Chapter 139: the wrong partner

Chapter 139 — The Wrong Partner

The drama club met in the old rehearsal room above the Lower Hall, a long space with a scuffed wooden floor, a wall of cracked mirrors, and a smell of dust and cold tea. Roxanne arrived five minutes early, intending to sit near the door, and learned within two minutes that the fine print had been hiding somewhere.

"Welcome, everyone," said the coordinator, a cheerful third-year with a whistle around her neck. "Tonight is improvisation. You’ll be paired at random and given scenarios with no preparation. The goal isn’t to act perfectly. It’s to react naturally."

Roxanne raised her hand. "Reacting naturally is easier when nobody is watching me."

"That’s the whole point of the exercise."

"That’s the whole problem with it."

There was a ripple of laughter. Roxanne lowered her hand and, for lack of anywhere better, looked across the room.

Liam sat on the edge of the stage with his boots swinging, looking far too pleased with himself.

She crossed the floor. "You signed up?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

"I heard there would be an audience."

"You’re the reason audiences need warning labels."

"And yet, here you are." He beamed. "Isn’t it wonderful?"

Before she could escape, the coordinator clapped her hands and began reading pairings from a list. Roxanne watched names disappear into pairs, waiting for deliverance, until the third-year looked up with a bright smile.

"Roxanne Silver and Liam Moonstone."

Roxanne closed her eyes. "Of course."

Their first scenario was simple. Two strangers discover they have accidentally swapped luggage at a train station. Liam took one look at the card and transformed. His shoulders hunched, his eyes narrowed, and he clutched an imaginary case to his chest with both arms.

"Madam," he whispered. "That bag is not yours. It contains a secret of enormous importance."

"It contains a toothbrush and a book about gardening."

"A cover. The gardening is a cover."

Roxanne sighed and played a woman with no intention of helping him whatsoever. She checked her imaginary watch. She remarked that her train was leaving. Within a minute they had abandoned the plot entirely and were arguing about whose luggage contained the more embarrassing belongings, with Liam insisting that hers must contain at least four novels with swords on the covers.

"Three," Roxanne said. "And a very dignified one about shipping."

"Liar."

"Spy."

The room was laughing hard by the time the coordinator blew her whistle, just as Liam drew breath to invent a second secret identity.

"Time," she called. "Lovely. Terrible, but lovely."

Roxanne turned on him. "You were supposed to cooperate."

"I was cooperating. You were supposed to improvise."

"I improvised the urge to strangle you."

"And yet you kept responding. You never once walked away."

She opened her mouth and found that this was true. The coordinator drifted past, scribbling on her clipboard. "Excellent timing, both of you. You ignored half the scenario, but your timing was excellent."

Roxanne could not decide whether to be pleased or offended, and settled on being both.

The second exercise was quieter. The coordinator handed each pair a folded card. Roxanne opened hers and read it, and something in her face went still.

One character has broken a promise. The other must decide whether to forgive them.

She did not look up. She felt Liam’s attention shift beside her, quick and careful, and waited for the joke. It did not come.

"Shall we begin?" he said, in an ordinary voice.

She nodded. He took a half-step back and let his shoulders drop, and became someone smaller, someone who had done something he wished he hadn’t. Roxanne played the one deciding, and for a minute she followed it mechanically, answering the way an actor answers.

Then something shifted.

"You keep saying you’re sorry," she heard herself say, and her voice had sharpened. "But you haven’t told me what you’ll do differently."

Liam paused. It was a real pause, longer than a joke would have allowed. "I thought if I said I regretted it enough, you’d believe me."

"That’s convenient for you."

"It is." He didn’t smile. "An apology that changes nothing is only a request to be forgiven. I know that. I’m asking anyway."

The room had gone quiet. Nobody coughed. Roxanne realised she had stopped breathing, and that the words coming out of her had been sitting a long time behind her teeth. She felt her hands go cold. She said nothing more.

"Thank you," the coordinator said softly. "That will do."

Roxanne stepped back, unsettled by how easily it had come.

During the break she poured herself a cup of water from the jug at the side of the room and stood facing the mirrors, away from everyone. After a minute Liam appeared at her elbow. He did not tease, and he did not speak until she did.

"Did the prompt bother you?"

"It reminded me of things I’d rather not revisit at a drama workshop."

"I’m sorry it landed badly. Neither of us knew what was on the card."

"You didn’t do anything wrong."

He nodded. For a moment he seemed to weigh something, turning his own cup between his hands. "You were good, you know. Not because you sounded angry. Because you knew what the character needed."

She looked at him sidelong. "Was that a genuine compliment?"

"Don’t spread it around. I have a reputation."

She smiled despite herself. It was the first easy thing she had felt in ten minutes. His humour had not pushed her toward anything. It had simply left a door open, and let her choose whether to walk through.

The final exercise gave each pair three random words. Theirs were crown, rain, and midnight.

"Two royal siblings," Liam proposed at once. "Arguing over who has to attend a dreadful formal dinner."

"Yes," Roxanne said. "But I’ve stolen the crown."

"Why?"

"Because I’m tired of being told how to behave."

His eyes lit. "Then I’ve been sent to retrieve it."

They went at it like two cats on a wall. She hid the crown under imaginary cushions, behind an imaginary curtain, and finally inside her imaginary coat. He accused her of treason, theft, and bad manners, in that order. She accused him of cowardice, vanity, and a suspicious interest in her jewellery. They threw excuses at each other until the room was breathless with laughter.

Then, in the middle of an accusation, Liam stopped.

"I don’t want the crown," he said. His voice had dropped. "I don’t care about the crown. I just want you to stop making decisions that put you in danger."

Roxanne looked at him. She felt the shape of the scene turn in her hands. "Then try asking what I want," she said, "instead of deciding for me."

A silence. Liam held her gaze, then smiled, slowly. "Fair. What do you want?"

"To leave. Before midnight. Through the kitchens."

"I’ll bring the lantern."

"You’ll bring the cake."

"Obviously."

The room broke into applause. Roxanne turned to find, to her surprise, that she was grinning, flushed and breathless and happier than she had been all day. She had not planned a word of it.

The coordinator caught her on the way out. "I hope you’ll come back for another session."

"I’ll think about it," Roxanne said, which was considerably warmer than her original plan to never return.

Liam fell into step beside her in the corridor. The lamps were low, and the building was quiet.

"You know, we make a rather good team."

"We make a tolerable team."

"That’s practically a love poem, coming from you."

"Don’t get excited. I say nice things about the cafeteria food sometimes."

He laughed, then glanced at her. "Would you have enjoyed it as much with someone else?"

She considered the question honestly. "Probably. But I’d have enjoyed it differently."

He did not fish for more. He only nodded, and when they reached the junction where the corridors split, he lifted a hand and turned left.

She was halfway to the dormitory when her phone buzzed with a message from the coordinator.

The workshop participants voted for their favourite improvisation. You and Liam’s royal-sibling scene won! Would you both be willing to perform a longer version at next week’s student showcase?

Roxanne stopped in the middle of the path.

An hour ago she had agreed only to consider attending another workshop. Now she was being offered a performance.

And before she had finished reading, a second message appeared on her screen. Liam, from somewhere down the corridor, already typing.

We’d be delighted!