Page 46 of Best Supporting Actor

Tag watched Jay move through the blocking for the scene with Henry. Henry wanted to try something a bit different, and Jay dutifully paced through the new suggestion. Then Bea was chipping in, and Freddie was flipping through her prompt book, making hurried notes. Tag was only half listening to what was being said, his attention taken up with how Jay was moving, his fluid grace, his expressive face.

Within himself, Tag recognised something shifting, a sudden switch in perspective that left him remembering, in bemused embarrassment, those months after they first met, when he’d looked at Jay and seen nothing but an over-privileged, condescending adversary…

“Tag, come here, will you? I want to try something.” That was Henry, beckoning him over.Shit. Tag felt a stab of panic even as he lurched up from his seat and hurried over. He should have been listening properly instead of navel gazing.

“Yeah?”

“You remember what we were planning when Jay gets to the end of this monologue, when it’s your line?”

“Yeah, I’m going to be sitting in the dark, stage left, waiting for the spotlight to come to me.” The instant the spotlight hit Tag, Jay’s side would go dark, taking the audience from Sassoon in the present to Owen in the past.

Henry nodded, but he was frowning. “It’s too static,” he said. “It needs more movement. It needs to be moredynamic.”

“I think you’re right,” Freddie said, tapping her pen against her chin. “That lighting break—it’s a bit clichéd, isn’t it?”

Beside her, Bea bristled, probably because the lighting direction was in the script. “I think it could be very effective,” she said defensively.

“Oh, it’seffective,” Freddie said agreeably. “Clichés are popular for a reason. The question is, is it the effect you want? You’re basically splitting the scene by switching the spotlight from Sassoon to Owen, but it’sonescene, isn’t it? That’s how I read it.”

Bea’s brow pleated in a frown, but she didn’t disagree.

Henry was nodding. “The scene needs to drive forward when Jay’s monologue ends, not stop and start again. We want continuity from Jay’s last line into Tag’s first one.” He looked at Bea, his gaze searching, as though willing her to understand.

“I see what you mean,” she said at last, turning to Tag and Jay. “What do you think?”

Tag, aware that he’d missed some of what had been said earlier, was relieved when Jay spoke up first.

“I agree. Those last couple of lines are soangry. Sassoon’s not just remembering the past. He’s feeling it in the moment. He’s saying ittoOwen.”

“Yes,” Henry said, pointing at Jay. “Yes. So, perhaps we begin to illuminate Tag’s side of the stage while you’ve still got a few lines to go? Maybe starting from the line about the ward at night?Silence falls. But soon after…” Shouldering out of his threadbare, oversized cardigan, he handed it to Tag. “Try this. You’re taking off your dressing gown, about to go to bed, pottering around a little. Bedtime routine stuff. And then”—he stilled, thinking—“then when Jay starts the line,Real or not, the dead haunt me to madness,you show the audience something. A moment of vulnerability.”

Tag glanced at Jay. He was listening intently to Henry, but as though he felt Tag’s attention, his gaze flickered to him, and their eyes met briefly. Tag felt a rare, brewing excitement, deep in his belly.

Dragging his gaze back to Henry, he said hoarsely, “What then? Does Jay stay on his side of the stage, looking over at me? Does he come to my side of the stage?”

Henry cocked his head to one side. “What doyouthink?”

That was a typical Henry move, Tag was discovering. He shared a lot of ideas but he also asked a lot of questions, seeming endlessly fascinated by everyone else’s views. Honestly, it was kind of thrilling for a young actor. Tag would never have guessed that someone of Henry’s reputation and experience would be so open to his ideas.

Buzzing now, he thought about it. At last he said, “I think he should cross the stage,” he said. “Yank back the curtain on the past and walk right into it. Say the last line to Owen directly. I think it could be really powerful.”

“Yes,” Jay said urgently, pushing his glasses up to the top of his head. “Yes, I like that idea. That last line isforOwen, after all. Sassoon’s angry. Furious. It’s almost an accusation.”

Bea nodded. She still wasn’t smiling, but she looked less unhappy. “All right, let’s try it.”

Tag moved to the left side of the rehearsal space, trying to sideline the happy energy bubbling in his gut at the intoxicating exchange of ideas and to get into his Owen headspace. It was hard, though. This was why he wanted to act, why he had chosen this insane career. He was hit by a rush of deep affection for the people standing around him, eccentric Henry and forthright Freddie and clever, difficult Bea.

And Jay. Who had proven to be a surprisingly sensitive actor. Sensitive in a lot of ways, Tag mused, which you wouldn’t guess when you looked at the red carpet photos. Jay Warren, star ofLeeches, was impossibly gorgeous, and always—like his alter ego, Skye Jäger—exuded unassailable masculine confidence.

Tag had seen another side of him, though, that night in Jay’s hotel room, and the more Tag saw of him now, the less surprised he was that Jay had been so sensitive in bed. So… vulnerable.

And the more he regretted the way the evening had ended.

Jay pulled those sexy, horn-rimmed glasses back down onto his nose and ran his gaze quickly over the script one last time before tossing it aside and crossing the room to stand a good ten feet to the right of Tag.

Behind Tag, there was a thud, and when he looked round, it was to see that Freddie had just set a chair down behind him, a prop for later. She raised a brow at him and pointed at the baggy cardigan Henry had passed him—his dressing gown in this scene—which he was still holding. Hurriedly he pulled it on, imagining the minimal settings of a bedroom around him. A bed, a chair, a small mirror above a cracked sink in the corner of the room.

And then Jay began to deliver the monologue. Tag stared at him, rapt. He was doing it differently than the last time they’d read this scene, his tone more driven, less dreamy, giving the familiar words new tone, new nuance.