Unlikely Stage Partner: A Chance Encounter on Stage and Behind the Scenes

She sat down in the first row of seats, as her friend -- who was working as stage manager for the show -- had requested. There would be audience participation, and they needed to make sure there were enough people in the front row to give the actors a selection. She sat in the middle section, but chose an aisle seat. A group of her friends sat in the row next to her, a blonde boy immediately to her left, taking up her attention until curtain.

The show was very humorous, and she was not ashamed to laugh openly. Then, one actor jumped off the stage and walked up the aisle next to where she sat, resting an arm on her shoulder as he spoke. He was almost perfectly tall, 5'11” maybe 6', and a tad on the scrawny side. To top it all off, he was a movie star, which also meant that he was the reason most of the people in the audience were there. Not her, though. She was there for the show.

When he finished the proper line, he grabbed her arm, "quick, you must help me!" He said, a bit too dramatically, but in a manner which fit perfectly with this farce of a show. As she followed him up to the stage, he bent down and whispered, "You’re not afraid of heights, are you?" She shook her head and smiled. The truth was that she loved heights.

Following his lead, she stepped onto a ledge about three feet off the stage floor and boosted herself up to another two or three feet above that. He had reached down to help her, but she was already up. Latching themselves onto a safety wire that tracked the course of the journey they would be on, they began to scoot sideways along the ledge. The scene went on in front of them.

Once they reached a place where they were hidden behind the flats of the stage, he slowed, standing on the ledge and moving up to yet another. Without hesitation, she climbed up as well. "This still okay?" He asked, referring to the height. A smile spread across her lips as she nodded, unable to help feeling like she was on an adventure. They began to scoot sideways again.

As they crossed back out in front of the flat, the audience laughed. They were supposed to be pretending to sneak up into a castle of some sort, and those still on stage did not notice them crossing. Again, they were back stage.

"You see the sword and shield there?" He whispered, pointing to props hanging against a wall.

"The ones you used in the first act?" It was the first time he heard her speak, and her voice was sweet and gentle, better than he imagined it.

"Yeah." There was a surprised smile on his face, as if he couldn't believe that she had paid such close attention. "They're so cool. I really want to keep them, like a souvenir of my first real touring stage show."

"I'm sure if you asked for them you could get 'em. They're wooden, so they'd probably either get thrown out or stolen by one of the prop crew members anyway. Everyone deserves a good memento." While she spoke, he watched her, having been enticed by her smile since the moment he first saw her from the stage, laughing out in the audience. She was one of the only girls who had actually taken her eyes off of him during the show.

Two more rounds about the stage and they were at least twenty feet in the air. "Only one other girl has made it up to this spot; they all get too scared before now. No one's made it all the way up, yet."

This time, her smile was a bit mischievous. "Challenge accepted." He stepped back to let her climb ahead of him up a tiny ladder which more resembled a rock climbing wall than anything else. She made it up and stood on the small roofing of the outdoor theater. To his delight, she had laughed quietly the entire way up.

He quickly stood behind her. "Careful, I almost fell off the first couple times I got up here."

"I'm pretty sure that's one of the things you're not supposed to say. You know like 'don't look down' or 'we probably should have had you sign a waiver' or 'is now a bad time to tell you that this safety cable can't hold your weight'." They spoke in whispers, making sure the audience members below couldn't hear them.

"Oh, I don't think the safety cable will be a problem. If it can hold me, it can definitely hold you. What do you weigh, like a hundred pounds?" His eyes traveled up and down her small frame.

"One-oh-three, actually." A million jokes had always come about because of her weight, or lack thereof. At 5'5 she looked rather thin, but not sickly so. Still, she ate constantly and rarely gained weight.

He laughed at her jest, “You’re not one of those salad-eaters are you?"

"A what?"

"Salad eater. A girl who only gets dressed up salads where ever she goes and counts her calories and won't eat carbs or a million other things."

"Oh, no. No way. I love meat and barbeque sauce, not to mention peanut butter and jelly is just about the best thing ever invented. I welcome carbs, and honestly, I could probably eat more than you." It took effort for him to keep the laughter under his breath at the air of playful arrogance in her voice.

"That can't even be humanly possible."

She was still smiling. "I guess you'd have to see it to believe it." As soon as she spoke those words, he felt the desire to do just that. Would it be weird to ask this girl to dinner after the show?

They reached

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THE END