Laugh Until You Cry

24 Epilogues

Seven Years Later

“This is Broadway, people!” Cenzia yells at all of us as we’re basically heaving for breath in our rehearsal studio. “We’re going one more time before rehearsal is over.”

I share an exhausted look with one of my co-dancers, Brie, as everybody walks back to their starting position to start the show over again just so that we can do it right and then go home. Not that I don’t love practice, but we’ve been working on this scene for four hours straight now and it’s getting around dinner time, which means that I’m hungry and I have dinner plans with Andrew.

This is my third Broadway show and this time, I’m actually the lead actress, which is amazing. Especially considering this has been my dream for years- since I was little, actually. Not just being on Broadway but being the lead in a Broadway play. It kind of proves to everyone who ever doubted me that I could make it. Almost my whole family, Gianna and Charlotte and everybody like that. It proves it to myself that I can do it.

Cenzia, one of our lead choreographers, starts the music again and then we count down like we always do and then start the dance. I have to sing too, since I’m the lead, but we’re not adding the vocals with the dancing yet. After getting my first Broadway gig right after I graduated Julliard, I realized that I’d get better roles if I took up singing too, so that’s what I did. I took extensive singing lessons until I was able to get a minor singing role in another play and then, I finally was able to audition for the role and after a few auditions, I got this lead. I know that I’m not the best singer ever but I’m pretty good, I think, and my dancing makes up for not being the best.

Anyway, we finish the scene and then Cenzia releases us for the day just so that she can go pull some more of her own hair out. Cenzia is really nice and everything but it’s a week before opening weekend so she’s extremely stressed out right now, so we all understand her snappiness and everything.

“So, are you getting nervous?” Brie asks me in the busy locker room as I toss my gym bag over my shoulder and we start to leave the locker room.

“I’ve been nervous since I got the call that I got the role,” I chuckle. “I feel like I’m going to vomit.”

“Please,” She scoffs. “You were born to play this part. Literally, you’ve been training for this your whole life. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Let’s hope so,” I sigh. “Are you nervous at all?”

“Me? I’m just backup,” She reminds me.

“That doesn’t mean that you can’t be nervous. When I was backup, I was nervous,” I assure her. “My boyfriend said that he thought that I was going to go bald before the show- which of course didn’t make things any better.”

“Boyfriend?” Brie repeats with a frown. “I thought that you’re married.”

“Well, I am, but he was my boyfriend at the time,” I explain, referring to Andrew, who I hadn’t married until I was twenty-four, last year, and my first Broadway show was when I was twenty. “But anyway, Broadway is always crazy- it’s always nerve racking.”

“Speaking of boyfriend-slash-husband,” Brie grins as we stop just outside the door of our rehearsal building when we both see Andrew standing there on the sidewalk waiting for me, I assume.

I smile and wave at him before turning to Brie. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow,” She laughs before we part ways and I hurry over to my beautiful husband.

“Hey,” I chirp, wrapping my arms around him and placing a soft kiss on his lips.

“Hey,” He kisses me back.