Second Act Romance (The Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances #3)

Chapter 2 Second Act Romance

There was a simple explanation for this, Bex knew, though everyone in the cast seemed quick to attribute the situation to a theatre superstition.

Last week, while the touring production of Oklahoma!

had been in Indianapolis, someone had committed the cardinal sin of uttering the word “Macbeth” in the theater.

When their lead actor snapped his Achilles the next day, Bex’s roommate, Dana, lit a candle and prayed to Dionysus, the god of theatre, for mercy.

Geoff, on the other hand, thought the production was cursed weeks before that in Ohio, when the ghost light that was to be left on overnight in the theater had mysteriously been tipped over and shattered in the morning.

Parker, his husband, believed this curse went even further back, to when Sarah was asked to leave the cast—Sarah, who threatened to hire an Etsy witch to, literally, lay a curse on them all.

Whitney was quick to point out that there were comets coming on Valentine’s Day, and cosmically, that couldn’t be good.

Everyone had their excuses and theories as to why this was happening.

But Bex knew deep in her heart that it wasn’t a curse on the production. No, the simple explanation was . . . the all-you-can-eat shrimp-taco bar for Galentine’s Day at a place called Senor Murray’s Taqueria around the corner from the theater.

The issue was food poisoning. Twelve members of the cast had gone out last night, and eight of them were officially called out of the show tonight.

Two were keeping the stage manager updated on their ability to leave the tiled floors of their bathrooms, and the two others were surviving with some minor setbacks.

Bex had declined the invitation to the Galentine’s Day outing yesterday.

As the actor playing the lead role of Laurey, Bex declined often.

She couldn’t drink on tour without dehydrating her voice, and a loud restaurant where she’d have to yell to be heard at the table was always a risk to her vocal health.

Bex was quite happy going to morning yoga with the married couple, Parker and Geoff, taking adventure Mondays with Dana, and baking new recipes in whatever kitchen her housing provided on that tour stop.

Dana, her best friend on tour, had always bemoaned Bex’s lack of a social life outside the theatre. But at least Bex wasn’t having her asshole ripped out by last night’s shrimp tacos.

Bex’s phone rang at 10:00 a.m. on Valentine’s Day while she was baking something for the cast for that night. She quickly washed her hands, tossed her light-brown hair away from her ear, and answered the stage manager’s call.

Esther’s voice was skittering like a rabbit’s heart as she asked, “Are you sick?”

Bex blinked at the gluten-free banana bread mixture in the bowl. “Sick?” Her stomach dropped. “Oh, god, does Charlie have COVID?”

Charlie was the understudy for the lead role opposite her. He’d been playing Curly, the flirtatious and curly-mopped cowboy, all week since the unfortunate Achilles incident.

Bex and Charlie kissed seven times per performance. Eight shows a week. And if their mouths had been just a little bit open during the past two shows . . . well, that was no one’s business but hers and Charlie’s.

If Charlie had COVID, Bex had COVID.

“No, it’s food poisoning. It’s running through everyone.”

Bex squinted at the oven timer, placing a hand on her stomach as if asking her body to confirm or deny. “Not me.”

“Thank god.” Esther breathed a sigh of relief. “You didn’t go to shrimp tacos?”

“No, I didn’t.” Bex turned to Dana’s door, which had been closed since she’d come back from yoga this morning—yoga that Geoff and Parker had mysteriously not shown up to. “Wait, it was the shrimp-taco place?”

But Esther was already saying goodbye, promising to call her if they needed an emergency rehearsal. Bex moved to Dana’s bedroom door with a light knock.

“Dana?”

A low moan greeted her.

Bex pushed the door open to a foul smell that she vowed not to show her reaction to—good friend that she was. No one was in the bed, and the moaning was coming from the bathroom.

“Save yourself, Bexy,” Dana’s raspy voice said. “Don’t subject yourself to this.”

Bex stared down at the bowl she’d been looking for this morning for her banana bread mix (clean, thankfully), a heap of towels (unclean), and a pixie-like brunette whose head could carry the tracks of all the ensemble women in the cast.

“Dana . . .”

“Don’t say it.” Dana’s head rested on the side of the toilet. “If you say shrimp taco-ohs—” Her stomach heaved.

“No, I would never say ‘shrimp tacos’ to you,” Bex said with a grin.

Dana moaned and turned her face to the porcelain. “I drank all your Gatorade, and then I promptly undrank all your Gatorade. I’m sorry.”

She leaned down to rub Dana’s back. “Well, how were you to know that a place called Senor Murray’s wouldn’t be the gold standard of Mexican food in Denver, Colorado?” Bex pulled out her phone and started a grocery delivery order. “Let’s shower. You’ll feel better after a shower.”

She helped Dana take off her clothes, all modesty gone in their relationship after forty-seven weeks of quick changes backstage, and flipped on the water.

“This is so upsetting,” Dana said, understating for comedic effect. “Such an inconvenience.”

“Esther called me. It’s not just you, it’s all of you.”

Dana paused with one leg in the bathtub. She stared at Bex with wide eyes. “Oh, god. Charlie was there last night. He ate so many shrimp tac—” She placed a hand on her stomach, grounding herself.

“Yeah, Esther told me.”

“No, Bex . . .” Dana was still half in the shower, water splashing one side of her face. “Geoff and Parker were there.”

Bex had assumed this, as they hadn’t shown up for yoga, but Dana’s mind worked differently than Bex’s did. As the female swing who had been with the tour longer than anyone else, Dana was thinking through logistics in a way Bex didn’t have to as the lead.

A swing was a member of the cast who didn’t go on for a performance unless someone was out.

Swings didn’t usually understudy a lead role, as members of the ensemble would be the leads’ understudies, but instead, they understudied many different roles in the ensemble, ready to “swing” into any track necessary.

Dana knew every female role in the show and, in a pinch, could go on for even the male ensemble roles with a well-glued mustache.

And Dana was now in Grandmother Swing mode—a loving nickname given to her at her ripe age of thirty-seven after the most years with the touring company.

“What’s wrong, Grandmother Swing?” Bex asked, beginning to realize.

Geoff and Parker were both swings. Both of them could cover the role of Curly if absolutely necessary, but as long as the two male ensemble members who knew Curly’s track were good to go—

“Assad and Victor were there last night.”

Bex blinked at her. Half of Dana looked like a drowned rat, half was the embodiment of “naked and afraid.”

“So if Charlie, Geoff, Parker, Assad, and Victor all had the shrimp tacos . . .”

Dana’s stomach contracted, and she placed the back of her hand to her mouth, swallowing. Bex was starting to realize the issue. The big issue.

“Then we don’t have a Curly,” Dana said before pivoting to vomit into the shower.

“The show must go on” is really quite an understatement in the theatre world. Many audiences would never know just how many meanings those five individual words have.

“The”—The specific show. The audience paid for Oklahoma!, they will see Oklahoma!

“Show”—The audience may never know that they did not see Oklahoma!

as it was originally rehearsed. They may never know there were supposed to be two more ensemble members on a random Tuesday in Florida three months ago, but when The Muny got permission to do Oklahoma!

for a week, six of the touring company ensemble members were pulled to go to St. Louis to support whatever celebrities and big theatre names were being thrown into the roles the touring company had been perfecting for months.

“Must”—Financially . . . this is quite self-explanatory. If they were the touring company of Hamilton, they wouldn’t have trouble selling tickets, but Oklahoma! had been around for eighty years. They weren’t filling houses the same way.

“Go”—It may not be 8:00 p.m., it may not be the more standard 8:07, but the curtain will rise, no matter the chaos backstage.

Bex herself had been doing costume fittings for her act 2 dresses in the middle of act 1 during one strange and exhilarating summer when she was plucked out of the ensemble of a completely different show to go on as Laurey for the first time in her life.

“On”—The show will not stop to accommodate the unprepared actor. The show is a beast moving through a dark wood. Or perhaps a rolling stone picking up moss and crunching bones in its wake. (Bones have literally been crunched.)

The company group chat had been quiet with shame and self-disgust all morning until Rachel finally ripped the Band-Aid off around ten thirty to ask if everyone was in the same boat.

The full scope of the day became clearer then.

Rachel felt okay, but shaky, after a night of purging. Geoff was hydrating and might be able to pull through, but Geoff was also the understudy for Richard, who played the villain, and Richard was actually in the hospital now due to dehydration.

Dana, mother hen that she was, started ordering electrolytes for everyone in between her trips to the bathroom, but Bex was talking to Esther about if it was possible to cancel the performance.

Esther had been told in no uncertain terms that that would not happen.

That evening’s performance had been advertised as the Valentine’s Day performance, complete with a dinner-for-two package to local restaurants and free parking arranged with the local parking garages. It was a completely sold-out show.