Chapter 12 INT. REHEARSAL SPACE
Chapter 12
INT. REHEARSAL SPACE
“So when do you think Geordie started having sex?”
Cole, perched on the edge of a mound of vinyl tumbling blocks, sputtered in response to Maggie’s question. “I ... have no idea.”
She hadn’t seen him since their hike. She’d texted the picture he’d taken of them to him, and he’d replied, Thank you for coming. I had a good time.
In between the prep work she’d done for this blocking rehearsal, she’d given too much thought to every single one of those words. Was the euphemism intentional? Was good too muted? If he’d really meant it, would he have said it had been a wonderful time? An extraordinary time? In the picture, he looked elated, but he posed for pictures for a living. Projecting emotions was what he did.
Even so, it was possible Maggie had made the pic her lock screen and then had switched it back to one of Savannah and several of their fellow teachers at a boozy book club.
And then had gone back to Cole.
Then back to Savannah and the book club.
Making the safe choice didn’t help when she was still imagining the moment when every cell in her brain had been shouting that he was going to kiss her. Absurd. Totally absurd. But they’d been on the top of a mountain, for crying out loud, and the view had been breathtaking, and the wind had been pushing them together, and—
Maggie had to delete that memory somehow. To get in there with a Brillo pad and brain bleach and scrub those moments away. Because this icy-winter-molten-lava shimmer Cole set off in her gut was unprofessional and pointless and ... confusing.
She was going to get it together. Starting now.
Tasha cleared her throat. As per usual, she was not amused, but now, her ire was directed at Cole, not Maggie. That was new.
“But don’t you think that matters?” the actress snapped. “Take Effie. She’s definitely a virgin. I think she’s kissed other men. Maybe fooled around. She’s never had an orgasm with a partner before, though. This is all new to her. This scene has to feel like a fucking revelation. I mean that literally: fucking is a revelation for her.” None of those ideas were in the script; that was entirely Tasha’s backstory for her character. Since Tasha had decided to get on board with the intimacy coordination, she was all the way on board.
“Okay, okay. Sorry for laughing.” Cole considered this. “Geordie’s definitely not a virgin. He has some sexual history, and not just with Madge. Sleeping with a woman like that—someone who isn’t in his social class, someone he doesn’t really care about, and also not taking any precautions for birth control—that’s careless. It’s selfish. I think he’s done it before. Right?” He looked up, wanting confirmation.
For several months now, Maggie had watched him hedge and downplay his insights into the character. He had an obvious inferiority complex. His youthful missteps had scarred him, and he dealt with it by not always taking himself seriously. It was defensive, and it hurt her to see him do it.
Cole was intuitive about his work, collaborative, and always, always kind. Those were rare qualities. She wished he could believe in himself as much as she’d come to.
“Yeah, I can definitely see that,” she said. “So what’s different with Effie? Why does he approach this affair differently?”
It helped the work when the actors could empathize with their characters and be vulnerable with each other. This was much easier with Cole and Tasha since they were already so close.
“She’s his match in every way,” Cole said. “He’s going to be a lot more careful with her, and more open with her, than with the other women he’s been with.”
He was watching Maggie closely, so closely that she almost wasn’t certain what they were talking about.
An invitation to be reckless, that look.
Oblivious to Maggie’s racing heart, Tasha said, “Which brings us back to Maggie’s question. What’s his number?”
That broke the spell, and Cole snorted. “A dozen, give or take. Before he left home, when he was still the young rich guy on the prowl, I’d guess he hit a brothel. Maybe had a mistress. Then he rejects that world to become a smuggler, and it’s different women. He’s still not, like, emotionally available with them. Sex has been just a release for him for a long time.”
“But that changes with Effie?”
“Yeah.”
“But why ?” Maggie asked. “And don’t say it’s because she’s not like other girls.”
“Yeah,” Cole agreed. “That’s a good point. She could’ve been another Madge to him, if they’d met earlier. Why is he ready now?”
A few seconds ticked by while they all considered this.
“I wonder if the failure of the Jacobite rebellion matters,” Maggie asked. “Like, things aren’t going well resisting the British. The writing’s on the wall, even if the Battle of Culloden hasn’t happened yet. So Geordie’s thinking about what he wants from his life. Is he going to stay with the common people, or is he going to return to his estate? And that’s when he meets Effie.”
“Yeah, so he’s prepped .” Cole picked up Maggie’s thread. “He’s grown up a little, but he’s also had something not work out. This has worn down his pride, made him emotionally vulnerable in a way he wasn’t before. But then Effie blows his heart up, and he wasn’t prepared for that.”
Maggie’s pulse was up, and she felt fizzy all over. This collaboration—it was everything she loved about theatre. “Exactly. So when they end up in this hayloft together, do you think they both arrive here planning to consummate this relationship?”
“For him, yes,” Cole said. “But I don’t think he realizes how intense it’s going to be, or how the sex will crack his heart open.”
Tasha nodded. “Yeah, I know we’ve talked about her, how this is her first time and how into him she is, but I think we have to get the mirror of that for him. He likes this woman, he wants to sleep with her, but then it’s more. That has to stun him.”
“I love that,” Maggie said. “How do we communicate it?” Because at the end of the day, that was the goal: How could they use this love scene to do the character work?
The script simply read, GEORDIE AND EFFIE MAKE PASSIONATE, EMOTIONAL LOVE IN THE HAY LOFT.
Um, thanks, writers!
“Well, they both have to be naked,” Cole said. “It needs to be very different than with Madge. A lot more foreplay, a lot of eye contact, a lot of checking in. And I think he needs to perform oral sex on her, the opposite of with Madge.”
Zoya had mentioned that, edited, she wanted this scene to clock in at least two minutes. Since the show’s previous love scenes had averaged about twenty seconds of thrusting postpenetration—Maggie had checked; she’d made a spreadsheet and everything, an actual fucking spreadsheet—unless they were going to play strip poker, simulated oral would definitely be involved, along with a lot more foreplay than was normal for the show.
This was like the Mount Everest of on-screen sex scenes.
“Yeah, the consent piece is really important,” Tasha agreed. “We don’t have to add lines”—that would mean calling in one of the show’s writers—“but we need all of those little beats of waiting for a reaction. You know when you’re with someone for the first time, and you aren’t sure what they like. You don’t know what they want and don’t want.”
“Um, yeah. Totally.”
When Maggie had been fired and the mess of the last year had begun, the man she’d been dating—a real estate agent—had broken up with her. He hadn’t wanted to deal with the bad press, meaning that he was afraid he’d lose business if he was involved with the most notorious woman in town. Those hadn’t been his precise words, but the implication had been clear. He’d enjoyed dating Maggie, sleeping with her, but he hadn’t really cared about her. He certainly didn’t want to risk anything for their relationship.
After the jolt of disbelief had passed ( “I got fired at eight a.m., and you’re dumping me at five p.m.?” ), Maggie understood. She enjoyed having dinner with him a few times a week. It had been a relief to have an assumed date for events and holidays. The sex had been fine, but she hadn’t thought they were in it together for the long haul either.
Hell, he’d probably done them a favor. If she hadn’t been fired, they might have gotten married out of inertia, which would’ve been tragic. She could barely remember what his laugh sounded like or how he’d made her feel, other than vaguely content. You shouldn’t marry someone whose best quality was having a pulse.
Since the breakup, she hadn’t had the time to date. What did you put on your Bumble profile— My interests include fighting theatre censorship in high-profile lawsuits ? No, her drought was pretty much exactly what vibrators were for.
Suddenly, Maggie wanted a first time with someone. The intensity of someone else’s hands being where only yours had been for so long. The smell of someone’s skin, the press of their weight, amplifying every emotion. The sheer intimacy of letting someone else see you come. The nakedness beyond nakedness when you took off your clothing with someone for the first time.
She missed sex.
Well, she missed good sex.
Maggie shook the thought off. She was working. “Totally,” she repeated. “We have to get all of that into the choreography, especially his tenderness with her and then the way this is going to just explode both of their expectations. Let’s walk through what we have.”
Cole rolled his shoulders and got to his feet. He’d changed into another one of those flowing linen shirts, but he’d also put on a pair of breeches this time. It made him look more than a little bit like a pirate.
Tasha was wearing her full costume: gown, corset, petticoats, and stockings. Since removing her clothing was such a big part of this scene, the actors needed it for the blocking.
Maggie attached her phone to a tripod and pulled up an app that let her approximate the camera’s viewfinder. After David, the DP, had explained that he found the shorthand version of her choreography incomprehensible, he’d shown her how the app could create a more formal, but stick figure–free, version of the storyboards.
“After the dialogue,” Maggie said, checking her notes, “we start with Effie in Geordie’s lap, and they’re kissing. He unbuttons her gown; then we have the sequence with his mouth on her cleavage. He strips her gown off; then he hikes up her petticoats, and he brings her to orgasm with his hand.”
“That’s the place where I have to show unbridled joy?” Tasha deadpanned.
“Yup, as if it’s the first orgasm in the world.”
“Lucky me.”
“I’m assured the light will be dewy and prelapsarian, which should help.” Maggie checked her list. “Then I’d guess he strips her totally and performs oral sex on her. Kneeling or with them both on the hay?”
“Kneeling.” Cole was firm about that. “It’s not submission, but it’s something like that. He’s worshipping this woman.”
“I like that. Is there anything else we can do to show it?”
“Well,” Cole said, “when we get to the penetration, he needs to take care of her. Like ... use his hand on her clit to make sure she comes.”
“Yes!” Maggie exclaimed. “That’s so rare in a sex scene.” She was already adding it to her notes. “I love it.”
The show was clear that the characters’ sex was orgasmic, but other than lovingly filming everyone’s bodies and showing some oral sex, there’d been shockingly little clitoral stimulation in Waverley ’s sex scenes—until now. Apparently Cole James was even better at making sure the love scenes were going to be awesome than Maggie was.
She was absolutely not going to think about what that suggested about what kind of lover he would be in real life.
At least she wasn’t going to think about that right now.
“But can you even find the clit?” Tasha asked Cole.
“Hey,” Cole protested. Then he looked directly at Maggie as he said “I have never had a problem locating—”
“Tasha,” Maggie interrupted, in part because she didn’t want to ponder Cole’s ability to locate the pleasure center. “What are you actually saying?”
Tasha sucked on her teeth. “How would that ... work? He wouldn’t actually touch me there, right?”
Aha. Tasha might have gotten on board, but she still had a few hang-ups. “No, definitely not. We can use forced perspective so that if his hand is just above the merkin”—the pubic wig the makeup people would paste over Tasha’s mons—“it’ll look like he’s stimulating your clit.”
Tasha absorbed this. “Sorry, I know it’ll be fine. You wouldn’t ever cross the line—”
“I would never ,” he said.
“But it’s still pretty intimate.”
Maggie didn’t know if Tasha had talked to Cole yet about what had happened to her on the Cosa Nostra set, so she was running them through the blocking as if he were in the dark. It wasn’t her place to force a confidence Tasha didn’t want to share.
“I get that,” Maggie said. “I know it’s in my title, so I’m supposed to be the expert, but I keep thinking about the word intimacy . I thought I knew what it meant—something like closeness and connection—but if it’s a thing we feel inside, how do we show that on screen? How do we make the audience believe in something they can’t, by definition, see?”
“And the answer is some clit rubbing?” Tasha asked skeptically.
Cole huffed out a laugh, and Tasha, followed by Maggie, dissolved into giggles. There were some moments of this work that were, frankly, absurd.
“It’s that he cares about her pleasure,” Maggie said, once she’d regained some composure. “And that she—not you, Effie —would welcome that kind of touch from him on a part of her body she’s never shared with anyone, in a way that’s going to make her feel out of control. And there’s risk here for her. She could get pregnant, she could die , because they have sex. But how she feels makes that risk worth it.”
Tasha considered this.
Maggie pushed on. “If we don’t put the sex on screen, if we don’t take her pleasure seriously, I wonder if Effie’s actions even make sense. It would be a hole in her characterization.”
“We’re compelled to show the banging?” Tasha was only half joking now.
“I don’t know about that, but I don’t think it’s merely titillating. I can see how the choice is justified for the writing and the art.” And Maggie could also see how the crafting of the scene, the very stuff they were doing in the rehearsal room, was important too. “There’s also a level beyond the characters. For you two, and I guess the crew, too, to film this scene right, we need to have a level of comfort with each other. The audience might not see or know about everything that’s going on behind the scenes, but we have to be intimate. If you sell them on Effie and Geordie’s love, and I know you will, it’ll be because of you and Cole’s intimacy. Not in a sexual way, but in an emotional one. That’s why you were well cast.”
“I don’t think anyone else sees it that way.” Cole gave Maggie a wry smile.
“But they will when they watch the show.” Maggie turned back to Tasha. “Look, I don’t mean to put pressure on you. I like Cole’s suggestion, but if you aren’t comfortable with that blocking, we don’t have to do it.”
Tasha shook her head. “No, I trust that we can do it in a way I’m cool with, and I get your point that seeing Geordie as an attentive lover adds to why Effie would take the risks she does.”
“I’ll keep checking in with you about it when we rehearse. Also, I chatted with her this morning, and Zoya would like to film the thrusting portion in one long shot—no cuts. It makes the blocking a little trickier, but she thinks it’ll feel more real if it’s not a montage.”
“Yup, I can see that,” Tasha agreed.
When Maggie had started to break down the show’s love scenes, it had amazed her how short most of them were and how many different cuts were involved. They were marvels of editing as much as anything else. But this particular scene was the emotional core of the season. If the audience didn’t believe that these characters were soulmates, the rest of it wouldn’t work.
“And Cole, Zoya feels pretty strongly about seeing your butt in this one.” Geordie had kept his pants on for the scene with Madge, so this was different. “She’d like to see you naked from the back, both for this scene, and for the, um—”
“Sex fest?” he asked.
“Yup.” After this scene, the characters’ first time, there would be a montage of subsequent encounters. Geordie and Effie were clearly not holding back.
“I’ve been doing lots of lunges and squats,” Cole said confidently. “My gluteus maximus is pleased to be of service.”
Given how easily Cole had scaled the mountain, Maggie wasn’t surprised. He was certainly in shape. Lana Larkin would be ecstatic.
Maggie wanted to press her water bottle to her burning cheeks, but she refrained. She could only hope they’d blame her flushed face on the stuffiness of the room and not her ridiculous crush on Cole. “Excellent. The real question before we start blocking is for you, Tasha.” She held up a strapless thong. “Are you cool with this?”
“Yup.”
“They’ll paste the merkin over it on the day of filming. And Zoya’s fine with side boob and side butt only for you, but how do you feel about frontal nudity above the waist?”
Tasha gave a long sigh. “Let’s try the blocking and see if we can make it work without.”
“Absolutely.”
They walked through the blocking for the kissing, then moved on to the portion where Geordie was fingering Effie.
Maggie was watching through her camera, trying to see it like the DP would. “The key is timing his forearm thrusts with your gasps, Tasha. It’s really acting with your cleavage as much as anything else.”
“I don’t have enough bust for this.”
“Your bust looks great,” Maggie assured her.
When they’d perfected the choreography so that it looked real, they decided Effie should keep her corset on for the oral sex for modesty—“Not that there’s much that’s modest about this!”—and then would lose the rest of her costume only for the penetration-and-thrusting portion of the scene. Cole and Tasha didn’t strip all the way for the rehearsal, but at least they’d planned every beat, just like you would with dance choreography. Really, really sexy dance choreography.
Then they ran it several times.
Cole and Tasha had a rapport—frankly, a chemistry —that made it mesmerizing. If some part of Maggie’s heart throbbed, dull and jealous, watching it, then that was exactly why it was a bad idea to get a crush on a coworker.
Silly heart.
After another run-through, Maggie said, “That’s not enough practice for you to memorize the blocking, obviously, but we’ll schedule a few more rehearsals before filming. The only real decision left to make is stockings on or off.”
“One on and one off?” Tasha mused. “Maybe we need to see cute options for the ribbon garters.”
“I like the idea that she knows he’s going to see them. It shows her planning this encounter, wanting it.”
“Yes! They should be different garters than what she wears earlier in the flashbacks.”
“I’m making a note to email Alexa.”
“Thanks, Maggie.” There was a long pause, and then, more heavily, Tasha said, “Thank you.” It was clear she was trying to communicate several things with that, and Maggie appreciated every one.
“You’re welcome” was all she said. Tasha obviously didn’t want to have an in-depth conversation about each and every one of her feelings. At the end of the day, Maggie could only be pleased that they’d finally gotten to a productive place.
When Tasha left to change and return her costume to the assistant waiting outside the rehearsal room, Cole shrugged back into his regular shirt—which was a bit of a shame. Those were a lot of lovely muscles.
Maggie felt a little guilty about even noticing that. When this was over, it would be nice to go back to ogling him without feeling an uncomfortable twinge.
“That was great,” he said enthusiastically. “This is going to be awesome.”
“Yup, it’ll be instantly iconic. It’s going to launch a zillion GIFs.”
At minimum, Maggie was certain that she’d be watching it on repeat.
“Your notes today,” she told him, “they were really good. You get this guy, and you have great instincts.”
He scratched his cheek. “I don’t always feel great about weighing in.”
“You’re doing amazing work on Waverley , Cole. I get the sense you don’t always feel confident about it, but you should. I’m here anytime you need to be reminded of that.”
“Anytime?”
For a second, the question hung between them, crimson and glowing as a brand fresh from the fire.
I wish I could be. That was how she wanted to answer.
But as always, Cole saved her. He let the heat drop from his eyes; then he kicked his feet into his shoes and scooped up his bag before leaving Maggie alone.
Which was exactly how she didn’t want to be. Not anymore.