“Okay,” I say warily. “But I’m not going to perform.”
“I won’t ask you to tap dance or twirl in circles.”
“Good,” I say, then oblige by heading down the metal stairs to the middle of the stage. I’m still holding my coffee, so I look up at her, and hell if she doesn’t look like the most romantic woman ever written leaning on the railing in the balcony, her long hair framing her face, a wistful sigh fluttering from her lips.
It’s a moment that shouldn’t be ruined by words. Besides, she wanted to see how the stage looks, not how it sounds, so I say nothing. I take a drink of my coffee. I wait for her to go next.
Even from this distance, I can see her swallow and exhale as if she’s about to say something that’s hard for her. “Your coffee?”
“Yeah?”
“All the hot guys take their coffee black. So that’s how I knew.”
For the first time in my life, I am speechless. I am reduced to nothing but this buzzing in my bones, as if every cell inside me has been dialed all the way up. My skin is hot all over and my body feels like it’s shaking as she turns down the stairs, crosses the stage, and stands in front of me.
I want to crush her against me. I want to smother her in kisses. I want to taste her, touch her, feel her.
Her lips are slightly parted, and if I stare at them any longer, I will be claiming her mouth with mine, pushing her up against a wall and owning her body. So I glance down, and that’s a worse decision.
The red sweater taunts me. Those pearl buttons are beacons calling out to me, and my fingers twitch with the desire to twist hard on one and let it rattle to the floor, then the next, then the next, exposing her br**sts to me, so full and creamy.
I scrub a hand across my jaw, then somehow find the will to turn away from her because if I start something now we’ll never rehearse. I won’t be able to stop making her come. I force myself to focus on my job.
“We should probably get to work on that scene,” I say hoarsely.
She raises an eyebrow. “The show must go on.” She walks to stage left then tosses me a look over her shoulder. “As they say.”
I love that she can shift back to this playful side, and it’s one more thing that is going to ruin me.
* * *
There is only an easel on the stage. It’s a temporary one, a fill-in prop from an art supply store. When the show begins, the real easel will be bigger, larger than life in many ways, befitting a Broadway show. But for now, this easel does the trick. It gives Ava a focal point for her work. She has been painting all day, working and reworking her newest piece under Paolo’s direction. The young painter, barely into her twenties, and the world-renowned artist who’s taken her under his iron-fisted wing at art school.
Paolo returns to the studio to check on her progress and finds her a painted mess.
I enter from stage left. Ava doesn’t notice me at first; she’s so engrossed in the work. I am quiet, walking on cat’s feet to her side.
She startles. “Oh.”
“You are…” I don’t finish the sentence. Instead, I make a circular motion around her face.
“I’m what?”
“You’re covered in paint.”
She shrugs. “What else should I be covered in but paint?”
“Your hair is full of paint. It’s getting in the way.”
With one sweep of her hand she brushes her hair off her face, leaving behind an imaginary streak from the paintbrush.
“Oops,” I say, because Paolo feels playful right now.
“It’s on my forehead now, right?”
I nod, then trace a quick line across her forehead. “A bright yellow streak. And your hair is the color of the sun too.”
“I’m a mess,” she says in a sweet, self-deprecating tone.
“Here.” I hold out my hand. “Give me the brush.”
She hands it to me, and I lay it on the easel. “Come with me.”
She follows and we move to the middle of the stage. “Sit,” I tell her.
She bites the inside of her lip then sits cross-legged. I kneel behind her, so the audience will be able to see both of us. “Let’s get your hair out of the way.”
“Okay,” she says, in the softest, sweetest voice.
She leans her head back, closes her eyes, and lets me run my fingers through her hair. I gather her hair at the top of her head, the thick strands laying across my palms like silk waterfalls. I begin weaving one strand into another, then gathering another layer, recreating the French braid I saw her wearing the other day. The one that made me think of a moment of intimacy, when Paolo and Ava come closer together through touch before they kiss in the next scene. A tender moment, where he wants to take care of her, get her painted hair out of her face.
I reach the point in the braid where I’m at her neck, and now I’m simply looping one strand over the other. There are no more lines in this scene until hers at the end, and as I finish I stare at her neck, at the way a vein seems to be beating harder, and then I listen, and her breaths sound like tiny little sighs.
I stop moving for a second, trying to collect myself. I am fighting everything in me that’s dying to touch her. I somehow find the strength to return to character, pulling a rubber band from my pocket, and fastening her braid. She turns around and looks at me.
That’s not in the blocking. That’s not how she did it this afternoon with Patrick. She didn’t look at him. She uttered the last lines while gazing out at the audience, her body language saying how she felt as she leaned into him, showing that she trusted him.
But now, she’s leaning back against my chest, and turning to look up at me. A tiny whimper escapes her throat, before she says, “It feels so good.”
I have no idea if she’s acting. If she’s Ava, or Jill, or both. If she’s acting, she’s so f**king convincing because her face says she’s never been more aroused in her life.
My hands are still on her back, my thumbs tracing the tiny strands at the end of her braid. She doesn’t break her gaze, nor do I. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t what’s happening. But for the first time I don’t feel like I’m in control anymore.
She is.
I stay completely still.
She counters me by shifting closer. “What is happening here?” Her voice is unsteady as she says a line that’s not in the script.
“You tell me,” I say, and I’m not even sure where my own voice is coming from.