Shannon shook her head and brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes.
‘If we’re going to take an ocean voyage, I want to take advantage of it.’ She looked at him and gave him a quick smile. ‘Don’t let it go to your head, but this isn’t bad. I like the clean smell the sea—and I don’t think I’ve been anywhere in New York that’s this empty.’ Pulling up her jacket collar, she moved out of his encircling arm and turned her back to the wind. ‘OK, let’s read. We’ll make sense out of this scene yet.’
‘Well,’ Cade sighed twenty minutes later, ‘at least it sounds a little better. I didn’t think there were so many different ways to read a line.
‘It’s my chattering teeth that make them sound different,’ Shannon laughed. ‘Oh, it’s cold!’
‘That’s it,’ Cade said, slipping his arm around her. ‘We’re going inside.’
‘No, don’t be silly. Really, I like it out here.’ She tucked a blowing strand of hair behind her ear and looked up at him. ‘What did you mean when you said you used to spend a lot of time on the ferry? Did you live on Staten Island?’
He laughed softly. ‘Nobody lives on Staten Island, remember? What happened was, I took a hole-in-the-wall apartment way, way downtown after I left Princeton. One room, make your own heat and hot water, cockroaches are free— sometimes, when I’d feel about as low as I could get, I’d grab my guitar and ride the ferry.’
‘Left Princeton? Not “graduated”?’
Cade shrugged. ‘I thought I’d told you that. I gave it up when I had less than a year to go. I was eager to get out into the real world, I guess... Well, it was more than that. My mother had just died and I felt, I don’t know, I felt as if nothing really mattered much.
‘What about your father?’
‘What about him?’ He gave her a quick smile. ‘I don’t mean to sound bitter, but I never knew my father. He took off when I was little. My mother worked all he
r life to keep a roof over our heads. I can still remember the Christmas she gave me my first guitar.’ Cade’s eyes darkened with painful memory. ‘It probably cost her six months of overtime.’
Shannon fought against the desire to reach up and smooth the lines of tension from his face. ‘And the rest, as they say, is history?’ she said lightly.
He laughed and squeezed her shoulder gratefully. ‘Something like that. Anyway, when I lived on Staten Island, the ferry became my emotional escape route. I used to ride it for hours.’
‘All by yourself?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, just me and my guitar. The smell of the sea and the sound of the gulls were—I don’t know, they were enough to make me feel human again. After a while, some of the guys who worked the ferries got to know me, and they’d let me ride back and forth for free. It was an ocean cruise that was better than any hour spent with a shrink.’ He glanced down at her and laughed self-consciously. ‘It really is a great place to rehearse, you know. I wrote my first hit on the ferry... Damn, why don’t you tell me to shut up? I sound like a nostalgia trip.’
‘Sea Lover? Written on this boat? Do you know, I can still remember the first time I heard it. I was taking a summer school course in English Lit, and our assignment was to pick a contemporary poem and present it to the class.’ Shannon dipped her head and looked away in sudden embarrassment. ‘I chose Sea Lover. Just the words, you know, as if it were a poem and not a song. I thought it was beautiful.’
‘‘Did you really like it?’
She nodded, warmed by the sound of pleasure she heard in his voice. ‘I still do. Did you really write it on the ferry? I’ve always pictured composers working in sound-proofed studios.’
‘Maybe some do. I just need a quiet place I can call my own, preferably near water.’ He tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. ‘I guess we don’t know much about the other’s profession, do we? I mean, I’d never have thought actors in soaps put in so many hours each day.’
‘Not all of them do. You must have noticed, Rima just floats in and out.’
‘Rima’s not an actress, she’s a happening.’ They both laughed. ‘You’re the actress,’ Cade said softly. ‘You’re good enough to carry both of us.’
‘You don’t need me to carry you, Cade.’
‘Look, let’s be honest. I’d have made an ass of myself a dozen times over if you weren’t there.’
‘That’s not true,’ she said quickly. ‘You’re good. Even Eli says so.’
He smiled. ‘Yeah, but where is Eli when I need him?’
‘Don’t worry about Monday. You’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll be a human laughing machine.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Shannon said with determination. ‘I’ll teach you some tricks of the trade. For instance, think of something sad when you’re playing a sad scene. It really helps a lot.’
‘The only sad thing I can think of when I look at Monday’s dialogue is that it’s going to be the end of my short but awful career.’