“Are you going to tell me what happened with Micki?” Sophie asked quietly.
“She was threatening to make trouble with Kari about our relationship.” Jules shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I told her we weren’t together, and it was none of her damn business.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophie said, sitting up. “That was really shitty of her.”
Jules huffed in anger. “I don’t know why she even cares.”
“I think she’s probably jealous.” Sophie wished she had something to wear other than her slightly rumpled stage costume, but since she didn’t, she stood and started redressing.
“Jealous of what?” Jules asked, tugging the last pins from her hair. It hung over her shoulders in unruly curls, and it was all Sophie could do not to touch them.
“Of us,” she told Jules. “I’ve seen her looking at you.”
Jules’s eyes widened. “I…well,shit.”
“Yeah, you might want to watch your back around her.”
Jules finger-combed her hair, yanking angrily at an overlooked pin. “I will.”
“Jules…”
“Look, I’m sorry about that.” She gestured toward the couch where they’d just had sex. “But I can’t do this with you. It’s too painful.”
Sophie tugged her top over her head, wishing for a shower in her dressing room like the one she’d seen in Jules’s bathroom. “I’m sorry for a lot of things, but I’m not sorry for this.” She drew her in for one last kiss. “I just wish it could have ended differently.”
Jules turned away, but not before Sophie saw the tears swimming in her eyes. “It never would have worked for us anyway.”
Sophie paused, one hand on the door. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A lifetime of competing for the same roles, you getting jealous if I land a better part than you? It would have destroyed us.” Jules didn’t sound angry anymore, just tired, as if she’d fought a battle and lost, and somehow, that hurt even worse.
Sophie’s skin burned with shame as Jules voiced her deepest, darkest fear. “I wouldn’t…”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these last few weeks,” Jules said. “And I keep coming back to that first day of rehearsals, how bitter you were.”
“I didn’t know you then.”
Jules’s expression hardened. “And that made it okay?”
“No,” Sophie admitted. “And for what it’s worth, that’s one of the things I’m most sorry for.”
Jules just shook her head, opening the door to her dressing room.
And then, since there was nothing else for her to do—or say—Sophie left.
23
Jules was sure there would be no one left at the stage door by the time she made it out, dressed now in jeans and a sweater beneath her wool coat, all remnants of sex and tears scrubbed from her skin. But a pair of women stood waiting, playbills in hand, and honestly, how was this her life now?
“Hi,” Jules said as she approached them.
“Hi,” they echoed, holding out their playbills for her to sign.
“You were great,” one of them said. “As a queer woman and a Latina, I can’t tell you how much it meant to see myself represented on stage like that.”
“I’m so glad,” Jules told her as she took the playbill—thankful she’d been doing this long enough to remember to bring a marker outside with her—and signed her name with shaking fingers. She signed both playbills, thanked the women for their support, and started walking home. Except she wasn’t quite ready to go home.
She had some emotional steam to burn before she could relax and sleep. Maybe she ought to stop by Dragonfly for a drink. Alcohol sounded like an excellent idea, a necessary one, even, but she wasn’t in the mood to see Josie or anyone else she knew. Tonight, she wanted to be a nameless face in a crowded room.
