Chapter 24
Dafne
We have an hour for lunch break, so Ollie and I bring our food outside and sit at our favorite spot in the garden. Despite the near absence of sun, the weather is somewhat mild by London’s standards, spring slowly making its way forth.
“Please tell me the story again,” Ollie says, extracting his turkey sandwich from his rucksack. I release an exasperated breath and take a sip from my canteen.
“He took me to a popcorn place. Think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , but it’s popcorn.”
“Amazing,” he says slowly, and I all but throw his water bottle at him.
“Why do I allow you to bully me like this?” I sigh dramatically as he chugs the contents of the bottle so greedily, I’m not sure it’s water.
“I’m serious! It was a genius idea, I have to hand it to him. I would have never thought of taking someone out for popcorn. Caramelised almonds, perhaps, but not–” he says, expression serious, but obviously taking the piss.
“Maybe I’ll do it again,” I say before taking a bite of my apple.
Ollie’s nose scrunches up. “Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because you clearly don’t like him, and it has nothing to do with popcorn. It’s not like you to settle . ”
“Ethan is a good bloke. He has …”
“The emotional depth of a children’s swimming pool?”
“I was going for ‘an interesting sense of humour’”, I smile. Ollie isn’t entirely wrong; not that I’d want a potential boyfriend to talk to me about Proust all day, but Ethan also used the world cool more than fifteen times in the span of one hour. There should be a middle ground. Besides, why am I thinking about boyfriends at all? So much for swearing love off, Dafne.
I suddenly think of the mind-blowing kiss Theodore and I shared and my breath hitches in my throat. Then I think about how we’re going to be alone and sweaty in a room in approximately twenty minutes.
“Okay, cards on the table,” I sigh then, setting my food aside. “I have to tell you something, but you have to promise not to be mad at me.”
He gestures for me to go on, and I look down at my lap. “I, well, not exactly I , but Theodore, rather–he kissed me. Uh, we kissed. I kissed him back. Not at rehearsals, I mean.”
Ollie stares at me unblinking, his half-bitten sandwich long forgotten.
“When.”
“I don’t know,” I say quietly–which is a lie, because I know precisely what day it was. “A while ago, but it’s not like we’re having an affair or anything, I mean, even saying it out loud is–”
Ollie waves a hand in front of me, which promptly shuts me up. “Does Devon know about this?” he asks, and I can’t tell if he’s shocked or something else.
“Uh, unless Theodore told him, which I assume he didn’t, then no.”
Ollie nods a few times, then goes back to gobbling his lunch down. I eye him suspiciously because I cannot believe he has nothing else to say. The bomb I just dropped on him should have him losing his shite.
“Uhm, did you miss the part where I told you Theodore Price stuck his tongue down my throat?” I whisper in disbelief.
“I heard you.”
“You’re not upset with me for not telling you sooner?”
“Have I ever been upset with you in my life?”
“I guess not,” I say.
“But now I see exactly what is going on. I know who I’m dealing with.”
I look up at him with a questioning look, so he starts to elaborate.
“You entertain this Ethan idea because you’re afraid of what the other option means for you. Except the Dafne I know doesn’t play safe. She never did,” he adds a little sadly, throwing me a metaphorical punch in the gut.
“Well, that’s not how I was expecting this conversa-tion to go,” I huff. Ollie chuckles and unexpectedly offers me his hand. I curl my fingers around his and he squeezes once before letting go.
I’d honestly be lost without him, even if I don’t like what he has to say.
“Either way I’m meeting him for a quick dance rehearsal after lunch, so that should be fun,” I grimace.
“Ethan dances?” he smirks.
“Price, Ollie, I’m talking about Price,” I say as I rub the back of my head, just to confirm it barely hurts now.
“You know, maybe it could be a lovely opportunity to chat,” I ponder, an idea forming in my head.
He blinks twice, then raises both hands in surrender. “I know better than to ask for details,” he declares, but I can tell he’s more amused than anything else. I stuff my things in my tote bag and mess up Ollie’s hair with one hand before jogging inside to get changed.
Ollie’s right. I don’t play safe .
Theodore
“Where is she?” I mutter to myself as I wait for Dafne just outside the dance studio, only to glance at my phone and find out I’m fifteen minutes early. The fact that I couldn’t eat anything other than crackers and a sip of Devon’s disgusting energising drink might have something to do with that–long lost are the days of smooth Theo, who didn’t have to worry about talking to a girl. With this specific girl, all I had to think about a good enough retort to whatever argument we’d end up having.
Luckily or not, Dafne turns the corner exactly four minutes before the designated time.
“Hey, sorry I’m late, I met Ethan again on the way, he needed–never mind,” she says, a little breathless, her canteen’s handle dangling from two fingers.
Does the bloke follow her around?
“Did you run?” I ask instead.
“ No ,” she glares. She definitely did.
I smirk, opening the door as I nod for her to go in. I put my rucksack next to the door, and as I reach to grab the cable to connect the loudspeaker to my phone I say, “Let’s start with–”
“How about we practice one of the duels instead?” she interjects as she secures her hair in a high ponytail.
“Uh, shouldn’t you take it easy? Besides, you don’t have any fight scenes in the play–”
“I’m fine, and I know the sequences,” she insists, challenge clear in her tone. “I’m a fast learner.”
“Fine by me,” I nod. I’m not sure what the point is, but I can’t bring myself to not see where it goes.
She walks to the small cabinet in the far left corner of the spacious room and extracts two wooden practice sticks, all but throwing one of them at me. We stand a foot apart from each other, bow, and the duel begins.
“Why don’t we–” she huffs as she ducks to avoid my first jab, “make it more interesting?”
“Do tell,” I reply, my gaze focused on her mock weapon.
“A truth for a truth,” she rotates her stick in a half-circle motion, which I intercept, and our sticks clack when they meet above us. “You answer a question honestly, and I’ll do the same.”
The sticks slide apart as we push back.
She takes two retreating steps back, just like the choreography requires. She really has been paying attention, and I should be impressed–but this is just the kind of thing she would do. Which is perhaps somewhere between slightly annoying and quite admirable.
“I’ll go first,” she says, and I know we’re both holding simple sticks, but for some reason it looks like hers could actually pierce me if she willed it to.
“Does anybody else know what you told me that day when you walked in on me and Ollie rehearsing?” she asks, no trace of teasing in her voice.
Bloody hell .
“Cutting right to the–” our weapons briefly clack again as I follow her across the room, “chase.” Not long until Romeo stabs Tybalt now. Will that provide an excuse for me to end this game before it gets dangerous?
“No,” I breathe. “My turn.”
She moves her fingers in a forthcoming gesture, a few strands of hair having escaped her ponytail brushing over her forehead. I rotate my pretend sword until it collides with hers again.
“Do you still hate me?” I blurt out. “That’s a question you should ask yourself,” she grunts, pushing against my stick with hers so that I find myself retreating a few steps.
We circle each other, not exactly following the original duel’s choreography. When I point out it’s her turn to answer, she says that she’ll give a proper one, but only after I answer my own question first. It would be fair, if not for the fact I don’t really want to talk about this, and there’s no way I can get out of it again; I should have known my luck wouldn’t last. If I’ve learned anything about Dafne, it’s that she knows what she wants and she’ll do whatever it takes to obtain it. Not so differently from me, after all. Before I can add anything else, she’s running towards me with much more force than expected, and when she acts on Tybalt’s last blow, the pretend sword held high in both of her hands, I mimic Romeo’s fatal strike to his–her chest. She slowly drops the stick and pretends to fall to the ground, and I find myself scrambling to throw my weapon behind me and stop her from hitting the floor with her knees first. Now I’m keeping her upright with my arms securely planted on her back, our chests nearly pressed together.
We’re both breathing heavily, and her eyes flicker to my lips for such a short moment I can’t be sure I actually saw it. I should really step back, but I’m rooted in place and she’s not backing away either. I wouldn’t be surprised to know she's never backed away, literally or metaphorically, from anything in her life.
My next words flow out of me as if they’d been tied to an invisible string and pulled out of my mouth.
“I’ve told you before, I don’t hate you . I hate that I’ll never be as good as you. I hate this jealousy, and I hate that you’ve seen all the ugly parts of me, but you’re still here. And I don’t understand why.”
Fuck my life.
It’s the second time since I’ve known her that she looks taken aback; the first time was when she heard my stupid interview. She nods slowly.
“Ask me again,” she repeats firmly, her fingers digging into my arms.
“Do you still hate me?” I ask after swallowing. Can bravado be passed by osmosis?
“I hate that you hate that I’m good,” she whispers. “I hate that you should know how good you are, but still spent the last three years taking out your senseless frustrations on me. I hate that you didn’t let me see the good parts sooner. And I hate that you chose the worst possible moment to decide to kiss me like that.”
Fuck Fuck Fuck.
She suddenly pulls away and turns in one swift motion.
“Next time you kiss a girl, make sure it’s for the right reasons,” she says as she tugs the hair tie off and lets her hair free. She starts gathering her things, and I’m exactly where she left me.
I figure I have a choice: I can let her walk away again, or I can change this narrative once and for all.
She has one hand on the door handle, and I reach her in a few strides, placing my hand over hers from behind.
“Am I out of time?” I ask in a low voice.
When I think she’s about to elbow me in the stomach and wrench the door open, she turns around and lets her bag slip off her shoulder to the floor. Dafne looks up at me, something bold flashing in her eyes. She reaches to thread her fingers in my hair and pulls my mouth to hers.
Have I said fuck? Because now I understand what giving a drink to a thirsty man really means. I don’t think I realised just how badly I wanted to kiss her again.
Dafne
I part my lips to allow his tongue in, and his hands move to my hips as we retreat. He effortlessly lifts me to sit on top of the small table next to the stereo, a pen and a note pad clattering to the floor as I adjust myself on the surface with one arm draped around his neck and the other hand gripping the hair at his nape.
“Are you–mmh,” I breathe as he moves to kiss my neck, “going to keep acting like-like I’m not the Juliet you wanted?” I detangle from around him to snake a hand under the hem of his shirt and trail my fingers over his abdominals. Holy Bard, does he have great muscles.
“No,” he says before pressing another kiss to my jaw. “No, Dafne.”
I tug lightly on his hair so that he pulls back with a small groan, just enough to look at me in the eyes. He sweeps a thumb over my bottom lip, brown eyes infused with gorgeous green roaming from my own to my mouth. “I don’t know how to just stop ,” he admits. “In everything I do. I’m not built to feel things halfway.” He licks his lips and squints a little, like he has to focus extra hard to say what he’s thinking. I find that I’m not displeased by the notion I do that to him. After a few moments where the only sound is our breathing, ragged from both practicing the duel and kissing, he says, “But I really want to try.” There goes honest Theodore again. Making my heart go to Zumba class.
“Good,” I say quietly, the haze of the past few minutes clinging to every part of me.
He drops his head, his hand still cradling my face .
Now I’m having other kinds of thoughts entirely. He kisses me again, this time slowly. Deliberately. In a way I didn’t think about being kissed, but that I enjoy way too much, if the heat spreading down my belly is of any indication.
“What about Ethan?” he asks then, his lips an inch from mine. “Are you still going to see him?”
Of course something had to ruin the moment.
“We’re not in a relationship,” I breathe, and I could swear his shoulder slump a little bit. “You and me,” I clarify. Not even these stupid feelings coursing through my whole body, and the knowledge that no one can understand why I do what I do like he does, are enough to make me drop everything else in my life to be his groupie. History doesn’t erase itself unless we do something about it.
His jaw works, then he takes a small step back, and his hands move to envelop the sides of my legs. It’s quite the dominant gesture, and I find I enjoy it. A lot.
“I suppose not,” he agrees. I can’t tell if he’s upset, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the taste of disappointment. That’s not what I wanted him to say. Ollie’s words from earlier ring in my head like an alarm.
“That’d be too much now, wouldn’t it,” he continues.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we shared you? You go out with Mr. Yo on the first and third day of the week, and we can make out every other day.”
Upset it is, then. His hands are still on me though .
“I’m sorry, what do you want me to say? That I’ll tell him to piss off because you don’t like me talking to him?” I know I’m being harsh, but I want him to tell me the truth again. Because I know he’s holding something back.
“He’s an idiot, Dafne, and we both know it. Are you even into him? Because it sure didn’t look like it earlier today.”
He’s not entirely wrong, but he doesn’t need to know that right now.
“Why are you acting like I owe you something?”
“You don’t . But it’s going to be really hard to fix this ,” he gestures between us, “if I know that you spend your spare time with him.”
“I went out with him on–” I sigh. “I don’t understand you. You just said you’d try. You don’t want me to see other people, and you’ve told me something about you that no one else knows. You’ve got nothing else to say?”
“Don’t do that,” he grimaces. Why is he so eager for a fight, even after everything we’ve just said and done, is beyond me. Well, here goes the million pounds questions. “You want to date me, Price?” I look him straight in the eye.
His mouth opens and closes without saying anything. His shoulders are clearly tense now, in such contrast to how he was melting into me mere minutes ago, it seems impossible. He closes his eyes and takes a breath, his brows furrowing. I’d like to smooth them with my thumb, but I don’t move a muscle.
He eventually settles on, “It’s complicated.”
Of course.
“I’ve heard that one before,” I say bitterly, hopping off the table so that he has to take another step back to make space for me. My hair is probably absolutely wild right now, but I can’t bring myself to care. A truth for a truth, was it? Even if he doesn’t give one back now, mine will have to do.
“I’m nobody’s pastime, Theodore. I have been once, and I won’t do it again. So make no mistake: I didn’t kiss you twice because I was desperate for it. I did it because,” I use my pointer finger to move his chin ever so slightly–I want him to really look at me when I say this, “I wanted to kiss you . I can look you in the eyes and tell you that even if it makes me ten kinds of crazy, I like you.
A troubled expression hardens his features at the words.
“Why is it so hard for you to do the same?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You want us to be more? Own it,” I say then.
I fix my hair back into a low ponytail as I lower myself to the stereo. I can see from the corner of my eye that he hasn’t moved.
“We’ve got a dance to practice now,” I remind him as I turn on the music. He doesn’t say anything else, and we rehearse in perfect, silent synchrony .
Theodore
How do you tell someone that your head has got to be to be wired up the wrong way, because you made a very stupid decision that could potentially make them hate you and it’s not right to pretend you didn’t? How do you tell them there is so much they don’t know, and I see now that none of it is a good excuse for everything that you’ve put them through?
When Dafne leaves, I glance at the clock on the wall and see I have exactly fifteen minutes before I need to get to the theatre. I tidy the room up, make sure it looks as if no one had just been here. As if I hadn’t kissed Dafne on that table. As if I hadn’t tried, and failed, to get four simple words out: I like you too . Maybe one day I’ll be the kind of person that can accept good things and never look back. And maybe trying isn’t enough; sometimes the people we care about need us to show up and do the thing.
I make my way to the locker rooms for a quick change of shirt. I wash my face, too, and when I turn the water off I take a moment to breathe deeply. A buzzing energy envelops me as soon as I set foot in the theatre, my castmates chatting or stretching. Naturally, my attention is caught by Dafne’s ponytail and the easy smile she throws Margaret as they talk. Someone’s pale arm suddenly weighs on my shoulder and Devon says, “You look stressed, Montague. I’m taking you out one of these nights.”