Tryst Six Venom, page 4
I press my palm to the board to stop myself as I move my index finger down the list, not looking for my name first.
I stop, seeing Mercutio, and slide right, hoping but already knowing before I even see it.
Callum Ames.
I drop my arm, fighting the urge to cry as I stare at the roster and exhale hard. I trace the line from Mercutio to Callum three more times with just my eyes to make sure before it even occurs to me to scan the sheet for my name to see if I was cast in anything at all, despite losing the role I wanted.
And there I am. Nurse……………….Olivia Jaeger.
I shake my head and turn away, holding back only a moment. Fuck you. I shoot off, my disappointment morphing into anger that I know won’t do me any good, but I’m not letting her off the hook this time. I throw open Ms. Lambert’s office door, finding it empty, and then stalk farther down the hall, stepping backstage and see her leaning over a drafting table, sifting through designs.
I move around the table, standing opposite her. “Four years,” I bite out, picking up at exactly where we left off the last time the theater director and I had this conversation.
She looks up at me, her short brown hair tucked behind her ears.
I continue. “Nearly four years of set designs and sewing costumes and completing whatever other menial task you asked of me,” I tell her. “I’ve spent more time here than I have with my family.”
“You got a part.”
“The nurse?” I practically spit out.
“You didn’t want Juliet.”
“Romeo wouldn’t have wanted Juliet if he’d spent more than one dance with her before marrying her!”
I’m yelling at a teacher, but I’m around her more than anyone, so I know she’ll let me off the hook like a mom who still loves you even when you fuck up.
I grip the drafting table on both sides, drilling into her eyes with mine. “Mercutio is the most dynamic character in the play. To be able to reimagine him, I mean…”
And I trail off, not seeing the point in saying what I’ve said before. The opportunity to reinvent him would be a dream come true. What the hell could Callum Ames do other than look good in a codpiece? And even that’s debatable.
She rolls her blueprints. “The administration won’t allow a female to play a male’s role.”
“Why not? They spent hundreds of years playing ours.”
She gives me a look like I’m not helping, and then heads over to another work table.
I follow. “He’s a skeptic, he’s crude, he’s hot-headed… He’s the only one with potential for growth.”
She laughs to herself. “A skeptic…”
Yes, a skeptic. I realize that’s not fashionable in a Catholic school, but I think she’s caught on to the fact that if it’s “in” then I’m “out.”
“Please,” I ask, a vulnerability to my tone that I hate hearing from myself.
“No,” she replies.
“I deserve this.”
“No.”
I stand there, watching her as she closes her laptop and gathers her travel mug and bags.
I can’t play the nurse. I don’t care if my part is small. It’s not that.
But I know what I can do, and I’d put in my time. I know what I’m worth.
“Did you even ask them?” I charge.
Does the administration even know the opportunity I’d like?
She stops and looks up, straightening. The soft look in her eyes tells me she wants to make me happy, but…
She won’t fight for me.
“No reimagined sets,” she reiterates. “No reimagined costumes. No Mercutio.”
She leaves, and I stand there, not frozen—just too tired to move. I wish she was telling the truth. I wish the administration really didn’t have money for a Romeo and Juliet makeover, and really did hate the idea of a female Mercutio.
But I know what I know. The problem isn’t my ideas. It’s me. I’ve been the grunt backstage my entire high school career—paying my dues and showing them that no matter how dissenting the piercings on my ears, or how many times my family name is in the Police Beat section of the newspaper—
I want to be here. I will be here every day for as long as she needs me.
I love the theater. I want to be a part of that world on-stage. I’ve put in my time—sewing costumes, building sets, being her right-hand during auditions and rehearsals, and literally being the axis around which everything else spins on performance nights.
You need something pinned? Come here.
You forgot a line? Okay, which part do you play? I know them all.
Dorothy’s almost up and she’s missing? I saw her making out with the Tin Man in the wings. I’ll go grab her.
I’ve pushed a wheelbarrow around in the background of Fiddler on the Roof and almost had actual lines as an understudy for North Winston when she played Miss Scarlet in Clue, but I’m kind of glad that never panned out. I wanted Mrs. White anyway.
Romeo and Juliet is my last chance—was my last chance—to prove what I can do before I’m inevitably rejected by the theater department at Dartmouth.
I hear the heavy stage door slam shut, the last few members of the crew clearing out, the only sound in the entire theater being the ever-present movement of the air conditioning in the ducts above.
My phone is in my bag. I should call Iron to pick me up, but I’m not ready to go home yet.
Heading offstage, I wander down the hall, not really knowing where I’m going until I see the racks of costumes pulled from storage that sit outside the dressing rooms. Repairs need to be made, as well as some altered for the actors wearing them this year, but I can’t help sifting through the clothes, pushing each hanger to the left as I take in the same tired, old shit. It isn’t like my ideas are all that new, either. Romeo and Juliet has been re-adapted several times in West Side Story, China Girl…
Would Leonardo DiCaprio’s version have been number one at the box office opening weekend if he’d been in tights?
Okay, perhaps, but the genius of that film was that it was revamped for a changing audience. Firefights, car chases, rock music, forbidden love… I’m not suggesting much that hasn’t already been done.
I spot a long black coat—Victorian, with a fitted torso and calf-length skirt—mixed in with the Renaissance costumes, and I stop, studying it.
Pulling it off the rack, I hold it up, pause only a moment, and then grab the ruffle on the left shoulder, ripping it off. I do the same to the right side and slide the coat off the hanger, slipping my arms into it. I button it up, the bodice fitting perfectly, and then slip the rubber band off my wrist and pull my hair back into a high ponytail, teasing my hair. I dive into a dressing room and dab on some more eyeliner and dark shadow around my eyes, seeing the scene in my head. New York. A cold night. White snow falling against a black sky.
Prince Paris is in his penthouse somewhere in the city and horns honk in the distance, beyond the park, as Romeo’s hair whips in the wind next to me.
My friend. I walk out to the stage, stand in the middle, and close my eyes.
My best friend. The true other half of his soul.
I swirl around the stage, Mercutio’s famous monologue rolling off my tongue, because I’ve had it memorized for years. Mercutio is large—a one-person party—and she dominates every scene she’s in, the coat spinning with me, my head tipped back, and my eyes still closed as the character slowly swells in my stomach.
“This is the hag,” I go on, feeling my eyes grow wild with fire as I gaze at my friend, “when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage.”
I sweat, inhaling and exhaling hard. “This is she.” I shout. “This is she!”
“You’re good,” someone calls out.
I freeze, my breath stopping, and then I whip around, seeing Callum Ames standing behind me. He wears fitted black pants and a dark blue Polo, all of his dusty blond hair flopped to one side.
I narrow my eyes. “Better than you.”
He grins, sliding his hands in his pockets. “I’m white, rich, and male. I’ll succeed no matter what.”
“You’re male,” I say. “You’ll succeed no matter what.”
He has zero interest in this play and not an ounce of talent. Why else did she give him this role?
He cocks his head, studying me. “Do you really think that’s what stood in your way?” He steps toward me slowly. “Don’t you think Lambert would’ve given that role to say…Clay, if she’d asked?”
I unbutton the coat but keep my eyes on him as he continues to move closer. Callum and Clay deserve each other. Both rotten human beings who won’t realize the snake in the other as long as they distract themselves with how beautiful they are together.
Callum continues, “I have no doubt you’ll pull yourself up out of the swamps and truly live a life that makes you happy, Liv, because you deserve it,” he says, stopping a few feet before me. “You do. You’re better than us, and don’t think I don’t know that.”
I’m glad.
“But it won’t be here,” he tells me. “And it won’t be soon.”
I remain quiet, letting my eyes flit left and right to make sure he’s alone. He always seems to travel with backup, and while he’s never tried anything, he will.
“Why do you think Clay hates you so much?” he presses but doesn’t wait for an answer. “Because she knows this is the last time that she’ll ever be more than what you are.”
“She was never more or better.”
“She would’ve gotten Mercutio,” he retorts.
I clench my teeth, and I know he sees it, because his smile grows.
He’s right. They wouldn’t have said no to her, or probably anyone else at this school.
And I can lie to myself all I want and say that I need this part to get some experience under me before I apply as a Theater major in college, but the truth is, I’m hungry. I want to be seen before I leave this fucking place.
By my brothers. By this school. I can’t leave Marymount or St. Carmen a nobody.
Someday, I’m going to be a voice to others and relay how I barely had any friends. How Clay Collins made it so I never belonged here. How her mother renovated the fucking locker room showers three years ago so I didn’t ogle their naked daughters.
“Do you want the role?” he asks.
I lift my eyes to his.
He tips his chin. “It’s yours.”
“If I consider your offer,” I add the unsaid, because I know exactly where he’s going with this. We’ve had this conversation.
But he just laughs quietly, dropping his gaze and inching closer. “Oh, you’ve had time to consider it,” he taunts. “Now, I need an answer.”
I gave you my answer.
“She’s pretty,” he whispers suddenly.
I pause.
“Soft, blonde, young... Lips that taste like a milkshake, and that’s not even half as good as the taste of her tongue.”
My stomach coils and knots, wanting my boot in his face. Picturing that entitled smile covered in blood.
“And she’ll want everything you do to her,” he says.
I toss the coat on a nearby chair and start to move around him, but he steps in front of me and pulls a slip of paper out of his pocket, holding it up to me.
“You do this,” he says, clarifying. “And I will get you this part.”
He hands me the paper, and I hesitate, not for a second indulging his offer, but my curiosity has the better of me.
Unfolding the paper, I see it’s a check. From Garrett Ames.
To the school.
In the note, it reads For the theater department.
I stare at the twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation which, I assume, is Callum’s angle here. Lambert gets some play money for next school year if she lets me have the role I want. And Callum will take care of it, if I give him what he wants.
So this is how the world works, is it? I put on a sex show with some chick I don’t know for a group of slobbering frat boys, and I’ll live happily ever after?
Or will all my hard work and time and good intentions really just come down to how well I forever perform on the casting couch?
I feel Callum move around me as I study the check longer than I like. It’s real. It’s signed.
It’s easy money to the Ames’. They wouldn’t even notice it missing.
The stage hardens under my shoes, and I feel the heat of the spotlight that isn’t even shining and the eyes of every seat filled.
I can picture it, it’s opening night. The snow falls over my head, and I’m going to die one of the most powerful deaths ever written for stage.
God, I want it. I want a lot of things.
But you know what I want most of all? I really want Clay and Callum and everyone else to start paying their fucking bills.
“No one else from our school will be there?” I ask, playing along.
But he doesn’t answer. I hear him exhale behind me, suddenly excited that I’m actually agreeing.
Idiot.
“Olivia…” he breathes out, and I think he’s about to come.
“And it’s just her?” I turn, questioning him. “Not you or anyone else, right?”
He nods, thrill lighting up behind his eyes.
All of a sudden, he holds up a copper key in my face, always ready. “Fox Hill,” he tells me. “Don’t lose it and be ready. I’ll get you as my understudy, then the role, and then you pay up. Got it?”
Fox Hill is their country club, but it apparently also has a secret, after-hours clubhouse where Callum Ames wants to use me to put on a show and impress his college buddies.
“I can’t wait to see you go to work on her.” He gives me that smile he gives all the girls. Like the one he gives Clay. “Make it hard. And hot. But if you don’t show,” he says, his tone suddenly stern. “It’s open season on you, Jaeger, and your whole family.”
“How do I know I can trust you to keep your end of the deal?” I ask.
He backs away. “When you have nothing, you really have nothing to lose, right?”
He smiles that fucking smug, I-own-the-world-and-you-know-it grin before pivoting and heads down the stairs and off the stage.
I hold up the key, wondering if he’s just stupid or too clever for me. Maybe I want the part bad enough. Maybe I do. My insides churn, not wanting to admit to myself that I’m not entirely sure how low I might sink in life if tempted. If you want something for so long, what price is too great?
But now I have the part.
And a key to his clubhouse.
I lift my chin, the wheels in my head starting to turn. And all without yet paying the toll.
I RUN MY hands down my thighs, the flesh of my nipples hardening as the air touches them.
“Bravado” plays on my phone, and I close my eyes as I sit at the end of my bed in my underwear, feeling the weight of his text sitting on my bed next to me.
Now, he orders. Let me see your stomach.
I’d ignored the text from Callum last night, figuring I’d make up some excuse that I fell asleep or something. There was no way I was texting anyone pictures of myself.
I promise him that my clothes will look better off in person.
Eventually, he’ll want me to prove it.
My mind drifts, the words coming again—against my neck in a whisper tucked away and hidden in tight spaces and dark places.
Just the two of us.
Now, he orders. Let me see your stomach.
But it’s not his voice. I drop my head, breathing hard. It’s not his voice I hear at all. My clit throbs, my nipples harden to pebbles, and I rub my thighs together, aching. “Goddammit,” I murmur.
I push off the bed and yank my school skirt out of my closet. I pull it on, followed by a bra and a white blouse, before diving into my bathroom to straighten my hair and put on a little makeup.
I stare at myself in the mirror as I spread the lip gloss.
He’ll feel good. He’ll feel good when he stands behind me, his naked torso against my back. His eyes will peer over my head as his strong, muscular arms slip around my waist, and he’ll take in the view of my body in the mirror, my shirt off for him. I can’t wait for him to touch me. He’s dying for it.
I dab some toothpaste onto a toothbrush and brush my teeth, imagining his hands gliding over my thighs and between my legs, and then I swish some mouthwash, locking on my gaze in the mirror.
You want him. You’ll look so good together, and at night, under the sheets, he’ll feel good, Clay. You’ll love it. His golden skin and narrow waist. His broad shoulders and big eyes that make him look so innocent until he smiles and you can see the danger. Everyone wants him.
But as I rinse out my mouth and look up at him and try to see him on top of me, I see a taunting little dare looking up at me instead. Her amused eyes locked on mine as she lies on the weight bench.
A body smaller and softer than Callum’s and lips I can feel between my teeth, because sometimes I want to bite her until she bleeds.
God, she pisses me off.
I open my mouth, letting the mouthwash fall out as I lean on the counter. My belly suddenly pooling with heat down low, and my mouth waters, nearly tasting her.
Liv. I breathe out, staring into the sink. Attention-seeking, rebel-without-a-clue, bitchy annoyance. I grip the edge of the counter.
I should just leave her alone. She’s none of my business.
But confident people don’t need to be loud, and it’s not my responsibility to make her disdain for everyone around her easy. I won’t stop pushing back until she runs from this place.
Shutting off the light, I grab my phone off the bed and fix the stuffed octopus propped up against my headboard. I have dozens tucked away in my closet and under my bed, but I only keep one out in the open.
I saw one in an aquarium in Orlando when I was about six—so beautiful and graceful—but I don’t think I was obsessed until my father joked that they were actually aliens. My mother laughed about it, but as I grew up, I discovered there is a significant portion of the human population who really believe it. After that, I was hooked. The ability to do what no other creature can. Being that different from everything else around it. The allure of its secrets.
