Method Acting: An opposites attract, found family romance (Center Stage Book 2) by Adele Buck (web based ebook reader txt) 📕

Chapter 13

Alicia bit her lip and leaned against the door of her apartment. Colin had left her with a few lovely, lingering kisses and a promise that he would call her. She wasn’t sure she believed he would.

And given her usual habit of keeping people at a distance, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to or not.

Running her fingers through her hair, she pushed away from the door and went back to the bedroom. Yanking a nearly empty suitcase from under the bed, she sank to the floor and pulled out a large manila envelope. She opened it and leafed through the collection of documents it contained. Her birth certificate, actors’ union documents, and Social Security card she put carefully back into the envelope. She spent a moment looking at the simple piece of folded paper that was the program from the first play she had ever acted in, then added it back to the collection.

She was left with a faded photograph, soft and almost floppy with wear. She ran a fingertip over the family of blond people, strangers to her now. Five small children sitting cross-legged on a dingy braided rug on the floor, three older children lined up on the sagging couch behind them. The wall behind the sofa was a dark mass of fake wood paneling. She could still smell the stale cigarettes, feel the couch springs poking into her skinny butt and legs.

A toddler sat on the oldest girl’s lap, baby fingers tangled in the teenager’s long blond hair that had never yet been touched by a pair of scissors. Mother, heavily pregnant, standing next to the girl, her hand on her daughter’s thin shoulder as if the older woman needed the support. Father at the other end of the sofa, staring hard and uncompromising into the camera’s lens.

Alicia focused on the toddler. She could almost feel the warm weight of the child on her lap again, the tickle of her hair under Alicia’s chin when she cuddled her close just before the photograph was taken. The tiny girl’s large brown eyes gazed at the photographer, blond curls clustering around her small head. Her little rosebud mouth was slightly open as if she was about to ask a question.

She was always asking questions.

Alicia wondered if the habit had been squeezed out of her. That’s what happened. No force, no physical abuse. Just the steady squeeze of disapproval, prayer, and work.

She slid the photograph back into the envelope with shaking fingers and replaced it in the suitcase. Pushing the luggage under the bed, she stood up, dusting her hands on the seat of her shorts and closing her eyes.

I’m so sorry, Gracie.

Colin shut the front door and dropped his keys into the little brass bowl on the table in the hall. He rubbed his fingertips lightly over his lips as he walked back through the house to the kitchen. He had wondered, bending to kiss her goodbye at her front door, if he would see the sexual aggressor of the night before, the sensuously assured woman of this morning, or any of the other myriad shifting surfaces she had shown him since he met her.

She had shown him none of those. Just a new face: a considering, thoughtful face that kissed him back but also seemed to be perfectly happy to slide into her solitude in that little garden flat. At least for the time being.

They both had a lot to think about.

He dug through his briefcase and pulled out a briefing on a big potential client for the firm, seating himself at the high counter in the kitchen to look it over. He had told Alicia that he usually worked on a Saturday, and that was the truth. But the printed words seemed to slide from under his eyes. His brain couldn’t gain any traction on the facts and figures. Digging his phone out of his pocket, he checked his calendar for the date of the meeting he needed to read this for. Thursday. Fine. He had some time.

Pushing the report back into his bag, he stood and paced around the kitchen, assessing it with the eyes of a stranger. He looked at the large, open room: the dark, flat-front cabinets, the white marble counter, the dining area with its reclaimed wood sideboard and table surrounded with comfortable chairs. His eyes flicked to the large painting that dominated the room. A mown field with a lone tree standing sentinel, a summer storm brewing in the sky.

He had chosen all of these things. He supposed they might say something about him. He had thought to do the same with her apartment, to suss out who she was by how she arranged her home and her life, but that wasn’t her home. She didn’t have one. She barely owned anything. For some reason, this bothered him.

Glancing around the room again, he wondered what exactly anyone could glean from his home—aside from his tastes and the money he had to indulge in them. His house, his possessions, they said little about who he was.

So, what was it that bothered him so much about her lack of a fixed address, of possessions? Was it that he wanted her to buy into the same structures that he had?

Or did he just want her to stay?

Restlessly, he walked back to the front door and, grabbing his keys, went outside. Another walk would do him good.

Alicia wandered back through the little kitchen into the living room of her apartment. If she had been anyone else, she would probably be on the phone with a friend, picking the last twenty-four hours apart. Or maybe making plans to meet over drinks later. But Alicia’s experience had taught her friendships were transient things, sliding off her like her life was coated in Teflon. She remembered Kathleen and Wendy with a pang. They had really seemed to care, even celebrating