Chapter 2

2

DAWSON

I loved him. And I got to kiss him every single night.

While Jem Sinclair clearly hated me, and actors like me, it didn’t stop me from wanting him with every cell of my being.

“Sit still,” Letty hissed. “You’re the worst, and it’s always on Fridays. Why you gotta be a pain in my ass on Fridays, huh?”

I bit my tongue and tried to hold still while she used a kohl pencil to darken my eyebrows.

I hated Fridays. Fridays started a sixty-hour weekend in which we did five shows. Friday afternoon was our version of the worst kind of Monday morning. Long hours, hard work, the dehydrating physicality of this particular show under the hot lights.

And the torturous tease of touching Jem Sinclair’s lips against mine. Feeling his taut muscles under his shirtsleeves and pinstriped vest as I embraced him, shoved him into a set piece, slid next to him under a table.

Every time Alfred’s wife came onstage, the six-foot soldiers in Alfred’s mob army had to act casual or hide. It was demanding physical comedy, but I loved it. The timing had to be just right, and the stage blocking was critical. It hadn’t been easy getting the hang of it, but after eleven months of almost all of the original cast remaining, we had it running like a well-oiled machine.

The acting and choreography weren’t hard.

Resisting Jem was.

I spent so much time touching him during those five shows, by Sunday night I was a horny wreck. The one friend I’d confided in had started teasing me about Masturbation Monday.

He wasn’t wrong.

I had the Playbill photo of Jem in my phone. In his headshot, he was fresh-faced and sparkling. In addition to adorably messy blond curls, he also had bright eyes and a teasing smirk. It was the perfect choice for the comedic style of this show, but it also showed off dimples I only ever got to see onstage or when he was laughing with someone else.

I lived for a glimpse of those dimples.

But tonight, I was in a funky mood. I’d seen Jem’s girlfriend in the front of the house asking to see him, and it reminded me of how ridiculous my crush was. She came by regularly to bring him dinner or ask for tickets to the show for her friends. She was cute and friendly with everyone, and I would have probably even liked her if I wasn’t so damned jealous of the poor woman.

“Fucking Christ,” Letty muttered. “If you don’t release those jaw muscles, I’m gonna have to do this contouring completely different than usual. Unclench.”

I sighed and tried relaxing. “You know anything about that woman who’s dating Jem?”

She laughed. “That man is gay.”

I shook my head, making Letty swear and hold my jaw still by force. “His girlfriend is here all the time. Haven’t you seen her?”

“No… but I’ve seen his sister plenty,” she said, raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow and pursing her lips. “Her name is Lina, and I think she works at a dinner theater around here somewhere.”

My mind scrolled back through my memories of seeing her around. I searched frantically for proof for or against this assertion, but I found nothing useful either way.

“You sure?”

“Uh, well… she brought her boyfriend one time, and I saw them kiss goodbye outside the stage door. It wasn’t a make-out sesh or anything, but it didn’t look platonic neither.”

“Hm.”

Letty shrugged and continued caking my face with makeup. “Maybe if you got out more, you’d know what was what with your coworkers.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, even though I already knew.

“You never come out for a drink with us. You’re always working on some new number or script. Men can’t live on theater alone. You need a social life.”

I made another humming sound and kept my mouth shut. The extra work I’d been doing was to prepare for auditions. After almost a year of wanting someone I couldn’t have, of touching him and kissing him every night knowing he would never want me for real, I was exhausted. It was time to move on.

It had been drilled into me for years that I should want to get to the top of my game and make a name for myself with an important lead role. I kept my eyes and ears open for opportunities and auditioned for all sorts of things, from other roles here in New York to a touring production in Europe and even a new summer stock program run by a former child actor in the middle of Colorado, which was generating all kinds of industry buzz.

It meant making the most of my free time since I also had to eat and sleep well to be able to keep up with my fast-paced role on this show each week.

I wasn’t about to slack off now, especially when I’d gotten another callback for one of the lead roles in Daniel Diggs’s new adaptation of Pillow Talk for Broadway. Theater gossip was rife with rumors about who was already cast as the other lead, but the fact it was a man and the adaptation was a modernized and queer version of the original Doris Day movie meant it was poised to take the theater world by storm.

Letty’s voice continued buzzing around me like a hair dryer. “If you’d come out with us last week, you would have known little Jemmy wasn’t dating his sister. He had guys all over him at the Retro. I damned near pissed myself watching him realize he was a recognizable face these days. Ever since they put you boys on that billboard, it’s been a hoot.”

It was true. Since the billboard had gone up, I’d been stopped in the street twice and asked for my autograph. It was kind of fun being recognized, but the second person had mentioned she specifically remembered me because “That kiss was so hot.”

Her words had surprised me. “You noticed the kiss?”

She’d exchanged an incredulous glance with her friend before saying, “Uh, yeah. Everyone talks about that kiss. Your chemistry with that guy was like… holy hotcakes.”

Her words had stayed with me. She wasn’t wrong. Our chemistry onstage was off the charts. It was our relationship offstage that was hopeless.

“He goes out with you guys?” I asked.

Letty sighed. “Just ask him out. It’s not like you haven’t rounded first base already. Everyone has bets on when you two are finally going to do it.”

My stomach dropped. “What the fuck?”

She flapped her hand dismissively. “You know how it is in theater. Everyone’s all up in everyone else’s shit. Somebody’s gotta be talking about somebody.”

“Is he talking about it?” I asked in a low whisper. “Jem?”

She pursed her lips again and shook her head. “Naw. That boy has some kind of issue with you. Don’t know what that’s all about, but he shoots you murder eyeballs. Goes to great pains to act like he don’t care about you one bit.”

I hated hearing confirmation of what I thought, but before I could say something dismissive, she continued.

“But, honey, when you’re not looking? Mm-hm. That boy shoots you a different kind of eyeball, you feel me?”

“No. I don’t feel you. What do you mean?”

“I think he wants a piece of this,” she said, waving an open palm around my face and body. “All of this.”

If only. I gave her a half-smile and stayed as still as I could until she was done. Thankfully, I’d come in early today so she could get to me first. It meant Jem wouldn’t be here for a little while longer, long enough for me to escape into one of the hidden nooks backstage where I put my earbuds in and went through some guided meditation.

When the curtain went up, Jem was there ready to go. He looked dapper, as usual, and his energy was as high as ever onstage. It was one of the things I appreciated about him. Despite not having any formal training, the man was as disciplined as if he’d had the strictest teachers in the industry. He gave the audience everything he had during each show and never seemed like he was phoning in his performance. It made me want to do better and constantly improve. It was one of the reasons I’d started ad-libbing our nightly kiss in the first place.

But now I just did it because it was fun.

As soon as it was time to kiss him, I reached behind his back and pulled him in close before grabbing the side of his face with my other hand and dipping my head down to drop a trail of tiny kisses from his collar up the side of his neck. I could have sworn I felt a little groan escape his throat, but maybe it was wishful thinking.

The crowd always laughed and hooted during that scene. The six mobsters turned from evil criminals into pussycats in various over-the-top ways. One guy pulled a baby doll out from a hidden basket and pretended to feed it. Another one produced a tall ice cream sundae and leaned across the table to share the pair of straws with another mobster like they were on a date at a 1950s soda fountain. And another pulled out an iPhone and began idly scrolling social media. The audience loved it, especially when the woman in the role of Alfred’s wife put her hands on her hips and looked confused.

But tonight, the crowd’s roar of laughter seemed louder and went on for longer.

The following matinee brought the same sustained response. And then again that night. By Sunday afternoon’s show, the cast and crew were trying to figure out what was going on until one of the director’s assistants finally got the scoop.

She brought a popular news site up on her tablet and showed the headline to us.

Kissing Couple Steals the Show!

In the body of the article, there were details about how the kiss changed every night. The writer had interviewed several audience members after the show who admitted to coming back again and again just to see how the kiss changed each time.

“Repeat business for the win,” one of the lighting guys muttered, nudging me in the shoulder. “Am I right?”

I glanced up to see if Jem was around, but I didn’t see him. What would he think when he realized our kisses were causing such a reaction in the audience?

“Places, everyone!” the stage manager called.

The lead actor winked at me. “Go out there and work your magic.”

I took a deep, centering breath. If there was one thing I knew how to do well, it was kiss Jem Sinclair.

But that night, something was off with Jem. His timing was messed up, and he looked a million miles away. It was very unlike him. If nothing else, the man was 100 percent on every night.

At first, I wondered if he’d heard the news about the article and it had made him self-conscious, but when it finally came time for the scene with the kiss, I got close enough to see the weariness in his eyes.

The man was exhausted. He had a hint of dark smudge under his eyes, barely visible under the makeup. But when I kissed him—first his lips and then under the eye where I’d seen the dark circle, I tasted salt.

Like from dried tears.

I pulled back and blinked at him, but half a beat later, the cue came for us to sit back down at the table and continue the scene.

After that, I watched him walk through the rest of the show like he was pulling it together from nothing but muscle memory. His performance wasn’t bad—probably not even noticeable to anyone in the audience—but it was disconcerting to me. Even John, who played Alfred, mentioned it after the final curtain call.

“What’s up with Jem? Is he sick?”

One of the guys from wardrobe shook his head as he took pieces of my costume as I shucked them off. “Nah, man. Family issues. Poor guy’s got some shit going on at home. Sounds like he got out of here just in time. I thought he was going to lose it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. The wardrobe guy’s name was Chris. I was pretty sure he was one of the guys who lived in the apartment next door to me. I didn’t pay much attention since I usually had my earbuds in and my nose in a script, but I’d seen him coming and going.

“Not sure it’s my place to say, but let’s just say I’m glad the weekend is over so he can get some time off. Don’t worry. He’ll be good to go for Wednesday’s show.”

“I wasn’t worried about the show,” I said.

John frowned. “He need any help? You know this show is a family. If he needs support, we’re there for him, man.”

Chris grinned. “He’s cool, but I’ll tell him.”

After that, I had to let it go. Clearly some of the other guys knew him better, were closer to him, could be the friends he clearly needed.

But when Wednesday’s show rolled around and he still seemed off, I was like a man possessed. I wanted to make him smile, make him laugh… somehow distract him from this funk and give him, for at least those two hours onstage, a break from whatever he was going through.

He could hate me the other twenty-two hours of the day.

But for two hours on that stage, Jem Sinclair was mine… and I was going to remind him of that.