M.L. Rio

He paused, gazing upward in soft surprise, sadness like drops of blue in both his eyes. Then he sighed and, smiling, shook his head.

James was in love with Wren, and I was blindly, savagely jealous.

acters we played as if they were our own.

“A good Shakespearean actor—a good actor of any stripe, really—doesn’t just say words, he feels them. We felt all the passions of the char

But a character’s emotions don’t cancel out the actor’s—instead you feel both at once

You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.

My eyes flicked from one of his to the other. Gray like steel, gold like honey.

He stared up at me for a moment, then lifted his head and pulled me down to meet him. It was almost a brotherly kiss, but not quite. Too fragile, too painful. Soft whispers of surprise and confusion swept through the audience. My heart throbbed, and it hurt so badly that I bit his lip. I felt his breath catch and let him go, lowered him to the floor again. Silence lingered overlong. Whatever Camilo’s line was, he had forgotten it, and so I spoke out of turn. “List a brief tale; / And when ’tis told, O that my heart would burst!”

It was just a kiss, but God, it hurt like hell

He hasn’t aged so much as discolored, the way old dogs do.