Acting Up (Center Stage Book 1)

by Adele Buck

  Paul felt that odd, buoyant bubble of emotion under his breastbone again. He huffed a short laugh, thinking of that moment all those years ago when he had nearly kissed her. “You know what? I think you’re right.”

  Cath stopped and turned to him. “You too?”

  “Oh yes.” Paul cupped her cheek in his hand. “I wonder what would have happened if we explored this earlier. We’re a couple of idiots, you know that?”

  Turning her face into his hand, Cath kissed his palm, sending a jolt of sensation through him. “We got smarter.”

  Chapter 20

  “Bloody hell.” Laurie’s voice ripped through the darkened theater. Cath dropped her pencil onto her script and rubbed her eyes. They felt gritty and hot. The final hanging and focusing of the lights had taken the entire production crew late into the night before and Cath had rolled into bed well past three in the morning. Fatigue compounded with the usual stress of technical rehearsals was taking its toll on everyone, but Laurie’s temper seemed more frayed than anyone’s.

  “Laurie, what’s wrong now?” Paul was speaking with the careful, patient tones Cath recognized far too well as of late. They heralded he was hanging on to the last shreds of his control and he sounded close to exploding.

  The lighting designer pointed to the stage. “That. That bloody great hot spot. And the shade is all wrong. What color did you paint that flat, Karl? It looks like infant vomit.”

  Karl looked at the bright spot glaring against the painted set. “You’re right. It looks like crap. But it didn’t before yesterday. What color gel do you have on that light, anyway? Piss yellow?” His normally easy, rumbling voice had a thin snap to it, brittle and harsh.

  A chill settled in Cath’s belly as Karl and Laurie continued to snipe at each other. All the affection they normally displayed had exploded into sharp fragments that they used to wound each other.

  Finally, Paul called a halt to the hostilities, saying, “We will get someone up there and fix the focus after rehearsal, Laurie. And maybe the gel color on that light needs to be adjusted as well.”

  Laurie’s jaw clenched at the implication that Paul was taking Karl’s side in the squabble, but he didn’t say anything. Cath made a note about the light and realized her hand was not quite steady.

  It’s just that you’re tired. We’re all tired.

  She looked from Karl to Laurie and back at the set designer again. The men had positioned themselves on opposite sides of the house, their body language tense and angry.

  Oh, God. Could this be me and Paul one day?

  On stage, James waited and Susan arched an eyebrow, presumably disappointed that she couldn’t unload her usual freight of ill humor on the proceedings. Cath had to admit that, in a huge surprise to everyone, Susan was handling the tech rehearsal better than most of them. Tech felt like a step backward for many actors, the flow that they had achieved over the weeks of work to make the play a smooth whole broken by the constant stop and start as lighting and sound cues were set and other technical details were adjusted.

  Of course, the actors had presumably enjoyed the advantage of a good night’s sleep while the rest of them had been working.

  Cath sipped her coffee and made a face. It had gone cool. She needed to get Freddie to make another run to the shop.

  “Okay. Susan, James. From where you left off.” Paul’s voice, hoarse from constant use, still held that slight edge. He sounded leashed in, careful and controlled.

  Cath checked the time. Still a half hour before she could call for a break. Taking a deep breath, she returned her attention to the stage.

  Paul glanced at Cath as he moved up the aisle to the table where she sat noting lighting cues. Her face looked drawn and tired, her eyes ringed with dark circles. Paul scrubbed his own face with his hands, knowing he was also exhausted and probably looked it, too. Cath turned and said something to Glenn, the electrician beside her who was manning the enormous lighting board, carefully tweaking levels to Laurie’s specifications and shooting nervous glances from the lighting designer to Karl and back again.

  Susan and James continued the scene, James moving away from Susan, toward the end of the stage where the scaffolding loomed. Ascending to the platform halfway up, he was arrested by a bellow of, “Oh, sodding bollocks,” from Laurie.

  Paul rolled his eyes and turned to the smaller man. “Laurie, you knew we were going to use that portion of the set. It isn’t just there for show.”

  “I know, but I thought all that blocking was in the fourth act,” Laurie said, striding over to the lighting board and adjusting the sliders himself, lights blooming over James as he sat patiently on the platform. Glenn leaned back in his chair to give Laurie room, his eyes apprehensive. Paul saw Cath check the time and caught her eye, nodding.

  Call a break, he mouthed at her. She nodded grimly.

  “Everyone, that’s fifteen,” Cath called out. “Please be back promptly.”

  “Oh, fine. I guess I’m the only one who has work to do,” Laurie snapped.

  Paul wrapped his hand around Cath’s arm as she turned to respond to Laurie. “I think we will just let him have a private moment with his light board,” he murmured in her ear, tugging her to her feet as Karl and Laurie resumed their tense bickering.

  Pulling Cath out into the empty lobby, he turned to face her, resting his hands on her shoulders, eyes scanning her face. “Well, that’s way above and beyond their usual tech week spat.”

  “I had completely forgotten they had such a charming tradition.” Cath inhaled deeply and let the breath out in a shuddering rush. Paul realized her shoulders underneath his hands were hard with tension. Looking more closely at her, he noticed her eyes were bleak, her eyes fixed on a point over his shoulder.

  “What’s the matter, Cath?” He flexed his fingers gently, trying to loosen the tightness in her muscles.

  “Is that going to be us?” Cath asked in a rush, her weary eyes flying to meet his.

  Cath’s stomach roiled with nausea and she sought reassurance in Paul’s startled eyes. “Tell me we will never act like that. Tell me we will never treat each other that way. Please promise me,” she said.

  Looking steadily at her, Paul’s hands gripped her shoulders tightly. “I can’t promise anything,” he said.

  “Oh, God,” Cath groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Wait, Cath.” Paul lifted one hand to tuck two fingers under her chin, lifting her face to meet his gaze. “I can’t tell you that because I can’t be sure. What I can be sure of is that it isn’t likely.”

  “Great,” Cath muttered.

  “Sweetheart.” Paul folded her in his arms, pressing her ear to his chest and folding his chin over the top of her head. “We are not Karl and Laurie.”

  “But they’re supposed to…be our model for something that works,” she said, her voice choked with misery. “That, in there…it isn’t working.”

  “And yet they do this almost every tech week when the sleep deprivation and the tension of deadlines gets to them. Just not usually as bad as this. They’re probably feeling the stress of the engagement on top of everything else.”

  “Why didn’t I remember that they can be this way?”

  “They’re good enough at their jobs and so charming ninety-nine percent of the time that everyone conveniently forgets,” Paul murmured. “They also always get beyond it.”

  Cath pulled back to look him in the eye again. “I don’t ever, ever want to be like that, even if we did get beyond it. I don’t mind an argument but that…it’s awful. They’re being awful to each other. I don’t want to be awful to you. I don’t want you to be awful to me.”

  “So we won’t.”

  Cath stiffened, her jaw tightening. “Don’t be glib. You just told me you couldn’t promise that we wouldn’t.”

  “No, but I can promise you that we aren’t Karl and Laurie. We’re us. We’re different. We fight differently, we handle stress differently.”

  “And we m
ight break apart under the same kind of stress. Then what happens to us?” Cath’s own voice sounded strained in her ears.

  Paul cupped Cath’s face between his hands and looked at her steadily. “I can’t imagine us breaking apart under any circumstances. I can’t imagine any part of my life without you. I love you.”

  Paul wasn’t sure how saying something that felt so perfectly right could create a reaction that was so absolutely wrong. Cath’s hollow, exhausted eyes went wide and she stepped back from him, twisting her face away from his hands. Stomach clenching, Paul forced his arms to his sides as she moved away.

  “And…you don’t feel the same way.” Empty and almost numb, Paul could still feel pain prickling at the edges of his very being. How…?

  “It isn’t that,” Cath croaked, rubbing her eyes. “It’s that I can’t believe you would say that now. Is it just to shock me? To get me to…what? Get back to work and stop worrying?”

  Continuing to hold his arms rigidly by his sides, he took a deep breath. “No, Cath. I didn’t tell you to manipulate you. I said it because it happens to be true. I don’t know why it’s so wrong of me to tell you how I feel about you.”

  Cath pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked at it, then turned the screen toward him, showing him the clock. “It’s wrong because we’re almost done with a goddamned fifteen-minute break, Paul. How can you expect to open a can of worms like that now?”

  The phone shrilled and the name “Michael Balducci” flashed onto the screen. Every muscle in Paul’s body turned to stone as Cath looked at the screen, her face flushing a dull red.

  “Why is Michael calling you?” Paul’s voice sounded unnaturally calm to his own ears, even as ice water flowed through his veins.

  “It’s not important.” Cath sent the call to voicemail and shoved the phone into her back pocket.

  Paul mentally filed through New York gossip and announcements. “Isn’t he preparing to cast a new show?”

  “Yes.” Cath didn’t look at him, instead focusing on something off to one side of him.

  “And he’s contacted you about stage managing it.” In some dim part of his mind, he was astonished he sounded so calm.

  She licked her lips, gaze shifting his other side. “Preliminarily.”

  He forced the next words through a stiffening jaw. “When were you going to tell me about this?”

  At last, Cath lifted her eyes to meet his. “I had forgotten about it. He e-mailed me a while back.”

  “And you were willing to consider his offer.”

  “There’s no offer. Just an opportunity to talk.”

  “This isn’t like you.”

  One of her arms flailed, seeming to take in the theatre, them, the entire situation. “None of this is like me. When he contacted me, you weren’t behaving like you. None of this is like anything we’ve dealt with before. When I got Michael’s e-mail, things were going to shit. I thought maybe we could use a break from each other.” Cath’s voice was high and thready.

  “And what do you think now?” Something in Paul was cracking, the strange calm he felt flaking away, replaced by a scrabbling panic.

  “I think we need to get back to rehearsal.” Cath started to turn back to the theater.

  Paul grabbed her wrist. “We can take another two minutes to hash this out. Or will it take longer? Are you still going to consider the job?”

  Cath looked at his hand on her wrist, then at him, tears sheening her eyes. “I don’t know. This is all getting a little intense, don’t you think? Maybe we need to be one thing at a time to one another.”

  “Have a romantic relationship or a professional one, but not both? Is that what you’re thinking?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, shutting him out. “I don’t know. You’re not giving me a chance to think.”

  “Can’t you at least do your thinking with me for once? I get your independence. I respect it. But this isn’t just about you. Don’t I get any say in this at all?” Paul grasped her shoulders again, barely restraining himself from shaking her.

  Cath’s eyes snapped open, flickering with rage. “Did you think about us when you nearly fired Susan only days ago?”

  Paul blinked. He’d nearly forgotten the incident in his relief that it had blown over. “What?”

  “You put everything on the line there. And it wasn’t just your career that could have suffered. Did you think about how it would have affected me? How it did affect me to see you make a unilateral decision like that?”

  Paul’s knees nearly buckled. She was right.

  Cath glanced at her phone again. “Time is up. Break’s over.”

  His teeth ground together. “Don’t play ‘the show must go on’ card with me. Not now.”

  Her jaw jutted stubbornly. “It’s not a card. It’s a job. Our job. We have people depending on us.”

  He wanted to say “Fuck the play, we need to fix this now.” Instead, he released her and walked past her, back into the house without another word.

  Cath took a shaky breath and covered her mouth with her hands. I can’t cry now. There’s no time. I need to get back in there. Get this goddamn rehearsal over with.

  And try to fix things with Paul. Somehow. After. After she did her job.

  Wiping her eyes and keeping her head low, she walked back into the house and resumed her seat next to Glenn. Picking up her pencil, her eyes slid to Karl and Laurie. They were standing a few feet away from one another, but their body language didn’t exhibit the same tense hostility that had characterized their earlier sniping. She rolled her neck in an effort to release the tension that still lingered.

  “Glenn,” she whispered to the electrician, “they get it out of their systems?”

  The lanky man was watching Karl and Laurie with the same sort of wary attention she supposed she was. “Not sure,” he replied, talking quietly out of the side of his mouth. “Just got back myself. They seem calmer, at any rate.”

  “Good,” Cath said as Paul strode across the house.

  “Gentlemen,” Paul’s ragged voice still managed to boom out with authority. “Are we ready to work again?”

  Laurie turned as if to snap again, but took a deep breath instead. “Yes, Paul, darling. All your lambs have trotted back into the fold.”

  “Excellent,” Paul said, striking his hands together and rubbing them briskly. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

  Cath found herself in a strange place as the surface part of her brain handled her professional duties. Underneath, she was split in two. One side argued for independence, for standing on her own. The other saw the sense in Paul’s desire to be involved, the pain she had caused him in not telling him about Michael’s offer. They’d both been wrong.

  And they’d both been right.

  Coward. This isn’t about standing on your own. This is about running away.

  She forced herself for what felt like the millionth time to focus on recording the lighting cues.

  Apologize. Do it soon. He deserves at least that, even if you’ve already ruined everything.

  Chapter 21

  Hours later, Paul pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting off the headache that had been threatening since his argument with Cath. He glanced sideways at her. Her head was bent over her script, scribbling frantically, her long hair curtaining her face, shielding her from his view. He couldn’t see her expression, but the angular lines of her body language were tense, painful.

  The sight gutted him. Half of him was glad to know that she was hurting like he was. The other half wanted to soothe the hurt.

  Even though what she had done—or hadn’t done—had cut him to the core.

  While they had occasionally worked on different productions in the past, they had been solid partners for years. He counted on her. The thought of trying to mount a production without Cath was…the very idea sounded like a series of booby traps, of concealed holes for his unwary foot to step into. A recipe for ruin. It made him panicky and uncertain
.

  And she had considered doing it without telling him. That was the worst of it.

  But hadn’t he done the same thing to her by almost firing Susan? And right in front of her to boot?

  Forcing his attention back to the stage, he shook his head. “Laurie, can we soften this a bit? I think it’s too bright for the mood. I’d like a little more uncertainty. More shadow.” He watched as Laurie considered the request and nodded, murmuring to Glenn at the lighting board. The illumination on the stage shifted subtly and the scene Paul had envisioned in his mind was in front of his eyes.

  “Thank you. That’s perfect.” Out of the corner of Paul’s eye, he saw Cath turn her face toward him, but when he looked back at her, she looked down at her script.

  Dammit, Cath.

  Raking his upper lip through his teeth, he gestured for the rehearsal to continue. They were getting there.

  “Actually, Paul, we need to take a break. Fifteen minutes everyone.” Cath rose to her feet and rubbed her temples.

  “Oh, come on.” Susan’s sarcastic tones sliced through Paul’s head, exacerbating the ache that was already throbbing in his sinuses. “Aren’t we almost done here? This is ridiculous.”

  “The union’s rules are clear. And they’re there to protect everyone, including you.” Cath’s voice was weary but firm. Paul looked at her, her profile shadowed from the gooseneck lamp that illuminated the board beside her.

  “I don’t need a break. I just want to get done.” Susan shadowed her eyes to look into the house, her face twisted into a peevish glare.

  Cath dropped her pencil on her script. “Well, bully for you. But it’s not just about you. It’s about everyone. The crew was working while you were sleeping last night, so we need it even if you don’t. Take it up with Actor’s Equity if you need to, but for now I’m going to adhere to the rules because it’s my job.” Cath turned away from the stage, pushing her hair back from her forehead.