Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,118
that fits Law,” Pearl said.
“One minute!” Ingrid, the stage manager, called, walking through the crowd with a clipboard and shooing the hangers-on into the wings.
Maya eyed Ben warily. “Are you sure we shouldn’t—”
“The rest of the cast worked with me on the blocking—that’s what you call it, I think?” he said. “But you do get that you’re gonna have to carry this thing, right?”
“Places, everyone!” Ingrid called.
Ben started backing away. He wasn’t in the opening scene.
“But wait!” she called after him.
“You can’t blame me if the Globe and Mail review is less than stellar,” Ben said with a perplexing degree of calm. “I mean, you can. You probably will.” He stopped walking and grinned. “I look forward to it, actually.”
She…was out of words.
“Oh!” he called. “There is one more thing.” He was still backing away, so the distance between them was growing as he spoke. “I’m in love with you.” He snorted, like he found the idea half-delightful, half-off-putting. “Completely and totally hung up on you, actually.” When she didn’t answer—if she thought she’d had no words a moment ago, she’d had no idea—he added, “Break a leg!”
And then he disappeared.
And the curtain opened.
The first exchange in the play was between the governor of their fictional town and a messenger. Maya listened to them talk and tried to pull herself together. The bright lights prevented her from seeing beyond the first few rows, but in those rows were friendly faces. Eve was backstage working on costume changes, but there was Sawyer sitting with Nora. Pearl, Eiko, and Karl were there, too.
Jake, the town’s odd-job guy, was, as promised, crouched in the space between the stage and the first row.
And front and center were Ro and her parents. Her attention caught on her dad, and he noticed, because unlike the rest of the audience members, who were watching the actors who were speaking, he was looking at her.
He smiled and gave her a big, dorky thumbs-up that made something in her chest catch.
Everyone was here. All her people. Her village.
For a moment it felt like they were all staring at her, all at once.
Which, actually, they now were. It was her line, and she was just standing there like an idiot. She took a deep breath. “‘I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?’”
Beatrice was asking about Benedick. Her nemesis. Her love.
And there he was, striding onto the stage. Her nemesis. Her love.
Who was “completely and totally hung up” on her.
It boggled the mind.
Some of the other men joked around, as the script called for, but Ben/edick didn’t have a line right away. He just stared at her—which worked for the script, because Benedick and Beatrice were basically obsessed with each other. He was looking very pleased with himself, no doubt because he had successfully ambushed her backstage, both with his presence and with his declaration.
And then they were off, doing what they’d always done. Bantering.
He wasn’t as polished as Holden. He could have projected better. He didn’t always know where to stand. He sometimes glanced at the cue cards, but always in advance of his next line, so he was never stuck with nothing to say.
But they had chemistry. They had chemistry for days.
And chemistry, it turned out, was everything.
Because what underlay chemistry was love.
And love could sustain you.
Law honestly hadn’t known if he could pull this off, but Maya saved him.
Practicing his lines by himself, or with some of the other cast members who’d come out to his parents’ house to help, had been one thing. Saying them live onstage with Maya as his foil was another. The first had been a slog. Homework. The second? Magic. Their first scene together was full of rapid-fire banter, and once they got going, it was as natural as…bantering with Maya. He had fun, which was not something he could have predicted.
And then, oh, and then.
There was a point, early in Act II, when they had to dance together at a masked ball—after some more bantering. It was a wild, reeling sort of dance that he stumbled through. He managed not to actually trip, though—until she twirled right up against him and whispered his own words from before back to him: “I’m in love with you, too. Completely and totally hung up on you, actually.”
He fell down.
Luckily, she managed to work it into the play, mocking him to the audience in such a way that it seemed like it had been choreographed.