The Road to Her Read Online Free

initial scenes together when Jasmine meets Casey for the very first time at university, and it niggled away at me over the weekend as to whether Elise would be more enthusiastic off-camera when the time came.
    As it turned out—to my relief—she was more animated when we got together again on that Monday. I’d spent the entire weekend reading my script over and over, pacing up and down my apartment, reading my lines aloud, varying how I said them each time. I felt like a kid about to start at a new school—excited, but nervous at the same time.
    And Elise was as brilliant as she’d been three days before. We successfully filmed our first scenes together by lunchtime, and it was as though we’d been acting together all our lives. She was effortless in her delivery of her lines, and if she was nervous on her first day of filming, she sure as hell didn’t show it. I thought that we bounced off each other perfectly, just as we’d done before, and I couldn’t help but keep getting a thrill of excitement, knowing that we would get to film more scenes like these—and better ones still—in the months ahead.
    Kevin had told me that morning that Elise had been offered a twelve-month contract for the show, with a view to extending if she proved a hit with the viewers. He told me, in a tapping-his-nose kind of way, that he and Susie were confident she’d be a sure-fire hit. They both thought she was awesome and would be a real addition to PR.
    I had to agree, and I told Elise as much that same morning.
    “Thanks, yeah, that’s a neat thing to say,” she said as we wrapped for the day, our very first scenes together in the bag.
    We walked down the corridor to our respective dressing rooms. I shared with Bella—and had done for the last three years—and Elise had been allocated a room further down the corridor from mine, sharing with one of the slightly lesser-known actresses on the show. I wished we’d been allocated a room together, though. I figured it would make learning our lines easier and more fun if we were, but The Powers That Be had seen fit to keep us separate.
    “You must be pleased, too,” I said, “to get the contract signed and sorted.”
    Elise nodded.
    “Kevin told me this morning,” I added hastily.
    “Yeah, we signed it last Friday after the screen test,” Elise replied. She paused. “Listen, you want to come to my room after you’ve changed?” She jerked her head towards her door down the corridor. “We can go over tomorrow’s lines.”
    Perhaps it was the cute way she jerked her chin, or just how she’d been standing, bag hitched over one shoulder, a hand buried deep in her pocket, looking cool and self-assured. I don’t know. But the second she looked at me and asked me to her room, an image of Grace flooded my mind, instantly flustering me.
    “Your room?” I mumbled. “Yeah, sure.”
    I left her briefly and went off to change from Jasmine’s on-set clothes back into my own, and then headed straight down to Elise. I found her already changed and lounging in a small leather chair, idly flicking through a fashion magazine. Her room was neater than mine, but that wasn’t a surprise. Bella wasn’t the tidiest of people, and it was a frequent source of irritation to me how she was unable to remove empty polystyrene cups from her dressing table or piles of magazines from the soft upholstered sofa that we had in there.
    Elise’s room was like an oasis of calm and tidiness in comparison. I immediately liked being there.
    “So, how long have you been back in England?” I asked as I sat down on the sofa, trying to ignore the sight of her long, jean-clad legs dangling over the side of her chair.
    “A few months,” Elise said. “I came back just after Christmas.”
    She wore a loose-fitting top, casual but expensive looking, the colours of which really suited her, and a string of long beads hanging perfectly down the front. Her faded jeans seemed to cling to her legs, and her feet were