Chapter 9
Nine
“The blood of the city pollutes the sea and angers Poseidon who dwells beneath the surface of the waves. If we torment the
Gods, they will retaliate.”
—“Agamemnon’s Rally,” The Wooden Horse, Act One
I have hands down never felt such a range of emotions at the theatre. Joy and despair mixed flawlessly. Dexter Ellis was sheer
perfection.
#Thewoodenhorse #Dexterellis
Holy shiiiit Dexter Ellis and Jonah Penrose last night were SO amazing. I literally can’t stop thinking about them.
#Thewoodenhorselondon #Jonahpenrose #Dexterellis #Dexah
Dexter Ellis made his long-awaited return to The Wooden Horse last night and stole the show. His Patroclus will go down as
one of the best in history. Five well-deserved stars.
#Thewoodenhorse #Theatrereviews #Dexterellis
Um, does anyone else think Jonah Penrose and Dexter Ellis are actually in love because that kiss on stage last night was a
bit too convincing to not be real. Right?
#Jonahpenrose #Dexterellis #Dexah
They had a bloody ship name. Jonah woke to hundreds of mentions on social media and a flurry of new followers.
For the briefest of moments, he forgot about the night before and Dexter Ellis with his stupid teeth sinking into his lip, and wondered what on earth he’d done to garner such attention.
His name alongside Dexter’s online seemed strange, a call back to the year before when he’d been announced as playing Achilles and the theatre circles went into meltdown.
These posts, however, were a lot nicer than the ones from the previous year.
They not only praised Dexter, but praised him as well, all while dragging poor Bastien in the process.
He hoped Bastien hadn’t seen the posts slamming his portrayal of Patroclus; he didn’t deserve to be compared to Dexter, especially when being ill meant he could do nothing about it.
Besides, Bastien was incredible in the role, and it was only the fans with permanent hard-ons for Dexter who thought otherwise.
The ship name, however, left him with a sour taste on the back of his tongue. Fucking Dexah. It sounded like an antibiotic
or something you might wash contact lenses in. The posts kept piling in, comments upon comments and photographs upon photographs
tagging both him and Dexter at the stage door. Dexter looked overwhelmed in the photos, his cheeks flushed, forehead damp
from sweat as he clutched his bouquet close to his chest and smiled brightly at the cameras. He looked as if he’d never done
stage door before, his eyes slightly too wide, almost scared; but then again, the pictures of Jonah were no better. The skin
below his eyes appeared abnormally dark against his pale complexion, like he hadn’t slept for a month then crawled out of
a cave to put on a sickly performance. He wiped his hand across his nose and grimaced at the shining trail of snot left on
his skin and groaned.
His throat chafed like sandpaper against flesh.
Nope. No. No way. He couldn’t be sick. He dumped his phone into his bedsheets and forced himself to get up and go to the bathroom.
His reflection in the mirror looked at him solemnly; if he didn’t know better, he would assume he’d been on a bender and still
hadn’t gone to sleep. He should have used one of the rehydrating face masks Omari and Sherrie kept not-so-subtly leaving in
his dressing room. Maybe then he wouldn’t look like a Victorian child wasting away.
Jonah forced himself into the shower, the hot water cascading across his skin already healing him, and the raw feeling in his throat subsided slightly.
It wasn’t the flu; he was just tired, and still slightly unnerved by the man grabbing him the night before.
It shouldn’t have surprised him. He’d been grabbed before, pulled about, arms thrown around him, and even wandering hands working their way down his back to his arse, and for some reason he just stood there and took it.
He never complained, never said a word to the security staff at the theatre, Evie, or the other cast members; if he kicked up a fuss, people might think of him as ungrateful, and he couldn’t be seen as anything other than bloody happy about his role and the attention that came with it.
There were nights he skipped the stage door altogether, opting to slip out with his hood up and headphones already on so no one expected anything from him.
He’d always inevitably receive a bevy of aggressive messages from random people who didn’t know him complaining he’d ruined their night by not stopping to take photos afterward.
Once out of the shower, he wrapped his towel around his waist and wandered back to his bedroom, where his bed looked at him
and whispered intricate words of seduction to get him back in it. He contemplated the offer; he needed to go for a run then
head to the dance studio for the class Omari was hounding him about on every form of social media possible, but the bed, God,
the bed looked so bloody good. His phone peered at him from the blankets, the screen lit up with an unrecognized number, and
he stared at it for a good few seconds before realizing someone was calling him. He grabbed it and held it to his face as
droplets of water from his curls dripped across the screen. The number must belong to Dexter; who else would have the gumption
to call at eight in the morning and expect someone to answer?
“Hello?”
“Yeah, hi, it’s Dexter.”
Jonah’s lip stung at the name. “It’s so early.”
“Is it? I always go for a run at five, then do Pilates. I’ve been up for hours.”
“You’re insane.”
Dexter scoffed. “A healthy mind and body are the first steps to success.”
Great. Another Omari. “But you don’t have to do those things at five in the morning, you absolute weirdo.” Dexter didn’t respond. “I thought you were going to text for your . . . feedback? Do you really want me to give you feedback?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t bite people when you kiss them.”
Silence. Jonah waited, not willing to say more, not allowing him to worm his way out of the confrontation by simply not responding.
They played phone-chicken with each other, both waiting patiently for the other to make a move until Dexter finally cracked.
“I went to a bar after the show last night and saw one of the guys you talked to on the tube the other week.”
Out of all the responses he could have given, Jonah couldn’t have guessed he would come out with that. “Okay? And you’re telling
me that because?”
“He came up to me and just started talking shit about you. Thought you might want to know.”
Jonah paused. Edward surely wouldn’t have anything bad to say about him; Jonah had been a great boyfriend, obviously not great
enough to not let Edward’s hands wander, but still pretty good by normal standards.
“What did he say?”
“That you were having an affair with his boyfriend. Apparently, the night you saw them on the tube it all came out. I knew
something weird was going on there. Never pegged you as a home-wrecker, though.”
“Wait.” Jonah let out a disbelieving laugh. It couldn’t have been Edward, it must have been Wes who spoke to Dexter. “I wasn’t
having an affair with anyone. Edward was my boyfriend, that guy was the ‘other man,’ not me.”
“Tomatoes, to-mah-toes.” As he spoke, Jonah could hear another voice in the background, and Dexter gave a laugh. “Anyway,
I’ve got to go. Was that all the feedback you had for me? No biting? Nothing about my actual performance?”
“I mean, that technically is a note on your performance, I just—”
“Okay, Jonah, cool, speak to you later.” He hung up.
Dexter Ellis hung up on him. Jonah gawped at the phone, his hands trembling.
He hated the feelings the man conjured inside of him.
Glinda and Elphaba described it best: unadulterated loathing.
Only Jonah didn’t know if he was the green witch or the one floating about in a bubble.
He wished he could place his anger somewhere other than the center of his chest. Back home when he felt this way he would go to the beach, near the little cove only he seemed to know about, where he could skim rocks and scream at the top of his lungs and it didn’t matter because no one could hear.
London couldn’t offer him the privacy he craved.
It simply sat back with a bag of popcorn and watched as his personal life went up in flames.
He’d been called in for a meeting with Colbie. The dreaded summons came from Evie asking him to come in an hour early. “An
emergency,” she said, “Colbie needs to see you,” the words no actor ever wants to hear about their producer. On his way to
the theatre, he convinced himself this was it. He was going to be told his contact wasn’t going to be renewed again; Colbie
saw how amazing Dexter performed the night before and now Jonah could kiss Achilles goodbye and go back home to Cornwall next
year with his tail between his legs. It didn’t matter how many times he tried to tell himself how ridiculous his prophecy
of self-doom seemed, he couldn’t stop the thoughts from growing. As the Northern Line pulled him closer to the theatre, he
could feel a weight pushing down on his shoulders. He debated texting Bastien, but his messages to him from the morning still
went unanswered, and he guessed Bastien really was as sick as he made out if his phone wasn’t permanently attached to his
hand like usual. He could reach out to Omari, but he was likely using his treasured steam-inhaler cup to cleanse his vocal
cords somewhere. And Sherrie—well, Sherrie would probably only add fuel to the fire, even if she didn’t mean to.