“Are you? Really?” Jonatho takes another step toward him, their faces growing closer. “I was just thinking … I might like to stay a little longer. For all of the performances. Next several weekends.”
Zakary’s heart jumps. “Really?”
“Yep. And, you know … that means all the weekdays between them are going to be rather … empty and uneventful.” Jonatho shrugs innocently. “Maybe I should look for someone to keep me company.”
Zakary bites his lip. “I think I know just the guy.”
They bring their lips together for a kiss, and Zakary might swear the whole dressing room is ignited by a glorious fire only they know.
And in the fiery heat of that kiss between them, Zakary can envision a litany of scenes playing out in his near future.
Scenes like packing up his cluttered apartment and moving to New York City with Jonatho to reprise his role—and taking a lovely little feline named Tiger with him too, of course. Scenes of furthering his relationship with Jonatho into something deeper, something that lasts. Discovering himself as an actor who learns to live life on the figurative stage instead of hiding behind curtains. Perfecting his lip-biting skills to drive Jonatho wild whenever he wants. Learning how to engage in conversations with inanimate objects with as much acuity and imagination as Jonatho does.
Or seeing a future for himself he was certain he would never know, until an adorable playwright—and a silly comment on a forum—gave him the confidence to realize it.
The red may fade, but his newfound confidence sure won’t. It’s gotten into him so deeply, it can’t hope to be washed away. Like a fire in his veins, it tells him anything in life is possible. It tells him all he has to do is live his truth, dream big, and own that stage—Red. Loud. Flaming.
9
The Epilogue Scene
The curtain rises.
The audience watches as a wild romance unfolds before their eyes. Tears are shared. Tender words. A healing hug after an argument. Unexpected laughter. Scene after scene plays out before their amazed eyes, and before they even realize it, they’ve fallen in love with the two men on the stage.
One of those men is Zakary Tisdale.
A year can really change a person.
The stage is one that is only found at a small yet prestigious acting academy in New York City. Zakary is one among only twenty students in his class. Each day, he absorbs the wisdom of his instructors, puts to use the various skills he learns in his voice and movement training, and embraces the utter thrill and sheer terror of performing on a stage.
Now, he can’t get enough.
When it’s time for intermission, Zakary returns to his dressing room, of course stopping five or six times to receive praises from various members of the crew, including the stage manager, who was in tears after the last scene of act one. When the dressing room door shuts behind him, Zakary is finally alone, only his reflection and troubling thoughts with him.
One thought being: He isn’t satisfied with how the first act went. He overreacted to one of his scene partner’s lines. He anticipated a moment and cut off a line too soon, then found his head stuck in that false moment for the rest of the scene. Judging from all of the praise he got in the halls, it didn’t seem like anyone noticed, but Zakary did; he notices it all.
“I just need to be in the moment,” he coaches himself in the mirror, analyzing what he did wrong. “Second act, just listen before you react, each and every time. Listen before you react, just like …”
Just like sweet Jonatho told him yesterday during the final dress rehearsal.
He finds his mind drifting back to that theater in Dallas, the one for which he used to work. He thinks about that handsome playwright who stole his heart by making it gallop straight out of his chest and into his palm.
If he closes his eyes, he still feels the electricity of their first kiss. It was so charged, the anticipation just before their lips touched for the first time and every bit of sense fled from his mind.
Maybe it was on that day he realized he was first in love. Can it be true? Can someone fall in love the very first moment they meet? Or is that heightened circumstance reserved only for romantic comedies, Shakespeare, and this very play he’s acting in?
That day in Dallas changed his life.
And it was all because of Jonatho Nassar.
“For act two, I need to be as liberated as I was in that moment with Jonatho,” Zakary decides. “I’ve got to find the emotional truth. I’ve got to find it and live in it. I’ve got—”
“I’ve got to stop interrupting you.”
Zakary flaps open his eyes and turns to the voice at the door. Jonatho stands there in a suit and tie, handsome as ever, with his hair styled meticulously and a knowing smirk curling his lips. His eyes sparkle in the lighting from the make-up mirrors, and he holds a bouquet of flowers.