The Summer Set Read online

  “Then just strip it down.”

  “Excuse me?” he asked, glass perched in the air before his lips.

  “The production. Set it in the present day, stark backdrop, we’ll wear our own clothes—”

  “But, opulence, Versailles,” he said, firm.

  “Fuck Versailles,” she said with a shrug. “Get some return on your investment. You got me for free, but I bet Chase cost more than Matteo and Danica combined.”

  He ignored her, which she took as affirmation. “So it’s more economical to make everyone learn a thousand different parts?”

  “‘Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona—’” She exhaled the beginning of Romeo and Juliet as if to say, Challenge accepted. Stretching her arms up, she twisted side to side, like warming up for a workout. “‘From ancient grudge...’”

  “I’m starving, let’s order.” He signaled for the waiter.

  The waiter arrived, but she continued Act One. “‘A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life—’”

  “Are you going to order?” Nick asked, impatient.

  “‘I strike quickly, being moved—’” she went on.

  “Just bring a couple of these.” He pointed to the menu. “And we’ll share them when she reaches the intermission.”

  “‘...’tis known I am a pretty piece of flesh...’”

  Nick looked Charlie in the eye once the waiter left. “Your point has been made.”

  But she just scanned the room, ignoring him and continuing on, “‘My naked weapon is out; quarrel, I will back thee—’”

  “Stop!” He seized her hand across the table, and her eyes snapped to his in response. She felt a charge, nerve endings sending a jolt from her fingers, up her arm, along her spine, as though she had been powered on. “Enough,” he finally said, more calmly.

  “Just saying.” She watched his pale winter-sky eyes. “It’s easy.”

  “Then why’d it take a judge to get you back into all this?” She wondered if he realized he still grasped her hand. He locked on her eyes in a way of someone truly wanting to know.

  “I’m here now,” she said after a pause. It was all she could give just then.

  He squeezed her hand once before letting go. “I have so many questions for you, Charlie.” For some reason when he said her name, in that graveled voice, it felt like finding a postcard from a place you forgot you had ever visited. He squinted, considering her as he rested his cheek on his fist.

  “I’ve got a lotta questions for you too,” she said almost to herself, trying to pour another glass, but only drops remained. Probably for the best. This had been the first time she had drunk in years, not that anyone would believe it, and she already felt unsteady.

  “Oh?” He had heard her, apparently. “Then shoot.”

  “Okay...” She straightened up in her chair, deciding where to possibly begin. “Why don’t you tell me—”

  “Look, if this is about last week here,” he cut her off. “She’s an investor.”

  “Who?” she asked, confused. “What?”

  “Taylor. Matteo said you guys were walking by here and saw—”

  “Ohh yeah. No, it wasn’t about that... Since you brought it up though—”

  “Long story, never mind.” He shifted in his seat. “But, since you brought it up—” He pivoted. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Do you have any—?” He searched for the word.

  “Investors?” she asked, in a loaded way.

  “It’s not—I told you,” he said. He tried to refill his glass, forgetting the bottle was empty, and groaned. She eyed their waiter, grabbed the bottle from Nick’s hands and shook it, signaling for more.

  “This isn’t what I wanted to talk—” He stopped. “I thought we should meet to clear the air.”

  “Ugh. Nothing good ever starts that way.” She folded her arms.

  “Just, you know, make sure we can...” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Get through these two months without you throwing anything at me. What do you think?”

  “That’ll depend,” she said, remembering that night so long ago.

  “On what?”

  “On you. Obviously.”

  “Me? You’re the problem,” he said like it was a fact.

  Now she was frustrated. “The problem? Me? I’m the solution.”

  “To what?”

  “To everything. The problem is that you stopped listening to me.”

  “Oh, here we go,” he said, dismissive, sitting back again. “Well, what do you want me to say, Charlie?”

  “If I have to write your lines then it’s meaningless.”

  “At least you’ve already answered my next question,” he said almost to himself, head in his hands like people in commercials for pain relievers.

  “And what question is that?” she shot back.

  “Whether you’re still angry.”

  “You fired me from a film that was supposedly inspired by me—”

  “You walked off the set—” he countered.

  She chucked her napkin on the table and got up. “No, Nick. I’m not angry at all.”

  15

  I DON’T HAVE TO ASK HOW IT WENT

  Charlie had taken to doing this, visiting the lake at all hours of night, which might have been dangerous, but she didn’t care. Her body had remembered the way that first night a week ago without needing to consult her mind. Past the ice cream shop and the empty soccer field, through the line of oaks fencing in the campus, straight out to the clearing.

  And there it lay. Peaceful and calm, aglow beneath a luminous sky obscene with stars. She had forgotten it was like this here. She didn’t bother looking up in the city.

  At the edge of the splintered pier, she pulled off her shoes and set them beside her. Didn’t even roll up her slim jeans, just dipped her toes into the cool water, leaning back on her arms, eyes closed, as though sunbathing. Her head spun from the anger and the wine. She wished so deeply to not be here now, but longed to be in this space two decades earlier, to undo and rewind. To have no history. Because beneath the spikes and armor, there remained that lit spark. Somehow. Impossibly. She hated it. But she had felt it tonight. Reignited by this setting and by the grip of memory.

  She could still see those long-ago mornings right here. That first bet of theirs: the race to the other side of the lake. If he won, she would star in his Black Box show. She had secretly let him win, but just beat him the next time and the next and the next until he’d realized it. There had been that one night too, weeks later, after his show—their show. The kind of night your mind returns to again and again for years afterward.

  The show was a one-woman one-act comedy, monologues of Shakespearean women talking about their terrible relationships: Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Juliet, a whole mess of them. Nick had written it and been awarded the fellowship for it. But she had rewritten it with him that summer. And he’d let her, bristling only a moment before acknowledging she was right, which she loved him for. She had crystallized for him what he hadn’t been understanding from the resident dramaturge or even Grayson himself, with their vague touchy-feely direction: Push it further, challenge yourself, and come back. He had admitted to her, when they were on this very pier, in similar moonlight, still strictly friends, “I have no goddamn clue what they mean. If I did, I would do it. I feel like I reached a level I had no right to reach and now everyone will realize that.”

  “Relax. Everyone of any real value feels like a fraud 90 percent of the time,” she had said like it was an artistic fact as basic as combining red and blue paint to make purple. “And the ones who don’t are pretty much always self-obsessed assholes. My research has shown.”

  He’d smiled at this and let her read a few pages the next day.

  “You’re missing out. This
should be unexpected, unhinged. You have Lady Macbeth but really imagine Lady Fucking Macbeth on a bad date,” she’d told him. “It’s the experimental, edgy part of this theater, not the stuffy part that thinks it’s having fun if it does one play a season with no corsets.” They had sat shoulder to shoulder on the rickety pier, its wooden planks worn down by time. A bright sun rising in the hazy morning sky, clouds burning off.

  “I’m not edgy. Or fun,” he’d admitted, toes in the water, eyes set in the distance. She’d let the silence wrap around them for a beat.

  And then she’d pushed him in the lake.

  One sharp shove.

  When his head popped back up he was laughing. “Really? You just did that?” He’d shaken his head, water spraying, combed his hair back with his hands.

  “See, you’re fun.”

  “You’re lucky I’m a good swimmer.” He’d splashed water at her.

  She hadn’t flinched, just let it hit her, hadn’t even closed her eyes. “You’re lucky you’re a good swimmer. I’m just lucky you stopped feeling sorry for yourself.”

  The next afternoon, after she had read it all, they had met at the coffee shop, Bard’s Brew, a back table. He had nervously tapped his leg, shaking the table, and when she’d kicked his shin to stop, he’d tapped his fingers instead. He’d asked her to work on the play with him, looking through her with the same bright, intense eyes he’d had at dinner tonight. She had loved then that she could watch him think, could feel him listening.

  She remembered it all, more clearly than she should. Lush, leafy branches rustled softly in the breeze, and she felt herself drifting off.

  * * *

  She awakened, surprised she had slept at all. She dug her phone from her pocket: nearly an hour; it was after 10 p.m. Texts from Matteo and Miles lit up her screen.

  Grabbing her shoes, she took a few steps to leave. But stopped, not ready to go back yet, to the inevitable questions from her housemates. She let her shoes and phone drop from her hands onto the pier. A few paces back till her toes reached the edge, and she dived in, clothes still on. The crisp water enveloped her as she shot through it.

  Then a flash of something else: that night in Boston Harbor.

  She burst up to the surface, gasping.

  Focused on her breathing, in and out, to slow it down, she treaded water. When she felt strong enough, she swam back to the pier and climbed out. She lay down on the grass now, her breathing still jagged. It was the first memory she had resurrected of the accident. Just slivers of sensation: bright streaks of city lights, the peace then sudden panic of waking engulfed by water.

  Finally, wet feet shoved back into her shoes, she walked home.

  Matteo was still awake, on the phone in his room, probably talking to Sebastian.

  “Night, Charlie,” he shouted as she walked by, popping his head out of his doorway. He had done this the past six nights and it only now occurred to her that he might actually be waiting up.

  She stopped, turned around.

  “Call you right back, love.” He hung up on his husband. “The lake again?” he asked Charlie.

  “Maybe,” she said, still clearly drenched.

  “I don’t like this, just putting that out there, again. I get the baptism thing—”

  “What baptism, it’s not—”

  “I get the whole water-is-life symbolism thing.”

  “No, that’s not what this is.”

  “But I don’t like you there alone and—” He stopped a second. “Unless—did you have company? After your dinner?”

  She didn’t answer, just exhaled, agitated.

  “No. So I guess I don’t have to ask how it went?”

  “No. You don’t.” She walked on, waving over her head. “Good night.”

  “I do think he’s trying, Nick is,” Matteo called after her as she made her way upstairs to her room.

  Well, Nick would have to try harder.

  16

  TENSION IS EVERYTHING

  It could’ve easily been a horror story, Sierra thought, listening to Harlow tell this particular tale on this dark night at the lake. The full apprentice contingency and even the department heads had gathered for “S’mores under the Stars” as the schedule dictated.

  The crackling flames of the bonfire lit Harlow’s delicate features. “...and Chase sat down beside me...and his shoulder touched mine and I asked him about his ink.” She slowly ran her hand along her own arm, took a deep breath. “It was amazing...”

  Perfectly outfitted as though for Burning Man (hat, fringed metallic romper, white hiking boots), Harlow had been regaling their mostly female crowd with vignettes from the latest Romeo rehearsal for so long that her marshmallow actually caught fire without her noticing. While Harlow droned on, Sierra calmly took hold of Harlow’s stick, blew out the flaming treat and placed it back in her hand. Ethan, just arriving on the other side of the bonfire, caught her eye, stifling a laugh.

  Fiona, director of their Black Box one-act, turned to Sierra and Tripp. “I’m so fucking lucky you guys somehow aren’t in the main stage show.” Fiona had cropped pomegranate-red hair, clunky black glasses and strong opinions. Tripp bowed with his marshmallow stick like it was a cane. “Our show is gonna be fantastic once we lift it out of the Stone Age,” Fiona went on. “People couldn’t even text when this was written, so we’ve got our work cut out for us. But—fantastic.”

  “Company in the house,” Alex, dressed in crisp, cool white linen, announced, joining them as he gestured to the actors along the pebbled path. Matteo chatted with Danica, and Charlie grabbed a marshmallow, walking ahead as a pack of girls swarmed Chase, snapping selfies.

  “We had a definite moment,” Harlow continued. “You know when you can just feel it?”

  “Check this out!” Tripp interrupted, gesturing to his T-shirt as Ethan approached. Ethan had given Tripp, Sierra and Fiona each a soft cotton T bearing the Summit Rodeo logo: a cowboy on a bucking bronco. Sierra loved hers so much she had secretly ordered another online.

  “Lookin’ good,” Ethan said, smiling as he took a seat on the sand beside Sierra. She gave up on the gooey marshmallow she’d been trying to sandwich between graham crackers and chocolate, handing it to him.

  “He made these,” Tripp reported proudly to an aloof Harlow. “They’re at Urban Outfitters.”

  “The rodeo is my family—” Ethan shrugged, biting into the s’more “—but the merch is me.”

  “Wait, but, they’re coming to Romeo, right?” Sierra asked without thinking.

  “We’ll see,” he said in a way that sounded like No, eyes in the distance.

  Sierra felt instantly sorry. “I didn’t mean... Never mind.”

  “It’s cool, Texas is a long way, and it’s their busy season,” he covered. “No big deal.”

  Sierra had already witnessed Ethan’s frustration with his family and understood how hard he tried to bottle it up. Before she could console him, Tripp yanked her shoulder.

  “Are you seeing this?” Tripp pointed to Charlie sitting atop an empty picnic table with a view of the lake, as Nicholas arrived by her side bearing a stick. “OMG. He brought her a marshmallow. Toasted. That is so sexy.”

  “Is it though?” Harlow questioned.

  “It’s an olive branch,” Alex said, between bites of his s’more. “For freaking out on Charlie today.”

  “Charlie kissed Chase,” Ethan explained.

  “Traditionally that’s what Juliet and Romeo do,” Sierra laughed. “Unless I’ve been misinterpreting the play all these years.”

  “It was uncalled for, we were just blocking,” Harlow snapped, as though this process of the director choreographing where his actors would stand onstage had been corrupted.

  “Nicholas was jealous,” Tripp said, lying on the ground, arms behind his head. “I didn’t even need to be there a
nd I know that. I’m a genius.”

  “Sure,” Sierra had to admit, watching them. “There’s this tension with Charlie and Nicholas.”

  “Tension is EVERYTHING,” Tripp said, deliciously. “They were like fire a million years ago.”

  “Seriously though.” Ethan leaned in to the group. “What is the deal with them? I mean, they make this genius, classic movie together, basically redefining the way Shakespeare is done on screen, right?” Everyone nodded. “Blunt’s first movie, which is insane. There’s all this folklore about how they were each other’s muses, how she inspired him to rework scenes at the last minute, add these crazy badass stunts.” Ethan started to pick up steam, as though telling the plot of a thriller. “They shoot it on a shoestring, then make, globally, millions. Win all these awards. They hook up allegedly after filming and Blunt gets all this cash thrown at him for the next movie, Super Id, and Charlie’s the star and it’s kind of about her and kind of a superhero movie and kind of a fantasy and kind of crazy—”

  “And she’s kind of rewriting that too,” Sierra said. “And they’re full-on together at that point—”

  “Sure, and then first day of filming, just months after the Oscars—” Ethan snapped his fingers. “She quits.”

  “And they’re over,” Sierra said. “Broken up. Done.”

  “And they despise each other,” Tripp added.

  “And now, she’s here. And he brought her here,” Ethan went on.

  “Look, it’s like this,” Alex began as though about to lay some major truth on them. “It’s chemistry. Love and hate. They brought out an X factor in each other.”

  “Oooh, anyone wanna watch Nicholas Blunt’s The Tempest: Director’s Cut tonight?” Tripp proposed.

  “All I know,” Ethan said quietly to Sierra now, “is Blunt would have a lot less to worry about if he’d just cast you as Romeo. And it would be kinda nice to have a friend there.” He elbowed her with his mechanical-bull-inked arm and Sierra felt herself blush.

  * * *