The Summer Set Read online

  * * *

  Charlie awakened to Nick beside her, birds announcing morning from the treetops, a bright sun already overhead, not a single cloud. She wasn’t sure if he was awake yet, wasn’t sure how to play this, whether last night was casual or if she could admit that it meant something. She spoke first, lightly.

  “So this is camping,” she whispered, eyes barely open. Her body still, she patted blindly at the grass in search of her dress.

  “We need a rematch because I don’t like these terms we agreed to.” He swept her still-damp hair to the side, kissed that lark imprinted beneath.

  “We’ll talk,” she said in a tone that signaled another race might not be necessary. She had missed this, all of it. The stage last night, being part of something again, that feeling that each night would be different, that the show itself was something alive and breathing, that she was alive and breathing. And him. Them.

  His hand traced that groove on her thigh. “I don’t remember this,” he said. “And I remember a lot.”

  “I’m flattered,” she said. “And that’s new. Souvenir from the harbor.” She tossed it out easily enough, hoping he would let it float by. But his hand froze there.

  She thought back to last night’s swim, how vividly her mind had called up the accident. Why had that memory chosen that moment to reveal itself? She had visited the lake almost nightly since arriving.

  “I don’t like how you got it,” he said, his eyes downcast. “But it suits you.” He planted a delicate, healing kiss on that ragged slash. And then on her lips again. “If only the theater was dark today.” He sounded pained. They had a matinee, a Q&A and an evening show. “But reality starts—”

  “Imminently?” she asked, without urgency. She grabbed his hand, checking his watch, which had survived the swim: 8:13. “Not imminently.” She sat up anyway, disengaging from him long enough to slip her dress back on and for him to do the same with his jeans and T-shirt. His phone rang, chiming offensively at them. He silenced it.

  “Imminently enough,” he said, with even more regret. “Alarm,” he explained, flashing the screen, and tossed the phone onto the grass. “I’m awake.”

  He pulled her to the ground again, entwined once more. She felt entirely swept up, couldn’t envision any scenario that would involve either of them leaving this isolated perch until showtime (so long as it remained unpopulated).

  Until his phone disturbed them again.

  “You’re busy,” she whispered against his lips. “This is literally why the voice mail transcription feature exists.”

  He kissed her neck again and her forehead, reaching over her for the phone, missing its last ring. He collapsed onto his back, eyes set on the screen, squinting in the sunshine. She lay on her side, her hand beneath his T-shirt, resting on his chest.

  “I do have some meetings, phone calls,” he said, defeated. “Stuff that has to happen before the matinee.”

  She looked at him, waiting for him to say more. He didn’t. She scanned his eyes for explanation, finding none. Her heart started to turn. “Oh, you’re serious,” she said, more hurt than she could ever admit. “Meetings or whatever. That’s what you’re going with? Okay, well, I’m super busy too.” She rolled her eyes, shoved her hand against his chest, using it as leverage and pushing herself up to her feet.

  “Hey,” he coughed at the impact, like he’d been punched.

  “So I’m gonna find the rest of my clothes and my misplaced judgment and then I’m bolting too.” On her feet now, she took a step, but he lunged, just catching her fingertips, then gripping her hand in both of his to stop her.

  “Wait, what are you talking about?” He rose to his feet, still not letting go of her.

  “Let’s not do this.” She waited. He said nothing, just looked at her, confused. “You need your lines,” she said almost to herself. “Here’s where you say—‘This shouldn’t’ve happened/can’t happen/won’t happen. I’m with someone,’ et cetera—”

  “Taylor?”

  “Right, sure, whatever.” She threw her arms up, not caring about the details. “You say, ‘Last night was fun, thanks for the memories—’”

  “But I’m not with Taylor or anyone and this isn’t a one—” He shook his head. She looked away, but he found her eyes again. “No, you’re going to listen to me. This place—the theater—is still going to close. And I still need to try to keep that from happening. Even if it’s inconvenient and gets in the way of the best thing that’s happened to me in years.” He paused a moment. She focused on the lake. “I meant you, in case you didn’t get that.”

  At this she glanced at him.

  “I’m trying to make up for lost time, but...it’s a lot...lost...here.” He scanned their surroundings. “And here.” He put his hand to his chest, and then gestured to her, his eyes trying to catch hers. “Believe me that I do have meetings and phone calls even if they’re with people I’d honestly rather not have to deal with. And the last thing I want to do is...basically everything I have to do today.” He picked up his blazer, his button-down, stepped into his shoes. He exhaled, hand through his hair. “This is an epically bad time for me to have this place falling apart and so few weeks to pull it together and then also to have this emotional chaos of you...and me and us. Amazing chaos. This is why I was about to kiss you on the rooftop? In London? But then I didn’t, but then maybe I should’ve.” He seemed to forget he was saying this out loud. “And you’re completely freaking me out right now. Why aren’t you interrupting me? You’re always interrupting me. You’re just gonna let me keep talking?”

  It was probably the longest she had ever allowed him to speak without cutting in. But she had no words.

  “I’m just, I’m a couple revelations behind,” she managed, dazed.

  His phone rang, and he closed his eyes like he had been shot. “I have to—” he said, walking away, pulling on his shirt, answering his phone after a few paces. She watched him go.

  Thirty-four days. It didn’t feel like enough now.

  32

  THEY’RE MADLY IN LOVE AND DON’T KNOW IT YET

  The theater was packed, with the full audience of the matinee staying behind for the TalkBack: a question-and-answer session with the four Romeo and Juliet professional actors and Nicholas. A collective rustling broke out as at least a dozen theatergoers left their seats to line up at the microphones.

  Sierra and her fellow apprentices pooled near the far left orchestra seats. She wanted to ask about Charlie and Nicholas, who sat beside each other on the stage. In the rare instance they made eye contact, both would look away instantly. Was Sierra reading too much into it? Willing something that wasn’t there? It was odd to feel like you could understand the motivations of two people you really didn’t know at all. It was possible to think you knew them, knew what was best for them, just from reading about them, from clips of them together when they had actually been together, from quotes given about each other in articles. All Sierra really knew for certain, she realized, was that the kind of chemistry Charlie and Nicholas had didn’t happen to everyone.

  “Are they or aren’t they?” Sierra whispered to Ethan beside her while the actors took turns answering an inevitable question about “process.”

  “Are they or aren’t they what?” he whispered back.

  “Like, you know, together together.”

  “How would I know?” he asked. And then said, “How would I know?”

  Because right now Charlie and Nicholas seemed entirely unlike what Ethan had reported from rehearsals. As Matteo Denali discussed character development, on the other end of the stage Nick leaned into Charlie’s ear to tell her something, one hand covering his microphone, the other hand on her back. Charlie smiled, nodded, their eyes connecting a moment, silently, before they returned focus to Matteo.

  “Ohhh,” Ethan whispered.

  “I can’t take this anymor
e.” Tripp, who had been listening to Sierra and Ethan, stepped over them to get to the aisle and the microphone with the shortest line.

  After a question from one of the directing apprentices about the challenges of switching parts, Sierra heard Tripp’s voice booming:

  “This is for Charlie and Nicholas,” Tripp started. “What’s it like working together again?”

  As Nicholas snapped forward, Sierra and Ethan, both horrified, exchanged glances, like they had been caught, guilty of something.

  “Maybe you should take that,” the director said to Charlie with a nervous laugh that the audience echoed. “I know my answer, but I’m curious if it matches yours.”

  Charlie shrugged, not shy. “I’d say it’s good.” She looked at Nicholas, and everyone held their breaths for more. But there was nothing else.

  “That was my answer too, so that’s a relief,” Nicholas said to the audience. Then to Tripp, he murmured, “Thank you.”

  “They’re madly in love and don’t know it yet, bless their hearts,” a wise Tripp whispered to Sierra and Ethan when he returned.

  “Another question for Charlie,” a directing apprentice asked next. Charlie nodded. “You were here last when you were with your mom. Any plans to work together again? She’s such a legend.”

  “That’s true. And you’d have to ask her,” she said. “I would love to but she never comes ‘across the pond’ these days. She’s very devoted to her theater school for children and she doesn’t like to leave it. So it would have to happen there, I guess.”

  * * *

  As soon as their talk wrapped, Nick ushered Charlie away quickly, backstage and up the staircase to avoid the crowd. “I have an idea, I think it’s a good one actually—” He swooped her into his office, swung the door shut.

  “Really?” she said, a saucy inflection. They hadn’t had even a moment to talk since he’d left the lake, but during the Q&A, when the attention was on Matteo, Nick had whispered, I’m sorry about this morning. She had whispered back for clarification, And last night? Are you sorry about that? To which he’d replied firmly, Absolutely not, that was no mistake. “So, what’s your idea?”

  “It’s about your mom,” he said.

  “Oh, okay, not what I was thinking.” She shook her head, resetting.

  “Sorry, no, I know. I have other ideas, that don’t involve your mom, you know what I mean, never mind, but first,” he sighed, starting over. “What if we sent her the clip of that question today? Wouldn’t she be flattered that she’s being thought of independent of us? Do you think she’s cooled down?”

  “Honestly.” Charlie sat on his desk, thinking it through. She so wished that she could give him the answer he wanted. “She’s just stubborn, even irrational.”

  His phone rang, and he glanced at it.

  “It’s okay,” Charlie said, glad to have a way out of the conversation.

  He kissed her quickly, glancing at the door as though they might get caught, but then kissed her once more as if he didn’t mind. Finally, rolling his eyes at his ringing phone, he picked up as she let herself out.

  * * *

  Sierra had to skip the Romeo and Juliet matinee to rehearse for the Black Box one-act. She couldn’t tell yet how it would come together, but at the very least, she worked well with Fiona and Tripp and knew her lines. Now, attired in her jean skirt and fuchsia Chamberlain T, she had to miss the evening Romeo performance too, to man the gift shop—which wasn’t so much a shop as just a pair of large carts packed with Chamberlain T-shirts, sweatshirts, magnets, tote bags, tumblers, autographed cast photos and a phone with a credit card scanner.

  All the apprentices had to rotate through these stations, but observing Tripp brave the nonstop chaos of the concession stand made her actively dread her stint there next week. She wished she could just watch the show every night. She still couldn’t quite reconcile the Ethan onstage with the one who routinely stole her bacon at breakfast and stayed up late Netflixing favorite old movies on their laptops (the indie beginnings of Cameron Crowe and Spike Jonze and Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Hardwicke and Kathryn Bigelow and even Tarantino). She studied that cast photo again—Ethan smiling shyly like he wasn’t sure he belonged—then swiped her own credit card, rolled up the photo and snuggled it into her bag.

  Midway through intermission, she finally had a lull in customers and spotted Nicholas Blunt, in his usual Chamberlain shirt, blazer and jeans, wander inside from the warm night and roam the lobby, shaking hands, talking to the audience, asking how they liked the show. (He had cleverly placed the intermission early after Romeo and Juliet were married, rather than after Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s deaths in the stagings Sierra had seen elsewhere. This made for a more upbeat audience at intermission time.) He was smart: Nicholas knew the power of letting people be near him, giving them a chance to feel part of this place. As someone who often felt a step outside the circumference of the spotlight, Sierra understood on a molecular level how this mattered, this inclusion. Something about Nicholas’s warm smile and slaps on the back felt genuine too.

  She didn’t know him, only what she had seen of him at their lectures and events, but now that the season had launched he looked more alive for some reason—or maybe it was just that she knew how much was riding on this kind of outreach. She couldn’t understand how anyone with the funds at their disposal could be immune to that kind of charm. The theater was worthy of investment too, this show proved that art was being made here that deserved to continue. Maybe Nicholas and the cast just needed more significant time, a more intimate gathering with the people with the cash, the people who could change the fate of this place. More than meet-and-greet minutes between acts. Even the gala, which had been perfectly exciting to someone like Sierra, was still just a large event, a performance. What they needed was something more personal, that let donors feel part of this club. Would it be too far outside their established boundaries for Sierra to talk to Charlie about this? she wondered.

  The lights flickered, signaling intermission’s end, and as the crowd trickled back in, a statuesque woman in a gauzy minidress and heels cut a quick path through the front doors, stopping in the dead center of the lobby and shaking out her bouncy caramel mane as though wanting to give everyone ample time to notice her. And they did, staring and whispering, doing double takes.

  Jasmine Beijao had just strolled into the lobby of the Chamberlain Summer Theater.

  Sierra’s mind almost couldn’t compute it. This was not the kind of place you expected to find Jasmine Beijao. A Hollywood premiere? Sure. The Oscars after that movie she really wasn’t so great in? Yes. The set of the next Bond movie? Absolutely. St. Bart’s in a string bikini? Totally. But a Shakespeare summer theater? Never.

  The only person who didn’t seem to notice this strike of lightning was Nicholas, currently preoccupied with a gray-haired couple.

  Jasmine sailed straight through, seas parting for her, walked up to Nicholas, wound one arm around his neck, her other hand on his chin, and planted a kiss on his lips. Interrupting his conversation and the conversations of everyone around them and seemingly stopping time for several seconds. Sierra hoped her jaw hadn’t actually dropped. Without a word, Jasmine continued on toward a woman Sierra recognized from the gala. “Right this way, Ms. Beijao, we have a seat in front,” the woman said, leading her into the auditorium.

  The chattering began again, the flow of guests, the last blink of lights. And a final glance at Nicholas, the shock still on his face.

  33

  THOUGHT I’D GIVE YOU THE FULL GROUPIE EXPERIENCE

  When Charlie skipped the curtain call, Nick knew she had seen the third row.

  He spotted Charlie in the backstage hall, grabbed for her hand as she walked by, already apologizing. “I don’t know why she’s here, believe me.” But Charlie shoved him out of her way, pushing her hand into his chest, his heart, strong enough to slam him into th
e wall. Without even slowing down, she walked past her dressing room to the stage door and outside. The cast disassembling after their bows, the stagehands, the end of show chaos quickly engulfed him, erased him, and he couldn’t get to her. By the time he made it outside there was no trace of her.

  Matteo caught his eye as soon as he came back inside, yelled from down the hall, “Nick, man, what the hell?”

  “I know, it’s a long story. I have to find her.”

  “Give her space...”

  But Nick didn’t hear the rest. Over Matteo’s shoulder in the distance, Nick spotted Jasmine Beijao, being led backstage by Taylor. Nick ran in the opposite direction, weaving around apprentices, stage crew, and up the side staircase to the safe confines of his office. He locked the door and called Charlie. And texted her. And called her again. Each time it rang and rang. He left voice mail after voice mail. Apology after apology.

  And then he made another call, to another voice mail box. “I never agreed to this, Taylor. You’re not the artistic director here. I am.” He hung up and threw the phone at his desk. He couldn’t remember the last time he had behaved as though this place was actually his. It was time.

  A knock rattled his locked door, the knob shaking.

  “Niiiiick? It’s me. Are you there?” Jasmine’s voice oozed. “We have sooo much catching up to do!”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He waited until she left, until the crowd flowing out of the lobby had died down, and then, just to be entirely sure the path was clear, he opened the window of his office and climbed out.