“What?” Stevie frowned, glancing between her two friends.
“Van,” Adri said. “I was going to try and butter her up with a scone or something first.”
“Stevie can get her scones for free,” Vanessa said, leaning in to kiss Stevie’s cheek. “Good to see you. Like I said, go easy on her.”
And with that declaration, Vanessa squeezed Ren’s shoulder in farewell, then all but flounced her way out the door and into the cloudy June afternoon, Bitch’s patrons’ eyes trailing her as she went.
Stevie looked at Adri.
Adri smiled.
“So,” Stevie said.
Adri waved toward the now-vacant chair. “Sit down, will you?”
“As long as you help me untangle these lights, or I may have to sic Effie on you.”
“God, anything but that,” Adri said, lifting her coffee mug to her lips. The drink had to be cold by now, but Adri never minded cold coffee.
Stevie slid the chair around to the opposite side of the table—no way was she same-siding it with her ex, best friends or not—and plopped the lights onto the table. Adri leaned forward and grabbed a knot, working the wires with her long fingers.
“How’s it going lately?” she asked, eyes on the lights. “Had any auditions?”
Stevie hated this question. The answer was always yes. She was a relentless auditioner, constantly spanning Portland all the way up to Seattle. She’d even driven to Vancouver two months ago. The real question was not whether she’d auditioned, but whether she was landing parts.
Which was a definitive and depressing no. Granted, she didn’t really cast her net very widely. She knew she needed to expand, maybe even get the hell out of the Pacific Northwest, go to LA, New York, Chicago, but the thought of taking those trips alone, much less moving, made her stomach feel like it just might take up permanent residence outside of her body.
“Here and there,” she said, keeping her gaze on the colorful bulbs. A perfectly satisfying, if vague, answer.
“So you’re not working a show right now?” Adri asked.
Jesus. Adri always did like to say it plain. Stevie never knew how to say anything plain.
“Um, well, no, not right now. I’m—”
“Oh thank god,” Adri said, blowing out a breath and sort of crumpling onto the tabletop for a second. Then she sat up, posture totally straight. “Sorry. Van’s right. I’m a little desperate here.”
Dread filled Stevie’s gut. Auditions. Roles. She knew where this was going.
“Adri,” she started, but Adri leaned forward and grabbed her hands.
“Please,” she said. “I need you.”
“I told you, I’m done with community theater.”
“I know, I know, and I get it, Stevie. I really do, but the Empress . . . she’s in trouble.”
Stevie paused. “What?”
Adri pressed her eyes closed. “I’m in trouble. Rent has skyrocketed, I can barely pay my staff, and with inflation, people aren’t going out to shows as much anymore. All that on top of our somewhat niche take on things, the Empress is suffering.”
Adri Euler was the only female theater owner in the city, not to mention the only lesbian theater owner. For the last several years, she’d worked hard to get the Empress off the ground, a tiny venue just south of downtown, and had managed to staff a few regular actors while leaving room for community roles in every production. The Empress specialized in queer interpretations of classics—gender-bent, swapped, and inverted, as well as trans, lesbian, gay, bi, pan, ace, and aro character arcs woven into familiar cishet plots.
The Empress was a queer institution in Portland. A safe space, a community. A home for many.
“I had no idea,” Stevie said.
“Because I’ve only told Vanessa,” Adri said.
Stevie nodded, but she couldn’t help feeling a pang of loss. She was no longer Adri’s confidante. And while Vanessa and Adri had always been close, it still stung to hear Stevie was now an outsider when it came to Adri’s emotions.
“Right,” Stevie said.
“But I’ve decided to turn this next production into a fundraiser. We’re doing Much Ado.”
Stevie tilted her head, smiling. Adri smiled back and, for a second, the last six months hadn’t happened. The last six years, even. Instead, they were best friends who hadn’t yet crossed into romance, sitting in that crappy apartment with the ant problem that the four of them shared senior year. Stevie and Adri were sprawled on the plaid couch they’d found on the street and doused in three bottles of Febreze, reading through Much Ado in order to “reimagine” the iconic play for their senior thesis.
“This would be so much better if everyone was queer,” Stevie had said, reading yet another of Beatrice’s diatribes at Benedick. “Take out the toxic masculinity, add a little good old-fashioned gay yearning, and—”
Adri had slapped her hand onto Stevie’s leg. They looked at each other, both of their eyes wide, and that was it. Adri kissed her—really kissed her, for the first time—and they spent the weekend huddled together, nitpicking every line, blocking out every scene, and noting facial expressions to turn the play into something funny and familiar, yet entirely new.
A few years later, the Empress was born.
“Always a crowd-pleaser,” Stevie said now.
“Exactly,” Adri said softly, squeezing Stevie’s fingers. “And we’re going all out—a sit-down dinner on closing night after the final performance, a silent auction, you name it. Except . . . I need butts in the seats for this to work. I need people to buy tickets to even be able to put it on.”
Stevie pulled her hands free. She couldn’t think straight while being touched. Never could.
“And?” she said, going back to a particularly stubborn knot in the wires.
“And,” Adri said, “I need you to play Benedick.”
Stevie closed her eyes. She fucking loved Benedick. He was an asshole, sure, but playing him as a queer person, opposite a queer Beatrice . . . well, there was no doubt that would be quite a show.
“You’ll bring in our supporters,” Adri said. “The community loves you and, fine, go ahead and deny it, but Stevie Scott is a name in this town.”
Stevie scoffed. If she was a name in Portland’s theater world, she wouldn’t be sitting in a coffee shop with a potentially degrading swear word in the name, untangling rainbow twinkle lights for a cranky practicing witch from Liverpool.
“You are,” Adri said firmly. “You’re an amazing actor, you’ve done dozens of shows all over this town, ninety percent of them to rave reviews. With you on the bill, we could pull the crowd we need.”
Stevie didn’t look at her. Couldn’t. She knew if she did, she’d cave and say yes, and hell, who was she kidding? She was going to say yes anyway. No was never a very easy word for Stevie when it came to Adri, when it came to anyone, really. She could handle the little stuff—do you want a soda, have you seen this movie, do you like onions on your pizza—but the big stuff, the stuff that caused disappointed expressions and down-turned mouths . . . yeah, she sucked at that part. Her anxiety would flare, and she’d spend the next week convinced her friends hated her, she’d die alone and miserable, and wasn’t worth a damn to anyone. Then, when said friend or family member eventually got ahold of her to tell her that, no, of course they didn’t hate her, why in the world would she think that, her anxiety would crest once again, convincing her that she was terrible at understanding people and could never trust her own brain to make heads or tails of any social situation.