Chapter Eleven
Twenty-six days till the show
Rehearsals started at ten a.m. sharp the following morning.
The first four days were just Lola and Annie.
No full cast, no stage manager, not until Friday.
Just the two leads and an empty theater.
Which, in theory, should’ve made things easier.
Given Lola and Annie space to find their rhythm, rediscover the easy chemistry that had made them such natural performers as kids.
Instead, it made everything ten times worse.
Lola hadn’t done theater since her late twenties when she’d been in a production of Funny Girl starring Hollywood legend Babs Belvedere, who—after a few drinks—had memorably given Lola the timeless showbiz advice of “Fuck ’em before they fuck you.
” But despite her absence from it, the Rhodes Playhouse stage felt comfortable and familiar.
Walking onto the worn wooden floorboards on Monday morning, Lola felt a surge of expectant energy, like a jet plane taking off.
First days brimmed with promise. They were Christmas morning and Memorial Day weekend and the inhale of breath to blow out a birthday candle.
And then Annie entered the theater, and the jet plane Lola had been coasting in plummeted straight into turbulence.
Despite her funky knee-length skirt and sun-yellow tee printed with I’m Here, I’m Queer, Have a Great Day!, Annie’s expression was tight as she climbed the stage steps. Not angry, exactly. Just…careful. A closed door with the lock turned twice.
You won. You’re living the dream. Annie’s tear-choked words replayed in Lola’s head even as she gave Annie a smile. “Morning,” Lola said, keeping her voice light. “Ready for today?”
“Yup.” Annie pulled her script from her tote, flicking through its pages.
Unlike at the table read, it was frilled with multicolored stickies.
Her lines were highlighted neon pink. She met Lola’s eye.
“Look, I’m sorry. About…the other day. I was really rude and that wasn’t fair.
We’re all grateful you’re doing this. It means a lot. ”
Lola felt a swell of surprise. She hadn’t expected an apology. “That’s okay. It was a hard day. And I’m sure me being back is…disruptive.”
A flash flood of emotion twitched across Annie’s face. She let out a soft laugh. “Just a bit.” She toed the stage with her sneaker, hesitating. Then drew a breath, bracing herself. “The thing is, Lola…”
The rawness in her voice made Lola lean closer. She could feel it—something hovering between them. “Yes?”
Annie’s gaze became more intense. “The thing is…”
Lola ached with wanting to know. “What?” She instinctively raised a hand, fingers skimming Annie’s arm—but Annie flinched. Looked away.
The moment broke like glass.
“The thing is we really need the play to go well,” Annie said briskly, stepping back. “For the town, and Jazz, and the rest of the cast.”
Lola wilted. They both knew the theater was in danger of foreclosure—Dylan had dropped that bomb yesterday. “I know,” she said carefully.
“So, I’m here for that.”
Not, it seemed, for Lola herself. Before Lola could process the sharp pang of that realization, the theater doors swung open.
“Good morning, thespians!” Jazz’s jubilant voice shook the chandelier. “Are we ready to work?”
They were out of time.
Lola expected Annie to shake off the tension once they got going. Surely, once they stepped into the rhythm of the play, she’d thaw out.
They started with act one, scene one—betting on a coin toss.
A deceptively simple moment, Jazz explained, but one that established the world of the play—absurd, improbable, playful.
In the beat, Lola as Guildenstern grew increasingly agitated over the impossibility of flipping heads over and over, while Annie as Rosencrantz remained cheerfully unbothered.
It should’ve been a lighthearted opening that built rhythm and a growing sense of the impossible made real. But Annie wasn’t reacting to the absurdity of what was happening. She stayed closed when Lola needed her open.
Lola tried to inject some life into the scene, delivering her very first line in a tone rich with mock gravitas: “There is an art to the building up of suspense.”
Annie responded instantly. “Heads.”
Too fast. Too flat.
Lola clocked it instantly—part of her instinctively reaching for a redirect, a note, something she might have said as assistant director if she weren’t in the scene herself. But she wasn’t just observing. She was floundering alongside her co-star.
Lola threw another two coins, catching them one by one.
Her voice dipped lower, like a magician leading an audience into a trick.
“The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted, is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys…” Lola let the idea intrigue her character, snapping her fingers theatrically. “If six monkeys were—”
Annie rushed in. “Game?”
Lola blinked. Wrong timing. She adjusted, trying to save it. “Were they?”
Annie looked panicked and Lola could tell she wasn’t acting. “Are you?”
Jazz called for a pause from the house seats.
Annie’s gaze dropped to the floor.
Jazz pulled off her glasses, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“This scene is a microcosm of the whole play,” she said.
“Where we establish tone, and stakes, and personality. The coin toss isn’t just a game.
It’s the universe behaving in a way it shouldn’t.
That should make you question everything.
But Annie, my dear, it feels like you’re just trying to get through it. ”
Annie’s throat bobbed. For half a second, her lips parted like she wanted to argue. Then, instead, she bit it back.
“Try it again.” Jazz waved a hand. “From the top.”
Lola swallowed. She could already feel that it wasn’t going to get better. Still, she flipped the coin.
Annie let it fall without looking at it. “Heads?” A question when it should’ve been a statement.
Lola’s stomach twisted. She was losing her. Again.
By the end of the first day, Lola hoped things would click on the second.
The following day, Lola tried everything: emphasizing different words, throwing in new gestures, even tossing Jazz a desperate “maybe I fall to the floor here?” suggestion. Nothing landed. Annie still felt miles away.
By the third day, Wednesday, Lola’s hope had curdled into dread.
At the end of the day, Jazz sat them both down for notes. “What I’m sensing,” she said carefully, “is a lack of honesty.”
Lola straightened. She thought she’d been holding her own. But Jazz’s gaze was too sharp.
“Great performances come from a willingness to open up,” Jazz went on. “To let yourself be seen. Even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Lola’s pulse stuttered. She flicked a glance at Annie, who’d gone still, her hands knotted in her lap.
Jazz looked at them both. “Especially when it’s uncomfortable. We’re still at the beginning, but I will need you both to find that honesty. Truth is the spine of a great performance,” she declared. “Without it, the whole thing collapses.”
For Lola, wearing a mask was second nature—onstage, in interviews, even in her own life. But now, under Jazz’s knowing gaze and in this hallowed space, that mask was cracking. She had no idea if she was ready to see what was underneath.
“No pressure,” added Jazz, “but the whole town’s counting on you both.”
· · ·
The next day, rehearsals did not improve: if anything, they were even more tense.
Late that afternoon, back at Jazz’s, Lola worked on a response to her stylist, to nail down her look for the Saturn Rising premiere at the end of the month.
She clicked robotically through endless collages of skintight dresses and sky-high heels, her mind tangled elsewhere.
Did Jazz know? Had she somehow intuited that Lola’s life wasn’t as perfect as she made out? The version Lola presented—glamorous, confident, successful—was so automatic that even she barely registered the omissions. But rather than making things easier, the lie felt like a burden.
She tossed her laptop onto the bed with a sigh. She wasn’t making any progress anyway.
The attic had been converted into a guest room since the last time she was here, but its bones were the same: pitched ceilings, exposed beams, a row of arched windows along one wall that let in golden light at this time of day.
A gauzy canopy framed the queen-size bed, and the mismatched furniture—antique desk, velvet armchair, a battered trunk—gave the space Jazz’s signature maximalist charm.
A dresser was cluttered with jewelry and vintage perfume bottles, and the farthest corner still had an old clothing rack crammed with costume pieces from long-forgotten shows.
Lola remembered sneaking up here with Annie as teenagers, back when it was a dusty attic full of props and abandoned set pieces.
They’d rummaged through the trunks, draped themselves in gauzy gowns and pirate hats, spinning through the dim space in mock duels and grand declarations.
They’d also made out up here. Pressed against the splintering wooden walls, their bodies buzzing with adrenaline, hands uncertain but eager.
Even then, their love had felt like forever.
So why had Annie ended it? Had there been something Lola didn’t know about? Someone she didn’t know about?
The questions rattled through Lola’s chest as she blinked herself back into the present. Her pulse ticked higher, the answer always just out of reach.
She could really use a glass of wine.
Padding downstairs to the second-floor landing, she ran into Vicky emerging from her own bedroom.
“Hey!” Vicky gave her a sisterly squeeze. “How’d it go today?”
“Great!” The lie came so easily, Lola barely registered it as the opposite of truth. Professional hazard—Hollywood thrived on a constant projection of success and good news. But Vicky wasn’t a colleague. She was a friend.
And she wasn’t fooled. “Really?” Vicky said, eyes sharp. “Being back onstage with your ex after twenty years of no contact—that’s a breeze?”
Lola let out a wry chuckle, leaning against the hallway wall. “Okay, you caught me. It’s been tough. I don’t think Annie trusts me.”
Before Vicky could respond, a door creaked open down the hall.
“I heard tea being spilled.” Dylan poked their head out of their room, hair falling over one eye. “And baby, I’m thirsty.”
Lola giggled despite herself. “No tea, really, it’s just…” She hesitated, trying to arrange her thoughts. “Jazz thinks Annie and I are not being honest.”
Vicky tilted her head. “Interesting.”
A question dropped into Lola’s mind, unprompted but suddenly urgent. “Can I ask you guys something? I’m trying to figure out why Annie and I broke up, and this is a weird long shot, but when we were kids, did either of you…hook up with her?”
Vicky’s jaw nearly hit the carpet. “What? No! Are you crazy?”
“You were the only one kissing Annie,” Dylan said. “Why are you asking about this?”
“I’m just wondering why she dumped me,” Lola admitted.
Dylan leaned against their doorframe, frowning. “Really? I always assumed you broke up with her—because you were leaving to go on tour with Mockingbird.”
“No, I hadn’t committed yet,” Lola said slowly, piecing the memory together. “I wanted to stay. Be with Annie, finish high school, help out with Pearl. But then…she broke up with me. Said she didn’t love me, never had. So I left.”
“Ouch,” Dylan murmured.
Lola exhaled heavily. “I thought coming back was a good idea. That we could smooth things over or I’d get some closure. Figure out what I did wrong. But the way rehearsals are going…” She shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should’ve let sleeping dogs lie.”
Vicky and Dylan exchanged a glance.
“Nah,” Dylan said, wandering over to give Lola’s arm a light punch. “Dogs are way more fun when they’re awake.”
Vicky nodded. “And the energy will shift once we start full cast rehearsals tomorrow. For now, maybe spend tonight not thinking about the play. Or Annie.”
Lola hummed in agreement as the front door opened downstairs. Jazz appeared at the bottom of the staircase, weighed down by bags of groceries. “Taco night?”
Dylan and Vicky spoke as one. “Hell yeah.”
Vicky poked Dylan’s ribs. “Jinx, buy me a Coke.”
Lola called down to Jazz. “Sounds lovely.”
“Excellent,” Jazz said, turning toward the kitchen. “Oh, and I invited Annie.”
Vicky’s mouth pressed into a smirk.
Dylan chuckled, low and amused. “Oh boy.”
Lola’s gut clenched. She gave a bright, breezy nod. “Great!”
What else was she supposed to say? Please don’t? That would make it a thing. And Lola wasn’t about to make it a thing.
Even if it already was.