Celia Marsh has not missed a performance in thirty years. Twice honored, permanently untouchable, she is the definite article of the English stage, and she is forty-nine years old with an ankle she is lying about and a memory that has started to leave white rooms in the middle of her best speech.
Wren Halloran has understudied her for a decade. Ten years in the wings. Two thousand nights. Never once on.
Then the stage lift sticks at nine inches, and everything Celia has built comes down in front of nine hundred people. By the end of the week, one role has two names on the dressing room door, both the same size, and Wren has laid a strip of yellow tape down the middle of the only room Celia has left.
They are rivals. They are supposed to be rivals. Nobody warned either of them what happens when the only person who can truly see your work turns out to be the only person who can see you.
But Broadway does not buy a time share on a star. There is one Constance in the spring, and both women know it, and each is keeping a secret that will decide the other’s life.
Some borders are made of tape. Some are made of thirty years.
Rivals to Lovers • Star & Understudy • Forced Proximity • Sapphic Romance • Secrets & Second Chances