Abe stood watching me. He gave me a wink, which I returned before I looked back at Declan, my Juliet.
This is it, I thought and said my first line.
Unexpected Results
The curtain was barely down before I rushed off the stage toward the wardrobe room, thankful to be out of the hot stage lights, even for a few minutes.
I had only a couple of seconds to be happy about how the scene had gone and how very not hot the kiss had been between me and Declan: just a quick press of lips that meant nothing. Thank God.
But now I had to completely change gears and get ready for Abe’s magic show.
Thankfully, Abe had cleared the room of people and had placed the box with the hat and gloves next to where I’d hung the dress on the big mirror. As I turned to thank him, he nodded and pulled the door closed behind me so I could quickly change while the third act (whatever that was, I had no time to even think about it) went on. I locked the door and pulled off my shirt and undid my bra as I stepped over to where the dress hung.
Beside it on the table was the two-sided tape. “This had better work.”
As I undid the pants and pulled off the rest of the Romeo outfit, stripping down to just my underwear, Spanx and fishnets that I’d had on underneath, I checked my makeup in the mirror and was again impressed with Kaylee’s skill. It still looked good despite the sheen of sweat on my brow. I grabbed my powder and brushed more on my face and some on the part of my upper chest that would be exposed above the bodice of the dress.
I pulled the dress over my head and cut two pieces of tape off the roll and adhered them to the tops of my boobs, pressing the fabric of the dress into the tape to hold everything in place. I made sure the tape wasn’t showing and then took the hat out of the box. Glancing in the mirror, I kind of hated that my hair was slicked back into the chignon, but it had been necessary for the Romeo bit.
“No,” I said decisively to my reflection, pulling the elastic out of my hair. I hadn’t brought a brush with me and a quick scan of the makeup tables came up empty so I finger-combed it out as best I could. It looked a little wild, which sort of worked, so I shoved the top hat on at a sassy angle, liking how my red hair flared out underneath. “Much better,” I said to myself.
A knock sounded on the door. “Two minutes,” Abe said, his voice muffled by the thick wood.
“Crap,” I muttered. I pulled on my silver shoes and finished off with the gloves after a quick check of the dress. The seam Emmie’d sewn looked good and mostly invisible. Not that anyone in the audience would ever notice.
After the final touch of bold red lipstick, I gave myself a last once-over in the full-length mirror. “You look pretty hot, Chelly Spencer,” I said, giving myself a wink.
“One minute,” Abe said, sounding a little panicked.
I hurried over to the door and unlocked it before opening it up.
“Ready,” I said, almost slamming into Abe who was standing in the doorway holding a bottle of water.
Thankful that I hadn’t spilled the water all over one or both of us, I regained my balance, watching as his jaw dropped. Like, his mouth literally fell open as he did the slow sweep of me from the top down and then back up again. “Wow,” he said. “You look...So much better than the other outfit.”
“Will I be enough of a distraction for the audience?” I asked, unable to help the big smile on my face.
“Forget the audience,” he said with a snort. “You’re going to distract me.”
He looked up into my eyes and it did something really awkward to my stomach, but I didn’t exactly have the time to stand there and analyze it.
“We’d better go,” I said, my voice a bit hoarse, making me glad I didn’t have a speaking part in the performance.
Like he’d been thinking the same, Abe nodded and brought the water to his lips, chugging the rest. “Sorry,” he said once he was finished, holding the empty bottle up. “I should have offered you some.”
I waved him off. “Let’s go,” I said, not a second too soon because the music stopped, signaling the end of the third act.
“You remember everything?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, moving with him through the wings to take our places on the stage. “You?”
He smiled over at me. “I hope so.”
He looked kind of nervous and my heart fluttered, feeling nervous for both of us.
“Good luck,” I said and then for no reason, I went up onto my tiptoes and pressed my lips against his. It wasn’t any sort of real kiss, but when I moved back, he looked surprised.
“For luck,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “For luck.”
We took our places under the lights and my heart pounded as I listened to a guy (the voice was muffled thanks to the curtain and from the speakers facing out toward the audience, but it sounded like it could have maybe been Dave) introducing Abe, doing a brief bio of him, mentioning his old sitcom. I glanced over at Abe who cringed through all of this and I realized it couldn’t be Dave because he never would have said things that would embarrass Abe.
As a bead of sweat slid down my back, Abe looked over at me and arched his eyebrow. I winked back, making him smile.
“...Without further ado...I give you The Great Abramo and his assistant, the lovely Seychelles!”
He gave me an eye-roll as the curtain started to rise. I took a deep breath and was suddenly really thankful for the blinding lights that wouldn’t let me see out to the audience. Still, the applause told me they were all out there. A lot of them. And for a half a second, I worried my knees were going to buckle, but then I realized if that happened, I would ruin Abe’s show. It was really important that he put on this performance to have some closure on his crap childhood and relationship with his father. So I girded my loins, as they say, and pasted a smile on my face as I did my job to deflect attention away from Abe as he did his tricks. I pointed at his props and made exaggerated faces as though even I was surprised at his tricks. Basically, I was totally rocking the lovely assistant bit. All while pretending I wasn’t roasting under those lights.
But I was. There was a pool of sweat at the small of my back and my head felt like it was tucked into an oven. A river trickled down the back of my neck, but I suddenly realized the sweat was the least of my worries.
Because as I went through the routine pointing and smiling and moving around more, I started to feel the tape giving way. I glanced down and saw where part of the material over my right boob had pulled away.
Crap. I returned my attention back to the act, keeping my peripheral vision trained on the fabric, trying to figure out what to do.
I didn’t dare look at Abe who was making the audience laugh with his magic and jokes, but there were still three minutes left and the trick he needed me for most was his big finale where I held the hat for him. Which meant I couldn’t bolt. As I did a big exaggerated wave toward him, I inconspicuously pressed my arm against my chest to push the material into the tape. It might have worked, if it wasn’t for the sweat. But instead of fixing it, I dislodged the fabric from the tape even more. Another quick glance told me most of the material was off of the tape on the right side. I tried the arm-press maneuver again, but it wasn’t working; the tape must have lost its stickiness or something. Whatever it was, I had the ridiculous thought that science was betraying me completely.
The urge to run off the stage was becoming overwhelming, but when I glanced over at Abe to somehow communicate to him that I was going to have to bail, he had this look on his face like he was having the best time of his life.
The best time of his life; this guy who had suffered the kind of childhood that people should have gone to jail over. No.
I would not ruin his show by running off the stage. Determined, I figured I could just stop moving around so much and the left side would hold on for the two or so minutes I needed it to.
He looked at me and for like a quarter of a second, his forehead twitched like he couldn’t understand the look on my face (the one that said: I really need to get off the stage. Right. Freaking. Now!) but then he had to return to his routine and pushed the rings together, making the crowd oooh and aaaah.
Then, as we’d rehearsed, he handed me the joined rings and I took a breath and held them up over my head to show they were joined, but as I did, the seam Emmie had sewn gave way at the same time as the material completely pulled away from the tape. On both sides.
The dress fell down.
To my waist.
Meaning I completely flashed the entire audience.
The.
Entire.
Freaking.
Audience.
For a split second as time seemed to slow and nanoseconds felt like hours, I completely froze, the sudden dead silence out in the house deafening, the buzz of the lights and a lone cough the only sound in the giant auditorium. I still couldn’t see them beyond the lights, but I knew they could see me.
In my peripheral vision, I saw Abe turn his head to look at me because he obviously hadn’t realized what had happened.
“Oh my God,” I said as I dropped the rings. They clinked and clattered to the stage, cutting through the silence as effectively as a bomb. Then then the curtain came down in record time, practically falling to the stage, as I yanked up the dress and bolted just as the crowd finally reacted and went crazy, the whoops and whistles just adding to my humiliation. “Noooo...” I whimpered, unable to put together a thought other than I needed to get out of there.
“Chelly!” Abe yelled, but I ignored him and ran through the wings, past the gaping Mr. Stratton and Kaylee and everyone else, out the back door of the auditorium into the hallway, not stopping when the top hat flew off my head.
Acting Out Page 10