CURTAIN CALL: Driven Dance Theater Romance Series Book 1 (Standalone) Read online

  Everyone is still wondering: will he pull it off?

  What will he do next? The other question that everyone is asking, and I wish there were an answer to. I couldn’t say for certain what I would do next, never mind him. All I know is that it has to be something, and it has to be soon. We are running out of time to complete the piece before the date of the premiere.

  There are the sideways looks over shoulders, whispers when he isn’t in the room, and heightened fear when he is. It’s as though everyone has taken on his anxiety and his nervous pace. No one is lounging on the floor in fatigue, as one might expect this time of day. There are pacing limbs and nervous, twitchy fingers. There are bodies hungry to execute the steps they’ve been given without the material to review. Elena slithers into a sequence, watching herself in the mirror before her body flinches in a jerk reaction when she remembers the steps she was going over were the ones Kent already scrapped. Cory shrugs. Cocky Buddha is no more, even Cory is decentered. Sterling twirls that bead on his pink tongue more than ever while ignoring me, and I wonder: if I had a silver bead to play with all day, would it keep my mind off things? But then I get these little twitches; it’s the anxiety combined with intense ecstasy. Just the thought of every beautiful part of my director’s body, and every beautiful thing he did with me, nearly gives me anaphylactic shock.

  Speaking of which, Kent pushes open the door like the tsunami, and I try to make eye contact, but he looks past me. Everyone stops what they are doing and huddles into the center of the room. Elena raises her hand.

  “I don’t know where this is going.” She plants her hands on her hips. “We’ve been talking.” She looks around the room, but everyone has pulled their focus away from hers and is fixated on the white floor, and I get this sick feeling that she has no idea what she is stepping into and that no one has her back.

  “What is your name again?” Kent narrows his focus into her, and though he must be bluffing, it works, because she seems abysmally small. Everyone shivers, a huddle of buzzing, busy wasps with weak knees and wide eyes.

  “Where is your dedication?” He stares her down. “To the vision. Where is your trust?”

  “I… trust.” She swallows. “But… we’ve worked so hard.” She looks down, probably to avoid the scrutiny in his eyes, while biting on her lip. “And you just trash it like it doesn’t matter, and now we have… nothing.” She lets the last word out with a harsh exhale, as though it were stuck somewhere inside her throat, and as it escapes, everyone flinches.

  “Nothing?” He retreats as though he has been smacked, his warm eyes turn red, and I don’t know who to feel sorry for: her, the more obvious underdog, or him, since he has not the means to deal with this kind of disobedience. And I still shudder at the thought of walking out on him last night and the embarrassment in the tabloids. I am not sure if he pays attention to it, but there was a copy of the Globe sitting on the table in the lounge this morning, which I happily shoved into the trashcan.

  “We have nothing?” He flinches again, the hard twitch rebounding in my own body mixed with the regret I have for running off on him last night.

  “Does anyone else agree?” Kent’s fierce eyes scan the room. There’s a wave of hurt inside of them that hits me viscerally. I can see the wound in him opening; his faithful followers, his own tribe, are unmooring their devoted loyalty one by one.

  But the huddle is still buzzing, and now with the shaking of heads and chattering of knees. No one is agreeing, and Elena’s face is stripped of all of its color when she realizes what she’s done.

  “You should leave.” His eyes point at her. The room is on edge.

  Elena just stands there, her white face turning green, her eyes glossy and pink as moisture stains her cheeks.

  “Go on, get—”

  There’s a look of shock on her face before she flees. She is gone with a whimper and not even a slam of the door. And Kent carries on, and we do what we do as if nothing has happened, and there’s not one drop of blood on the floor.

  I try to look at him every chance I get, but he won’t look at me. “Miss O’Hara,” he says once, putting me in the hot seat, and I can’t believe we’re back to that after how intimate we’ve been. I stand in the center of the room and tug at my suit, which is too tight around my neck. I swallow. Okay, here goes:

  Breathe, I remind myself.

  The room is a blur of white concentration. A sixth sense is taking over.

  A shiver nips down my spine. His eyes are on me.

  Watch me. Understand me. Dance is the only way I know how to speak.

  There are no words.

  Time stops.

  Everywhere is a blur. Eyes are all over me. My fingers are shaking.

  The floor is cold. And white.

  I roll a shoulder, my head dips, and a leg extends.

  S-l-o-w.

  Thank god it’s slow, because everything has been so fast, and for once I control the tempo.

  Fast, fast, fast, fast: s-l-o-w.

  I fall into myself, not all at once, but in bits and pieces, until I am not myself.

  I am the step.

  Swivel, fall, catch, extend.

  Hold.

  My mouth is dry. The music builds. The bubble that occurs around a performer when they dance wraps around me.

  Listen, fall, fall, fall.

  Listen.

  The word makes me shiver.

  I suck in a breath and look into his eyes, terrified of what I might see.

  I don’t know what to say.

  How to feel?

  Naked: more naked than I have ever been.

  I am moving in slow motion. The music pushes past me.

  Breathe.

  We catch each other in the eyes. The tempo builds. Push through, spin, spin, spin, spin around, under, foot beat, slide, brush—spin.

  Slow. S-l-o-w. Slow.

  The last extension reaches beyond my fingers and toes, past the walls—

  There’s a cough, a foot squeaks across the floor, chatter, the bang of a heel landing on the barre, and the sound of the door creaking open. Footsteps disappearing.

  He walks out the door.

  I follow Kent to his office, barely surfaced from the dance. His fingers twitch through his hair, and I force down the lump in my throat. I have no idea what I am doing or plan to say, but it has to be good. He folds his fingers over his desk and looks at me. I want to run over to him, to kiss him and get lost inside of it—not to worry about a broken heart, gimpy knees, or gossip.

  I shut the door.

  “Branwen.” His nostrils flare before he looks at his phone. He isn’t going to make this easy.

  “I think I’m in love with you.” I swallow, not believing what I just said, and Kent’s eyes flash with discomfort. At first I think it’s because of what I just admitted—well, that’s probably part of it, but his eyes aren’t really on me. They are on the woman walking into his office behind me in black stilettos and a white trench coat.

  She raises a brow in my direction.

  “Branwen. Elle.” Kent gives the introduction with a tight swallow.

  I wrap my arms around my chest apprehensively as she eyes me.

  “Kent and I go way back.” She stares at me as though I am supposed to get the hint and leave.

  And I do.

  That afternoon, we are all lined up in the center of the room like alien life in our fitted suits. Kent sits in his chair in his sleek black shirt and pants and stares us down. This has been a frequent activity of late. His focus simmers into us, and I imagine he has X-ray vision and can see anything of significance in our bodies, anything malignant or benign, and certainly more than we can see ourselves. Then I wonder if he could reach in and fix it, if his movements are a cure or a rare form of medicine.

  After he has stared us down in silence for a good long while, he stands up and clears his throat. “Take fifteen.”

  I join Londyn and the smokers on the steps, because I need some fresh—or pollut
ed—air, and even if Kent has been casting his focus my way on occasion since the embarrassing timing of my confession, I have managed to avoid him.

  “The reporters finally left.” Londyn draws a cigarette to her lips. “The Drivenless tweets, on top of the scene you and Kent made at the Guggenheim yesterday, has stirred shit up, but I’m not surprised. Things always get more interesting before the show. He thinks he’s some kind of Van Gogh. What is he going to do next? Cut off his ear for publicity?”

  The publicity isn’t his doing. I crumple my brow, and Londyn smirks as I study her. Did she think Kent being involved with me was good publicity? That makes no sense, when the world was starting to think of him as a Charles Anderson type, and all because of some tweets. I plan to set it straight. Even if I’m still thinking about Elle and how she had to barge in on us at the worst possible time.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I wonder if it is Kent again.

  “You don’t know who Elle Vanderhyde is, do you?” I ask Londyn, and her eyes simmer ahead as she blows out a long exhale of smoke. “Is she the one funding the new production?”

  “Not without a good hunk of flesh.” Londyn grinds her cigarette into the paved step. My stomach lurches. Maybe this company is corrupt, as Lexi warned. Londyn looks off into the distance, as leather soles click up the steps. A dark figure is approaching, and I don’t recognize it—until I do a double-take.

  Holy shit.

  “Dad?”

  22

  “Hi, sweetheart. I thought I might find you here.” My dad looks at me and then at Londyn, who is lighting up another cigarette, the black cloud hovering above her. Sterling is uttering profanities in the background to a small group of dancers, and two female demi-soloists have their arms and legs wrapped around each other flirtatiously. I wonder what my conservative dad must think, and why the hell he’s shown up now. Then I remember all the tabloids and media attention Driven has been getting. I have been a little oblivious to it, since all I think about these days is my developing relationship with Kent.

  He’s in a long black coat and a blue V-neck with brown leather-soled shoes—his idea of dressing up—and he looks tired and his hair is short, like really short, and definitely grayer, with more receding going on than the last time we saw each other.

  “What are you doing here?” I look up from the Driven steps and cross my arms over my chest. He looks down at me with kind eyes, and even though he looks older and more pathetic and I am probably in the prime of my suddenly mind-blowing career, he makes me feel small. How the hell does that work? Londyn cocks her head.

  “Can I bum a smoke?” I turn to Londyn, interrupting him when he is about to answer, and she slides a Marlboro out of the package and lights it for me. You can see it in her eyes. She’s a quick study.

  “Sorry, what were you saying?” I look up at him with a fake inhale; it’s the only way to do it. I will never ever be a smoker, because I could not do that to my body, but faking it for the moment feels damn good.

  “We saw you in the news and thought we would come see how you are. Abby especially would love to talk to her big sister. The production you guys are working on sure has a lot of hype around it. We were thinking we would take you out for dinner tonight or tomorrow—does that sound okay? Karen really wants to make an effort.” Ever since he married Karen, he’s needed her approval on all matters.

  I’d like to remind him that he said he couldn’t afford a trip to New York before Driven became a news story. Instead, I grind my cigarette into the pavement, Londyn-style.

  He sucks in a breath and looks at me with those ridiculous, knitted-together eyebrows, like he’s trying to pull himself off as someone who actually cares. That’s when Kent decides to walk through the door.

  “How does Morton’s at seven tomorrow sound? We’ll meet you there.” Kent wraps his arm around me and gives my dad a tight smile, and I look up at him in shock.

  “Wonderful.” My dad shakes his head smiling widely. “You must be Kent Morgan; it’s great to meet you. I’m Christopher.” My dad holds out his hand, and Kent grips it as he stares him down. My dad grins, waving his hand in the air as he makes his way down the street. I don’t know how I managed to evolve from such a nerdy gene pool.

  “We are so not going for dinner with them.” I smirk at Kent.

  “I’ll pick you up at six thirty.” He squeezes his arm over my shoulders with a grin, and I give him a look like he’s crazy, but I can’t help smiling. Because if this is his way of telling me he has feelings for me too, it’s working.

  For the rest of the afternoon we are like panting dogs trying to keep up, trying to sniff out the truth. As he throws all kinds of ideas at us, the room is a field of flying Frisbees seeking to land. But ultimately, nothing is right. He shakes his head in frustration and digs his fingers into his scalp, pushing them through his hair after our bodies have been stretched inside out and worked to exhaustion. And he’s scrapped the movements from the other day too.

  “Tomorrow we start fresh.” His eyes simmer, and everyone in the room groans.

  Sterling is brooding in the corner after rehearsal. I sit down on the floor beside him as he does push-up reps. He basically ignores me, but I don’t care. He’s my friend, and I am not going to just give up on him. It seems possible he might ignore me for all eternity. He’s been mad at me ever since the news about Kent and I came out.

  “Forty-five.” He grunts out the last rep, and his biceps and the rest of the sinewy muscles in his arms pop as he pushes himself off the ground one last time before collapsing. He rolls onto his back, his chest pumping in and out. He wipes drops of sweat from his brow and reaches for his phone, as though I’m not right beside him.

  “You’re upset with me.” I eye him, and he flashes me an annoyed look. I can’t help but wonder that maybe he had feelings for me by the way he was acting ever since he found out about Kent. We had become close, and there was a time or two over the past months when I thought that there could have been an attraction between us if I weren’t head over heels over Kent.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” He rolls his eyes.

  “Like what?” I bite my lip. A full sentence: this is progress.

  “Like you know what I’m thinking.” He looks down at his phone. “I can’t help how I feel,” he mumbles, and I swallow as I nod my head. I guess this isn’t a very good time to tell him how I totally humiliated myself by telling Kent that I was in love with him, even if Sterling normally would get a kick out of the compromising situation. But I have to say something.

  “It’s not like I haven’t wondered about you too.” This is coming out all wrong.

  He cocks a brow and sighs. “Lindsay wants me back. Apparently, the Push director, Peter Strauss, said that if I leave Driven I can have my position back. Otherwise they’ll have to hire someone else immediately.”

  “So you don’t have feelings for me?” I blurt in relief, but by the look on Sterling’s face I must be the world’s biggest idiot.

  “Jesus, Branwen. I’m gay,” Sterling says, miffed.

  Sorry. I retract, and if I was trying to get Sterling to be less pissed at me, I’m not doing a very good job. It failed to cross my mind that Lindsay is also a guy’s name. But now I am mentally conking myself over the head. “When you found out about Kent and me, you got so angry, but with a name like Lindsay, how can you blame me for not assuming your sexuality?” I huff.

  “You mean The God?” He shakes his head. “You’re my best friend, and you’re sleeping with the enemy. Plus, I don’t appreciate finding out everything about my best friend from Twitter.”

  Aw. Best friend. My heart warms.

  “I am sorry about that, I really am. I just hope that you don’t tell me that you’re hot for the guy who I just totally humiliated myself in front of by telling him I love him?” I give it back to him. “Ignoring me for the past few days was an extremely bitchy thing to do. I should have known you were gay.”

  “You did not t
ell him that.” Sterling covers his face before wrapping his arms around me. If I was wondering how to get back into his good books, I think I’ve figured it out. But, thankfully, he doesn’t make fun of me this time. Though I’d prefer crude humor to the pity look he is giving me.

  “Just promise me next time you’re dry humping The God you won’t tell him I am leaving. I would like to do it myself. And whatever you do, do not make any more compromising videos of yourself. They have you pinned as some kind of mentally unstable victim. If they only knew what I know.”

  It sounds absurd coming from Sterling, but that old video coming up again has probably not helped matters on Twitter, not that I would dare to look. I shoot him my best dagger eyes, but before I know it we are smiling and hugging, and there are tears pricking my eyes. I can’t believe he is leaving us to go back to Lindsay.

  Sterling is absent from rehearsal the next day, and it’s as though there’s a vacuum in the wall sucking out the life he normally brought in. After rehearsal, Daniela is sitting by herself on the only couch with her lips pressed together as she stares at her phone. I pour myself a coffee and sit down beside her. She’s become so much less intimidating since she shat her pants. Her whole cocky attitude has been wiped right off the slate. She’s wearing eyeglasses, and one of her hands is stuffed into a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips. I almost forgot she wore contact lenses, and the glasses act as some kind of a shield she can hide behind.

  I sit down, and she adjusts her butt, barely looking up from her phone.

  “Hey.” Her lip slightly curls, but it’s so quick, and her voice is so quiet, it makes me wonder if she said anything at all. Her chest rises as she inhales, and she lets out a loud breath through her thin lips. She tucks her feet under her butt on the couch.