Better Than Me

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Nora stood between the two of us, sporting a pretty convincing poker face. I had a feeling she was just trying to mask the fact that we were pissing her off already. Sophia avoided eye contact with me while I gave her a dirty look, hoping she would at least glance up so my efforts wouldn't go to waste.

When Nora realized neither of us was going to come forward and speak first, she used her hands to gesture at us to speak. Pretty much all of what followed was gibberish, at least when we were both trying to speak over each other.

"One at a time, guys," she said.

Sophia opened her mouth to speak – and spew her usual bullshit – when I interrupted her. "Why should you speak first?"

She raised her eyebrows at me. "Haven't you ever heard of 'ladies first'?"

"I would hardly call you a lady."

"Last I heard, you're not a lady at all," she said.

Nora still had that same indifferent look on her face, like she had all day to deal with us even though she probably didn't. "Are you two done now? Have you gotten it all out of your systems?"

If I'd gone with my real answer, I would've said "no" but I had a feeling that wasn't what she wanted to hear. Sophia must have realized the same thing because we both went with "yes" instead of the truth.

"Good. Now, we have work to do, and we need to get started. You two need to learn to control yourselves. If you want to fight, do it on your own time. Better yet, do it on screen. Use your anger for your scenes together. Okay?"

Neither of us really had anything to say after that besides mumbles of reluctant acceptance. With that, we followed her back inside.

Sophia and I ignored each other for the remainder of the introductions and things went smoothly from there. Finally, we were able to start the actual read-through, which was as simple as its name suggested. It just consisted of reading through the script.

Sophia's character had the first line, so she began the read-through. "No, no, no! I said gardenias. Gardenias! Is that so impossible to comprehend?"

The owner of the flower shop started to respond. "We have some very nice tulips and lilies available—"

"Did I ask for tulips or lilies? No, I didn't. I said gardenias. We want gardenias."

Jesus. No wonder they gave Sophia the part. Emma van der Bilt was as much as a raging bitch as she was, if not worse.

"Miss, you must understand—" the owner began.

"There's nothing to understand," Sophia said. "We want gardenias. Not tulips. Not lilies. Gardenias!"

"Sophia sounds a little stiff to me," I impulsively interrupted. "Give us some emotion, sweetheart."

She gave me an annoyed look. "Call me that again and I'll show you emotion."

"Well, if you're so worried, Christian, how about we do some exercises to loosen up?" Nora suggested with an evil look in her eye.

Shit. Shit. Shit. That was not what I meant. "Did I say stiff? I meant great. She sounded great to me."

"No, I think this is a good idea," Nora said. "We're all doing these. Not just the cast. It'll be fun!"

From what it sounded like, she was the only one who thought that sounded like a fun time. Everyone else looked like they wanted to complain, or they were actually complaining. I couldn't blame them. I thought I'd left behind acting exercises when I stopped doing theatre.