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I took a deep, shuddering breath. “No, I am not the saboteur. I’ve been dreaming of this opportunity… But not like this. Not at the expense of someone else.”
He nodded without hesitation. “I didn’t think so, but I had to hear it. I’m sorry.”
It was easy for me to smile once he was convinced. “If I were anyone else, I would think it’s me too.”
Atkins went to his desk and opened the top drawer. He pulled out the note from the saboteur. “They seem to have targeted Tatiana specifically. So you should be safe. But I can’t guarantee it.”
“I know,” I said. “The extra security funding gives me some peace of mind. Hey, about Ryan… He tried his best. He’s really upset that the cameras didn’t cover the sub-stage. He knows he messed up.”
“Ryan’s a good kid,” Atkins said. “But I had to fire him. The camera setup was his responsibility. It sucks, but someone had to be the scapegoat for the problems going on.”
I sighed. Part of me had hoped I would be able to convince him to give Ryan his job back. A foolish hope.
“I understand.”
“Let’s get back to rehearsal,” Atkins said, smiling behind his grey mustache. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. But you’d better tell Ryan to get the hell out of my theater. If I see him hiding back there in Andy’s booth again I’m calling the cops.”
I grimaced. “He just wanted to hear what your announcement was.”
“I know. That’s why I took pity on him. This time.”
“I’ll let him know. Hey, where’s Braden?” I asked. “I didn’t see him out there.”
“I got an email from him earlier. Said he had a family emergency and has to miss rehearsal. He should be back tomorrow.”
I followed Atkins back out toward the stage. I must have really fucked up if Braden was skipping rehearsal. How was I going to make things up to him?
A worse thought crept into my head: if I couldn’t make things up to him, how were we supposed to perform the show together?
More cold stares greeted me when I returned to the stage. Lots of the cast definitely thought I’d been the one to sabotage Tatiana. I tried to ignore it, but it created a hollow pit in my stomach.
“Nadia” Dorian exclaimed, rushing forward to wrap me in a big hug. His smell was sweet and musky. “Congratulations! You’re going to absolutely crush it, darling. I’m positive.”
“Thanks,” I said. His encouragement helped wipe away the accusing stares from everyone else.
The first act of The Proposition was all about Jane’s affair with the neighbor, Hector. But the second act featured Jane and her husband Marshall suddenly patching things up as his musical career finally took off. This helped set up the final act, when everything blew up in Jane’s face and she lost both men, and then overdosed on a bottle of poison.
Braden’s understudy stepped in tonight, but the two songs we were rehearsing were between Jane and her husband Marshall, played by Dorian. I was excited to get started, falling into the songs and steps I’d already worked hard to memorize.
Then I remembered that both of these numbers involved intimacy between our two characters.
One of the songs was a duet tango. Dorian and I danced around stage hand-in-hand, singing to each other as we reignited our love. We crushed it together; as soon as I started singing I forgot all about the rest of the cast suspecting me of sabotage. Halfway through the song, I had to perform that tango move where the woman wraps one leg around her partner while keeping the other leg extended, and he drags her across the stage. That required me to essentially dry hump Dorian on stage while singing about how much I wanted to fuck him.
“God, I’ve needed you,” he sang in a melodic voice. “My darling, my Jane…”
“I’ve needed you inside me,” I sang back, my entire body pressed against his. He was warm and hard with muscle. “There’s no one like you!”
“There is only you…” he sang back.
Something happened while we sang and danced together. Paradoxically, it wasn’t awkward. If anything, being forced into close proximity and to pretend to be a lustful married couple helped peel away the awkwardness that had come between us since kissing. I knew we were both acting, but it still made it all feel more… real. Like we were finally getting closure.
And as we moved around the stage, I could sense my feelings for him returning. Just like the character I was playing in the show.
We came to the end of the song. Dorian stared deeply into my eyes, and there was a shimmer of truth there. Like he’d been wanting to say these things all along. The music reached it’s climactic note.
Traditionally, most kissing scenes were faked during rehearsals. Just a light air-kiss to note the moment in the show, allowing the actors to avoid kissing each other dozens of unnecessary times.
Dorian puckered his lips in an air-smooch. But I leaned in and gave him a kiss for real.
