Page 52 of What I'm Looking For

Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to be acting the words, so I don’t even try. “‘No, my good lord, Diana.’”

“‘Titled goddess; And worth it, with addition! But, fair queen?—’”

I hold up my hands in a T. “Time out. Are you supposed to say all the words exactly as they are?”

“Yeah. Please stop me if I mess up. What’d I miss?”

“The end of that sentence is supposed to be ‘But, fair soul.’”

“Oh, right. I’ll start again.” He faces forward, talking to some invisible woman across the room.

The next try, he gets it right. It’s a bit of an effort to pay attention to the rest of his speech because just the sound of his voice gets me all hot and makes me want to be bothered by his hands again. Luckily for him, I’m more of a perfectionist than a hedonist.

It’s my turn again. “‘She then was honest.’”

“‘So should you be.’”

“‘No: My mother did but duty; such, my lord, as you owe to your wife.’” A shiver goes through my belly. “Time out again. Yuck. He’s married to somebody else and seducing this lady?”

“Yeah, he’s kind of a jerk.”

“Kind of?”

“Okay, a real asshole. But bad guys can be fun to play.”

As problematic as this is, he needs to get off book before I can get off again, so I get back to my assignment. He only makes a couple mistakes, which I correct. The section ends with Diana saying, “‘Adieu, till then; then, fail not. You have won a wife of me, though there my hope be done.’”

“‘A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.’” He rolls over and nuzzles my neck. “Same goes for you,” he murmurs against my skin.

Tension knots below my ribcage. “Except for everything else in the scene, I hope.”

“Don’t worry.” He snuggles in next to me and closes his eyes. “I may find him interesting to pretend to be, but I would never cheat on someone in real life.”

At the word “cheat,” theLost in Spacerobot chants “Danger Will Robinson” in my head. “Well, I hope he gets his just deserts in the end.”

He rolls to his back, his gaze on the ceiling. “Well, yes and no. It’s one of Shakespeare’s problem plays. He leaves the ending a little ambiguous, and the director hasn’t yet decided how to play it.”

“But how can you—how do you pretend to be someone you would never want to be in real life?”

His eyes are lit with passion when he turns to face me. Not the passion I’m now well acquainted with, but one that obviously fuels his drive. “That’s the coolest thing about acting. Since the Greeks, actors have taken audiences through both tragedies and comedies in a way that helps us all, like, purge the dark and revel in the light.”

My face must reflect my confusion because he grabs my hand to continue.

“You know when you go to a concert and you can actually feel the music reverberating in your bones?”

I’ve only been to a few live concerts, but I nod.

“It’s more subtle when you go to a play, but it happens there too.” Two fingers press on my sternum. “An actor’s voice and the emotion it carries go right in here and literally move you. To tears, to laughter.”

I’m not sure if I believe him, but it kind of makes sense. “But what about you? How do you—I don’t know—take on a character that you don’t like?”

“Well, that’s what I spent four years studying to do, but… I think the easiest way to think of it is you either go inside/out or outside/in.”

He checks to make sure I’m still with him, so I nod.

“Outside/in, you imagine what this guy Bertram would look like, how he would move.” Will jumps up and begins strutting around the room. Even naked, he suddenly looks like a trader. His shoulders are broader, his gaze sharper, his smile smug. “The way I take up space affects the way other people treat me, and that helps me figure out who this guy is.”

“And the other way?”

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