Second least?
Who’s the least?
Aleksandr
Mine.
“Ow!”I hissed as a pin struck me in the side. I turned to the costumer, who looked at me unapologetically, a bunch of other pins held between her teeth. “That hurt!”
“Beauty is pain,” she said in a thick Russian accent that reminded me of the one Alek got whenever he was in a jealous mood—all angry that Raphael had to touch me while we danced. I guessed it was a good thing that he hadn’t been present for any of the balcony scene rehearsals.
Yet.
Because it was only a matter of time before Madame Germaine made Raphael and me actually rehearse the kiss. We’d gotten away with forehead touches up until this point, but she was insistent upon a true declaration of love for the show, which was less than three weeks away.
Alek was going to go ballistic.
“Beauty doesn’t have to be pain,” I muttered. Spa masks, bubble baths, a cute new shade of lip gloss. None ofthosewere painful.
“It does when you are Juliet,” she snapped right back, stabbing me with another pin as she placed a bit of embellishment on the bodice. I resisted the urge to scowl back at her.
If you aren’t happy, don’t pretend to be.
Damn it. Ididscowl. And it felt good.
A few minutes later, I was finally out of the costumer’s closet and in the theater. I could practically feel Alek’s nervous energy subside as I stepped into the stage lights. He hated going long without seeing me, which meant that our hours apart were basically torture for him.
I moved next to Raphael and waited for Madame Germaine’s orders, my eyes going out to the seats to find him.
I found him in the back of the audience, his body once again shrouded in shadows. I waved once before the sound of the cane on the floor snapped my attention back to the rehearsal.
People were scurrying about in half-finished costumes while sets were being placed, and a tech crew practiced the lights.
We were preparing for next week’s full dress rehearsal after our sitzprobe earlier this week, which was the rehearsal where we ran the show with the orchestra for the first time. There were a few kinks to work out still—playing with a large group of live musicians was much different than our one accompanist, who feared Madame Germaine more than she feared God—but overall, it went pretty well.
Madame Germaine said I’d more than exceeded her expectations, probably because I spent most of my evenings in my house practicing as a way of avoiding Jules.
I’d broken my silence—it was almost impossible for us to go over a month without speaking to each other when we livedtogether—but not by much. Our dinners were filled with stifled pauses and awkward conversation, and any attempts to bridge the gap on his end were met with a RBF Mia would be proud of.
Jules seemed to expect me to forgive him a lot sooner, but I was holding out. He needed to learn that my crush on Alek was more than just a fleeting fancy that could be shoved aside with an order. I loved Alek now more than ever, and I was determined to let my stubbornness win out over my brother’s.
“We will practice the balcony pas de deux,” Madame Germaine said. She gave Raphael and me a sharp look. “In full.”
I gulped. I knew what that meant, and judging by the stiffness in his posture, so did Raphael. The director expected us to kiss.
Raphael gave me a nervous look. To his credit, he didn’t want to kiss me as much as I didn’t want to kiss him. Neither of us was the other’s type. I wasn’t a male, and Raphael wasn’t Alek.
But I think the biggest reason for his hesitation was Alek. Everyone knew of my boyfriend’s possessiveness. Despite never showing his face in our rehearsals, he’d made it known with the flowers he gifted me before things all went wrong and the notes he still left me now, usually containing the words “mine” in some form.
Plus, I had a giant hickey on my neck from where he bit me yesterday.
Thankfully, Jules believed my lie about it being a curling iron burn from rehearsal. Maybe Elsie stood up for me, or maybe the makeup I threw on under my hoodie actually hid it. Considering the way Raphael’s eyes kept flashing to it, I doubted it was the latter.
“It’s okay,” I said softly, hoping that was true.
Raphael didn’t look convinced, but he went off to the side of the stage anyway as Madame Germaine ordered, “Begin.”
The orchestra began to tune up, and I took my first position. The music was soft and slow—a stark contrast from the chaos I could hear backstage—as I began to dance alone as Juliet in her room. My dress flowed with the rest of my limbs as I moved like water, flowing and shifting in time with the rise and fall of the music.
