Under the Lights Read Online Free

they do. I am grateful for their help.”
    And it wasn’t as if she had to get used to them being gone. They’d been absentee most of her life.
    “I get it.” He drummed his hand on his knee. “I’d like to be able to help my family if they needed me. They don’t. If they did, though, I’d need to be there, too.”
    “Sounds as if you’re close.” She hadn’t expected to ever know him, or to want to. This Ian, the version who wasn’t late—although he’d made her five minutes tardy—was actually a nice person with whom to spend time He was easy, although his questions were weird. It almost felt akin to a job interview. He watched her so intently, hung on every word. Nothing she said was so interesting it warranted such rapt attention.
    “We are.” He took her hand. “Why do you do it? Stage managing I mean?”
    His abrupt shift in topics caught her off guard. It took her a second to reorient. It was almost one a.m. He needed to leave soon. If she wasn’t in bed by two, she would be a zombie at six when her grandmother needed her IV bag changed and her linens swapped.
    “I’m good at it.”
    “Yes, you are, and I’ve had some bad ones. I make all stage managers nuts. I know. You are really excellent at your job. Yet I find myself wondering, these skills you have, couldn’t they be used in any number of jobs? A good manager? Your abilities would be a total gift to many organizations. Why did you pick theater? You don’t watch the show most nights. I know; I’ve looked. Why theater? It can’t be the money.”
    “Well.”
    She didn’t even try to soften her nasty tone. With his demanding questions, he sounded exactly like her father. Why wasn’t she doing more with her life? Why not go manage something where she could actually earn?
    “Woah.” He withdrew the arm from behind her and extended his hands toward her, wrists together as if he was under arrest. “You just expressed more emotion in a single word than I’ve ever heard you do in sentences worth of talking. Don’t tell me. Don’t shoot.”
    She’d already begun, and refused to silence herself. “I do my job because I enjoy the way it makes people happy. For a few hours every night, the audience is transported somewhere else. They can leave their lives and go wherever we—and I count myself in the grouping—take them. Just because I can’t act doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate creativity. I do. I relish the whole process of it, from start to finish. While you’re under the lights getting the applause, you’re just a piece of it, not the whole kit and caboodle.”
    Ian rubbed his chin. “Never said I was. The stage manager is pivotal to the show. The whole crew plays a role.”
    Really, it was too much to deal with when her grandmother was dying in the other room. She stood.
    “I think you should leave.”
    Having him come home with her was a mistake. She should never have let him into her space. What had she been thinking? Of course, he thought what she did beneath him. Of course, if she didn’t do her job, he’d have no lights to shine on him when he made love to the audience every night.
    Once she started, the words poured out of her. Every statement increased in volume.
    “For the record, I do watch the show. I have to. So I can give you the cues the crew needs. I know every line. It would terrify me, but I could go on for you if you fell and broke your arm. I heard you tonight when you flubbed your line.”
    She clapped a hand over her mouth. He hadn’t earned her rage. Her temper on the topic was for her father, her last boyfriend who had scoffed at her life decisions, and a hundred unfeeling people she had had the bad fortune to encounter over time. Ian hardly knew her. It was past the point for him to leave if for no other reason than so she could find her equilibrium again.
    If she woke Granny, she’d never forgive herself.
    Ian pulled her into his arms, catching her by surprise, and she almost fell. Instead, in