spend the rest of the day with this woman and would be paid to do so was a surreal concept. Her job certainly did not suck.
“Did you catch anything I said?”
She turned absently and looked up at Trip, who must have been speaking. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t.”
He looked across the room to Lauren and smothered a knowing smile. “Right. Got it. Well, I was just offering to walk you through the different danger zones on set for when we go to black between scenes. I’ve marked them with glow tape, but you’ll want to be aware for safety.”
“Good idea. Lead the way.” She glanced over her shoulder one more time to Lauren, who was busy signing in with Janie. For whatever reason, in that moment, Lauren intuitively raised her gaze to Carly’s.
“Hi,” she mouthed.
Carly offered a wave back. The connection from the other night was still in full effect.
Bam. She smacked right into somebody. Tinsley. The set woman. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Carly said.
“Yeah. Probably best to keep your eyes forward.” She flicked a look in Lauren’s direction. “Instead of over there. Make sure everybody is safe.”
Carly offered a salute. “On it.”
Tinsley tolerated her at a minimum. Carly was pretty confident it was because of her own interest in Lauren. Jealousy flared, and she quieted it. She had no ownership of Lauren, even if she secretly hoped she had no interest in Tinsley, or anyone else for that matter. One thing Tinsley had over Carly—Minneapolis. She was a permanent fixture. Carly wasn’t.
“When you make this corner, be aware of the edge right here. Use the tape as your guide.”
“Got it.” She followed Trip to their next destination. Carly generally considered herself a casual dater, never getting too serious, never demanding too much of the other woman. She was young, and out to enjoy herself. Why did this feel like the stakes were so much higher? A Tinsley in the mix should never have bothered her.
“Any questions?” Trip asked. He looked at her. She looked back.
“No, I think you covered everything. Very thorough.” She pointed at herself. “Impressed.” She realized, lamely, that she’d probably only registered about half of Trip’s instructions, which couldn’t have been good.
It wasn’t.
Two hours later, during a run of lighting cues, she slammed smack into an end table on her exit, which kicked her into one of those incredibly graceful foot shuffles, where you thought you might just remain upright, but no. “Ow,” Carly mumbled as the pain arrived.
“Hold, please,” she heard Trip say over the God mic. The lights came on and seven different people moved to Carly, who held up her hand from the floor that she was fine.
“I’m good. Just a very stupid exit is all.” She chuckled and tried not to point out that the front portion of her right thigh throbbed from the collision with the hefty end table, and the ankle on her same foot hurt from where she twisted it trying to prevent herself from falling.
In the sea of faces crowded around her, it was Lauren’s that pulled her focus. “Did you try to take that set piece out?” she asked with a grin.
“I don’t really feel like it matches Ashley’s taste,” she said back with some sass.
Lauren’s fingers went around her arm to steady her as she stood. “Seriously, are you okay?” The stagehands, seeing she was upright, stepped back.
Carly nodded. “I’m an idiot, but I’ll live.” She leaned in closer to Lauren. “But I’m not going to refuse any TLC. I’m no fool.”
“I’ll kiss it later,” she said back in Carly’s ear. Suddenly, this little injury didn’t seem like such an awful thing. Her ankle throbbed like crazy through the remainder of rehearsal, especially when she put too much weight on it, but she chose instead to focus on Lauren and their scenes together. Today, more than ever before, their onstage chemistry seemed to come clawing out of the dialogue. Ethan, when she encountered him, seemed on cloud nine about the show’s progress. It seemed like he couldn’t stop grinning, which made her feel satisfied with the work she’d done. They hadn’t even been in front of an audience yet, and Carly was already so fulfilled by this process.
“How’s your foot?” Lauren asked, as they stood in the wings, waiting for the designers to be ready to move forward to the next cue.
“I’ll be okay.”
Lauren didn’t seem convinced. “You don’t have to be a badass. For someone so expressive, this is the time you choose