Read Online The Me You See by Shay Ray Stevens - Free Book Online Page B

comfortable,” I said, motioning to my red
leather couch. I went to get the scene that was still sitting in the printer.
She sat down, checked her phone, and laughed as she returned a text.
    “Someone sending you jokes?” I asked as I walked back into
the room.
    “No. Just another you were so wonderful in the
production text. I still can’t believe how awesome it all is.”
    “People love you. You’re a natural.”
    She smiled.
    “Now,” I said, sitting down next to her and handing her a
copy of the new scene, “this is a piece for two people. I know your last
audition you only had to give a monologue, but there might be callbacks for
this next show and you’ll probably be asked to read against someone in a scene
before they make their casting choices.”
    “Well, if I got called back…”
    “Yeah. If.”
    I smiled at her and then looked down at the paper.
    “Shall we?” I asked.
    She nodded.
    She read her part and as she concentrated on the lines, my
hand crept across the cushion of the couch and rested on her thigh.
    “Niles,” she said, scanning her eyes quickly down the page.
Her eyes fixed on my fingers spread out on her thigh. “That’s not in the
script.”
    “No. It’s not.”
    “Niles, don’t…”
    I slid a finger up to my lips to shush her, and then pushed
her back to lie down on the couch. Her eyes were fat with panic and her breath
tangled somewhere inside her chest. I watched her head meet the cushion, her
hair spill out all around her face, and her lips part to say something—but I
never heard what it was. All I knew was that my hot breath on her face as my
hands fumbled with the hem of her skirt was melting what little bit of girl was
left inside her.
    The look on her face.
    Oh, god.
    I will never forget that look.
    **
    At 6:30 am on a Sunday morning, two weeks after that first
run ended, I sat at my dining room table drinking a mug of equal parts Baileys
and coffee. The slow swirl of light into dark was mesmerizing and I resisted
the urge to stir it all together with my spoon.
    A quiet tap on the front door shook me and when I looked up
to the etched pane of glass I’d just changed out three days earlier, I saw the
outline of someone who looked a lot like Stefia.
    I opened the door and neither of us said anything. I could
hardly believe she was standing in front of me.
    She’d come back.
    “Hi,” she squeaked after a minute.
    “Hi.”
    It had snowed the night before and her boots made prints on
the porch.
    “Do you want to come in?” I asked. “It’s cold…”
    “No.”
    The knitted red mittens she wore looked warm, but she
rubbed her hands together and blew on them even so.
    “Look,” she said, agitated and almost impatient. “Auditions
are the beginning of next month.”
    I watched the squint of her eyes as she focused on a drip
of paint that had dried on the spindle of the porch. She wouldn’t even look at
me.
    “Niles, I need your help to audition.”
    “I’d be more than happy to…”
    “Don’t say anything,” she said, looking to the ground and
kicking her boot at the snow that had warmed to slush under her feet. “Just let
me talk.”
    The cold air drifted into my house and I heard my furnace
kick on. I didn’t dare ask her a second time to come inside, so I stepped out
on the porch and pulled the door closed behind me.
     “I need to be on stage, Niles. I need this theater. I
can’t even explain it to you because it doesn’t make any sense to me.”
    “You don’t have to explain it to me, Stefia. I…”
    “I shouldn’t even be here talking to you. You get that,
right? The last thing I should have done this morning was walk over here to
talk to you. But I couldn’t stop.”
    Stefia pulled her hat down further over her ears and then
wrapped her arms around herself.
    “I was ready to quit. I was going to just be done. I was
going to…”
    She looked at the railing of the porch, unable to finish.
The cold had crisped the features of her face,