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

sip of her cocktail, never taking her eyes off me. It was a little more than disconcerting how tawdry she was. Frankly, I was rather embarrassed for her.

“So?” she said, batting her lashes. “Are you going to tell me?”

Tell her what I was thinking? Oh, darlin’ there were sooo many things I was thinking. Where to begin? But before I could respond, the one image that rushed to the forefront of my mind and assaulted my senses manifested before me, bearing my Bud Lite on a tray. Beth took one look at Caroline, set the beer on the table, and whisked herself away again. Caroline took the opportunity in that moment to throw her arms around my neck.

“Well, what are you thinking?”

Caroline was a good-looking woman, and she knew it, but she was laying it on a little too thick. And without glancing away from Beth, watching her tend to her other tables, I grumbled under my breath, “Hotshot Frot?”

She snorted and gave me a little chastising smack on the back of my hand. “Oh, you are a naughty one, aren’t you?”

But I ignored her, half-laughing, half-cursing under my breath.

“What does that even mean? Hotshot Frot?”

A splattering of crimson overspread her cheeks, and I realized with some regret she must have taken it as a compliment to herself. But she was playing a game as women like her often do, and in a coy, kittenish purr, she said, “Who you calling hot?”

I suddenly felt claustrophobic, caged in by a pair of long, ivory arms. A dancer’s arms. She was probably exceedingly flexible, I mused. But why didn’t she do anything for me? Was I losing my libido? I fixed my gaze on Beth. No. Definitely not losing my libido.

Untangling myself from Caroline’s tentacles, I slid the best I could along the furry surface of the booth, all the way around to the other side, still laser focused on Beth. Caroline’s scrutiny followed the direction of my gaze to where Beth stood across the room, and her jaw fell open.

“Her?” she cried incredulously

“I gotta go.”

I extracted the first bill I found in my wallet and tucked it under the beer bottle, unabashedly leaving Caroline behind without another word. I didn’t even care where Bing was at that point. There must have been something in the air at Lucas Lodge that made my head feel so foggy. It wasn’t until I escaped into the cool, November night that my mind cleared.

“Hmmph,” I growled as I climbed into my Ferrari. Regional theatre! What had I gotten myself into?

4

Spiders, Sharks, and Barnacles, Oh My!

Beth

“That Quasimodo left me a hundred-dollar bill.”

I was livid. Not only did Mr. Hollywood purposefully sit in my section to taunt me with his arrogant ‘dilly dilly’ and ‘call me your majesty,’ but he found pleasure in degrading me by flaunting his wealth in my face. Yeah, I was a waitress like every cliché actress, but unlike him, I didn’t have a rich daddy with connections to pave my way through tinseltown. It was the end of the night, and I had to vent about it to Charlotte, and although I hadn’t ‘musical cussed’ all day, I decided it was a Hunchback of Notre Dame kind of night.

Charlotte was genuinely confused and blinked her eyes at me for a few moments before asking, “Is that… a bad thing?”

“Of course it’s a bad thing!” I cried indignantly. “He’s trying to put me down by throwing his money around, implying I’ll never make it as an actress, thinking that he’s better than me.”

“Or… and I’m just spitballing here... maybe he just was happy with your service,” she said with a shrug.

“He ordered a beer and didn’t even drink it. What a gargoyle.” I then told her about the conversation I heard between Will and Bing by the costume rack, how he descriptively dismissed my talent, how he sat in my section to act like an entitled Phoebus, and how he was practically copulating with Caroline in the booth. And then he left. He just left, abandoning his friend. “Bing looked all over the bar for him,” I added. “Jane had to give him a ride home.”

Jane actually had no problem with that.

“Well,” Charlotte said after some thought, “would you rather he’d not left you a tip at all?”

“That’s not the point. It’s the principle of the whole thing.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Okay.”

She resumed her side-work of marrying ketchup bottles and was silent for some time, and I was disappointed to learn she’d considered the subject dropped. But then, after several minutes, she said, “You must have made quite an impression on him to single you out like that. He would never have so much as spoken to you if he didn’t notice.” She stopped her actions to punctuate her thoughts. “No, there’s more to this than what’s at the surface.”

“Did you not hear what I’ve been telling you?” I cried. “There’s no more than what’s on the surface. He’s a surface kind of guy. He’s… shallow.”

“What makes you think that? You don’t even know him.”

She leveled her gaze to stare me down behind those thick-rimmed glasses. “He’s not Brett, you know.”

I snorted, trying to find the words to support my argument and also a little miffed that Charlotte didn’t seem to be on my side. Did she have to bring up Brett? My ex might have been a ruthless, Hollywood, social climber, but he was small beans compared to Will.

“He’s obviously shallow,” I replied. “Look at the movies he makes.”

I had a more profound basis for my interpretation, but I couldn’t put it into words. Loathing Will Darcy was an intangible feeling. It was there, but the justification was just out of reach. That didn’t make it less credible though.

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “If you were offered ten million dollars to make a sell-out movie, would you do it?”

I thought about it for a half second before answering. “Would there be nudity?”

“Um, maybe just your bootay.”

I knew where