Page 143 of From Rivals to I Do

my head and it didn’t matter much at all.

“Oh, I wanted to give you this,” I start saying while I dig in my pocket for my wallet. “I saw it in the park yesterday. I think you should audition.”

She looks over the slip for the Barefoot in the Park audition and shakes her head.

“I can’t, I gave up acting,” she hands the slip back to me, but I refuse to take it.

“What is an audition going to hurt?” I argue, hoping she will give in and agree.

“There’s just too much going on for me to work on that right now,” she replies.

“Have you seen the movie?” I ask her and she shakes her head. “The movie is hilarious. It’s about a misfit couple doing everything they can to stay together

even though countless events are forcing them apart. It’s romantic and funny. The characters are all great.”

“You’re a real film buff, aren’t you?” she asks me, turning the attention off of herself.

“I am, but I also love the theater and think that you should audition.”

She sighs and rolls her eyes at me. “Fine,” she concedes. “I’ll audition. I doubt anything will come of it anyway.”

Chapter seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Charlee and I get home and I send her up to her room to play before bed as I cook dinner. I sit at the table and twist the audition slip in my hands, trying

to decide whether or not I should call and schedule one.

On the one hand, I love acting and I would give anything to do it again. On the other hand, I am raising Charlee all by myself now, and taking time off for

auditions, rehearsals, and performances would take a lot of time away from us.

But what could one audition hurt? Being on stage again and feeling the rush of eyes falling on you and being under the spotlight would make me happy.

I dial the number on the slip and call to get more information.

“Ronald Smith,” a man answers on the other end.

“Hi, my name is Rayne and I’m calling about the Barefoot in the Park auditions,” I reply, my nerves singing.

“Oh hi, yes. We have open auditions this Friday, but if you can’t make it that day, we can always schedule another time,” he happily responds. “Are you familiar with the play?”

“Only a bit, I am going to read it all before the audition though. Do you have a specific set of lines to read for or should I choose something?”

“The producer of the play is going to be our Paul Bratter, so if you’re reading for Carol, we’d ask you to prepare the elevator scene. But I can email you the

PDF with more information if you’d like.”

“That would be amazing, thank you.”

I give him my email address and we say our goodbyes. I let out a long exhale and searched for the script online. Reading over it, I can see why Leonard likes

it so much. It’s a comedy of errors, nothing goes right for the lovers in the play, but they continue fighting for their relationship, to be together in the end.

When I reach the elevator scene I read Connie’s lines aloud, figuring out the best way to annunciate each word to capture the mood. A woman so in love

she can’t bear to be away from her husband for eight hours. Whenever I have had more than two lines in projects in the past, I would try to remember moments

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