AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rebecca opened it up, flicking through the actors’ headshots and bios.
‘Who is it you know?’ she asked.
‘Here,’ I said, prodding my finger at a glossy shot of a black girl in her early thirties. ‘Nathalie. She’s great. She was in the year above me at drama school. It was obvious she was going to do well. We went out for a bit, actually.’
Where had that come from? I’d specifically decided not to tell Rebecca about my history with Nathalie.
‘Oh, did you?’ she said, peering closely at Nathalie’s headshot. ‘was it serious?’
‘Not really. I think she just liked having me around as a sort of trophy boyfriend. She wheeled me out whenever she wanted a plus-one, and then barely spoke to me the rest of the time. Eventually I lost interest, which I don’t think she was best pleased about.’
‘What were you like at drama school, then?’ asked Rebecca, going in closer to read the text. ‘Did you get the best parts, too?’
‘Sometimes. Usually.’
She looked up. ‘You’re good, then?’
I swilled my drink around in my glass. ‘You’ll have to come and watch me sometime. Make up your own mind.’
An announcement informed us the performance was about to start and that we should please take our seats. I stood up, scraping back my chair. Rebecca grabbed both our drinks and followed me into the auditorium. Inside, it was dark and still, a small studio theatre with four of five rows in the stalls where we were sitting and two or three rows up on the balcony. Enviously, I imagined the actors behind the set, earnestly doing their warm-up exercises. Running lines under their breath. Arranging to meet for post-performance drinks.
‘This is us,’ I said, shrugging off my coat and stuffing it under my seat. Rebecca did the same, revealing a black shirt tucked into skinny blue jeans. It seemed like a different look for her; less buttoned-up than the stuff she usually wore to work. Actually, the more time I spent with her, the more I enjoyed her company. She was grounded in a way I wasn’t used to. And she was super smart and intuitive – I felt like she got what I was trying to say, even if she didn’t know much about the acting world herself. I found it funny, now, that we’d got off on the wrong foot and that I’d made these assumptions about her based only on that.
‘Do you wish you were on the stage?’ she whispered in my ear, as though she could see what was inside my head.
I shrugged and then nodded. ‘Sort of.’
And then the lights went down and the play began.
At one point I felt like I was going to get cramp and I stretched my right leg out in front of me. My thigh pressed against Rebecca’s and I gently pulled it away, feeling self-conscious in case she thought I’d done it on purpose. It took me a few seconds to concentrate on the play again after that. Worryingly, it had felt quite nice.
