She did what?”
Adrian is behind the little stage at one end of the ballroom, listening to the stagehands argue.
“Kestrel tried to take him out! Tumbler to the face!” one of them says, happy and merciless, like he’s talking about reality TV. (Adrian has nightmares about reality TV — the shark-infested waters that famous people are tossed into when everyone else is done with them.)
“Yeah, but she missed,” said another stagehand.
“Awwww,” says the first one, like he’s seriously disappointed.
Leopold asked Adrian to wait backstage. He did it with these apologies in his voice, like that would be a problem for Adrian, but Adrian likes it better back here. There are always people at parties who want to touch him, take pictures with him. Sometimes he loves it and sometimes it’s exhausting, and both of those reactions feel wrong. Smarmy or ungrateful. Take your pick.
Leopold walks in through the side door. Adrian can sense one of his hugs coming on. He steps away before it can happen. There’s always too much body heat and cologne involved.
“My boy, my boy,” Leopold says. “Tonight we make the public believe in Echo and Ariston’s love.”
“I thought this was just about shmoozing,” Adrian says with a nervous laugh.
“The photograph you posted online got people quite excited,” Leopold says, and Adrian gets to bask in the fact that he did something right. (He hasn’t basked in a while. It feels good.) But then Leopold’s arm is around him and he’s using his most urgent director voice. “You need to take things to the next logical step.”
“There is no next step,” Adrian says. “It was a picture. To make people excited about Zara. As Echo.”
“We want them excited about the two of you together,” Leopold says. And he whispers a plan into Adrian’s ear.
Adrian pulls away, and he can feel the depths of his frown. He was the one who wanted to tell Zara to go along with anything, but now he’s not so sure. “Don’t we want the audience to stay focused on the play? How good it is?” Adrian came here to impress people with his acting, not his ability to post a picture online and get hundreds of thousands of hits.
“Your Ariston, while perfectly adequate,” Leopold says, “is not enough to maintain this illusion. Not without a little help.”
Adrian sighs and attacks his hair with a nervous hand. “What about Zara? Does she want to do this? I mean, is she ready?”
“The girl is more than ready,” Leopold says. “She’s . . . eager.”
Adrian thinks of Kerry, on the patio of the tiny apartment she could barely afford, swigging blueberry lemonade straight from the bottle, hollowing out avocados to make guacamole. She won’t know that he’s doing this for the play, for the audience, for the marketing. She’ll only see him acting, and she’ll think it’s true, because that’s the one thing Adrian is good at. Utterly convincing.
And then he’ll lose Kerry.
(Really lose her.)
Maybe that’s good, though. Maybe that’s exactly what he needs so he can shove this whole thing into the past and get on with life. Adrian rolls his shoulders and says, “Let’s do this.”
Leopold claps him on the back and takes the stage before Adrian can rethink.
The lights in the ballroom dim, and the noise level goes from shout-to-be-heard to a hushed whisper. “You are here tonight because you want to fall in love,” Leopold says. He has a decent voice — not an actor’s voice, but the kind that you could imagine telling a story around a campfire. “Perhaps you used to slip in and out of love easily, when you were younger. Perhaps some of you are finding love tonight.” There are a few stray laughs. “I think you’ve waited long enough to see what true love looks like.”
Leopold waves his hand toward the wings, and Adrian strides out onto the little stage. This feels like practice for the Aurelia — but it’s also different, because during the play Adrian won’t be able to see the audience. The lights will drown them out.
Tonight, he can see everyone.
“Here is your Ariston,” Leopold says. “A young man who comes to us from a kingdom of plenty, which we’ve been battling for ages. I’m speaking, of course, about California.” The audience laughs, full-on. Adrian realizes he loves this part. When he sneaks into movie theaters in disguise, people are always on their phones or muttering to each other or making out, regardless of what he’s doing on the screen. This is better. This is more.
Adrian gives a bow, and the audience cheers.
“And here,” Leopold says, “is your early Christmas present.” He shades his eyes and peers out at the ballroom. “Echo? Where are you, my dear?”
A gasp rises as a little spotlight goes hunting through the crowd. It finds Zara standing alone near the entrance on the far side of the room. Even from this far away, Adrian can see that Zara looks surprised.
She really is a good actress.
She works her way through the crowd, and Adrian watches her along with everyone else. He can’t stop thinking about what Leopold said. (She’s eager.) The room narrows down from hundreds of people to just Zara. Her dress is white. Her hair is loose. Her cheeks shine like moons.
She looks beautiful.
And nervous. When she arrives onstage, Leopold pulls her in for a kiss on the cheek and Zara goes stiff. When she takes her place at Adrian’s side, he can feel her trembling where their arms almost touch. It reminds him of the first time he ever kissed a girl. He was eleven. It was for a movie, and he hated the idea that his first kiss would be fake. So he asked the actress, who was thirteen and a half, to practice with him in the studio lot. She pushed him against one of those little carts and his lips went numb, totally confused. Then her tongue was in his mouth.
He remembers how scared he was. And how grateful that she took the lead.
“Hey,” he whispers to Zara. “You okay?”
She gives a blinking nod. It feels like some kind of Morse code that Adrian can’t figure out. He puts an arm around her and the crowd cheers. Leopold is hovering behind them. Waiting.
It only takes one perfectly choreographed turn, and then Adrian is kissing Zara. Her mouth is flat, which throws him off. Leopold said that she was ready. But maybe she just needs time to adjust to the new reality. Adrian’s hand in her hair. Adrian’s hips gently nudging hers. Adrian’s, not Ariston’s.
The audience is going insane. Adrian didn’t think a room of old theater patrons and journalists could get this riled up. It’s like nothing he’s ever experienced. Adrian’s blood rises to match the heat of the lights, the heat of kissing, the roar of applause.