A Midsummer Night's Fling (Stage Kiss Series Book 1) (43 page)

And her heart broke. She flung her hand up, stopping him. "I'm going on the tour."
 

"
What?
"

"I
have
to go, Max. I have to have my own life apart from you." Her voice broke and she swallowed, hugging her arms to stop her body shaking.
 

"That's not why you're going, and we both know it." Max stared at her for one long, aching minute then turned on his heel and slammed into the bathroom.
 

He's wrong
. But that wasn't much comfort since things were over between them.

Crying softly, she went around the bedroom, gathering her things and stuffing them in her bag. The ring box sat on Max's dresser, staring at her, mocking her. Calling to her. She snatched the box off the bureau and pulled the ends open. Her ring winked out at her like a flirtatious star. She lifted it out and studied it on the flat of her palm.

He'd had the ring custom made for her with a slim, white gold band with petite Tudor roses and curlicues etched into the metal. He knew she didn't like diamonds. With some help from the salesgirl at the jewelry store, he'd picked out a large opal with sparkling blue fire in it with tiny, perfect pearls set in a circle around the main stone. Opals were Nicola's birthstone. Pearls were his.
 

All those years ago
. . . A week after they'd ended things, after he'd destroyed her by saying she was living her life for him, he'd shown up at her mother's house with this ring. If Nicola closed her eyes she could still see him kneeling in front of her on her mother's porch, holding out this beautiful, perfect ring.
I was wrong, Nicci. It's you. It's always been you
.
 

And he was Max, so even though her gut had told her it was wrong, that it wouldn't work between them, she'd taken the ring and slipped it on her finger and said,
Yes
.

We're going to build a life together, Nicci. You and me
.
 

But nothing had changed. The engagement ring wasn't a magic fix. He went out partying the next night, drinking and fighting. He was late for a date with her because he'd been drinking all night and all day, and when he finally did show he was too drunk to stand. She let him pass out in her bed, but in the morning when he woke up it was to find the ring in its box on a pillow beside him.
 

He'd gaped at her, wounded, scared, and so hung-over he could barely sit up.
What does this mean, Nicci?

And she'd felt sick and sad and so scared herself, but she'd said,
I can't, Max. I love you, but this doesn't work.
We
don't work. You were right when you dumped me before: I need to be my own person, and you . . . you can't keep partying like this. Drinking so much. You need to clean yourself up and learn some responsibility. I'm sorry. Goodbye, Max.

She'd walked him out of her house, engagement ring in his pocket, and that was the last time she'd ever seen Max. Until he showed up on her doorstep all those weeks ago.
 

She glanced at the closed bathroom door, the finality of it. Her vision blurred with tears and she hunched over, surrendering to the pain. It was over. She'd lost Max. Squeezing the ring in her hand, the metal and stones poked into the meat of her palm
. . . that's your ring, Nicci. It's always been your ring
.
 

She caught her breath and smoothed the tears off her cheeks. Sick at heart, she put the ring in its box, closed the lid, then shoved the ring box into the bottom of her bag.
 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

So, Nicola was gone, but somehow, horribly, interminably, life went on. Nicola had left him without saying goodbye, she was going on the tour, gone for good in just a few days. He had to assume she'd already called Isabelle to quit. Now they'd have to bump one of the fairy handmaidens into the Titania role. Exactly what he and Rita had been trying to avoid when they'd cast Nicola.
 

Their first preview in front of an audience was that night. Their first real performance where they couldn't stop.
 

Max sighed. The Bunkhouse felt echoing without Nicola, which was silly because Peter and Lachlan were around all the damn time. Besides, Max had lived on his own for years. No reason on earth that the sheets should feel so cold now, the bed so empty without her.
 

But they did. He felt like he was missing part of himself and, unfortunately, it was a feeling he remembered all too well from five years ago.

I want a drink
.
 

The thought flashed through him, like a physical pain.
I want a drink and a smoke. I want to numb all this fucking pain until I don't feel anything. Until I never have to feel anything
. He puffed out a ragged breath and flopped onto his bed.

"Knock knock," Peter said, rapping his knuckles against Max's bedroom door.

"Peter, I want a drink. Actually, I want ten drinks."

He heard his brother freeze, heard him gasp then take a second, longer breath. The bed sank and bounced as Peter sat at the foot. "Do you need me to lock you in the bathroom?"

Max snorted. "Maybe?"

"You'll be OK." Peter touched his shoulder. "You want to tell me what happened with Nicola this time? Did you drink, is that why she left?"

"No. I'm still sober. Three years and going strong." Max rolled to his feet, pacing the room. "It was about the musical job."

"Because you didn't want her to leave
Midsummer
early?"

"No, genius, because I didn't want her to leave
me
." Max reached the edge of the room and paced back, starting another circle.

Peter eased onto one elbow, watching Max. "So, wait, why does her taking the musical job mean she's leaving you? Did she not want to do long distance?"

"She's using the musical job as an excuse," Max said, grinding his teeth. "She doesn't want to try. She's scared."

"Did she
say
that?"

Max glowered at his brother.

Peter lifted his hands in surrender. "I'm trying to get a handle on the situation, baby brother."

Max rubbed his jaw and leaned against the wall, exhausted, like a candle wick that's burned itself out. "She said she couldn't live her life for me. That it wasn't fair of me to ask her not to take the
Anything Goes
job."

Peter frowned. "Did you do that?"

"Maybe?"

"You told her to pass on the job to be with you?"

"It wasn't, like, an ultimatum. I'm trying to do what's best for us, what will keep us together." Max started pacing again. "She's the one who's willing to throw everything away."

"Did you offer to go with her?"

"Peter, that makes no sense. Why would I do that?"

"To show Nicola that her career, her
life
, are just as important as yours." Peter had been fairly neutral the entire conversation but now irritation edged his voice. "Did you even try to discuss a compromise?"

Max opened his mouth, paused, then snapped it closed.
 

Peter rolled his eyes. "So, you basically said, 'Hey, honey, forget your life. Stay here so I can keep you barefoot and pregnant with me. Your dreams don't matter.'"

"She left."

"You didn't try to go after her."

Max stormed over to his dresser, kneeling in front of his sock drawer. "I went after her last time and
this
is all I have to show for it." He pawed through his socks, searching for the ring. But when he reached the wood paneling at the bottom he sat back on his heels. The ring wasn't there.
 

"What?" Peter said.

Max glanced around the room, trying to remember the last place he'd seen the engagement ring. It had been on the dresser all last week during tech. He'd been so exhausted after rehearsals and sort of, maybe, hoping if he left the ring in sight it might subliminally work some magic on Nicola. So much for that.
Where is the stupid thing?

Then he remembered.
That's
your
ring, Nicci
. "I'll be damned," he murmured and hopped to his feet, hurrying to his closet.
 

"What?" Peter said.
 

Max threw a pair of jeans on over his boxers and kicked his feet into a pair of flip-flops. He paused on his way out the door. "Nicola took the ring. She took the fucking ring."
 

Max was grinning as he pounded downstairs.

***

"Have I mentioned what a wonderful friend you are for helping me move twice in four weeks?" Nicola said.

Cassie sighed, tying off another trash bag full of old clothes for Goodwill. "You are going to owe me so much pizza and beer after this."

"I know it." Nicola dumped an armload of books into a box. Fortunately, that was about all she'd managed to unpack in the few weeks she'd been in her apartment. She and Cassie were mostly trying to minimize the pile so Nicola didn't spend another five years paying storage fees for stuff she didn't want. She pulled a ragged box from the top of one stack. The bottom split and a sea of papers, books, and scripts scattered across the floor.
 

Nicola huffed her breath out and threw the box aside. She squatted with Cassie to re-pile the mess. Cassie scrapped away the top layer of clutter and dumped it in a new box. Nicola grabbed an armful up for herself then froze and stared at the script she was holding. It was a coil bound copy of photo-copied pages. Nothing there to make her heart pound. And yet she felt like she was about to have a heart attack.

Romeo & Juliet
, it said on the front. And a date. In one corner, the careful handwriting of her old drama teacher:
Nicola Czerwinski – Juliet.

Throat thick with emotion, Nicola cradled the script in her hand then carefully opened it and flipped through the pages. The bound sheets immediately folded open to one page. The balcony scene. Their first kiss. Nicola flipped the page over then laughed at the scribbles on the back.
 

Cassie peered over her shoulder. "What is that?"

"It's a game of MASH I did on the back of my script."

"MASH?"

"A fortune telling game. You never played?"

"I lived in China until I was twelve, remember?"

"Right. Well, MASH stands for mansion, apartment, shack, house, which is where you might live in the future. Then you make a list of things for each category. Husband. How many kids. Your job." She pointed to each of these categories on the sheet. "The person having their fortune told gets to pick three things for each list, and the other person, the 'fortune teller' gets to pick the last one. You pick a random number, the fortune teller counts and when you're done with each rotation, you cross off the word that you land on. By the end of the game, you have four words left, each from a different category. That's your future."

Cassie held out the script page filled with the crossed lines. "Bored, were you?"

"Yeah. Me and one of my girlfriends used to play at rehearsal. That's her fortune. This one's mine." This had been early in rehearsals. Nicola had been standing in the wings, watching Max onstage doing one of the scenes with Friar Lawrence. She and Max hadn't started dating yet, but she'd wanted him. Her gut had burned with that wanting.
 

"So if I'm reading this right," Cassie said, studying the sheet, "your friend ended up living in a shack, married to Vin Diesel, with twenty-seven kids, and she was going to be a lawyer."

"We're Facebook friends. She is a lawyer. Alas, she and Vin Diesel were not to be. But she married a nice dentist, has a house in the suburbs and a new baby."

"And you . . . oh." Cassie's face fell as she read down the page.

Nicola hissed a breath out through her teeth. She didn't even need to glance at the script; she remembered how her MASH game had gone. "Married to Max," Nicola murmured. "Living in a mansion. Three kids."

"That's a pretty good fortune. Did you cheat?"

"Of course. I needed it to land on Max."

Cassie closed the script, her voice mock-hearty. "Shame about the job, but I'm told being a pooper scooper at the zoo can be very fulfilling."

 
"I think I'll stick with acting." Nicola lifted the script out of Cassie's hands and set it in one of her 'to keep' boxes. She didn't want to bury the past anymore, but she couldn't quite live with it in her future. Her engagement ring was in the bottom of the same box. "I'm happy with where I'm at."

"Are you?"

Nicola gave Cassie a wobbly smile. "Most of the time."

"I thought you and Max were pretty good together. You were happier with him than I've ever seen you. What happened?"

"It's difficult to explain," Nicola said.

"I fucked up," Max said, and slammed the door behind him.

Nicola gaped at him.
 

"We didn't lock that?" Cassie said.
 

Max pulled the door open again. "Want to throw me out, Nic?"

"What are you doing here?" Nicola's brain was functioning at half-speed. A wild tumult of string instruments and harps and Shakespeare quotes was spinning inside her head, taking up all the space for thinking. A riotous chorus of inchoate joy she was powerless to silence.
Max
. Here.