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“Who’s joking?” I gestured. “Unless that was my imagination?”
Nadia shook her head. “No, I definitely heard it too. Hold on.”
She walked to the ladder at the edge of the stage and began climbing. It was at least 30 feet to the catwalks. She took the steps carefully, planting each foot before moving on. When she reached the top she poked her head up so that it was even with the catwalk ground.
“You’re afraid of it being haunted,” I called, “but you’ll still climb up there to check?”
She looked around a few seconds before answering. “I’m afraid of the unknown. That scares me more than any potential ghost.”
“And the verdict?”
She climbed back down, letting go when she was ten feet off the ground and landing softly on her feet. “Nothing that I could see.”
“So the unknown remains the unknown,” I said in a spooky tone. “If you’re too scared to keep rehearsing…”
She jabbed a finger in my direction. “I never said that. Real or imaginary, a ghost isn’t going to stop me from practicing.”
I found myself smiling at her attitude. “Then let’s get back to it. From the top?”
The next few numbers in the show had us on totally opposite sides of the theater. I knew I was fishing for an excuse to be closer to her, but I couldn’t help but say, “How about we practice the lead’s track?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nadia said. “It’s pointless with Tatiana ahead of me.”
“You never know,” I insisted. “And as understudy, you have to be prepared. Come on, let’s go through it. It’ll help me with my part, too.”
The core story of The Proposition was about a woman—Jane—whose neighbor—Hector--offers her $10,000 a week to have an affair with him. But the secondary story setting up that premise was that the woman’s husband—Marshall—was pursuing a career as a musician. His lack of success left Jane as the sole income for their family, which is what leads her to accept their neighbor’s proposition.
I was playing the role of Marshall, the husband. Which meant I had several songs where I interacted with Tatiana. The song we had just practiced was a duet between Braden and Tatiana, the two leads, where Tatiana sung along with Braden while dancing with me. It was a haunting song of temptation and lust; her character was pining after Braden while dancing with her husband.
I queued up the previous song to play again. Nadia and I stepped up to each other and I took her hands in mine, as if we were beginning a waltz dance. Our bodies were just inches apart, and I could feel the heat coming off her chest. The music played, and then we began moving.
My fingers tingled where they touched hers, and I tried to focus on my steps rather than the heart-shaped face staring back at me, lips puckered and insanely kissable. She stared over my shoulder as we danced, focusing on anything but my face.
I didn’t have any lines in this song, but as a good rehearsal partner I began whispering Braden’s lines to give Nadia a baseline, so she wouldn’t have to imagine them in her head.
“You’re all that I’ve wanted,” I whispered, Braden’s lines.
“You’ve always been there,” she belted out in a singsong voice, glancing over her shoulder as if Braden were there to sing to.
“Your gaze leaves me haunted,” I said.
“My heart cannot bear!”
Her voice was crisp and clear and beautiful. After hearing Tatiana’s mediocre voice, Nadia’s was shocking. Thankfully there were a few moments in the song where I dipped Nadia, bringing my lips close to hers. The urge to kiss her was intense. How could a man hold her in his arms and not kiss those pouty lips?
I lifted her and whispered Braden’s first line of the next verse: “Our love can’t be flaunted…”
Nadia’s voice was like a songbird’s. “A proposition most fair.”
“Your lust is undaunted,” I whispered.
“My body does swear!”
She held the note of the last word as the music rose to a crescendo. I imagined the backup dancers reaching to the sky while Braden extended an arm toward Nadia, and she extended an arm away from me toward where he would be standing, still belting out the final note.
At the end of the song I was supposed to pull her back into a kiss, a reminder to the audience that my character was totally unaware of what was going on. For the first time since being cast for the show, I felt a stab of nervousness. Did she want to kiss during practice? Some actors preferred to perform all stage directions during practice, but others didn’t.
On cue, I pulled her back toward me, cutting off her note. Her chest heaved against mine as she caught her breath, full breasts warm and soft against my body. Her almond eyes bore into mine, wide with expectation.
