by Vi Keeland
“I want to know what you sound like. I want to know what you look like when you come,” I tell him, as I wrap my legs tighter around his ass, so divinely sculpted, and he drives into me, sending me near the edge once again.
He breathes out, hard. “I need you to come again. I need to feel you coming on me. I need it now.”
I look at him, his eyes open and wild, his lips parted, his breath hard and fast and I’m there in an instant, I’m shattering beneath him once again, writhing and bucking my hips and pulling him deeper with an orgasm that tears through me, and it’s all the more intense, because he’s coming apart with me.
At last.
Davis
We sleep well, but not much. I wake up in the middle of the night, needing more of her and I pull her against me, spooning her. She sighs sleepily at first, then wakes up, and brings my hand to her breasts and wriggles her backside against me.
“Let’s go again,” she says, and I am only too happy to oblige as I slide into her, her hot flesh surrounding me. We make love like that, slow and unhurried, and I have plenty of access to her breasts and her belly as she hooks her leg around my thigh, giving me more room to sink into her, in the dark of the night, all of Manhattan sleeping and we’re the only ones awake. She moves languidly, wrapping her arm around my neck as I rock into her, and soon her voice is rising, and she’s moaning and gasping and crying out, and I will never tire of making her come.
“Your turn,” she says seductively as she shifts onto her stomach and raises her ass.
“My favorite position. How did you know?” I say, then grab her hips and plunge inside of her, enjoying the view—the curve of her ass, the length of her back, her body underneath me, as we finish yet another round.
In the morning I make a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, and then we have to get ready because there are only four days left before opening night.
“I brought a change of clothes. I should probably go shower and get ready,” she says.
I look at her as if that’s the craziest idea in the world. “No. I don’t think that will happen.”
She tosses me a curious look. “I’m not allowed to shower here?”
“You’re not allowed to shower without me.”
I take her into the beige tiled bathroom, and there’s room for two. As the steam fills the shower, I rinse the shampoo out of my hair. Then, I feel something absolutely fantastic as Jill’s hands run down my chest, my legs, and then she’s kneeling, taking me in her mouth, her beautiful lips surrounding me. I look down, and groan because there is no hotter sight in the entire world than this. I watch her lips move, and I want to finish this. But I want her too, so I pull her off, grab her hips and lift her up and against the shower wall, then bring her down hard on me and move inside her fast, furiously, as she grapples with my hair, my shoulders, my back until she comes apart, and I do the same.
Then, we go to work.
Chapter 24
Davis
“This is awful. It’s all terribly awful. It’s the worst mess I’ve ever seen.”
Alexis stomps her high-heeled foot dramatically down on the floorboards, decked out in Ava’s costume for our final dress rehearsal.
“It’s not,” I assure her. “It’s great. It will all be great,” I tell her, doing everything I can to keep my cool as she throws her patented dress rehearsal fit.
“No, it’ll be a disaster,” she whines, pursing her lips into a pout as if she’s going to force herself to cry. “It’ll close in eight days.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that,” I say, as if I’m talking to a petulant child, but one I need to encourage because that’s the only way to end this sort of tantrum, since she’s now flung herself dramatically onto the steps that lead up to her dressing room. “It’s going to be fantastic. Now, come on and let’s do the final number.”
Her head hangs between her legs in the most woeful pose. I offer her a hand. “You can do this, Alexis.”
She shakes her head and heaves her shoulders. “I need a minute alone.”
She retreats up the stairs to her private dressing room, slams the door and stalls the rehearsal for a full ten minutes as she’s locked in there, the rest of the cast waiting for her to deign to return. Shannon gives me a wide-eyed look and taps her watch as if to say tick tock.
I sigh heavily, then march up the steps and knock on the door.
“Alexis, we need to finish up. I know you can do this. I have absolute faith in you.”
She opens the door and peeks out, and in a meek voice she says, “You do?”
“Yes, you’re Alexis fucking Carbone, for God’s sake. Everyone loves you. Now let’s finish the rehearsal.” I offer her a hand, but instead she flings her arms around me, clasping me tight.
“Thank you. Thank you for believing in me, Davis.”
She lets go and flashes me a smile, and as she does I can smell whiskey on her breath. I roll my eyes when she looks away. She heads down the steps holding the railing, descending as if she’s some southern belle at a debutante ball, waving to the cast on stage waiting for her. Then the heel of her shoe hooks into the metal on one of the steps, and in an instant her leg is bent, and she’s grabbing at the railing, but missing as she tumbles in a wild mess down the stairs.
The entire theater turns starkly silent for one brief moment, then the quiet is broken with a deafening wail that rings through the house. I rush down the steps and Shannon races to Alexis as the star of the show clutches her knee, shrieking.
An hour later, Shannon calls me from the hospital to tell me Alexis has a torn ACL and will be on crutches for four to six weeks, and out of commission for even longer.
I find Jill in her dressing room, chatting with Shelby and looking at photos on their phones. I don’t smile, I don’t laugh. I’m not glad that Alexis is hurt. But, it feels a bit like payback, and a lot like karma for Alexis.
I rap my knuckles against the doorframe. Jill looks up. “It appears you’ll be opening the show, and starring in it, too, for the foreseeable future.”
Her eyes go as wide as saucers, and she tries to hold back her glee with little success as I tell her what happened.
“Is she going to be okay?” she asks, and I’m proud of Jill for having the common decency to ask.
“She’ll be fine in time. As for now, the show must go on.”
Jill
I can barely eat the next day, I am so aflutter with nerves. But I force myself to finish off a piece of toast, and Kat brews me tea.
“I believe it’s the drink of choice for all the superstar sopranos,” Kat says as she hands me a mug.
I take a deep breath, and it’s probably the fiftieth or the five hundredth I’ve had to stop and take today to quell the butterflies. I always knew it was a possibility that I might go on, but I figured it would be a night here, a night there. Not opening night. I drink the tea then grab my purse and head for the door.
“See you after the show? You’ll come backstage, right?”
“Like I would miss it for anything.” She rolls her eyes. “Get out of here. And I’d tell you to break a leg, but somehow I don’t think that’s the right thing to say at the moment.”
I reach for the door handle, then stop, and turn back. “Kat?”
“Yeah.”
“I love you. I just wanted to say it.”
“I know, silly. I love you too. I’ll be in the third row, and I will be your biggest fan.”
“Bye.”
Then I leave and I take the subway, because I always imagined when I went to work in my first starring role that I’d take the subway, I’d emerge from the New York underground into the neon and lights and noise in Times Square, and I’d walk purposefully to the theater, head backstage, get into costume and do a few quick warm-up vocals.
So that’s what I do. As Shelby and I run through our exercises I am jittery, I am jumpy, but I am also confident. I’ve been ready for this since before we even started rehearsals. I know Ava, I
know this show inside and out.
I don’t take over Alexis’ dressing room because that would seem a bit rude. I stay with my chorus girls, because I am still a chorus girl. I’m just the lucky one who gets to swoop in at the last minute.
At six forty-five, Davis comes by to wish us good luck. He is business-like and professional, and that’s what I would expect.
“You’re all going to be great,” he says to the group of us, and then tips his forehead to me, then the hallway. I stand up, and join him in the hall.
“Do you remember what I said the first night I rehearsed you? How I wanted you to be able to blow the audience away?”
I nod. “I remember everything about that night.”
A smile plays on his lips. “Me too,” he says in a sexy voice then he returns to his directorial one. “I told you I wanted them to melt for you. To fall for you.”
I nod, eager to hear what’s next.
He leans into me, brushes his lips on my forehead. “You’ve got this, Jill. They will. They will fall for you.”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling warm and glowy from both the kiss and the praise.
“I’ll see you after. We’ll go celebrate.”
“Of course. But you might have to come to the cast party because, you know,” I say teasing him, “I gotta hang with my actor peeps.”
“I would be honored.”
Then he heads down the hall on his way to find Patrick and give him a pep talk. A few minutes later Shannon knocks on the door to tell me my brother is here.
Even though I saw Chris a few days ago, I still jump into his arms.
“Hey, little sis.”
“Hey, big pain in the ass.
Then I turn to meet McKenna and she’s so pretty and has the coolest dress on—a rockabilly number with dog prints on it. “I’ve only seen you in your Helen video. I can’t believe I’m finally meeting you. You’re even hotter in person.”
She blushes. “Stop that.”
“No, seriously. I can’t believe my brother snagged a total babe. How did you trick her, Chris?” I say, teasing him. Then I lower my voice and whisper to the woman I’m pretty damn sure is about to become my sister in law-to-be in a few minutes. “I’m so glad he found you. He’s mad about you.”
“The feeling is completely mutual.”
I offer to show them the stage, because that’s all part of the plan Chris and I drummed up in Bryant Park. Then I smack my forehead. “I forgot something in my dressing room. I’ll be right back.”
I head for the wings, but I can’t resist watching Chris get down on one knee to propose, and it makes my heart soar when she says yes. I want to clap and cheer and run over to them. But it’s their moment, so I let them have it, even as I grin like a crazy person from my private little hideout spot.
“Okay, let’s clear the stage now,” Shannon says. They walk off stage, holding hands, with McKenna giving Chris kisses all over his cheeks as they go.
“You guys are the best,” I say, and give them both huge hugs before they head for the lobby. I return to the dressing room, where I touch up my makeup, making my mascara pop even more, and then applying lipstick and lip liner. Shelby smooths out my hair for the first scene, pulling it back into a simple ponytail and spraying it.
“I can’t resist being the hair stylist,” she says happily.
“I love it,” I tell her.
Then all of the chorus girls in the dressing room do a few quick yoga stretches to loosen up. When we’re done, Shelby grabs my arm as if she forgot something. “We need to go say hello to the ghost,” Shelby says excitedly.
“You’re right! We have to.”
We rush down the red-carpeted hall, pop backstage and wave grandly to the pretend ghost of Hammerstein in the balcony, since he’s only here on opening night. I peek at the audience members filing into the theater, thrilling at the sight of them taking their seats, opening their Playbills and seeing my name in the white slip of paper that was inserted into the programs tonight.
At tonight’s performance, the role of Ava will be played by Jill McCormick.
I take my place in the wings. Shelby grabs my hand hard and squeezes it. “You’re going to be great,” she whispers.
I nod a quick thanks and when the overture fades, I make my entrance to the stage in front of the packed house at the St. James Theater for my first performance ever in a Broadway show.
It is electrifying.
I spend the next two and a half hours singing and acting and crying and fighting and kissing and falling in love with Paolo. Because that’s who Patrick is to me. I leave myself behind, but this time it’s as it should be. This is when I can forget who I am and become someone else. Because this kind of pretending is what feeds my heart and my soul as I become this broken down character who somehow finds a way through her pain and loneliness to the other side.
When we sing the final lines in the final song, and then fall into each other’s arm for a last staged kiss, I feel as if I am flying. This is the highest high, and the purest joy I’ve ever felt—performing and doing what I love with my whole heart.
The curtain falls, and Patrick grabs me for a bear hug. It is a friendly, affable embrace, and then he high fives me. “I knew we would be great together on stage,” he declares with a fist pump.
“It was amazing,” I say with a grin as wide as the sky, and maybe that’s how Patrick and I were meant to be together—as actors, playing parts, and making the audience believe. Perhaps, that was always what was in the cards for the two of us.
He rushes off to stage left, I head to stage right, and we wait in the wings. I am still riding on the adrenaline and I probably will be for years, as the audience starts cheering and clapping when the curtain rises again. The chorus members rush out to take their bows. Then the supporting actors and featured stars make their way, one by one, to the front of the stage.
The notes to our signature song flood the theater and I beam at Patrick as we rush out and meet in the middle. He grasps my hand, and we head to the front of the stage and take our bows together.
In the audience, I see Chris and McKenna, Kat and Bryan, Reeve and Sutton, and I wave to them all. The cast links hands together for one more bow as the cheering grows even louder, and we gesture to the orchestra in the pit who played the beautiful score.
Finally, the curtain falls, and I am overcome with emotion. Fat tears slide down my cheeks, but they don’t last long when Shelby jumps in my arms.
“You were absolutely amazing! You broke your Broadway cherry! And you did it in a big way!” she says, and I stop crying tears of happiness because now I am laughing. We return to our dressing room, and I’m still floating on this magic carpet ride of the most amazing night of my life as I change out of my costume, pull on jeans and a sweater, and sweep my hair into a loose ponytail.
My friends all stop by for congratulations, and then it’s time to hang with the cast.
“Ready for Zane’s?”
“Yeah, let me meet you there,” I tell Shelby, then pop out of the dressing room to look for Davis. I head down the hallway, but I don’t see him anywhere, and even when I peek at the empty stage he’s nowhere to be found. I hunt around more, and finally I leave the stage when I see a handful of people lingering in the now empty seats.
There’s Davis’ lawyer, Clay, as well as a man in a sharp suit and a woman in black slacks. They look cool and business-like, and Davis is holding court with them. He’s leaning against one of the chairs in the front row, his long legs stretched out as they chat.
They must be the Twelfth Night producers, and there’s a part of me that kind of likes watching him, unseen, as he conducts business and is wooed by the financiers of the theater world who want his talent, his vision, his eye. My lips curve into a grin—that’s my man over there, and everyone wants a piece of him, but I get to have him.
A woman walks down the aisle, and I tense. The last time I saw her was at the gala. Only it’s not Madeline. It’s Joyel
le Kristy, the actress who was interested in Twelfth Night. She joins the crew, and I tell myself not to be jealous because this is his job, and he will work with many beautiful people over the years, just like my job is sometimes to kiss men on stage and I did that tonight.
But she smiles at him, and it’s so unlike the way Madeline looked at him. Madeline was all distance, but Joyelle has this happy, buoyant vibe around her that I almost can’t quite put my finger on. Then, it hits me. She looks like me when I first learned I was cast. Like me, she’s throwing her arms around Davis, gripping him in a huge hug, and he responds by hugging her back and smiling.
I step back, nearly stumbling. That’s how he treated me outside Sardi’s. He’s interacting the exact same way, and seeing the two of them unleashes a new feeling in me, a foreign feeling. Something I haven’t felt before because I haven’t loved like this.
The fear of us unraveling.
He sees me in the corner of the theater, untangles himself from Joyelle, and gestures to them that he’ll be right back.
“You were breathtaking,” he says when he reaches me.
“Thank you. What’s going on?”
“The Twelfth Night producers are here.”
I nod a few times, trying to prepare myself for what I know is coming. Him leaving. “So you’re taking the job in London?”
“Yeah, I am. But you knew I was leaning towards it.”
“And Joyelle? Is she Viola?” I ask, my body flooding with worry that this most wonderful thing could fall apart when a new leading lady walks onto his stage.
“Hey,” he says running his thumb along my jawline. “She’s just happy she was cast.”
“Right,” I say with a nod. Just happy she was cast. Like I was, and I can see it all unfolding again. He’ll be in London, away from me and working with her. She’ll have late nights with him. She’ll have private rehearsals with him.