Behind Closed Curtains (Desires of the Forbidden)

Chapter 4

"Hey, Peaches."

My jaw slacked and my eye's widened. Any and all confidence I conjured up before walking into those callbacks was sucked away completely, leaving me empty and unsure.

"You two know each other?" The director asked while observing my sudden, odd behavior towards the impossibly handsome yet extremely blunt man I had just met hours ago.

"Just barely. We met in the lobby earlier today," the man answered back for us, his crystal eyes still locked onto mine as he spoke.

"Hmm, okay then." The director seemed to lose all interest in mine and the mans previous history as he leaned back in his chair and beckoned me into the room with a small hand gesture, releasing a long, exhausted sigh.

"Alright, so you two are going to be doing the first scene between Alice and Dan. They are in a hospital and Alice has just been hit by a taxi and Dan witnessed it." 

I took a few shaky steps into the room and set my purse down next to a chair and grabbed a script from the directors table. My palms proved just how nervous I'd become in the last few seconds as they stuck to the papers of the script, now clammy with anxiety.

Focus, Lee.

Be confident. Be sexy. Be Alice.

"Now, both Alice and Dan are obviously attracted to each other right off the bat so this scene needs to be full of tension and underlying, flirtatious meaning."

"I think we can handle that," the stranger next to me quipped while sending me a sly wink my way.

The action sent a thrill of surprise through my body and straight to my stomach, which twisted into an accumulation of nerves and a strange bout of excitement to begin the scene.

"Good. Start whenever you're ready."

I took in a deep, cleansing breath through my nostrils and released it through my mouth. I focused on the excitement of this role barreling around in the pit of my stomach and latched onto it, finding that the feeling brought a soft smile to my lips, a giddy sort of feeling flushing through my body. 

I began to feel lighter. I began to feel more confident. And as I straightened my back, pushed my chest out and let the freeing, exhilarating sensation wash through my body and soothe my mind, I felt like Alice.

I strolled over to the plastic chair being provided for the callbacks and sat down. The cold of the chair welcomed me and my body shivered at the frigidness of the hard plastic.

I lifted the script, taking in the first line which I already knew by heart since I had read this play hundreds of times and started the scene.

"Who cuts off your crusts?" I asked in a low, alluring voice, my eyes lifting up to train on the man's.

"Me," he replied in a deep voice, slipping into character quickly as his entire persona became that of Dan's; A quiet, intelligent, charming man.

"Did your mother cut off your crusts for you when you were a little boy?"

"I believe she did, yes."

I looked up to him, cocking my head to the side, my eyes squinting into teasing slits.

"You should eat your crusts."

"You should stop smoking," he shot back at me with a playful glint in his eyes.

I watched as he grabbed a chair from the other side of the room and walked up to me casually, placing it next to mine and dropping down into it, brushing our knees up against each other's.