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I could feel Nash looking at me, but my face flushed with embarrassment, and I slipped down in my seat instead of making eye contact with anyone.
“That’s nice to know,” Nash said. “I didn’t realize she was that big of a fan.”
“She’s your biggest.” Autry continued to dig his hole. “She doesn’t like anyone else on the circuit but you.”
I sighed, closing my eyes. “Autry, we need to get in there to work. Have a nice day.”
Autry chuckled. “Just FYI, but I let a new girl go today. She’s in there right now cleaning out her locker.”
I blinked open my eyes. “Which one?”
“The one who you told me might be a problem last week,” he said.
Last week, I’d started Lainey Dexcom on her probationary period after Crimson hired her. Crimson, who was off for three days straight, didn’t see the drama that Lainey managed to cause in the time she was gone. And knowing that she probably wouldn’t last, I’d told Lainey she had a thirty-day probationary period that meant I could fire her if she continued to cause problems amongst the performers.
Well, it looked like she hadn’t heeded my warning.
Even worse, she was supposed to have been taking over all of my short acts, freeing me up to work on management crap that nobody seemed to want to do beside Autry.
And Autry couldn’t do it all, meaning that I would be the one to take up the slack.
Or, I was supposed to help him, anyway.
But that was with Lainey taking over my trapeze acts as well as the few smaller skits that I’d taken over for my sisters, giving them their allotted time off.
“Awesome,” I grumbled. “Does that mean I have to work tonight?”
“It does,” he said. “You are here, though. I was just about to call you, but Crimson was just here, and looked it up and saw that you were already headed our way.”
I sighed, closing my eyes in exhaustion. “Just perfect.”
“Sorry, Zippy,” he said, then opened the gate for us.
The entire time, Tyson and Aracelli had listened to the conversation without comment.
It was only after Aracelli rolled my window up and we started forward that she said, “Does this mean that we can watch your show?”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
What I thought would be a short trip to try out a costume and get some practice in turned into a full-blown half a day of bullshit.
First it started with having to deal with Lainey in the locker room as I went to get changed.
After her promise of ‘retribution on social media,’ I went out to the practice tent where Coffey had taken the four Christophersons to wait and found them all standing around talking. All but Nash, who was on a box in the corner of the room with his phone to his ear as he looked like he was arguing with someone.
I shifted, feeling the beads and the sequins from my outfit dig into sensitive skin, and knew that I’d have to put a few adjustments in to make it comfortable enough to wear for hours on end.
Already, I could feel a raw spot forming on the inner part of my left thigh, where the sequins were rubbing between my legs.
“Wow,” I heard Aracelli say. “That’s gorgeous. So much better under the light like you said it would be.”
I tossed her a smile over my shoulder, then went through a series of warmups to loosen my muscles up.
Today wouldn’t be a full-blown workout.
It would be a shake out, since I now found myself required to perform tonight.
After lubricating my joints and muscles, I started to climb the ladder that would lead me to the platform where I would start my performance.
It was when I was fully at the top that I felt his eyes on me.
I could always tell, especially so after being near him almost twenty-four-seven this last week.
“Ready?” I heard Coffey call.
Apparently, he’d turned on the music for me instead of whomever did it usually.
Probably that guy didn’t show up, and we would have to fire him, too.
That was just our luck.
With one foot already off the platform, I caught the bar swing, then dropped.
I heard the gasp over the music—that wasn’t as loud as I would usually have it since there were people there—and I knew it was him without actually seeing him.
I swung, flipped, and pulled myself along for a solid five minutes when the song cut out.
Thinking that was plenty of time to test this outfit, I flipped myself up to sitting on the bar swing, then waited for it to come to a stop before I said, “Can someone lower me down?”
Nash got up and waited for direction.
“There,” I pointed at the large control panel. “The left one.”
He depressed the button, lowering me all the way down to the floor.
When my feet touched, he pulled his finger off the button, then crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me with an unreadable expression on his face.
