Chapter Forty-Three
Petra sits in her dressing room, folded into herself. Her elbows dig into her thighs, fingers woven through her hair as if manual pressure might keep her from completely unraveling. The devastation arrives in waves, oscillating between suffocating and crushing.
This was supposed to be her night. The moment justifying every blister that’s become a callus. She’s fought for this stage since arriving in New York, and just as it revealed itself to her, it’s been taken back. Poof—gone.
Her shoulders tremble as tears slip through her fingers. A lifetime of preparation demolished by food poisoning. She doesn’t even get the dignity of failing on her own merits. At least failure gives you something to fix. Bad luck just gives you pain to endure.
Her gaze lifts, blurred by salty tears, to where the Sugar Plum Fairy costume hangs across the room. It sways slightly, mint-green tulle and silver thread catching light. A dream in fabric form, mocking her with its useless perfection.
She can already hear tomorrow’s whispers, the revisionist history being written in real-time. An unfortunate mishap, but perhaps for the best. She wasn’t quite ready for the role anyway.
Kate will wear sympathy like imposter jewelry, cheap and obviously fake, relishing every second of Petra’s devastation while pretending concern.
The nausea arrives next. Sweat breaks across Petra’s forehead, cold and clammy. Her hands shake so badly she can barely wipe her mouth. The injustice of it hits her physically, a punch to the solar plexus that makes her double over. Her stomach heaves, empty but churning.
This is what twenty years of discipline and sacrifice amount to: sitting on a cold floor, make-up streaming down her face, body wrung out, while her most important night forgets to include her.
A knock at the door interrupts her descent into grief.
She stiffens. Probably a stagehand delivering the official news, the formal notification of her erasure from tonight’s program.
Another knock at the door, firmer this time.
“Yes,” she manages to say.
The door opens, and she sees him: Liam standing in the doorway.
“Your Cavalier has arrived,” he says.
“What—Liam, what’re you doing here?”
“I heard from Zoe,” he says simply, stepping inside like this is perfectly normal, like appearing at Lincoln Center instead of Madison Square Garden on the most important night of his season makes total sense.
Petra wipes at her face. “Liam, you have a game tonight.”
He shrugs. “The Sentinels have a game tonight. I have a performance tonight.”
“But…I don’t understand,” she says.
His gaze holds steady, unwavering. “This is where I belong tonight, Petra.”
“Liam, you can’t just—”
“I can,” he interrupts with confidence. “And I will. If you’ll have me.”
“Liam, you don’t understand—”
“Volkov does though.” His smile carries secrets and solutions. “When I told him I was the guy in that viral video, he was blown away. Didn’t believe me at first—asked me to do double tours to prove it. So, I did. He’s on board for me to perform as the Cavalier.”
Petra blinks, dumbfounded. “I don’t know what to say. I’m—I’m—”
“Then just nod and agree to let me dance with you.” Liam steps closer, taking her hands. “This role? You taught me this role. It only seems fitting we debut together.”
Petra’s tears, the ones that began as tears of sorrow continue to flow but now as tears of joy.
“You’re choosing this over the playoffs?” she whispers, searching his face.
“I’m choosing you over everything,” he says. “I was an idiot, Petra. That night we fought—I said things I didn’t mean. You were right to be angry about the video. It was your career and your reputation. They matter. I should have understood that instead of making it about me.”
She shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault. And I shouldn’t have walked away. I was scared.”
“We both were scared,” Liam says, pulling her closer.
“But I’m done being scared. I’m done pretending hockey is all that matters.
You taught me to move differently, to be stronger in ways that have nothing to do with checking someone into the boards.
You rebuilt me, Petra. Not just my hamstring—me. ”
She reaches up, touching his face. “You’re giving up the most important game of your season.”
“No,” he says firmly. “I’m showing up for the most important performance of yours. That’s what partners do.”
“Partners,” she repeats.
“In every sense,” he says. “On stage, off stage, wherever you’ll have me. I love you, Petra. I should have said it months ago instead of letting you walk out that door.”
“I love you too,” she says.
Liam pulls her in for a kiss. When they break apart, she looks at him with sudden panic. “But you don’t have a costume—”
“Volkov’s having wardrobe grab something from a past production. It might not fit perfectly, but it’ll work.” He wipes a tear from her cheek. “Come on, Sugar Plum. We have a performance to put on.”
Backstage, the theater’s pre-performance mayhem swirls around them.
Stage lights filter through velvet curtains, illuminating dust motes that dance around like tiny spotlights.
Following the lively overture, the opening scene of The Nutcracker begins, the Stahlbaum family’s Christmas Eve party filling the stage with Victorian grandeur.
From the wings, Liam watches fourteen children in period costumes flood the stage.
The boys enter wearing miniature tailcoats with brass buttons, their hair slicked into matching side parts.
The girls spin in burgundy and emerald party dresses, petticoats rustling, ribbons trailing from their carefully pinned curls.
A stagehand rushes up to Liam and taps him on the shoulder.
“Sentinels are down three to zero after the first period,” says the stagehand before he disappears down a dark corridor backstage. Before Liam has a chance to let regret creep in his bones, the performance playing out before him recaptures his full attention.
The adult dancers playing the parents glide through the scene. Mrs. Stahlbaum’s bustle dress must weigh fifteen pounds with all its trim and beading, but she moves as if it’s a nightgown. Mr. Stahlbaum’s tailcoat swings as he mimes greeting guests, his long mustache from a bygone era.
The massive Christmas tree upstage starts at twelve feet, waiting for its mechanical moment to grow to forty-one feet. For now, it’s decorated with fake candles and glass ornaments.
Drosselmeyer makes his entrance with a flourish of his cape, black silk lined with purple satin.
He brings his three life-sized dolls: Harlequin in his diamond-patterned suit doing mechanical turns; his partner Columbine in pink tulle executing perfect hops in arabesque; and of course, the toy soldier who performs breathtaking jumps much to the children’s delight.
The party builds to its climax: “Grandfather’s Dance.” The orchestra swells; Tchaikovsky’s score fills every corner of the theater with holiday magic that makes even the most cynical stagehands pause to watch.
From his position backstage, Liam can see it all. Dozens of moving parts somehow create a single magical story. In fifteen minutes, this organized pandemonium will clear, the battle scene will begin and then Act II will arrive. His Act II. Their Act II.
Petra appears beside him, now in her Sugar Plum costume. “The party scene always makes me nostalgic,” she whispers. “I was one of those party children once back in Alabama. Stepped on Drosselmeyer’s cape and nearly brought him down.”
“And now you’re the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Liam says.
“With my Cavalier,” she responds, squeezing his hand.
The party scene reaches its end, the children and parents taking their final positions as the lights dim. The transformation is about to begin, the magic that turns a party into a dream, a living room into a battlefield, and very soon, a hockey player and a ballerina into a Cavalier and Sugar Plum.
Liam’s survived game sevens, playoff overtimes, penalty shots with entire cities holding their breath, but none of it compares to this. Hockey terror is manageable. Ballet terror is a different beast altogether.
As Act I concludes and everyone prepares for Act II, Liam is busy envisioning each step in his mind’s eye. His head and body make small, abbreviated movements as he plays out his role to himself in preparation.
Petra moves beside him with the calm of someone in her natural habitat.
“Remember, lift from your core and legs, not just your arms.”
He nods, breathing through the strain.
They stand behind the wings, stage lights creeping into the margins. The little angels are already performing Act II’s opening in the Land of the Sweets, their delicate steps creating the ethereal atmosphere that precedes disaster or magic, all depending on Liam and Petra.
The second act unfurls in a shimmering blur of color and sound. Hot Chocolate bursts onto the stage first, snapping castanets, flashes of crimson, skirts swirling like flames. Coffee follows, slow and sinuous, followed by Tea who flits onstage, all quicksilver precision and bright, chiming notes.
Then come the Candy Canes, hoops in hands and bells on their costumes jingling with each bounding jump; next are the Marzipan Shepherdesses, delicate and pastel, dainty yet powerful; and then Mother Ginger lumbers in, towering and immense, mirror in hand, powdering her face, unleashing her Polichinelles from underneath her dress.
By the time the stage blooms into the Waltz of the Flowers, the entire theater is fully immersed in the story as petal-pink tutus sweep across stage like a garden caught in a warm gust. The applause when they finish rolls backstage like distant thunder.
Liam watches from the wings, anticipation and anxiety growing tighter and tighter in his chest until the Dewdrop and her flowers take their final curtsy, and suddenly, it’s time.
Petra turns to him. “You ready?”
Liam pauses, then smiles. He kisses her, then whispers: “Merde.”