“Ten? Is she trying to kill me?” she squeaked. “I’m a grandmotherly thing.”
“You’re thirty-one, Lala, and no one’s nanny. Carly Daniel is a girl who knows how to turn it up, and you could use a little of that in your life.” He sat on top of the table and did the gesture he did with his hands that said she had to hear this. “You should have been there Friday night. She literally danced on the bar. It was all over Instagram, and then Perez Hilton jumped on the bandwagon and ran a story with the photos. Not your typical McAllister kind of coverage.”
“Wait. She danced on the bar at Put Upon Pete’s?” Lauren wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone dance on the bar at Pete’s. “It’s not really that type of place.”
“It is now. Lala, you should have seen it. She had half our people up there with her in thirty seconds flat. Everyone was in sync and working it. I felt like I’d stumbled upon the middle of a performance of Rent. It was epic.”
“Sounds epic,” Lauren said blandly. Inside, she scoffed. She knew how to have fun, but it had been a while since she’d kept show-people hours. She turned in when the theater folk headed out because she was Lauren. Maybe she missed it a little bit, though. The old days. She could admit that.
When Lauren arrived at Pete’s at precisely ten, she found Carly and Kirby, who played Ashley’s assistant in the show, among other roles, doing a pink colored shot at the bar. The rest of the group populated the small tables that dotted the main floor, an oasis in which drinks and pub food flowed. The lighting gave the place an overall red tint, and a variety of ball caps—each sporting the word Pete somehow worked into a slogan—dotted the walls. The other room was furnished with dartboards and pool tables under fluorescents. Five restored jukeboxes lined the back wall. Pete’s was known for two things: drinks and billiards. Lauren happened to be better at one than the other.
Deep breath as she approached her colleagues. She relaxed, smiled, and left her metaphorical clipboard at the door. Hell, if she thought about it, she was supposed to be on a beach right now. Tonight, she planned to embrace that relaxation, unwind, and maybe even get the tiniest bit tipsy. Who knew? The night was young.
* * *
“Did I mention that I love martini night?” Kirby enthused. Kirby Bonner was an up-and-comer who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three at most and had the cutest little pixie cut. From the moment they’d met, she seemed to really look up to Carly, even after all the bad press. Maybe not the wisest role model choice, Carly thought, but she also understood that her celebrity did tend to attract people. “Let’s do them every Saturday. God, I live for a good martini. Don’t you? I’d love it if we made it a thing. Do you want to make it a thing?” She also liked to talk. A lot.
“We can totally make that happen,” Carly said, accepting the mango martini from the bartender. Orange and beautiful and well earned. Carly touched her glass to Kirby’s. With her brown hair and doe-like brown eyes, she would surely be cast as everyone’s cheerful younger sister. At least for the next five years. Carly turned back to the group, and would you look at that? Her stomach muscles went tight, and she shimmied against the tingle that crept up her spine. Lauren Prescott had just walked in. “Well, well,” she murmured to herself. Dreams do come true.
Kirby followed her gaze. “I feel like she gets on you a lot,” Kirby said, surely trying to make it clear that Carly’s enemies were hers. “Who cares if you missed the off-book deadline for the first three scenes. You’re a professional. You’re going to be fine on lines.”
“Lauren? Nah, she’s just doing her job.”
“She should get who you are, though, you know?”
It was possible the same thought had occurred to Carly. Yet she could forgive Lauren for being so uptight and stuffy and hell-bent on following a clock. It was apparently what she was hired to do.
“I’m not always easy to wrangle,” she told Kirby.
“My boyfriend says that about me. He’s six three.”
“Is he now? Amazing.” Carly sipped her martini and let the nearly too loud music wash over her. Saturdays were for letting off steam, and that was exactly what she planned to do, especially with a day off tomorrow. She was already a drink in and her muscles felt a little looser. She inched her way slowly to that point of tipsy with each new sip. God, she loved the gradual feeling of that unravel. She wasn’t a fan of drunk, but tipsy she could do. “Be back soon,” she told Kirby and headed across the bar, following the magnetic pull that wouldn’t seem to let up.
“You came,” she said to Lauren when she arrived at her table near the front of the bar. “I honestly wasn’t sure you would.”
Lauren gasped and smiled. “Why? Because you think I’m uptight?”
“No. Because I know you are.” She tossed in a wink for good measure.
“Don’t be so sure you know everything.”
“I’ll work hard,” Carly said. “Let me buy you a martini. Please. I’ve never seen you outside that rehearsal room, so this warrants a celebration. Deal?”
“I’m in.” Carly stole an extra few seconds to absorb this new version of Lauren. Her dark hair was down and she’d added a subtle curl to it which came off as fucking glamorous. Carly loved it. Lauren wore jeans and a white cold shoulder blouse. Yeah, those bare shoulders were really doing Carly in. Lauren was hot with her shoulders covered, but this just seemed cruel. The straitlaced thing only fueled that fire.
“One martini for my stage manager,” Carly said five minutes later, depositing the drink next to Lauren. She picked up her own martini and offered a toast. “To a kick-ass show.”
Lauren touched her martini glass to Carly’s. “I will sincerely second that. As soon as you meet your off-book deadlines.” She added a wink.
“Is it really that big a deal?”
Lauren stared her straight in the eye. “It really, really is.”
“For you? I will put in the effort.”
“It should really be for you, but I’ll take it.” Lauren passed her an amazing smile, and that made everything better.
The music in the bar portion of Pete’s was loud, but by now Carly’s ears had acclimated. Yes, they had to talk louder than usual to hear each other, but that was part of the fun of being out and about. God, she felt like dancing, but one-on-one time with Lauren won out.
“Do you live near here?” Carly asked. It wasn’t small talk. She wanted to know more about Lauren, and geography seemed like a good place to start.
She nodded. “Only a couple of miles north. Easy commute to the theater, which is nice, given I have to be there at odd hours.”
“I feel like your job is never ending. You’re there before all of us, and you leave after we do.”
Lauren sipped her drink, which, okay, was off-the-charts sexy to watch, and considered the statement. “There are definitely a lot of responsibilities that fall into my lap, and they take time.”
“Then you have Hollywood assholes like me, who show up and ruin your life.”
That one apparently hit home and pulled a laugh. Carly liked Lauren’s unabashed smile and wanted to do more to inspire it. “God, it’s rough.”