AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s like we’re in a play or something. You’re playing your part, I’m playing mine.”
She wished she didn’t understand what he meant.
“Okay,” she said, moving to the bed. “Yes. It’s different. But we’re not going to fix it by moving backward.”
“Why not?”
“I was dying at Icarus, Kev.”
“I wasn’t!”
He’d whirled on her, the words leaving him in a guttural yell. She stumbled backward and saw regret soften his anger. Kevin took a deep breath. Then another. Then a third.
“Don’t you want to dance with me?” His voice was quiet. “That’s why we’re together?”
She was confused. “You want a list of reasons?”
“All those nights sitting on your couch, we talked about our future, where we were going. Remember?”
“Of course,” she said. “But we don’t need Icarus for that.”
He laughed bitterly. “Well, we could try Broadway, but if you couldn’t handle Icarus …”
Her eyes filled with tears. “That’s not fair.”
“Not fair.” He went back to packing. “Not fair is taking that last show off, Hal.”
“You danced in that show!” She stared at him, incredulous. “That last show ran for three months. Three months when youdidn’t have to leave the stage at all, and I was mixing drinks. Do you know how hard it was to stand behind the bar and hear the music from the theater? You were literally dancing in the next room, and I couldn’t join you.” She threw up her hands. “Sorry—I didn’t want to have panic attacks on stage.”
“I shouldn’t have been in the ensemble,” he muttered.
“Yeah, well, blame Cyd.”
“Cyd only put me in the ensemble because of you,” he shot back. “Because we’re a pair. Tickets sell when we dancetogether.”
Hayley felt sick. “She told you this.”
“She sure did.”
“So you asked for more stage time, she said no, and you said, ‘I’m out.’”
“You think I fucked up.”
She shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because when I told you I wanted to leave Indianapolis, you acted like we’d won the lottery!” he said. “Why should I have told you? What would that have fixed?”
She shrugged, defeated. “I don’t know.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Linda will never let us headline here.”
“Who cares about headlining?”
Kevin stopped packing. Very slowly, he turned to face her.
“Whocares?” He was incredulous. “What the hell have we been doing this for, Hal?”
Hayley stopped breathing. “I thought you were doing it for me,” she whispered. “I thought we were building a life.”
