Superpowered Love 7: The Playhouse

By Katey Hawthorne

Summer has been Lily McBride's favorite time of year since she was a kid, because that's when the Brookesville Playhouse opens. Now that she works as their tech director, Lily wants more for her beloved Playhouse: a larger audience, a longer season, and exciting shows to draw new patrons.

This year, though, she also wants Genevieve Mason, a pretty starlet-in-the-making from the local university, recruited for the tech crew. Genny throws her heart and soul into the place too, adding her own dreams of representation to the 'must-have' list, and using her sweet voice and surprising flare for pyrotechnics to draw the crowds in droves.

They work so well together, it's not long before their summer crush blossoms into a steamy affair. Lily's falling hard, but always feels like Genny's holding something back. And then there's the dreaded Brookesville Arts Council—supposedly a support system for all things cultural, instead dragging the Playhouse down with their old-fashioned stubbornness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: KV Taylor
• Release date: Jul 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733372572

Katey Hawthorne

Katey Hawthorne loves queer romance. Originally from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, she currently lives in Pittsburgh with her family of one other human and many furry creatures. In her spare time, she enjoys travel, comic books, B-movies, loud music, video games, Epiphones, and Bushmills. Her favorite causes include animal rescue and bisexual representation in media. She is an unashamed fangirl and collects nerdy tattoos like she’s trying to prove it.

Book preview

Summer has been Lily McBride's favorite time of year since she was a kid, because that's when the Brookesville Playhouse opens. Now that she works as their tech director, Lily wants more for her beloved Playhouse: a larger audience, a longer season, and exciting shows to draw new patrons.

This year, though, she also wants Genevieve Mason, a pretty starlet-in-the-making from the local university, recruited for the tech crew. Genny throws her heart and soul into the place too, adding her own dreams of representation to the 'must-have' list, and using her sweet voice and surprising flare for pyrotechnics to draw the crowds in droves.

They work so well together, it's not long before their summer crush blossoms into a steamy affair. Lily's falling hard, but always feels like Genny's holding something back. And then there's the dreaded Brookesville Arts Council—supposedly a support system for all things cultural, instead dragging the Playhouse down with their old-fashioned stubbornness.

The Playhouse

Superpowered Love 7

By Katey Hawthorne

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the author, except for the purpose of reviews.

Cover designed by Natasha Snow

This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

Third Edition July 2019

Second Edition April 2019 Less Than Three Press

Copyright © 2019 by Katey Hawthorne

Printed in the United States of America

Digital ISBN 978-1-7333725-7-2

The Playhuose

Superpowered Love – Book Seven

Katey Hawthorne

Part I: God, That's Good!

I tried to stop myself, but it just popped out: "But we always do five shows at the Playhouse. Since I was three years old!"

Since before you were born, honey, Mitzi Abercrombie said. She sat there waving a Chinese paper fan in front of her melting face like some kind of faux Southern belle. Not for the first time in my life, I wanted to shake her and say, You live in Appalachia, not Savannah!

Luckily, her sister, Lettie, slightly less melty in the face but miles more sensible, elbowed her. "Lily knows that, Mitzi. She just means she can remember it since she was three. I remember too, sweetie. Your daddy playing King Arthur. Had to sit up in that papier-mâché tree for an hour while the audience filtered in, poor thing."

And we still hadn't managed to get a curtain, seventeen years later. Not sure how I held my temper to keep from saying that, but it was probably a good thing I did.

Why doesn't Reggie come to the shows anymore? Daniel Wesley, aka Wes, asked. His slicked-back hair and polyester suit made him look even sweatier than the Abercrombie sisters. Like a long, tall, waxy monument to that guy you expect to see driving a large van with tinted windows around the neighborhood. Oh, but he'd lived in New York City once; he had culture. Bow the fuck down.

Ooookay, enjoy your stay here at Greendale Community College, Britta.

He's in California, I said sharply.

Mitzi made a fake sad face. Of course, after your mama died—

Can we talk about this schedule? Four is not enough. And one of them is the kids' play. I fucking hated the kids' play. A bunch of prima-donna twelve-year-olds and their stage mothers. Not my idea of a good time. Not even when I was one of the twelve-year-olds myself.

It makes the most money, pointed out Shae—the only other person in the room under forty, the theater professor at Trinity College, and the artistic director at the Brookesville Playhouse for the last three years.

She'll be canonized someday, I swear.

I'm not directing it, and I don't care what we do. I leaned back in my seat. It was a sulk, but whatever.

Denise can do it, Mitzi volunteered.

I rolled my eyes. Fine. She can pick the show, then.

It's not your choice to make, Wes, said, beady eyes glistening. This isn't a hereditary position, Lily; you don't get to just pick up where your father left off in the arts council.

Yes, the big bad Brookesville Arts Council. Curators of the tiny museum down by the river, heads of the cultural festival downtown every fall, and dictators to the Playhouse about how it got to distribute its meager funds each summer production season.

I wanted to flip the table in his face.

But I needed this to work. I needed the Playhouse to do more than just survive, to thrive. So I gritted my teeth and said, I can bring in the patrons if you let me help set up the schedule. I know what people like. I'm not asking you to pay me any more than last summer; I'm just asking for a chance to try it my way.

Four shows, Wes said.

I looked at Jake Altmann, once upon a time the Will Parker to my dad's Curley McLain, the Nathan Detroit to his Sky Masterson.

He smiled slightly, then turned his attention to the rest of the solemn arts council. "Four—I'd rather do four right than five badly. But we should let Lily have input. None of us knows how to draw in the young people. I think she's right about Sweeney Todd for the opener."

Mitzi snorted. They don't know how to appreciate the theater anyhow.

I bit down on my tongue—hard. It was gonna be a long, long summer.

*~*~*

"I thought your Aunt Mitzi was going to collapse when I suggested Pippin," I said with a laugh.

Denise giggled. "I'm glad you won that battle, at least. I used to watch the seventies movie of it all the time. I didn't realize how bad it was."

"Almost made them grateful for Sweeney Todd." I sipped on my Honeyed Fox and turned my face up to the sun. I'd elected not to start the day's chores until the new crop of summer recruits arrived. Denise was technically too young to work for the Playhouse, but since she was related to the Abercrombie sisters, she was allowed to hang out. Which would've annoyed me if she weren't so damn helpful—not to mention talented. It wasn't often a Broadway voice came through West Virginia's northern panhandle, but she just might've been one.

We didn't need to use power tools for anything today, so whatever. A beer wouldn't kill me.

I think Mitzi must not even know what it's about, or you never would've gotten that past her. Denise paused. Do I even want to know how we're gonna build that barber chair?

If you figure it out, tell me. Working on a few ideas, but nothing solid. Just as I said that, a car appeared at the end of the gravel road. To get to the Playhouse, visitors have to drive through a few miles of gorgeous rolling park, complete with golf courses, public pool, and duck pond bobbing with paddle boats. And there it is: a gigantic two-story barn, slightly in need of re-siding, but otherwise in great shape.

It served as the local summer-stock theater. Obviously. Currently with me lounging on the ramp to the upstairs—read, the theater stage and house proper—in cutoffs and a tank top, and Denise on the stairs across from me in a bikini top and track pants.

Whose car is that? Denise sat up straighter to peek through the railing. Is Cy coming back?

Yeah. I thought you knew, I said. Is that his car?

Uh, yeah. Hottie pants. She was clearly enraptured by the sight of the raggedy old Toyota.

He's your Anthony, I said. She'd landed the part of the yellow-haired milksop Johanna and couldn't be more pleased. Except, of course, that Cy was playing her starry-eyed beau.

"Well, he was in stuff last year. He didn't live here," she said.

Lucky us, I mumbled under my breath.

But sure enough, skinny white boy Cy Nowak emerged from the driver's side…and he'd even grown Pippin hair. Oh God. It was almost to his shoulders, curly, brown, and shiny. So very painfully seventies.

You know they did a revival, right? I pointed out. You could've gone with modern hair, if you're angling for the part.

The music's so seventies, though, he drawled, stretching his long, lanky form like he'd been cooped up in that car for days. 'Sup, Lily? Good to see you, girl.

We'd been in Children of Eden together last summer. God, I hated that show, but it had drawn in the religious types, which the council had deemed both moral—unlike my picks this year—and good for business. And the music wasn't bad, I guessed.

Yeah, it had been so good for business that we could only afford four shows this summer, apparently.

Yeah? Looking forward to spending your summer in a trailer that's falling apart? I took another long drink of my beer. For the record, I am not one of those assholes who makes fun of trailers; trailers are awesome affordable housing, and anyone who says otherwise has immediately pegged themselves as an overprivileged dick in my books. But this particular trailer was someone's rickety cast-off on cinderblocks behind a barn in a state park. You can imagine the state of it.

You got more beer, I'll spend my summer wherever you want, he said with a lazy chuckle. That was the thing about Cy—I could never tell if he was actually constantly high or just sounded like it. The fact that he generally bathed in patchouli didn't help. Was it the oil, or did I detect a faint lingering smell of cannabis? Oh, the mystery.

I was so busy greeting him with snark that I only just noticed the starlet-pretty, petite black girl who popped out of the passenger side. Which was remarkable, since she was lovely—and somehow familiar. The kink in her dark, bouncy hair was one hundred percent natural, unlike Cy's knock-off perm. Large, honey-colored doe eyes surveyed the barn—not with wonder or judgment or anything else I expected to see there, just surveying.

You must be Genevieve, Denise said, tearing her gaze off Cy for long enough to hold out her hand to the new girl. I'm Denise. I don't work here, technically. I should, but I'm not eighteen yet.

Genevieve took her hand and squeezed it. Oh, you're our Johanna?

Denise nodded happily and glanced at Cy, probably hoping he looked pleased. But his face was buried in his back seat now. Denise managed not to look too disappointed as she said, Right. Are you in it, or are you a techie like Lily?

Genevieve looked at me as she took her hand back, smiled, and said, Hi.

Hey, I replied, feeling incredibly