“But it’s only the end of Act One,” Mack said weakly. “The rest of the show...”
“Will end at Act One, at the prom,” I finished for him. “We’ll make an announcement that the show is ending early, but that there will be complimentary drinks at the Lemon Bar for the rest of the night.” I nodded at Bailey, who’d finally stopped filming. “Can you go tell the bar manager the plan? Tell her it came straight from me.”
Bailey nodded as solemnly as someone who’d just pulled a sword from a stone. “You can trust me with the free drinks, Addison,” she said and then left.
“Pearl, find a bucket for Isabel and Edmund in case they need it,” I directed. “Mack, you tell the stage manager to raisethe lights after the scene ends. I’ll make the announcement the minute the prom dance is over. We can cross the finish line on this!”
Gretchen took one last sip and then set down her margarita glass. “Addison, we might need a contingency plan.”
Chapter Fourteen
Iwas grateful for the contingency plan three minutes later when Lizzie/Isabel staggered back into the wings, unhesitatingly took the bucket Pearl offered her, and yakked into it. Gretchen took my crutches and helped me slip a white cardigan over the spare blue prom dress we had. I reached up to adjust Cassie’s abandoned wig. It was already itchy. Big curls hung past my shoulders.
I gave it a final tug. “Does it look okay?” I whisper-asked Gretchen.
“No.”
“Okay, well, here goes nothing.”
She patted my shoulder. “I would saybreak a leg, but...” She gestured to the boot.
“Thanks, Gretch.”
To the swells of the prom music, I made my way to the wings, where our hero was waiting to escort me out into what would be an empty prom scene. “You got this?” he asked in a low voice. The words had a quaver to them, and he was more than vampire-pale. The shrimp curse was coming for him.
“I got it,” I replied quietly. There was no singing in this part, the dancing was mostly just standing on top of the hero’s feet, and I had the legally-different-enough lines from the movie memorized by heart after sitting through so many rehearsals. “We’re going to curtain after this scene. Just make it a few more minutes.”
“I’m going to do my best,” he swore, but then after about two steps onto the stage, he froze. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and retreated backward into the wings, toward Pearl and her bucket.
Which meant that it was me alone, on the stage, just as people were realizing that I wasn’t the same Isabel of just a moment ago. Whispers and giggles filtered from the crowd, and I started seeing phone lights popping up like fireflies in the dark, and oh God, on top of the serum video on the jumbo screen, I didn’t know if I could take any more embarrassment today.
But then I thought, why the fuck not?
Last year I watched my best friend, Winnie Baker, become the world’s most unexpected unwed mother, and a year before that, I watched The Hope Channel air a wholesome Christmas movie with porn star Bianca Von Honey as its lead. Who was to say what an image could survive? The important thing had been that Winnie and Bianca had been happy, making the right choices for themselves no matter what the rest of the world thought, and maybe I didn’t know where I’d end up if I let go of the plan, but I did know the right choice for me right now, and it was on this stage, in a blue prom dress and a boot, giving this little musical that could a worthy send-off. I was in front of my guests, smiling and giving them a fun memory. And when I left this stage, I was going to my room to call my mom and let her know that I didn’t want to do theAddison Hayes is bisexualannouncement in some big, orchestrated PR way. I wanted to do it in the way that felt right, that felt honest, the truest to myself and not just to my brand.
I wanted to be more than my brand!
How wild was it that I had to fracture an ankle, face public humiliation, and have mind-blowing sex in the Pacific Ocean just to get to that very obvious conclusion? I really should try therapy sometime.
Shoulders back, epiphany in tow, I waved and smiled at the imaginary people who weren’t actually on the stage—all the ensemble cast members who were supposed to be prom-goers and who were instead heaving shrimp into the ocean outside of the theater. And then I reached the middle of the stage and stood under the two-dimensional gazebo strung with lights. It was here that I would have danced with the hero and the characters would have shared their first kiss.
Well, I supposed the gazebo would be the backdrop for me announcing the end of the show and the beginning of the free drinks. I couldn’t very well dance on my own—
A wave of noise from the audience drew my attention to the opposite side of the stage, where someone was stepping from the wings.
And it wasn’t a vampire.
Krysta came toward me, her eyes only on me. And in her bodyguard uniform of a button-down, trousers, and blazer, slightly rumpled from her tussle with Cassie, she almost looked like a prom date. In no other way did she look like the vampire hero—her blond hair was still in its bun, showing the neat lines of her undercut, and her eternal sunglasses were propped on her head. And she was unmistakablyKrysta, blue-eyed and plush-mouthed, with the long lines of her straight nose and finely carved jaw.
But she was coming toward me in a suit, and then she held out her hand, and before I knew it, I was in her arms, lifted so that my feet were on top of hers, and we were swaying from side to side.
I was supposed to say some lines now, but all of them left my mind because Krysta was holding me and I was looking up into her face and she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out in a whisper. “I should have told you everything from the beginning. I shouldn’t have broken your rules.”
She searched my face, long blond lashes catching the stage lights above. “You know it’s not about the rules, right? It’s about trust.”
Okay, I was definitely doing therapy when I got home. Add it to the vision board. It was happening. “I think I’m beginning to see that,” I said, still speaking in a hushed voice so we couldn’t be heard over the music. The crowd was silent now, and I was certain they were filming us, but I couldn’t look away from Krysta’s ocean-colored gaze to check. “I’ve made Addison Hayes a brand for so long that I think I’ve forgotten how to make her a person too. Because being a person felt lonely and disorienting, and it was so hard to be okay with not knowing what was going to happen next that I decided that Ihadto know everything that was going to happen next. And then that started to matter more than anything else, and I lost sight of who I could be without that knowledge. Until you.”
