Page 98 of What I'm Looking For

I make myself meet her gaze. “Yeah, that’s the problem. Seems it’s not enough.”

She nods slowly. After a moment, she tips her head toward the open rehearsal space.

“I’m so tired,” I manage, sounding like a whiny little kid.

She holds my gaze. “Mm-hmm.”

My chin drops to my chest. “Aaand, that’s often the best time to work.”

“Mm-hmm.”

I haul myself to my feet and trudge across the bare floor.

Eva Marie shoves a blue mat my way. “Lie down. Just breathe. Release everything into the mat. No effort. At all.”

I follow her orders, closing my eyes and resting a forearm over my face. I hear the scrape of a chair being pulled across the room, a squeak as a body settles into it.

“Just breathe, William,” my teacher’s voice reminds me. “Let go of thought.”

At her direction, I focus on my belly and try to relax those muscles, but my solar plexus is a stubborn knot. I put a hand over it, feel my palm’s warmth, but it doesn’t ease the pain that’s taken up residence there.

This is exactly why I should’ve stayed away from Kate in the first place. I can’t afford to have my heart broken. I need it for work.

“Relax your jaw,” Eva Marie says softly. “Good. ‘Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.’”

A chuckle burbles under my palm. Oh, the hurtcouldbe much. I let the impulse fly on the text. “No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve; ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.”

In this moment, Mercutio’s words are absolutely hilarious to me. By the time I get to “Why the devil came you between us?” I’m on my side, hysterical with laughter.

My eyes are still closed, but I can feel Eva Marie’s presence close by. “Yes! That line again.”

“‘Why the devil came you between us?’” I ask the universe.

“Why did he? Why did Romeo betray you?” she challenges.

I repeat the words over and over, allowing the emotional fuel to shift the intention. I’m hurt, pleading with an imagined Romeo. Angry, punishing Romeo. And then jealous, beating back an image of Steve kissing Kate.

I’m struggling to get back to the world of the play when Eva Marie prods me on. “Go with it. Whatever’s happening, just put it on the text.”

Her permission unleashes something, and I roar with jealousy. Pain. Frustration. Fear. Rolling onto hands and knees, breathing deep into my soul, I howl Shakespeare’s words like they’re my own, going at the speech, over and over, giving full rein to any and every emotion that rolls through, until my voice is hoarse.

“On your feet,” Eva Marie commands. “One more time.”

Wrung out, I stagger to my feet, letting go of any last shred of control and deliver Mercutio’s final monologue one last time.

By the time I croak, “They have made worms’ meat of me,” I’m laughing again. The final, nonsensical words, “I have it, and soundly too: your houses?” blend rage, grief and physical pain into a stew that finds its own logic.

Spent, I drop into a squat, head low, hands on the scratched wooden floor. The mat makes a squelching sound as Eva Marie settles onto it. Her hand rests between my shoulder blades, its warmth melting through to the back of my heart.

After a few moments, I fall onto my butt next to her. Face in my hands, my voice still rough, I talk to my palms. “I’m working through a breakup. I guess it’s messing me up more than I thought.”

“Hm.”

“What?” I ask when she doesn’t elaborate.

Her eyes follow dust motes dancing in the shafts of light slicing through the room. “Well, I’ve been meaning to say something to you since theAll’s Wellrun. I don’t know how you felt about it, but I thought you had a real breakthrough in that show.”

I’m a bit thrown by the shift in topic. “What do you mean?”

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