Secured Best Play at Equity Library Theater of New York Summer Virtual Play Festival in NYC. LIV LIV LIV Please don’t leave me. About the Author Ashley Nicole Audette Ashley Nicole Audette: (Playwright) is a New York-born, Missouri based playwright. Latest productions include Crashing (Fabled Fox Theatrics), Better? (LCK Productions), Lights (MITF Summer), Second Chances (Grange Playhouse), Fishbowl (MITF Fall), Lights (Midwinter Madness), Free Love, (Actor’s Theatre Company), Light and Dark (Distilled Theatre Company), Happily Ever After (Short Play lab), The In-Between (Manhattan Theatre Rep), The Twisted Cross (Perchance to Dream). She has also had her first radio play Bluebird released on iTunes. She is currently part of the Kansas City Public Theatre Playwrights Round Table. Ashley is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College and a past student of ESPA. Ashley currently resides in Kansas City, Missouri.
Crashing
Dusk.
The ocean.
LIV sits, waiting on a beach towel,
with a bag.
Waves crashing.
Liv holds a note tightly in her
hand, fidgeting with it.
Waves crashing.
ALEX enters, in a disheveled tux,
blood dripping from his head.
ALEX
LIV
You’re late.
ALEX
Forgive me.
LIV
I don’t know.
ALEX
Forgive me. (moving closer to her)
Forgive me. (whisper)
Forgive me.
They embrace. Alex kisses Liv’s
arms, neck forehead, never her
lips.
LIV
(touching his head)
Are you alright?
ALEX
Just a scratch baby.
Waves crashing.
Do you. . .
ALEX
/I don’t.
Beat.
LIV
I, I brought it.
ALEX
(taking it from her)
(reading quickly)
It’s very well written.
LIV
You think?
ALEX
Of course.
LIV
Something isn’t quite right though. The last part.
ALEX
The last part.
LIV
It doesn’t, it’s not how, the sound of it.
ALEX
The sound.
LIV
Right.
ALEX
And you think. . .
LIV
/I know.
ALEX
You know that it’s off some how.
LIV
Yes. Of course you get it.
ALEX
Of course.
Waves crashing.
Are you sure?
ALEX
Oh Liv.
LIV
(takes a pocket square out of the bag,
dabbing the blood)
I want to fix this.
ALEX
(gripping her wrists)
You can’t.
LIV
(pushing him away)
How could you be so stupid?
ALEX
Livy.
LIV
No. (putting up her hands)
Why did you have to be the one that got to get away?
ALEX
I don’t have any answers.
LIV
Right. No answers. All you’ve left me with is a pit, so deep
in my stomach that no matter, no matter what I do, I can’t
seem to fill it. There is no peace. No sanity. Just holes,
holes burning themselves through the fragments of my heart
that are left.
ALEX
I can’t give you what you want.
LIV
And what is that exactly?
ALEX
A life. A, a partner that knows what the right thing to do
is.
LIV
What’s my favorite song?
ALEX
It’s not. . .
/How about color? What’s my favorite color Alex? Movie?
Coffee order? What is my biggest irrational fear? I know you
know every answer.
ALEX
It wasn’t enough.
LIV
Right. Not. enough. I’ve heard that a lot through my life.
It’s fitting it would come from you as well.
ALEX
No, you. You are perfection. More than anything I could have
wished for.
LIV
Not enough to stay.
ALEX
I should have stayed.
LIV
You got that time machine in your pocket?
ALEX
If I did, I wouldn’t even need a millisecond to go back and
fix what I broke.
LIV
How can you fix what you can’t even grasp? I’m just sand
falling through your fingers.
ALEX
You are the universe. My universe. And I messed it up. I
utterly blew it up.
LIV
That’s right. You did.
ALEX
And I want you to know that this isn’t the way to try to fit
these pieces together in a puzzle that has been outgrown.
LIV
It is. You’re here now.
ALEX
That’s not fair.
LIV
Nothing is fair in love and war.
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There
is no middle ground.
LIV
What do you call all of this then?
ALEX
In between.
Beat.
LIV
What happens now?
ALEX
Spoilers.
Waves crashing.
LIV
I’m so broken.
ALEX
You’ll heal.
LIV
How can you talk so lightly about your presence in my life?
ALEX
Because if I sit in your pain for a minute longer, my brain
will melt.
LIV
It’s selfish to want you to feel that pain. You must feel so
much all on your own.
ALEX
Yes. (beat)
Doesn’t make it right though.
LIV
No. But, both things can exist at the same time.
ALEX
I beg you not to do this.
LIV
Do what?
her bag, she chugs it down.
This isn’t some fucking Shakespeare play.
LIV
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love,
remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts. . . .
There’s fennel for you, and columbines.
ALEX
Please. This moment, you and me, here together, like this.
The stars sparkling in the sky, mother natures ocean
greeting us with her thunderous presence. Why are you
wasting this time?
LIV
(laugh)
Wasting time. Don’t you know all about that?
ALEX
Now I do. Not then. Not before.
LIV
But I was there. Before, before all of this, this
destruction, and darkness. I was there, with you. And you
couldn’t see it. You couldn’t see me. I did every possible
thing. And you still couldn’t see me.
ALEX
I couldn’t accept it. I wasn’t able to.
LIV
So why are you here then?
ALEX
You still have that power, even now. You needed me and I
came.
LIV
I hate you.
ALEX
I know.
LIV
I would of said yes by the way.
her bag.
You found it.
LIV
I did.
It looks good on you.
LIV
You looked good on me. Your light. Engulfing me, making me
feel, feel invincible. Flying through the air, able to feel
the stars and the ocean, smelling your peppermint tea mix
with my coffee brewing. It all would collide at full force
but some how making sense. We made sense. And now.
ALEX
And now it’s different.
LIV
What a throw away response.
ALEX
I’m just one person. I don’t matter.
LIV
You mattered to me.
ALEX
I told you, that whatever I say to you, it will not be
enough to show my regret or my mishandling of everything.
LIV
Mishandling.
ALEX
This is not how I thought this was going to go.
LIV
Me either.
Liv makes her way to the edge of
the water.
ALEX
A late night swim in our future?
LIV
Can you even do that?
ALEX
I don’t know. I would try for you.
LIV
I’ll see you soon.
I beg you to stay here with me.
LIV
I have to go.
water, Alex holds onto her tighter.
You are so much better than me. You are stronger, and this
is not what you think. Please.
LIV
I can’t, I can’t Alex. I had to let you go. Give me the same
courtesy.
ALEX
Think of Lisa.
LIV
Don’t do that.
ALEX
You want her to feel what you feel? That’s what you’ll do.
LIV
She’ll understand. I explained it all.
ALEX
And you think that will be good enough? Was it good enough
for you? (beat)
I know your whys, but this is coming from a place of anguish
rather than pain.
LIV
You don’t know me anymore.
ALEX
I know you. I know you more now, than I ever did.
LIV
planted)
edge of the water with her,
wrapping the blanket around them.
I’ll stay till the end.
Waves crashing.
Waves crashing.
End of scene.
Act 1
Scene 1
Hi.
ALEX
Liv removes a bottle of wine from
ALEX
She pulls out a small ring box from
ALEX
Liv opens the box, pulling out the
ring, sliding it on her own finger.
ALEX
Alex on his knees, wrapping himself
around her waist.
ALEX
Liv tries to move closer to the
ALEX
(shoves him off of her, but she stays
I can’t.
Alex takes the blanket, sits at the
ALEX
Waves crashing.