Going Viral

Chapter 25

September 7th

Everything seemed to be coming to fruition. The Halfbloods album dropped at midnight on Friday morning so Percy was lost in interviews, shoots and media appearances and Annabeth was on her way to her first Waitress rehearsal, if you could even call it that.

The auditorium was hauntingly empty when she arrived. The ghost light on stage was humming dutifully as Apollo unlocked the door and let them in, flicking all the switches to start the day. Like Annabeth, Kayla and Katie were part of the January cast change, alongside Luke and Butch who were switching from understudy and swing respectively and into full time parts. With them for today's rehearsal we're two of the current cast members to help them learn the blocking.

Annabeth's script was messy and well-worn with sticky tabs poking out of the top and pages colored with blue highlighter before their first rehearsal - she was nothing if not thorough.

"Starting from the top!" Apollo instructed, ushering everyone up onto the stage.

Waitress was a favorite of Annabeth's and so she liked to think she would pick up the blocking pretty well, but it's a lot more intricate than she had first imagined. After about four attempts at the opening sequence of imaginary pie ingredients, Apollo's helpless call of "Annabeth, the stage is covered in flour!" and many an apologetic wince, they resign themselves to going back to that scene at a later time and move on to Opening Up. Everything from there seems to run pretty smoothly. Kayla makes a wonderful Dawn, Annabeth notices as she watches the younger girl rearrange her glasses - which were certainly a character choice and not prescription, and she has the perfect southern accent to nail When He Sees Me. Of course, Kayla was professionally trained for this business. Annabeth's imposter syndrome settled into her gut and made her feel a little sick.

Or maybe the ill feeling appeared when she noticed the way Luke was looking at her.

His character, Dr Pomatter, didn't appear for a while and so Luke seemed to have made himself comfortable on the front row. Usually, Annabeth would take no notice in the way guys looked at her, she was determined to take no grief from anyone who only dared to sit and judge her. She never had time for guys that would look her up and down the way Luke was, let alone now that she was with Percy.

(The "I have a boyfriend" excuse has come in handy in a few sticky situations because apparently predatory men only seem to back off if they think they're overstepping the territory of a man they've never met, despite the wishes of the woman right in front of them. Of course, Percy would clench his fists and threatened to knock a guy out if they were to ever try something with a woman who was clearly uncomfortable, god forbid they ever tried anything at Annabeth, but they both knew full well that her years at summer camp meant she could pack a pretty lethal punch too and was more than capable of holding her own.)

Nevertheless, Luke's piercing eyes tracked her up and down and she did feel herself start to grow tense.

There first scene together is just dialogue and is easy enough for her to not rely upon her script, but Luke is already comfortably settled in the part and rattles through his lines with practiced ease. He moves around the doctor's bed and makes Annabeth feel dizzy from having to track him with her eyes. He's doing this to bother her, there's no chance the official blocking has Dr Pomatter dancing around his office like a lunatic to get Jenna's attention.

In contrast to Luke's infuriating behaviors, Butch makes her feel more than comfortable. Before they even start the scene, he asks if there's any moves she would rather he did or didn't do that would either help her get into character or trigger anything she'd rather keep hidden. Annabeth doesn't really care what he does, but she appreciates him asking. She supposed it must be common curtesy amongst actors playing abusive husbands on stage to make sure their scene partners are not actually distressed.

Butch appears to be an accurate enough depiction of his name with his rough looking, shaggy hair cut and heavily built body. She actively tries to separate him from any predisposing stereotypes she might hold of a man of his size and obvious strength in her head, but it isn't too difficult to do when he breaks character and beams at her like an excitable puppy waiting to play fetch.

It takes them nearly four hours to get through act one so Apollo calls it to a close as the cast would need a break before their performance later that day.

The entire cab right home, Annabeth quizzes herself on why Luke might've been looking at her like that.

1- He finds her attractive.
Annabeth found it rather disgusting, not only because she looked like a mess but also because he'd met her twice and already made her feel uncomfortable by the ways his eyes roamed her body.

2- She's reading too deep between the lines.
In actual fact, Luke doesn't even like her and she's definitely imagining all this creepy behavior.

3- Her hideous orange top is actually considered New York fashion. The shirt is a memoir of her days at a camp in Long Island and has certainly seen better days, but she holds the memories close to her heart. Why Luke felt the need to inspect her fluorescent shirt embroidered with a Camp Olympus logo, she wasn't sure, but it was certainly better than the alternative.

4- Luke was a creep.

Her extensive background checks on the entire Waitress cast and crew have told her that Luke is kind of a creep, his Instagram feed features many photos of him at bars and clubs with his laddish friends. She's sure there'll be something in his Waitress contract that requires him to hold a good public image but that doesn't mean he's a genuinely good person either.

Deciding it wasn't worth the fuss, Annabeth heads over to Percy's apartment like she had planned, stopping on the way there to collect her filming equipment. He'd agreed to take part in a few videos with her to help out her workload. Annabeth had been working extra hard to make sure she had enough footage stored up to be released during her Broadway run, so of course, filming with her favorite person is a necessity.

The title of the video 'boyfriend teaches me guitar' was inevitably going to attract viewers - titles that featured significant others always did, it was common knowledge that people loved to nose in on others love lives.

When the door to his apartment swings open, the smile that was on her face fell immediately.