Sip of Assistance

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

 

It only took a day to move all my stuff into James’ guest house. The place was perfect and I loved every square inch of it. I even had my own office, though I doubted I would use it very much, as I was with James most every minute of the day.

He had taken to the idea of me running lines with him in his trailer on a daily basis, which had gotten uncomfortable for me. Long Winter was a tragic love story, so often the scenes we acted out were between the two main characters. I had to fill in as his love interest and he was a very good actor.

He had explained to me the first time we rehearsed, that I was to do whatever the script told me and go with it so we wouldn’t have to stop and that way he could keep the flow. I knew the drill, I had done it before, but the embraces and such were getting to be a bit much.

“Okay, so I need to practice a couple scenes to get the flow going. Here’s the first,” he stated as he stood and handed me the pages in his hand.

I grabbed it, yelled action, and we began.

“How could this be happening? It’s not fair!” He yelled, pacing in the small walkway of the trailer.

“That’s just the way life goes sometimes, Abe. Everything will be alright,” I stated in a calm voice.

“How can you even say that? What a crock that is! How can anything ever be all right, again?”

I sighed, pausing, “I don’t know, but it will have to be. You can fight this all you want, but it’s happening anyway.”

“I can’t lose you,” his voice faltered as he stared down at me with tear-filled eyes. Man, he was good. I looked down at my script, not wanting to mess up his ‘flow’.

“You’ll never really lose me, you know that.”

He knelt down in front of me, grabbing my hands- knocking the script onto the floor- and bringing them to his lips to kiss as a tear left his eye and dropped slowly down his scruffy cheek.

“Please, don’t leave me, I can’t survive without you,” his voice broke on the last word and he dropped my hands so he could wrap his arms around my waist and pull me into him as he laid his head against my stomach.

I almost cried, he was that good, that believable.

“And scene,” I finally remembered.

He lifted his face and pulled his arms back, looking expectantly at me.

I wiped the tears from his cheeks ignoring how sparkly those light blue eyes were, “That was perfect, James.”

He reached out and wiped a tear from my cheek that I hadn’t realized was there. So much for almost crying.

“Thanks, Holls.”

He picked the papers up from the floor before standing and brushing his long hair out of his face. With that, he threw it on the table and picked up another set of papers.

“Okay, next one. I need you standing,” he said as he handed it to me.

I stood and began, “Action.”

“Everyone’s out, I thought maybe we could talk?” he sounded confident.

“Hmph,” I turned my back on him, “What could we possibly have to talk about? Do you want to talk about Charlene? You’re seeing her now, right?” I said with a little venom in my voice as it seemed as though this scene was of an argument.