Free Premiere: A Love Story by Tracy Ewens

Always the sympathetic one, she said, “Oh Christ, hormones again?”
    “Good morning to you too. And my hormones are . . .”
    Carmen broke off and continued in Spanish. She did this a lot when she was angry, and Julie usually made her angry. They were different women to begin with and the fact that Julie was from New York made her that much more abrasive in Carmen’s eyes.
    “Julie,” Sam said, patting Carmen on the shoulder, “Carmen and I were talking, and I’m going to work on turning the large green wall into oleanders tomorrow. She has so many other things to work on, and her crew’s busy with the outside flower boxes, so I thought I’d help.”
    Julie looked at Carmen just as she said something under her breath.
    “Did she insult me in Spanish?”
    She then began doing a million things at once around her podium while Sam assured her that Carmen was really tired and would be fine after a little rest.
    “Okay, yeah, that’s fine if you’re sure you don’t mind helping with the oleanders. I don’t see why Gordon can’t project damn flowers on the bush wall with his lighting scheme, but since I can barely get him to light the stage correctly, I decided not to argue in this morning’s design meeting.”
    She huffed and looked at Sam. Sam was definitely starting to realize that everything, in Julie’s eyes, was poor Gordy’s fault. Must have been some breakup. Sam nodded and with that Julie turned, put on her headset, and was gone: lost in her world of shouted orders and professed disappointment.

Chapter Nine
    T he next day Sam walked into the theater prepared for oleander blossoms. She was ready to pick up a glue gun. It still struck her as ironic that she was adding finishing touches to a set of Peter’s backyard for a replay of her childhood. It was surreal actually. She opened the doors, letting the morning sunlight spill into the darkened theater. As the doors quietly closed behind her, it took a couple of minutes for her eyes to adjust. When they did, she stared at the stage stunned. Her stomach, empty of the breakfast she skipped, began to turn. The stage was lit cool blue and there were plants everywhere: a weeping willow, bamboo, and birds of paradise. Billowing green silk covered the stage. My God, he ’ s going to show everyone, Sam thought. She had hoped, based on what she’d read so far, that the play would stop just short of this scene from Peter’s life, her life.
    Overhead the sound guys were testing different levels of pounding thunder. Stagehands repositioned plants and fussed with the set, adjusting the details on one of the best days of her life. Sam’s heart raced into what felt like an anxiety attack. She had never had one, but she’d heard about them, and this seemed pretty close. She slid into a seat in the last row of the theater.
    The stage was set up as the Huntington and it was clearly going to rain; it couldn’t be any other scene. Peter was going to show all of Pasadena—and then most likely the entire country—something so private, intimate. Sam closed her eyes and tried to will the memory away, but it was too strong.
    Peter and Sam had been celebrating a victory over their medieval history professor. He was truly crazy, and his final exam had 300 questions. They had been studying for it since the first day of class and they had survived. Peter took Sam to lunch and then to their favorite place, the Huntington Library and Gardens, alone. Grady still wasn’t home from Stanford, and Peter had said he didn’t want to wait. It was the two of them, and it was a perfect day. They felt like a weight had been lifted. They were finally going to graduate. By the time they got through the exhibits in the galleries, the afternoon light descended diffusely through huge clouds. It didn’t yet look like rain, so they decided to go through the gardens quickly and see as much as they could. Sam remembered feeling exhilarated, running through each region like school kids on a