Finally Us

Scene 41

...and that's just what she did. Her feet were up on the edge of the balcony with music playing from inside her room, a glass of wine on the table paired with a bowl of popcorn and the script in her hands. This was her method - music, wine, popcorn or any other salty snack, a view (most of the time) and nothing else. Unlike most other actors, the music helped her concentrate and memorize everything. Reading over the scene on the paper in her hands, Laura popped another kernel in her mouth and played out the scene like she had it in her mind. She could see Magellan on the steel table getting the attention of a good doctor. She could see him treating her wound that Izel caused and stopping the blood from spilling out. She could feel his hands as they left the rag behind and brushed over the curve of her back onto her shoulder and down to her hand. She could see all of it in her mind and hoped it was going to play that well on the camera too. Picking up her glass of wine, Laura also grabbed the remote for the stereo, positioning it behind her to turn up the volume.

"Dude!" Ross came out of his room and leaned over the full wall between their rooms. "Turn it down."

"Nope. Not going to happen," she told him straight out, giving him a glance before going back to her script line by line.

"But it's distracting, Laur," he whined, his head sagging down. "I need quiet."

"And I need the music," she countered back, the drink flowing down her throat.

"How you can do that, I will never understand."

Laura smirked back at him before turning back to her script. She wasn't expecting him to jump over the wall and onto her balcony, but then again, she wasn't complaining either. "Not turning the music off," she still told him before he reached over her for the remote and turned it off himself.

"Ah, much better," he closed his eyes, the silence surrounding him again. "So, Magellan, how's that wound?"

She rolled her eyes, before becoming suddenly aware of just how close he was. What was going on? She never would have pushed him away before - because they were friends; best friends. Now, after their "date" last night, her body was sending her mixed signals and pushing him away now, she instantly regretted it. He pulled up the seat next to her, his feet up on the edge of the balcony right next to hers and enjoyed the view of Table Mountain. She watched as he didn't wait for her answer and instead got up and went back inside to her room, making some noise in the kitchen. Her eyes darted back to the script in her hands, going over the lines again and making sure she was retaining them. He would ask her how the wound was and she'd reply: "It hurts like hell."

"Izel's always had a stick up her ass," Ross came back onto the balcony, uttering the next line in the scene. "I'm sorry she did this to you. To Amunet," he looked out towards the view, his emotions overwhelming the scene. "I promise you he'll be okay. Sarah is a terrific doctor."

"But you don't like that type of medicine," she said, her voice softer as she imagined his hands on her skin and underneath her shirt.

"You're right, I don't, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work for some people. I'm gonna need you to take your shirt off."

Laura glanced back at the script and re-read the lines again. "Sorry, can we start that again? I want to do it differently."

"Sure," Ross nodded, gulping down the bottle of water he had grabbed from her kitchen. "From the top?"

So they did just that - five more times. Five more times that she read the lines differently and each time she didn't like how she was saying them or how she was performing them. They weren't hard lines; she knew them. She had known them by heart the second time they read through the scene and frustration was getting the best of her. Laura pulled her hair up from her face and her legs came down from the balcony ledge as she let out a short huff.