The Imitation Game ✓

ONE | OVERTURE

The number of times Cora had kissed her worst enemy in the past week was absolutely infuriating.

If someone ever told you that any actor can kiss someone they're not romantically involved with without it feeling weird, they were lying. It is weird, but most of the time, you're able to move past the feeling quickly enough.

That wasn't proving to be so easy with Rasmus North.

He was definitely the prettiest boy she'd ever kissed, but that hardly mattered since she'd wanted to punch that pretty face of his since elementary school. And now her hands were tangled in his dark hair and his mouth was all over hers, hot and tasting of the ginger tea he drank before rehearsals, and she had to act like she was enjoying it.

It was a cruel twist of fate, finally getting her Broadway debut but having to experience it alongside her absolute least favorite person on the planet. His eyes – sometimes more green, sometimes more blue, but endlessly taunting – were lazy on her when she got to break away from him, like he was perfectly pleased to be miserable as long as it made her miserable, too.

"Let's take five, guys," their director Annie suggested, a welcome reprieve from having to look at his oh so punchable face.

Cora fled to her small locker of belongings to gulp down some water and text Siena. She instinctively wiped at her mouth, feeling gross after kissing him. When she pulled her phone out of her purse, there was already a message from her concerned roommate waiting there for her.

how is he today?

Cora is typing...

the usual.

Rasmus, also affectionately known as Raz (or Rasshole, depending on who you asked), was the same irritating boy he'd been in high school and college, only substantially worse now that he had all the more reasons to be conceited. Over a period of just a few years, he'd managed to propel himself from being an unknown college graduate to a prominent up-and-coming theatre star. In a month's time, they opened on Broadway, originating the lead roles in the new play Illicit Affairs. Rasmus played the exact sort of character that everyone would expect him to – the charming, devilishly handsome and witty husband. Cora, the vengeful wife who hatches a plan to take him down when she learns he's been unfaithful. Their romantic scenes made her want to gag, but it certainly wasn't hard to behave like she was angry with him.

She occasionally had to remind herself that she'd accomplished the exact same amount as he had—she just wasn't letting it get to her head and being a jerk about it.

She closed her eyes, clenching her phone so firmly that it made her fingers ache, and breathed. She always used these little breaks to remind herself that she was grateful, that she absolutely was not going to let that boy ruin her Broadway debut for her. The show was beautiful, and a huge piece of her still couldn't believe that she was being trusted to originate such a fierce, complicated, sensual woman on the Great White Way when she thought she'd spend her whole career in cookie-cutter supporting roles. Most girls were never so lucky.

And yet she didn't feel lucky at all when she had to go back to him. Evident amusement danced in his eyes when she returned to the main room of the studio, planting herself across from him and bracing herself for another kiss.

Pucker up, Coraline, he mouthed.

She glared. People were always exclaiming to her that Cora Kline sounded like Coraline (as if she wasn't already aware of this and they had just come up with an entirely novel idea), and she hated it, and he knew it. He had always loved that she hated it. He'd pointed out to her on many occasions that the character Coraline also hated being called by the wrong name and therefore she was only digging herself further into the hole by not wanting to listen to him call her that. That didn't make her stop hating it. She only hated it more.