Backstage Romance: An Austen-Inspired Romantic Comedy Box Set by Gigi Blume (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📕

“Okay.” I absentmindedly broke down some gift boxes leftover from Christmas.

“It’s not what you think, dear.”

“I’m not thinking anything at all, Mom.”

“He didn’t get a… you know. He’s good at math.”

“You don’t have to explain.” The last thing I needed to hear was stories about my mother’s cycles and the measures Dad took to avoid impregnating her. I crumbled some wrapping paper and threw it in the wastebasket. Post-Christmas organizing was a fun and tedious job. I’d have to find new homes for the various gifts I’d received. And then I noticed a particular gift. The book Jorge gave me. I didn’t even want to look at it. I was so disgusted. If I weren’t such a nerd, I’d have thrown it away. But it was a first-edition Hobbit. It had to be incredibly valuable. The thrift shop or wherever he got it from didn’t know the gem they had sold him. Maybe I could sell it on eBay.

Mom had moved on to her local gossip train. Something about a neighbor’s daughter getting married and how all she wanted now was grandkids. Truthfully, I kind of tuned her out because I found something in the book I hadn’t noticed before. Tolkien’s signature. It was personalized. Why didn’t I catch on to that before?

To Martin. A small boy with big dreams. JRR Tolkien

Martin. Martin Darcy?

“Mom, I gotta go.”

“But I haven't finished telling you about—”

“Sorry, bye.” I hit the end call button and immediately pulled up a search for Tolkien’s date of death. 1973. It was possible Will’s father met him as a young boy. Then again, there could be any number of people with the name Martin who happened to know the famous novelist. More realistically, someone from England. But then I remembered Will’s letter. He said Jorge had taken some of his father’s books. Was he really so stupid as to give one of them to me for Christmas?

I gingerly filed through the aged pages for annotations or notes perhaps. Something that could give me more answers. And then I found it. Tucked deep in the pages where it was sure not to fall out, was a strand of hair enfolded in a scrap of waxed paper. And next to that was a small photograph of Will’s mom.

It was evening when Cole finally called. They were on to some lead, but that’s all he could say. Even he didn’t have the details. All we could do was wait. One last thing he said before he hung up. “Go to the theatre tomorrow and do your best. I’ll be home Tuesday.”

None of us wanted to sit like hens and wait, and we certainly didn’t want to do our final dress rehearsals while poor Lydia might be lying in a ditch somewhere. But Cole was right. It was all we could do. Wait, hope, and rehearse. Opening night was less than a week away.

And so off we went on Monday to the theatre, morbid and sad. I felt like a jerk, singing and dancing and doing comedic bits. It was weird without Lydia there. But Nora tagged along to claim a small piece of her sister through the osmosis of the art.

“I’ll feel close to her just being there,” she said. So we brought her with us. The other absences in the cast were deeply felt. We knew Cole was still in Mexico, but our stage manager did a perfectly fine job at running the show. Stella cut out early, but Will didn’t show up at all. After all the new insights I had about his character, how I was now sure he was a man of virtue, he didn’t bother coming to one of the last rehearsals before opening night. I was Lydia’s oldest friend in the cast. We were practically sisters. So were Holly and Jane. We were heartbroken and worried. But we came to rehearsal. Where the heck was Will? Did he want to wash his hands of this whole mess? Would the actor that played Samuel have to step up last minute to do Will’s part? Those thoughts did nothing but stress me out. But then I had another thought, and I became incredibly depressed. What if I never saw Will again? What if he was gone from my life forever? I mean, I knew it was inevitable. We’d part ways after the run. But now that I was faced with the reality of it, and with the possibility of it being sooner than expected, the idea of it was unbearable. I’d gotten so used to his presence, now that he was gone, I wasn’t whole.

My heart galloped in my chest, and all those rocks in my stomach (the ones I’d been entertaining for weeks as the ingredients for my loathe pie) turned to fairy dust, and I felt lighter than air. Oh. My. Hamilton. I was in love with Will Darcy.

How incredibly inconvenient.

Why me? Why was I the stupid girl in the movie that didn’t realize until it was too late that the perfect guy had been right in front of her all along? I wanted to throw popcorn at myself.

There was one good thing that came of the whole day. Bing and Jane were on speaking terms again. They weren’t quite back to the same old smooching in the dressing room antics, but the mutual affection was written all over their faces. It was a sliver of light in an otherwise gloomy day and only a matter of time before we could ship their names together. Jing got my vote.

“Did Bing tell you why he skipped out on Stella’s charity?” I asked as we hung up our costumes for the day. The corners of her lips hitched in the silent grin of someone with a secret and a flush of pink dotted her cheeks. But I was having none of that. There would be no more secrets.

“Spill,” I demanded. I