“What if it does?”
I cackle. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I just wanted to do it.” I sigh. “I may still die a virgin, but at least I tried. Right?”
“Right.”
“Thank you, Bethany.”
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. Everything that might need to be said between us has been, by now.
“Post it?” She hands me the phone.
I cover my face and push it back to her. “You do it.”
A snort. “Fine. Ready?” She hesitates. “Last chance to change your mind. Then it’s on the internet forever.”
Face still covered by both hands, I nod. “Do it.”
I hear the melody start, and my voice singing: “Forever can never be long enough for me/
To feel like I've had long enough with you…”
Marry me…say you will.
The Smart Thing vs. The Right Thing
Westley
“…And it was like, so hot. The costume had like eight layers, and it weighed about twenty-five pounds I think, and I just absolutely hated wearing it.” Shania Knox, my opposite in Singin’ in the Rain, is a dead ringer for young Debbie Reynolds. It’s eerie, actually. But she’s…not a great conversationalist. She tends to just ramble and ramble and ramble. “I loved the character, you know. She was just so real, and I had a ton of fun playing her, but I’ll tell you what, I’m looking forward to this role because the costume will be so much easier. Not spending an hour and a half in costume and then another two hours in the makeup chair every single day will be just wonderful.”
A pause, but it’s brief, just long enough for her to take a sip of her sweet white wine and nibble at a piece of mahi-mahi.
“The dancing is killing me, though. I mean, I thought the stunts for the Marvel movies were hard? God, I was so naive. That’s wires and jumping around and stuff. Compared to all the dance moves I have to learn? I wish for something as easy as stunts.” She finally turns the conversation over to me, for the first time in the past fifteen minutes. “What about you? We’re going to start working on our choreography soon. Have you been practicing?”
The past couple of months have been prep—ever since I got the role eight and a half weeks ago, I’ve been cramming dance lessons in and spending hours a day in the studio, learning dance. Tap, jazz, ballroom, contemporary, hip-hop. All of it. I want it to look natural. Real. Not just learned for the role, for the scene, but real.
Something tells me, though, that I don’t need to say any of this to Shania. I just need to respond and turn it back over to her.
“Yeah,” I say. “A bit.”
“Well that’s good. I have a little dance experience from high school theater, and my first paying role was in the chorus of a stage play in Boston. But that’s nothing compared to what we’re going to have to do for this shoot. If only I had a Gene Kelly to teach me.”
“He was a pretty brutal teacher, from what I hear.”
“I know. But look at the results.”
“True. But I think Debbie Reynolds once said that Singin’ in the Rain was the hardest thing she’d ever done, along with childbirth.” I grin. “Honestly, I’ve found learning to dance to be a lot of fun. A hell of a lot of work, but fun.”
“Oh, me too! I wouldn’t have even auditioned for the role if I didn’t know I could learn the dance. But god, It’s so much harder than I expected. If they were going to be using some of the original choreo, it’d be easier because I started by learning that. But no. They have to do all original choreo, because of course they do.”
“It’s not going to be the same kind of dancing, though. I heard they’re getting Nappy-Tabs to do a couple of numbers.”
She leans forward, clapping and grinning. “No way, really? I love them.”
“That’s what I heard from one of the ADs.”
“I’ve been focusing on tap and the classical early Hollywood musicals style,” she says. “Do you think I should start learning hip-hop too?”
I shrug. “I mean, I am. I’m trying to learn as much of everything. I might be going overboard, but…better over prepared than under prepared. Especially because this is Singin’ in the Rain we’re talking about. Only one of the most famous movies of all time. And I have to do that famous scene. I have to get it right. I have to. Or I’ll go down in history as the asshole who ruined Dean Lockwood.”
She smiled at me. “You’ll do fine.” Her gaze turned…speculative. Mischievous. “We, um, we could start practicing together. You know. Do our own choreography. Work off the original. Just to get a head start on our…chemistry.”
I should have my head checked.
Because even though Shania is undeniably beautiful, a talented, successful actress, and super sweet…I’m just not interested in her like that.
Which means there has to be something wrong with me. She’s perfect, by any measure. Sure, she rambles. Sure, I’d probably get fed up within a month. But…she’s stunning. Naturally beautiful, and insanely talented. Her turn as X-23 in the X-men universe reboot has been a real game-changer. For her and for superhero movies. She gave the character an aggression and physicality that no one expected from an actress hitherto known more for playing the sweet and sassy love interest in B-grade rom-coms.
I should be drooling over her. I should be jumping all over her hinted invitation to turn this co-starring gig into a chance to hook up with one of the most desirable women in Hollywood.
Something stops me, though.
I smile at her. “Yeah, for sure. We can dance together. Have your people call my people.”
She laughs at the joke, but her smile is a little forced—she picked up on my subtle redirection. “Yeah, it’ll be good. Where, um—where do you work out?”
The rest of the date is like that. Forced and awkward. Hopefully we’ll be able to pull out the chemistry for dance, even though the spark isn’t there in real life.
But hey, that’s why they call it acting, right?
A few days later, I’m home in my long-term rental, enjoying a rare late morning alone.
My phone rings—Jen. I answer it on the second ring. “Hey, Jen. I know I’m not scheduled to be anywhere till one, and I’m enjoying it. So I really hope you’re not calling to tell me I have to suddenly be somewhere.”
“No, I’m not. Put me on speaker and check your notifications.”
“Um. Okay?” I put the call on speaker and swipe to my notifications screen—apparently I missed something, because my socials are blowing up; I have literally tens of thousands of notifications, mostly from TikTok. “Wow. Okay. What’d I miss? I was enjoying a nice peaceful morning not on my phone.”
She sighs—it’s a complicated sound, frustrated, annoyed, confused, worried, angry. Something of all of them, all at once. “Just…god, Westley. It’s a mess. It’s everywhere. E! has even done a post on it already, and you haven’t even seen it yet.”
“On what, Jen? Just tell me.”