His back hit the wooden wall at the same time her mouth crashed into his.
Everything was hot. Every inch of her skin, his mouth, his hands as they went for the fastenings of her clothes. Her fingertips glided over his jaw, the skin slightly rough under her touch, then tightened in his hair at the base of his neck. Her breath hitched audibly as her dress fell open in the back.
And their audience was screeching like freaking banshees.
Cora had thought that this would be harder to do in front of so many people, but it was actually quite the opposite. Their excitement was nearly making her dizzy, drunken. And hell, she would have given them more—she would have been willing to do worse with Rasmus than what was in the script if it got this kind of response out of people.
She was burning up by this point in the show, sweltering so much from running amok in such a bulky dress under the heat of the stage lights that it was actually relieving to have it removed and feel that layer of thick fabric pulled away from her skin, leaving just the corset beneath. It was like a breath of fresh air. And to have people cheering at her for it...
Well, she felt indestructible. So this was what pure adrenaline felt like, the high of being on the big stage.
This was what it felt like to be on Broadway.
Cora managed to stay shockingly calm for the whole show, but as soon as the curtain fell and they scurried to their places in the wings to line up for their curtain call, her eyes started welling up with tears. Holy shit. I did it.
She could see Rasmus across from her in the opposite side of the wings, looking like he was having the same train of thought as she was. Her heart pounded as she watched their other castmates go out for their bows, and then even faster as their stage manager gave her and Rasmus their cue to walk back out onstage together.
The roar of the crowd doubled in volume as they stepped out simultaneously, meeting each other in the middle to then walk downstage hand-in-hand. Through the glare of the lights, she could still see them—more than a thousand people standing and applauding them.
Rasmus' hand was firm in her own, steadying the both of them, which she was grateful for even if it was for his own self-benefit. And when she looked over at him with the silly grin that she couldn't have kept off her face even if she tried, he was already there smiling back.
We're kind of a team now, he'd told her last night.
For the first time, it was finally beginning to feel like it.
Anais greeted Cora with a hug when she returned to her dressing room after the curtain call, taking the smiling but exhausted girl in her arms and patting her on the back. "Congrats, Cora."
She had always been proud of any show she worked on, but she felt a particular kinship to Cora. Maybe it was just because she was making her Broadway debut in such a huge role, but it made Anais really happy to see her grow into her own abilities so much over just the past few weeks and then blow it out of the park tonight.
"Now let's get this thing off of you."
Cora laughed as Anais started helping her out of her costume. After, once she was already back in her own clothes and had scurried out the door, there was a knock.
It was Gideon, Anais' male (and in her own opinion less pretty, but only slightly) counterpart, looking like pretty much everyone else around here did tonight: slightly disheveled but all grins.
"Just came by to say congrats," he said kindly.
"Thanks, you too," she replied as she set Cora's shoes aside to be inspected in the morning for any wear and tear. When a character stayed onstage as long as hers did, it wasn't uncommon to wear through shoes in a matter of a couple of weeks, not months. "You doing anything to celebrate tonight? Or are you more of a 'save it for opening night' kind of person?"
He was leaning slightly against the doorframe, giving her an unreadable look. There was a reason she worked backstage instead of on it—she was very mediocre when it came to understanding the nuances of body language.
And when he lightly asked, "Are you doing anything tonight?" she wasn't quite sure what to make of him, or what she even wanted him to be saying.
"I don't have any specific plans," she said carefully, holding his gaze. "But if someone invited me to go out, I wouldn't say no."
Cora didn't anticipate that there would be anyone wanting pictures or autographs at the stage door; or if there were, that it would be just a few curious audience members, no more than a dozen. So when she pushed the door open and there were at least fifty of them there, all with their playbills and phones at the ready, she stopped in her tracks.
Her heart lurched for what felt like the hundredth instance in the past thirty minutes. How many times had she been the little girl there waiting to have her playbill signed? And now she was the one on the other side of the exchange, fumbling in her purse for a pen or marker.
She had just assumed that she would have to make a name for herself first, that it would take until opening night at the very least for the crowds to really start forming. For starters, plays simply weren't quite as popular with the younger audiences as musicals. And in her own eyes, she was still a nobody, just a little aspiring actress without much more than a degree to her name, so hearing all of these people complimenting her performance while she hastily scribbled her signature on their playbills gave her the best sort of emotional whiplash. She knew she sounded flustered as she thanked them, but she hoped it was obvious that her gratitude was genuine. And that she looked decent in their photos.
When she was about halfway down the line of people, many of them erupted into cheers again, which she knew must mean that Rasmus had just walked out the door. And sure enough, when she glanced back to see if she was right, there he was, looking as painfully perfect as usual even though they had both just been disgustingly sweaty for two hours. He was handling this much more smoothly than she was, already with a sharpie at the ready, but not even his obnoxious charm could grate on her nerves tonight.
Once the initial surprise and peculiarity of being greeted by so many strangers and taking pictures with them wore off, Cora greatly enjoyed it all. She had to muster all her willpower not to get teary-eyed again as they all told her their stories about how they'd heard about the show from an article or a video or a friend and that they loved it even more than they expected to. She realized that she was talking to a very biased portion of their audience—the people who didn't like it were very unlikely to come outside for pictures and autographs afterward—but her heart still did a giddy jump in her chest each time one them complimented her.
But the best part of it all was getting to the very end of the line and seeing one last straggler, a pale-haired boy in an oversized jacket clutching his playbill and patiently waiting his turn like everyone else. Her lips leaped into a grin when her eyes landed on him.
"Hey, stranger," Simon smiled. "Can I have your autograph?"
Cora moved to wrap him up in a hug first, and when his arms circled around her back, she found the familiarity of it even more comforting than normal amidst this night of brand new experiences and sensations. He had told her that he would try to come tonight—the first preview of a show was usually much easier to get a ticket to than opening night since so many of those tickets were reserved for the press—but seeing him there holding a playbill with her name and picture in it was yet another component of the evening that made this new reality of hers feel so much more real.
Once she let go of him, she doodled some Xs and Os on the front of his playbill, which put a silly little smirk on his face.
"Getting scandalous, are we?" he leaned over and teased to her under his breath as she looped her arm through his to walk off together.
Rolling her eyes, Cora gave him a swift peck on the cheek once they were a little further down the block. "You just watched all of that and you're gonna call this scandalous?"
"I almost booed a couple of times when you were making out," he admitted guiltily. "But no one else around me was gonna get it and I didn't really want the ushers to kick me out."
She couldn't help but giggle a little bit at the mental image that conjured up in her head, but she nodded her agreement with him. "That would have made a great story, but I think I'd get very psyched out onstage if I heard someone booing at me."
Simon reached for her hand to lightly squeeze it. "We definitely wouldn't want that."
"Unless I was the villain, of course. Then it'd mean I was doing my job well."
"One could argue that you are the villain," he pointed out.
"Oh, no." Cora shook her head. "That's definitely Rasmus."
Neither of them could help but snicker a little bit at that, but Simon was polite enough to try to mask his as a cough. "Am I walking you home?"
They had been meandering towards the subway station at the pace of snails. "I'd like that. Speaking of which, where are you going tonight? Please tell me you're not about to drive back to Rothbury in the middle of the night."
Simon quickly assuaged her. "I'm not. Maybe I should, but I'm not strong enough to torture myself like that just to make it to work on time tomorrow. I grabbed a hotel room for tonight and called out for the first half of the day so that I can just drive back in the morning."
Cora's eyebrows furrowed. "I would have let you crash with me. We have a very comfy couch, you know."
"I know you wouldn't hesitate to say yes," he promised. "Which is exactly why I didn't ask you. I don't want to intrude."
"You wouldn't–"
"And I knew you'd say that, too," he grinned, holding up his hand to stop her. "But it wouldn't have been very much of a surprise then, would it?"
"I suppose not."
They descended down into the subway station, chatting quietly amongst the two of them for the ride back to her place. Now that the adrenaline of the night was starting to wear off, it was finally hitting Cora just how freaking tired she was. And thirsty. Even though she'd chugged a bottle of water after the show, she still felt like she could down two more. Her whole body, but especially her feet, ached. She wouldn't be surprised if she woke up in the morning for rehearsals with a couple of fresh bruises from how roughly she and Rasmus had to handle each other. But this was the hardest part, the beginning. She'd get used to the physical wear and tear, especially once they opened and were no longer doing rehearsals during the day.
By the time they were walking the couple of blocks between the station and her apartment, Cora felt like Simon was halfway dragging her along, but if he had any complaints about her leaning so heavily on him—both literally and metaphorically—he didn't vocalize them. Instead, he gave her a final hug once they were in the lobby.
"I love you," she murmured into his shoulder.
"I love you, too."
Realizing she hadn't said it forthright yet, Cora pulled her head back to meet his eyes and told him, "Thanks for coming to see me."
Simon sweetly brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, a gesture she was long past thinking of as romantic when it came from him but rather as the action of someone who simply wanted to take care of her. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
____________________
A/N:
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. There will be 40 of them, so we're a quarter of the way through the book!