Playing With Her Heart (13 page)

She becomes his, and
that changes her.

“I love that
sentiment,” I manage to say and I’m only vaguely aware that I
sound a bit breathy. I quickly catalogue my reaction—there are
goose bumps on my arms, and there’s a tingling in my belly, and my
lips are parted.

It hits me what’s
happening.

Because he’s doing it
to me again.

He’s fucking me with
his words, and I am turned on beyond belief.

My body is responding
faster than my brain can apply the brakes—my skin is hot all over,
and heat is flaring through my veins. I know this feeling. I usually
only feel it when I’m reading a hot scene in a novel. But now I’m
feeling it in real life, and not in my imagination, not from
pretending or picturing a make-believe session in the sheets. This is
real and it’s legitimate and it’s borne from the fact that I’m
craving something I haven’t let myself have in years.

Contact.

My vision blurs for a
moment, and I dig my fingers into the side of the piano so I don’t
fall.

“Which sentiment,
Jill?”

He says my name like
it’s dessert. Like it’s something he wants to eat. Even though
it’s only a simple question he’s asked, I’m unhinged by my
body’s reaction to the way he talks. By the way it feels as if my
body is no longer my own, that it’s responding to someone else’s
cues.

His cues.

For no good reason.

Because there’s no
good reason at all why my head should be so cloudy and my body so
hazy, and my pulse racing like a getaway train. I can’t let myself
get carried away. That would be unbearably foolish, so I remind
myself that he’s good with words, he’s good with people, he’s
good with ideas. He has to be. He does what Paolo does. He takes
nascent, unformed clay and transforms it into something alive and
wondrous, with a heartbeat, with a life force. That’s the only
reason there’s an aching between my legs. Not because my director
is turning me on again. The only reason I am a tuning fork now is
because he’s making me feel like Ava, and Ava is turned on by
Paolo.

“All of them.”

“All of them?” He
raises an eyebrow.

“The one where she
becomes his,” I say quickly. My skin is feverish. The heat is
cranked too high in this room. I look around. “Can we turn the heat
down?”

He stands up, walks to
the thermostat, adjusts the lever and turns back. He’s near to me
on his return path, so near that even though I force myself to stare
hard out the window, I can sense him as he passes me. As if he’s
mere inches from me. For a brief moment, I expect him to trail a hand
across my lower back. Make me shiver. I close my eyes as the image
flicks by, and then I open them.

He hasn’t touched me
though. Maybe he doesn’t have to for me to feel this way, because
I’m a livewire already.

He sits down at the
bench, and plays the opening notes to Ava’s signature song,
Show
Me The Rebel
. “Show me the rebellious bird in you, Jill.”

“But,” I say,
stammering. This is so unlike me. I know the music. I know the song.
I have never been afraid of performing. Acting has been the thing I
love most. But something’s different now. “It comes in the middle
of the show. It’s not even her first song.”

My protests fall on
deaf ears. He says nothing.

“Can’t we start
with something else? I haven’t even practiced it before. ”

There’s a glint of a
smile on his lips. “That’s why
I’m
rehearsing you,” he
says, and his voice is like whiskey and honey. Rough and smooth at
the same time. “So you can practice. I want you to be able to blow
the audience away. I want them to melt for you. I want them to fall
for you. You can start by trying to make me feel that way.”

I feel wobbly, and I
don’t know if it’s because I’m rehearsing with an award-winning
director in my first Broadway show, or if it’s because his words
are all laced with subtext and innuendo.
You can start by trying
to make me feel that way.
But as off-kilter as I feel right now,
I have to use this emotion. Because Ava feels the same way when she
begins this song. She doesn’t know what to make of Paolo, and I
don’t know what to make of Davis.

I pick a point on the
opposite wall, a random little nick in the plaster, and I sing to it.
I serenade the nick on the wall with a flat, empty-sounding melody. I
make my way through the first six lines of the song when he stops his
accompaniment.

I turn to him, waiting.

“Is there a reason
why you’re staring at a spot on the wall?”

“Um…”

“Is there?” he asks
again.

I shake my head.

“Do you sing the song
to a spot on the wall?”

“No.” My face
flames red.

“Do you sing it to
the audience?”

“No.”

“Do you sing it to
the floor?”

“No.”

“Do you sing it to a
random, distant point in the balcony?”

“No,” I say through
gritted teeth, and now I want to smack him for the way he’s making
me feel stupid.

“Are you mad at me,
now?” He asks, but his tone never wavers. He’s like a law
professor quizzing a student, dressing her down. He doesn’t anger,
he doesn’t rage. He simply peppers her with questions ‘til she’s
unnerved. Screw being turned on. Now I’m pissed off.

“No,” I lie,
looking down.

He rises from the
piano, stalks over to me, and stands mere inches in front of me. He
doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t lift my chin with his hand, or grip
my shoulders. He doesn’t have to make contact for me to respond, to
raise my face, to meet his eyes. I do it anyway, looking up, meeting
him because I can’t not. His midnight blue eyes give away nothing
right now except power, confidence, and absolute fucking control.
Maybe it’s the ions, maybe it’s electricity. Or maybe there is
just a current between us, and it’s one that he alone controls. I
bite my lip briefly, and he breathes out, hard. He makes an almost
imperceptible sound that borders on a growl, then speaks. “Are you
mad at me?”

He doesn’t use my
name this time. Nor does he use Ava’s. I
need
to know who
he’s talking to. “Are you asking me or are you asking Ava?”

I’m greeted by the
tiniest grin of satisfaction. He nods approvingly, as if he likes the
question.

“Jill,” he says
slowly, my name taking its time on his tongue, crossing his lips,
turning into sound in the charged air between us. “I’m asking you
as Jill.”

“I’m saying no, as
Jill.”

He shakes his head,
narrows his eyes, seeing right through me. “Don’t lie to me.
About anything. There is no right or wrong answer. There is only the
truth, and I want yours right now. Tell me your truth. Are you mad at
me?”

I breathe out hard.
Then I admit it. “Yes.”

“Good.”

“Why is that good?”

“Use it. Use it for
the song. Ava is headstrong. Ava is passionate. Paolo makes her
crazy. He manipulates her. Or so she thinks.” He raises his hand,
balls his fingers into a fist, and gestures as if he’s grabbing
something. “But he does it to reach down deep inside her. To help
her find her true self, her true art, her true creativity. Everything
he does, he does because he believes in her.”

“But why? Why does he
believe in her?”

“Because he knows. He
knows in his heart—” he taps his chest “—in his head—”
now his forehead “—and his gut.” He hits his fist against his
flat stomach. “He knows. Start from the beginning. And take your
anger and use it. But don’t sing it to the wall, or the lights, or
the chairs. Sing it to Paolo. Look in his eyes. Let your anger carry
the song. Let your frustration take you through. Then let go of it,
and let it fade away.”

I nod. I don’t think
I can speak. I can only feel. The anger at Davis for dressing me
down. The frustration at myself for not getting the character right.
Then what Ava feels—the spark of hope, the possibility of becoming
the person, the artist, the woman that he believes she can be. I take
a deep, quiet breath, imagining all those feelings living inside of
me, so I can become her.

He returns to the bench
and resumes the music, the notes pouring forth, falling on me like
rain. Then I’m Ava and I turn and meet my director’s gaze. Only
he’s not Davis anymore. He’s Paolo. He’s the man I’m mad at,
and mad with, and most of all, mad about. He’s the one I’m
singing to. Not the wall, not the floor, not the audience. But him.
Just him. The man who drives me crazy with his perfectionism, with
his sometimes inscrutable side. But I need him, I need him not only
to succeed as a painter, but to break free of all the loneliness I’ve
felt my whole life as Ava. And I sing every word, every line, every
note to him.

He watches me the
entire time. Lets my words, my story, my tale become a part of him.
He takes what I have to give. He absorbs all my music, all my
passion, all my pain. He is the reason I’m singing, and I give it
all to him because he knows what to do with all I have.

Because he accepts me
for who I am, and because he makes me feel again.

And as I sing,
something deep inside of me loosens. It’s like a brittle piece of
my make-believe heart that I’ve been gripping so hard for so long
rattles free, and tumbles away. I don’t even try to grab it, to
glue it back on. I let it go, because I’m ready for it. For a
fleeting moment, I feel buoyant, unencumbered from my past, and it’s
an unfamiliar feeling, but such a welcome one. It’s like a
reprieve, and my voice hitches on one note, hitting it wrong and raw,
but that’s when his eyes light up the most. Then I finish the last
note of the song, and take one step closer to him. “I need you,
Paolo,” I say, shifting from sung words to the spoken ones in the
script that cap off this song. Shifting too from calling him
Professor to calling him by his name. “I need you to make me whole
again.”

“I will, Ava,” he
says, in the softest whisper, but one that carries, reverberating
throughout the whole rehearsal studio as he delivers lines that start
to bring this hard-edged, mercurial man closer to falling for this
woman. “I promise.”

* * *

After several more
rounds, I’m sweating. I’ve shed my sweater and I’m wearing only
a tank top with my jeans. It’s a workout singing for Davis, and I’m
not even dancing. I’m merely standing, and singing. But the way he
directs, insisting, and requiring everything I have feels like a
workout. I pull at my navy blue shirt so it doesn’t stick to my
chest.

“Ready to go again?”

“Any time you want.”

He laughs once, shakes
his head. “I was only teasing. I think we can call it a night.”

“Oh, I can keep
going,” I say. “But if you need to stop…” then I trail off.

Davis rises from the
piano, closes it, and grabs his jacket. “I don’t really think
there’s any question about whether I can keep going. And I don’t
need to stop. Ever.” Then his eyes rake over me, as if he’s
memorizing me for later. “I’m
choosing
to call it a
night.”

Okay, so now my chest
is hot again, and I’m ready to take the sheet music and turn it
into an accordion to fan myself. How is it that everything that comes
out of his mouth is a double entendre? Does he even intend to talk
this way? Sometimes, I think I have him figured out, but then he
looks at me with those bedroom eyes, or says something that’s so
sexy, and I’m back to putting the puzzle pieces together. I revert
to humor to find my way out of the innuendo because I’m not quite
sure what to do with all this double-speak, especially when he made
it clear I’m not his type. Not to mention that teensy tiny little
detail about me being crazy for someone else.

I point to his coat.
“So you do own a jacket.”

“I’m not entirely
impervious to the elements.”

“Aha! He is human.
I’ve learned the truth,” I say, and I’m glad to be back to
teasing, to toying. It’s familiar footing, and I can handle it so
much better than the wobbliness I’ve felt most of the night.
Besides, there’s a part of me that’s bordering on punch drunk
from singing my freaking heart out. I feel spent in the way that a
good, hard run can wring you dry, but leave you surging with
adrenaline too.

“Don’t tell anyone
though. Wouldn’t want to ruin my badass reputation,” he says,
stopping to sketch air quotes, and I like that he lets me tease him.
That he doesn’t seem to mind at all that I’ve figured out he
likes the image he’s created for himself—take no prisoners, hard
as hell, impossible to get to know. Sure, he is tough, but there’s
more to him, too, and I don’t think he lets many people see his
other sides. Maybe that’s why he seems to enjoy it when I see
through him. Almost as if he wants me to. Maybe that’s why he talks
to me this way. Because we can be friendly enough. We can move past
the weirdness.

“Oh, you’re still
badass in my book,” I say, as I pull my sweater back on. For a
moment, I wrestle with the neckline, so I can’t see him as I’m
stuck under my clothes.

When I emerge, he’s
stepped closer, and he’s all serious and smoldering again. The
whole dark and broody look is back in full force, and I can’t take
my eyes off of him when he’s like that. It scares me how my whole
body feels like it’s waking up when he looks at me. “Am I? Badass
in your book?” He asks in a voice that’s low and smoky, and makes
me want to say
yes
to him over and over, and to anything he’d
ask.

That’s precisely why
I can’t answer his question. Because my body’s going one way, but
the rest of me is my usual messed-up, mixed-up, fucked-up self, and I
have no idea what to do with these veiled questions that feel a lot
like foreplay.

Besides, I have Patrick
this weekend. I have the chance to finally get to know him for real,
like I’ve always wanted. I take a steady breath and jam my arms
into my jacket, then cinch it closed. I need to shift gears and focus
only on my job. “So how did I do tonight?”