what might’ve been, I knew I could live with it. After all, not performing on stage was hardly the end of the world. I still got to do the thing I loved. I still got to dance.
My friend Farrah happened by and shot me a grin. I’d worked with her on my last production and was delighted to discover she’d been hired to do wardrobe for Moulin Rouge.
“You should get a load of the corset I’m designing for this scene,” she called over. “It’s going to be a fucking masterpiece.”
“How very modest of you to say,” Iggy replied dryly, and she flipped him off before sauntering away. Those two always had a sort of bitchy love/hate friendship. I was sure if Iggy wasn’t gay, the both of them would’ve started having uber-hot hate sex a long time ago. I loved Farrah because she was one of those no-nonsense older women who kicked arse at living life, who you sort of wished you could become one day.
A couple of minutes later, the lead actors arrived for a preliminary stage rehearsal. I locked eyes with Damon, and a tiny shiver of awareness trickled down my spine. He stared up at me, his eyes zeroing in on the curve of my waist before running down the length of my body. I remembered our little conversation from yesterday. I’d embarrassed myself twice, first admitting how I’d love to hear him narrate an audiobook, and then with the whole “big is good” comment. Somebody needed to put a leash on my mouth, seriously.
Alicia approached me. “So, this is the swing, huh? Jacob’s been waxing lyrical to me about it all morning. I have to admit, it’s pretty impressive.”
I nodded, and Iggy came over. “Rose is going to teach you how to use it. We want to make sure there’s no chance of you falling off and breaking your coccyx, or you know, anything else. Sorry, I just like saying the word ‘coccyx.’” He chuckled, and Alicia shot him a weird look. Iggy was the kind of man you either got or you didn’t.
I cleared my throat and nodded up to the rafters, where Paul the props guy was finishing his coffee break. “We’re going to practice with Paul lowering you down. During the performances, your outfit will be harnessed to the swing and then released once you hit the stage. I’ll demonstrate first.”
Sitting back down on the swing, Iggy hooked the harness around my waist, and I gripped a tight hold as I shouted to Paul, “Beam me up, Scotty!”
I just about made out his eye roll. Like Farrah, I already knew Paul from previous shows. We’d practiced the lowering of the swing a few times earlier in the morning, so I was an old pro at it now as everybody watched me rise up to the ceiling. A small jolt of stage fright hit me, but I rejected it just as quickly. There were ten people here, tops. Nothing, really. It was Damon’s attention that I felt the most, and I was beginning to realise that he watched me more closely than the others.
As I was lowered back down, my eyes found his once more, but I couldn’t decipher his expression. His gaze was so…consuming. I used the ropes as reins and swung in a circle, kicking my legs out and raising an elegant hand in the air to show Alicia how we wanted her to do it. Damon’s attention never left me all the while.
Once I was back on the stage, I got off and began instructing Alicia further. She perched herself on the diamond-esque swing, arching her spine in a delicately seductive pose. It didn’t take long for her to seriously impress me. She’d trained as a dancer in her teens, so she picked everything up fairly quickly, even joking to me at one point, “Forget about diamonds — a Visa Infinite card is a girl’s best friend.”
I grinned in return, probably because it reminded me of something Julian would say. Iggy busied himself with showing the lead actors their positions, while Jacob described what he wanted from them for the scene.
It was about twenty minutes later that Bob finally showed his face, looking dishevelled and hungover. Oh, Bob. I wished I was on friendlier terms with him so maybe I could offer some help, but I only really knew him in passing.
Jacob looked like he wanted to drown a bag of kittens when he clapped eyes on the man. He left