The Summer Set Read online

  Nick’s name popped up on her screen: Are you going to keep ignoring me?

  She didn’t respond, instead taking a long moment to wind her hair up into a topknot, securing it with a pen—his pen, which she’d grabbed from the table. The beak of their lark curving around her neck, visible to him now, she imagined.

  Indeed, from the corner of her eye, she caught him looking from the corner of his eye. He watched as though willing her to text back, she could feel him waiting. She always liked pretending not to notice his eyes on her and for a moment she forgot that she was angry. But as he turned the page of the script, she remembered and concentrated on the words again.

  He inched his arm closer to hers, his left forearm touching her right elbow. She moved immediately, typing, I’m literally midrehearsal here.

  He glanced at her, and she glared back.

  He typed again; her phone buzzed once more: Can we talk tonight?

  She looked directly at him, shook her head. What was there to talk about?

  Nick focused on Chase, reading so terribly, and then swiftly pulled his pen out from Charlie’s hair so it fell to her shoulders.

  She exhaled, blowing a wisp of hair away from her face, folded her arms.

  He scribbled onto her script, “please?”

  She yanked the pen away. “You’re being extremely rude to your cast right now,” she wrote on his script.

  “There’s exactly one cast member I care about right now,” he wrote on hers.

  “‘Right now’ = the operative term,” she wrote back.

  “No. I mean: AT ALL.” She didn’t write again, she took the pen, put the cap back on, set it between them.

  By the time they reached the play’s end, Charlie was so desperate to escape, she couldn’t stop her leg tapping up-down-up-down, manic. She recited those final lines—the same she had assigned to Sierra to audition with—hardly getting the last word out before Jasmine stepped on them.

  “That felt so good!” Jasmine announced, nearly orgasmic. “I can’t believe I haven’t done theater before!”

  A few apprentices, who didn’t know any better, cheered.

  “Yep, it’s pretty damn amazing,” Matteo said, expressionless.

  Nick hopped to his feet. “I know this is a tough part of the season, finishing up Romeo while staging this—”

  But Charlie couldn’t take another minute. She shoved her chair back with a screech. “I have somewhere to be,” she said.

  Nick reached out as though to grab her arm but she slipped ghostlike through his fingertips and jumped off the stage, bursting through the side door toward the workshop. The buzz of circular saws was soothing after that read-through.

  * * *

  Yes, that went well, Nick thought, as he swallowed two codeine tablets (left over from his ankle injury post-window-jump), washed down with cold, bitter coffee in his office. This new show was already as brutal as any of Shakespeare’s most violent tragedies.

  A knock rattled the door. He hoped it might be Charlie, manifesting from his thoughts, but it opened to Mary instead.

  “Hello, hello!” she chirped, ignoring his grim expression. “So I have a special request from the silent auction winner for Friday night’s show—the one who bid to choose which actors would play which parts at Friday’s Romeo and Juliet?” Nick nodded, scrolling through his emails, barely paying attention. “They called with an unconventional casting option—”

  He pulled up the schedule on his laptop. “Sounds promising,” he sighed.

  * * *

  “I feel like I should be bringing you coffee and answering your phone,” Ethan joked, as he walked Sierra to her Black Box rehearsal on the other side of the theater complex. “Now you’re the one with the killer schedule.”

  “I’m just glad I’m finally doing more acting than, like, seat upholstery and costume wrangling,” she laughed.

  “Can we please talk about the drama at that rehearsal?” Tripp caught up with them, kissing Sierra on the cheek. “It is by far better than the show.”

  “I’ll leave you to your work husband.” Ethan smiled, letting himself out the side door, a little disappointed to go.

  He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Sierra’s Midsummer audition. They had run lines together daily since they’d met. But in all that time, she hadn’t shown a glimmer of her first audition, when she had conjured Romeo. Until yesterday.

  The moment Sierra began Puck’s monologue—the one that people who have never read Shakespeare still know—Ethan had reflexively shifted forward in his seat, rested his chin in his palm. Perched on the edge of the stage, she spoke to the audience as a friend, then leaped off, making her way to where Blunt sat beside two directing apprentices. She crept atop the table to kneel before them, grabbing their hands and talking just to them, but somehow Ethan still felt like she was speaking to him too.

  When she’d finished, she sat there a beat and then smiled and said, Thanks. Not Thank you, but just Thanks. Slid off the table, walked up the aisle, right out the doors and into the lobby. As she passed Ethan, rather than returning to her seat beside him, she shot him the quickest glance. A flash of a character-break that made him shiver.

  His phone buzzed with a text: SOOO excited for next week, Miles wrote with a smile emoji and theater masks. Get ready, Romeo. Break a leg!

  As if on cue, the stage door clanged open on the other side of the loading dock, and Ethan peeked around the corner to spot Charlie. She darted across Stratford, dodging cars, as she walked away from the main drag and marched past the hotel and finally to that historic log cabin: the first thing anyone saw upon arriving into town, the last thing they saw before leaving.

  * * *

  Charlie hadn’t planned to go to Chamberlain Cabin; her body had just taken her there. The darkened sky, threatening rain, suited her mood.

  Even though it was late afternoon, it looked like dusk inside the cramped wooden dwelling. Same dirt floor, same fireplace, same wooden loft with its rickety ladder of chopped branches. She climbed up there now, the rungs creaking under her feet.

  The rehearsal had been miserable, but when she thought of that fast-approaching date—July 30—when she would be free to go and have her previous life restored to her, she only felt worse. She liked so much about being here: the work, the stage. She sensed that something once lost had been returned to her and she wasn’t sure she could give that up again. She didn’t want to share the stage with Jasmine, but maybe she didn’t have to physically be on that stage.

  She had resigned herself to a cold war with Nick, but it didn’t feel like a solution. Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe she had come to the cabin for answers.

  She could feel that night again, all those years ago, here in this cabin with Nick. It had been the night after their tryst at the lake, and they hadn’t known yet whether it had been an experiment, a mistake or the beginning of something. So she had kissed him again, here. And again it had led to morning. And this time to their lark in the window. And to the larks on their necks the following night. And to an imprinting upon each other that they wouldn’t be able to shake.

  She drowsily recalled it all, until her phone buzzed, signaling showtime.

  43

  THAT’S WHERE THE ZIP LINE WILL GO

  Days later, Nick opened the auditorium doors and found Charlie already there, early for their blocking rehearsal. She walked up the aisle toward him, smiling in a way that made no sense based on their extremely frosty week. He looked behind him, in case her warmth was intended for someone else.

  “You know what this production is missing?” she launched in.

  “Uhhh, nothing?” he asked, hopeful.

  “Aerial work,” she said as the side door opened.

  “Excuse me?” he asked as their set designer, Mason, jogged over.

  “This show is gonna rock,” Mason said in
greeting, tying his shoulder-length hair back with a rubber band. “We’ve got some great stuff cooking. I was stoked when Charlie told me what you wanted. So I’m thinking the zip line goes up—”

  “I’m sorry, did you say zip line?” Nick cut in. “Charlie, what the—?” She just smiled, mischievous, as Mason kept talking.

  “—right, so we’ll install it right there, by the lighting booth.” Mason pointed to the ceiling. “We’ll do a lot of wirework—I’m an amateur flight instructor, so we can do this all in-house,” he said proudly. “Then some trapdoor stuff, dust off that pop-up toaster.” Mason tapped his fingers at the air, all manic energy. “I’m gonna set Charlie up in the rehearsal room now, we rigged up the wires there, so she can start getting the mechanics down.”

  Charlie nodded, began to walk away with Mason.

  Nick, processing it all, lunged to catch up with her. “Um, yeah, what’s the deal with all—?”

  “Sierra’s on board running lines while I spend the next week or two, whatever, downstairs on the wires,” she said. “You know it’s a good idea.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not,” he said. “It’s just...a lot...and who’s going to do this when...?” He didn’t want to remind her that she would be leaving nine days into the run. “I worry it’s just going to make you irreplaceable or something...” As soon as he said it, it sounded much more naked than he’d intended.

  “Not my problem.” She shrugged. “I’ve gotta fly.” She walked away, adding over her shoulder, “But you know where to find me.”

  “Unless...” He said it too softly to be heard. “Unless you’re planning to stay.”

  * * *

  Walking home with Matteo and Chase in the soft summer drizzle, Charlie felt more renewed with each step and every word.

  “Jasmine started asking around immediately, ‘Where’s Charlie? Did she leave?’” Matteo reported of the rehearsal. “And one of the apprentices who’s in the workshop—”

  “Ethan, it was Ethan,” Chase said, as though keeping track of him ever since their sword fight.

  “Right, so he was like, ‘No, man, Charlie’s doing this whole aerial thing on wires, it’s gonna be awesome,’ and that did it.” Matteo clapped, laughing.

  “So Jasmine says, in front of everyone, like LOUD—” Chase stepped in.

  “But in that voice, you know, the one that she thinks sounds sweet—” Matteo added.

  “But really sounds like right before the serial killer murders someone in the movie?” Charlie asked.

  “Like that,” Matteo said, as they reached their house, unlocking the door. “Jasmine says—”

  Danica piped up from the kitchen. “Are we talking about, ‘If you really care about me, you’ll put me in a wire?’” she asked the three of them, stirring in a spoonful of honey into her preshow tea, delivering the punch line of their story.

  Matteo clapped, slow, reverent, and Charlie couldn’t help but smile. The goal had simply been to spend as little time as possible physically on stage with Jasmine, so this reaction was a bonus, like finding deleted scenes on the DVD of your favorite movie.

  “Okay.” Charlie pulled a soda from the fridge. “But the real question is—”

  “What did he say? Right?” Chase hopped on the counter, unwrapping a protein bar.

  “He says, loooud—” Matteo bellowed.

  “Like to the whole group,” Danica clarified.

  “—‘Last time I checked, there’s only one actress here who hasn’t ever relied on stunt doubles,’” Matteo said.

  “BOOM!” Chase said.

  “Honestly.” Danica furrowed her brow, considering something. “I don’t know why Jasmine would even want to do wirework. It’s just asking for trouble. Especially with the terrible stagehands they’ve had the past couple seasons,” she went on. “Remember last year the whole fly rail was fucked up, they forgot to weight it properly and the lights came crashing down and the stagehands flew up to the rafters. People could have died.” The three of them just stared at her as she casually grabbed her tea. “But you’ll be fine,” she said to Charlie. “You seem to know what you’re doing, more or less.” She slipped out of the kitchen to begin her preshow ritual.

  “Thank you?” Charlie scrunched her face.

  Matteo snapped his fingers, remembering. “So you’re good on next Friday’s show?” he asked Charlie.

  “Fine by me, he’s got it.” She shrugged. By then she would have only fourteen days to go, she could roll with anything.

  “Mercutio as Romeo.” Chase whistled. “I’d love to know who the anonymous donor was that just had to see that guy as the lead.”

  44

  BLINK TWICE IF YOU’RE OKAY, ROMEO

  Ethan couldn’t believe this was really happening. He replayed the afternoon in his head, again, as he walked back to the dorm to prepare for the night’s performance. He wasn’t even technically an understudy for Romeo, but Miles had hatched this plan weeks ago, so Ethan had learned the entire Romeo part, studied how Chase played it opposite Charlie, memorized every movement down to the detail, in order to seamlessly assume the role. Nicholas Blunt had even held a special rehearsal to run the major scenes—balcony, sword fights, death, the usual suspects.

  But it was Act One, Scene Five, that first kiss at the Capulet ball, that had been the most invigorating. Or at least, as invigorating as something could be when it was also terrifying and choreographed and the director watching them was his costar’s ex-boyfriend. In his very limited stage career of student productions, Ethan had never kissed anyone onstage on whom he’d had a crush offstage. He always wondered if the heart would understand that this was acting or be fooled into believing this was real. The answer, he discovered, after the wave of fear as he leaned toward Charlie and the shock of his lips connecting with hers, was that the heart—his heart—was smarter than he’d expected. It knew and was swiftly overridden by his brain, which instructed his head to lean to the right so as not to block Charlie from the audience’s view and that he should hold her hand and that it should last approximately four seconds and that he had a line immediately after, and she did too, and then another kiss, and that above all, he had to do this well. The Actor Ethan had to remain present and in control and active in order to appear worthy of performing opposite someone like Charlie. The heart knew.

  When Miles had informed him that he’d taken up a collection among the employees of North End Cinema to raise funds to install Ethan in his dream role for a night (it had cost $501, a dollar above the second-highest bid), Ethan was touched. But why would you even do that? he had laughed. He couldn’t resist asking.

  Because I think you’ll remind her of herself, when she started out, Miles had told him. And I think it would do her some good to remember that. Things like passion, you know?

  Ethan felt like there had to be more to it than that—it was a lot of money—but he let it go. He didn’t want to talk Miles out of it.

  * * *

  Sierra thought Ethan was kidding when his text popped up on her phone just fifteen minutes before showtime: are you busy? can you come back here a minute?

  backstage???? Sierra typed.

  yes. greenroom. closet.

  She excused herself from Fiona and the intense debate the directing apprentices were waging about the most overrated auteurs of the twenty-first century, and slipped out the main doors to the corridor that fed like an artery into the backstage maze.

  In the greenroom, Harlow, Alex and the other apprentices in Romeo laughed and talked, spirits too high to even notice Sierra. She rapped on the closet door and then opened it: Ethan sat on a backward folding chair. Makeup on, hair slicked, in costume.

  “Well, you look good at least, and that’s, like, half the battle,” she said.

  He wore jeans, the requisite white button-down, open collar, sleeves rolled up above his elbow. The same shirt tha
t she was so used to admiring on Chase. And the very same one that she had ironed crisply only hours earlier. The ink of his mechanical bull half-sleeve tattoo—which she had learned was meant to imply the intersection of old and new, a metaphor for the expansion of his family’s business, because this was the fascinating way Ethan’s brain worked—visible through the translucent broadcloth. He still said nothing.

  “Okay, blink twice if you’re okay, Romeo.” She leaned down, looking in his eyes. He blinked once. “Good enough.” She sat on the floor in front of him. “They’re still making you change in here?” she asked, to lighten things. “Don’t they know who you are?”

  “Exactly.” He spoke finally. “I’m nobody. What am I doing here?”

  “No, what am I doing here? You’re about to go on in—” she glanced at her watch “—seven minutes?”

  “Is this crazy?” He looked at her now, serious.

  “Which part?” she whispered. “The part where you somehow got friends to put up the cash at the silent auction to request you to star opposite Charlie. Savoy. Tonight? As Romeo? Or...”

  “Yeah, all of it,” he said. “And I’m paying them back. Somehow.” He was on his feet, pacing now, which was hard to do in such cramped quarters. “And I’ve spent a lot of money at that movie theater, so it’s sort of even anyway—”

  “Listen,” she cut him off, grabbing his shoulders to stop him, looking into his dark eyes as she had that very first day on the field. “I’ll tell you the part that isn’t crazy, and that’s you as Romeo. You know how to do that, no matter who’s starring opposite you.”

  A sudden scurrying and calling out of directions and names filtered through the walls.

  He took a deep breath. “Text me at intermission and tell me if I’m a complete disaster?”

  “No.” She smiled. “You got this. Break a leg.”

  * * *