by Vi Keeland
“I better let you finish your meeting,” I say, as my heart starts to race at a frantic pace, like it’s trying to escape from my chest.
“I’ll see you at Zane’s.”
“Yeah,” I reply, but I feel completely unmoored as he walks away and rejoins the people he’ll be working with next as he moves on from me.
All along, I thought I’d be the one to hurt someone. I’d avoided relationships for that reason. But Davis has my heart, I’ve given him my most valuable possession, and now he can hurt me too.
I grab my coat and leave the theater, the heavy stage door clanging shut behind me. I button my coat, and head out to Forty-Fourth Street, and am shocked when there are audience members waiting for me, asking me to sign their Playbills. It’s thrilling, and I sign several and pose for a few photos too, but inside I am awash in stupid worry.
That doubt escalates as I flash back to all the days and nights we spent together. To all the things he said. To how he plays actors like instruments to get the performance he wants. From Patrick to Alexis to me, he knows all the right notes to hit, and he plucks them perfectly, creating the masterpiece he wants from the tools we give him. Ourselves.
Memories collide with each other.
Davis telling Alexis she was his first choice.
Davis coddling Patrick with niceties.
Davis working me over, bit by bit, night after night to get me to be his best Ava. He knew what Alexis was like. He might not have known she’d break a leg, but he knew I’d have to go on, and he made sure I was ready. Then it hits me, like a punch in the gut. The way he talked to me that night at the studio—do you sing to the wall, do you sing to the floor—it’s no different than how he dirty talked to me in the restaurant the night I got off for him.
I lean against the wall of a nearby apartment building and wrap my arms around myself, as if that can somehow protect me from all these images smashing into my brain and pricking at my heart. I can see him and Joyelle in London, alone in the theater after hours, rehearsing, running lines, digging deep for emotion, connection, passion. I know far too well how easy it is to get swept up. It happened to me. It happened to him.
It happened as he turned me into Ava. All along I never saw that my relationship with him mirrored Paolo’s and Ava’s. But he broke me down to get the best performance from me, as Paolo does to Ava. As Davis will do to Joyelle. The young, gorgeous, talented actress who is next in his employ, and I can’t stand the thought of losing him to her. To anyone.
I start walking again, but I’m wrung dry and worn out, and as I enter Zane’s I want so desperately to recapture the way I felt many minutes ago on stage, as well as the way I felt all the days before. But it’s hard to grasp onto what’s real because now I’m sick with worry that the one real thing could slip from my fingers. That he could be far away from me and forget all that we shared.
Inside Zane’s, I do what I’ve always done. What I’m used to. I shuck off the past. I ignore all the things that hurt, that don’t make sense, that I don’t know how to deal with, as I grab a beer and join Shelby and the others in round after round of endless opening night toasts. As the minutes turn into an hour and he still doesn’t arrive, my heart is a brick inside my chest, and I wish I could rip it out, and replace it with a mechanical one, because I think I’d be better off that way.
Better off like I used to be.
Then, like I’ve been slapped stupid, I pick myself up. Because I wasn’t better off. I was acting all the time. I was living a life of pretend. But then he came around, and with him there was never any faking, there was never any make believe.
I rewind to the night in my bedroom when he listened to me, and he helped me, and he saw me through.
I flash back to the direction he gave me at our first private rehearsal: “But then she transforms. Love changes her. Love without bounds. Love without reason. She becomes his, and that changes her.”
How I loved the sentiment, how I felt it ring true in every cell in my body, how I longed for it to take shape in my life. I can picture the next scene, I can hear the music swelling, the orchestra growing louder, because this is the moment in the show when the heroine has to face all her fears.
For better or for worse, I need to know.
I grab my coat, my purse, and leave Zane’s. I won’t sit here and mope, and I definitely won’t walk away from this man without trying to protect what’s mine with every ounce of my heart and soul.
Davis
The meeting is taking forever, and I am antsy and eager to leave. But Clay has made it clear that the producers—Tamara and Carter Shey—like a casual, family atmosphere. They want a director to be involved, to chitchat, to engage in long, deep discussions about Shakespeare. So I hold my own, sharing some of my vision for Twelfth Night, and how I want to bring a new take to one of the Bard’s most popular plays.
Joyelle is enrapt in my ideas, and at one point, she even bats her eyes and casts me a huge beaming grin that seems a bit too adoring at this point. Or really, at any point.
I look at my watch, and they realize it’s nearing midnight.
“I’m so sorry we’ve kept you so long, but we’re thrilled to have you on board,” Tamara says, and shakes my hand.
“There’s one thing I’m going to need though to make this final,” I say, then nod to Clay. “He’ll let you know what it is because I need to go.”
I clap Clay on the back, and leave it up to him to work out the most important detail of my contract. I say goodbye to the others, grab my jacket, and head down the alley. If I know Jill, she’s already starting to worry. I’ll have to work on that with her, to reassure her that things don’t always unravel. That things can keep getting better.
But I don’t have to go to Zane’s, because she’s walking toward me, marching right up to me. She has the most determined take-no-prisoners look on her face, and her blue eyes are fixed on me. She stops inches from me, reaches for the neck of my shirt, grabbing the fabric. It’s not an angry gesture, but a pleading one, matched by her voice when she speaks. “Please tell me you’re not going to fall for Joyelle,” she says.
I laugh once, shake my head, and clasp my hand over hers, pulling her closer.
“Tell me,” she says again, insisting.
“I’m not. That’s not even remotely possible.”
“Tell me why,” she demands.
“Because of you,” I say simply. The answer is patently clear to me.
“I need to know you’re not going to fall for her. I need to know that if you work late with her, help her become a better Viola, you’re only going to think of me,” she says, and I can’t help but grin.
She points at me, accusingly. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because I love your jealous, possessive side. It’s completely endearing.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You haven’t answered the question. Are you going to fall for your Viola?”
I shake my head, and curve a hand around her neck. “It’s impossible.”
She leans into me, and her voice softens. “Tell me, Davis. Tell me why it’s impossible.”
I cup her cheek in my hand and look her in the eyes. “Because she might play Viola, but you are my Viola. You are my Ava. You are my Eponine. You are every part ever written, but most of all, you’re my Jill and you’re the only woman I want,” I tell her, and she closes her eyes briefly and sways towards me. But I’m not done. I have more to say. “I will work with other women and you will be on stage or screen and kiss other men, and we will come back to each other because nobody else can come between us.”
Then she melts into me, pressing her body against mine on the streets of Manhattan, outside the St. James Theater, where I first told her on that cold evening that she was in my show. “Do you want to know why I took so long in there? What was so important to me that it kept me away from you on a night like this?”
“What?”
“I told them I would only do Twelfth Night if it was worke
d into my contract that I could come back once a week during rehearsals.”
Her eyes widen and sparkle, as if she’s filling with happiness. I love that she responds this way. “Really?”
I nod. “Yes. Really,” I emphasize. “I want to see you. I want to have a future with you. I’m not going to jet off without a way to see you as much as I can.”
She shakes her head, as if she’s berating herself. “I’m an idiot for doubting you.”
“No, you’re human. But you’ve got to realize that even though I might be in London for two months, I’m not going anywhere.”
“I love you,” she says fiercely, grabbing my shirt again, and fisting the fabric. “I fucking love you so much it hurts. But it’s a good hurt, because it makes me feel like I’m alive, and it’s not pretend and it’s not fake, and I want to keep loving you and trying not to hurt you, but sometimes doing it anyway, and then forgiving, and I want that with you. Only you.”
“Good. Now why don’t we skip Zane’s, because I think there are other things we should be doing right now.”
“What could you possibly have in mind?” She says playfully as she takes my hand and I hail a taxi.
“Come back to my place and find out,” I say, then open the door and let her in first.
* * *
We barely make it into my loft. She launches herself at me in the elevator, running her hands through my hair. “Do you remember our first private rehearsal?” she asks in an intensely serious tone.
“Of course. How could I forget?”
“When we were leaving, I kept hoping the elevator would stop. Or jolt me into you. So I could do this,” she tells me, then captures my lips in a kiss that is both soft and hungry, a promise of what’s to come soon, of how we will have each other tonight. She slows the kiss down, running her tongue along my bottom lip, then nipping at the top. She breaks the kiss to shoot me a sly grin. “That’s how you kiss me sometimes. You torment me with your teeth.”
“You deserve tormenting,” I say, teasing her.
“I know, but I want to give it back to you.”
“You should definitely give it back to me. Any time. All the time.”
She backs me into the corner of the elevator, grabs my wrists and holds them tight at my side, then bends her head to kiss my neck. Only she doesn’t kiss. She bites, and it feels fucking fantastic. I close my eyes, reveling in the sensation. I’m about to respond in kind, but she lets go of my wrists and grabs my hair hard, then pulls. Once.
“There,” she says happily. “Like you do to me.”
“All’s fair in love and war,” I say as the elevator stops. She steps out first but as soon as the doors close, I grab her jeans and pull her back to me, spin her around, and lift her up against the wall in the hallway. She wraps her legs around my waist, her arms around my neck. I push hard against her, grinding my hips into hers, kissing her face, her neck, her eyelids, her hair, her earlobes, anywhere on her, until she rasps, “Inside. Now.”
I lower her to the floor, unlock the door and shove it closed. In less than a second her hands are on the zipper of my pants and I’m undoing her jeans, and we are pushing clothes to the floor, and nearly tripping as we grasp at each other while moving into the kitchen. I lift her up on the counter, pull off her boots and her jeans, and then slide my hand between her legs as she parts them for me.
“You’re already wet,” I whisper in her ear, as I rub my fingers against her, and she arches into me.
“Did you expect anything less?”
I shake my head, and slip off her panties, tossing them somewhere behind me. I don’t bother to take off my shirt, or step out of my pants. I need to be inside her now. I tug her closer to the edge of the counter then sink into her, and she bites her lip, then takes a sharp breath, followed by a long, low sigh of pleasure as I fill her.
“There are so many ways I need to fuck you, Jill. So many positions, and places, and things to do with your beautiful body,” I tell her as I start to move inside her.
“I know,” she whispers. “All those things you said you’d do to me when we had dinner. And then at the Plaza. I need all of them.”
“You’ll have all of them. And later tonight, I’m going to spend my time making love to you, but right now, I’m going to take you, and it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be fast.”
Her eyes light up, like she has a secret. “That’s what the hero said in a dirty novel I was reading. I want it like that. Please do it like that now,” she pants, then grabs my ass and pulls me deeper into her.
I do as I promised, gripping her hips as I drive into her, slamming her onto me. She grasps me with her legs, and holds onto my shoulders, then rests her forehead against mine, her breath on my face, and I love it. I love how she can’t hold back, how she wants this as much as I do. How she needs it. Soon, she is moaning with abandon, moving faster with me, and I start to lose myself in her noises, her sounds, in the way she tugs hard on my hair, and shouts yes many times over as she comes, and I chase her there. Then she wraps her arms around my waist in a tight embrace. “Davis, I love you so much. I can’t imagine being without you either,” she whispers, and I might be the happiest man alive right now.
“Good,” I tell her. “Because you won’t be.”
After a quick bathroom break, I return to the kitchen, and she’s made herself at home, perched on a black leather barstool at the counter. She’s still wearing her sweater, but nothing on the bottom.
“That’s a good look for you,” I say. “It’ll be even better if you take the top off.”
“Consider it done,” she says, and pulls off her sweater and her bra, and crosses her legs. She looks so unbelievably sexy, all naked and blond and just-been-fucked, sitting on my barstool, in my kitchen, in my home.
“I have something for you. For us,” I say, then open the stainless steel fridge and remove a bottle of champagne. “To celebrate your first Broadway show. Your first ever performance on the Great White Way.”
I pop open the bottle, pour two glasses, and sit down next to her. I hold up a glass to toast. “To many, many more.”
“To many more,” she repeats, then takes a sip.
I tip my forehead to the stool. “You look good on that stool. You look good in my home. You should make it yours.”
She gives me a curious look, as a grin plays on her lips. “Are you asking me to move in?”
I shrug a shoulder playfully. “You said your roommate’s moving out soon. I figured why not.”
“So I should move in since it’s hard to find a place in New York?” she jokes.
“That. And because it makes it easier to fuck you, and make love to you, and kiss you, and hold you, and touch you, and be with you,” I say, then I pause, taking a beat, so she knows I mean this from the heart. “And because I love you.”
She hops off the stool, wraps her arms around me and kisses me wildly, so I take that as a yes.
Chapter 25
Four Months Later
Jill
“You are the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen,” I say as I hand Kat a tulip bouquet, all in purple, her favorite color.
She whispers a thanks, takes a breath, her shoulders rising and falling, as if she’s prepping herself for this momentous step.
“You’re not nervous, are you?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
“Good,” I say with a smile.
The string quartet begins Pachelbel’s Canon, and that’s my cue as the maid of honor to walk down the aisle, a white runner spread out across the lawn at Le Belle Vie, an inn in Mystic, Connecticut, where Kat grew up. It is June, and she and Bryan are getting married outside under the warm afternoon sun on a beautiful blue-sky Saturday, the ocean waves lapping the nearby shore.
When I reach the steps of the gazebo, I take my spot across from the groom and his best man. Bryan looks so handsome in his tux, and so happy as the wedding march begins and Kat walks down the aisl
e. He only has eyes for her, and she for him, as it should be.
She’s radiant, with her hair pinned up in a gorgeous twist, in the perfect dress she found at the bridal shop in the West Village. She reaches the gazebo and stands across from Bryan, and the two of them are so ridiculously happy. I catch a glimpse of Davis in the third row, looking as classy as ever in a button-down shirt and tie that I want to unknot later.
For now, I keep my eyes on the bride and groom as the justice of the peace begins the proceedings.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate one of the greatest joys in life and witness the union of Bryan Leighton and Kat Harper in marriage, which is an institution ordained by the state and made honorable by the faithful keeping of good men and women,” he says. “Marriage is founded upon sincerity, trust, and mutual love.” Then he pauses, as if preparing for a quip. “As well as a mutual love of movies, coffee drinks and Paris.”
I beam, and so does Kat, and it’s all so true because that’s how Kat and Bryan fell in love again.
“Kat and Bryan have a strong and solid foundation. They support each other, they care for each other and, as I understand it, Bryan is quite good at making her laugh.”
Now it’s Bryan’s turn to smile proudly. He won Kat back into his heart in many ways, but especially because he always made her laugh.
Then the justice of the peace grows more serious. “They are each other’s true and forever loves, and today they take that pledge before God, family and friends.” He turns to Bryan. “Do you, Bryan, take Kat to be your lawful wedded wife?”
“I do.”
“Will you love, respect and honor her in all your years together?”
“I will.”
Then he turns to Kat.
“Do you, Kat, take Bryan to be your lawful wedded husband?”
“I do,” she says.
“Will you love, respect and honor him in all your years together?”
“I will.”
After they exchange rings, the justice of the peace says the words we’ve all come to hear. “By the power vested in me by the state of Connecticut, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”