Chapter 2
Ten and a Half Years Earlier
The thick velvet curtain did nothing to muffle the roar of applause. Foot stomps reverberated through the floorboards. Chloe turned to Sean beside her on the stage, his face flushed with triumph.
“Listen to that, they loved it,” she said, eyes glittering with delight.
“Of course they did,” he said, grinning back, his black hair damp with sweat, pupils wide with adrenaline. “You were spectacular.”
“Everyone was,” Chloe said, catching Akiko’s hand in the line beside her and giving it a squeeze.
“I thought I was going to throw up when I saw how packed it was,” said Akiko, pulling a face. “And I needed the loo for the whole of act two.”
The band filed onstage now, led by John, and the curtain lifted once more so the musicians could take their bow.
As the spotlight hit them, the crowd erupted again—shouts, whistles, Chloe’s name called from the stalls.
Sean nudged her forward, pushing her through the line of musicians, and she stumbled, alone, into the spotlight.
The applause surged as she took a final bow.
She had never known an opening night like it.
No missed cues, not a single flubbed line; there was an energy onstage that felt electric.
Everything about tonight felt like a real, professional production rather than a student play.
Chloe hadn’t been acting Katherina; she had been Katherina.
All those months of writing and rewriting, the midnight rehearsals, those late nights workshopping with Sean, transforming Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew into something raw, modern, their own.
It had all been worth it. Because there was no high on earth like this. No legal high, anyway.
Running back, she grabbed Sean’s hand and dragged him forward.
This was his moment too; they’d adapted the play together.
The curtain finally fell again, and the cast spilled offstage in a frenzy—wig caps pulled off, beards ripped away, giggles echoing through the wings, as everyone hurried to the greenroom bar via the dressing room.
In the chaos, Sean reached for Chloe’s hand again, just as John swept between them, flinging an arm around each of their shoulders. His long red hair shone bright as a beacon beneath the backstage lights.
“Well done, you two,” he said, beaming. “Another Adler-Fairway spectacular.”
Chloe hugged an arm around his waist and grinned up at him. “None of it would work without your music. That piano solo during the dance scene…” She kissed the tips of her fingers.
“John, who’s that guy on the double bass tonight?” Akiko asked, skipping in front of them. “He is yummy.”
“Evan Marlow,” John said casually. “Lovely man, not your type.”
Akiko stopped dead, hand on hip. “Excuse me. How is he not my type?”
“He has a boyfriend.”
“Of course he does,” she groaned, throwing back her head dramatically, then yanking out pins to send dark braids tumbling free. “I swear I am cursed to only fancy unavailable men.”
“Um, two eligible straight men standing right in front of you, Kiko,” Sean said, clutching a hand over his heart like she’d wounded him.
“You two don’t count,” she shot back, giving Sean a playful shove. Sean glanced across at Chloe, but she had taken a deliberate step ahead.
They found the dressing room corridor in chaos—heat, chatter, bodies everywhere.
A man, probably Rocco Falconi, charged out from the nearest door wearing nothing but a glittering thong and a plastic bucket on his head, shrieking with laughter as someone chased him down the corridor.
The four of them flattened against the wall to avoid a collision, and Chloe let out a startled laugh.
She took the opportunity to pause, pressing her palms against the cool plaster wall.
She wasn’t ready to go in there, to brave the soup of sweaty bodies, brush the tangled nest of hair spray and pins from her auburn curls, and put on her regular, boring clothes.
She wasn’t ready to go back to reality. Not yet.
“Let’s give it a minute,” Sean suggested. “Wait for the chaos to clear. Drink at the top?” Before anyone could answer, he slipped inside the heaving dressing room, then returned seconds later clasping a bottle of champagne.
“Always be prepared,” he said with a grin, handing the bottle to Chloe like a trophy.
No one needed much convincing. They snuck up the metal staircase that led to the lighting bridge above the stage.
They weren’t technically allowed up here, but the stage manager would be too busy to notice.
Chloe and Sean often sat up here after rehearsals, looking down on the world they were building onstage.
This was her happy place, where she felt in control.
And the act of creating, of deciding how your story would play out, it lit something inside her in a way nothing else did.
Now the four of them sat side by side in a line, Kiko and Chloe at either end, the boys in the middle, legs dangling over the edge, listening to the last of the audience leave and watching the stagehands dismantle the set below.
Sean reached for the bottle, then raised it in the air. “A toast, to my leading ladies.”
John and Akiko clinked invisible glasses, while Chloe rested her forehead against the cold metal railing.
“I want to freeze this moment,” she said quietly. “Us four, here. I want it to always be like this.”
They all leaned a little closer to her, a moment of still, as though they were trying to make her wish come true.
“Oh, hey,” Kiko said, reaching across both boys to tap Chloe. “I didn’t want to tell you before the show, but I heard someone say there was a talent agent in the audience tonight.”
“What?” Chloe gasped, sitting bolt upright.
“Yeah, I thought it might freak you out if I told you before. Imagine if you got an agent out of this?”
“Or you could,” Chloe said, her pulse quickening, veins still thrumming with adrenaline.
Akiko laughed, reaching for the champagne bottle. “But I don’t want to be an actor. I just like playing dress-up with you guys.” She took a swig of champagne. “Whereas you, Chloe Fairway, will be a star one day.”
“Don’t forget about us when you’re rich and famous,” Sean said, nudging her with his shoulder.
“Oh stop it,” Chloe said, ducking her head, but she felt the warm fizz of possibility bubbling within her. Could she really be good enough to do this professionally?
Sean reached over and gently squeezed her hand, his pupils flaring as he looked at her. “If anyone can do it, you can.”
“ ‘The reward of a thing well done is to have done it,’ ” John said, like a wise old owl. He had a quote for every occasion. Then he carefully removed his wire-rimmed glasses and started cleaning the lenses on his shirt.
“Who said that? Voltaire?” Sean teased.
“Emerson, I think,” John replied. “All I mean is, can’t we just enjoy tonight? An appreciative audience, a job well done, time enjoyed with friends.”
“Yeah, live in the moment, guys,” Akiko said sternly, then giggled as she passed the bottle to John.
“Tiny Dancer, don’t shit on our dreams of fame and fortune.
Allow us our great expectations,” Sean said theatrically, as he threw an arm around John’s neck, then ruffled his red hair.
John shoved him off, but his mouth twitched into a reluctant smile.
With the surname Elton, John had picked up his fair share of nicknames around college, but “Tiny Dancer” was the one that stuck.
Given he was tall, reserved, and rarely danced in public, it didn’t suit him at all.
But perhaps that was what made it so funny.
Chloe watched her friends play-fight, while Akiko swung her legs back and forth like a child. She tried to capture the moment, take a mental Polaroid.
Then, whoosh. A soft thud echoed below.
“Whoopsie,” said Akiko.
They all peered over the railing to see one of her silver heels sitting in the middle of the stage.
A stagehand looked up and pointed. “Hey, you lot, get down from there!”
Akiko yelped, covering her mouth with both hands.
“Clumsy Kiko strikes again,” Chloe groaned.
“That’s one way to get a man’s attention, bludgeon him in the head with a shoe,” Sean said with a sigh.
“And so, it was ever thus. We’d better go down,” John said, pushing himself up on the metal railing, then offering Kiko a hand. “If you ever want to play Cinderella, I think you’d be a shoe-in.”
“Har de har,” Akiko muttered, pulling a face at him, then tugging off her other shoe so she could walk without hobbling. They started along the bridge and John moved aside to let her go first down the ladder. Chloe turned to follow them, but then Sean caught her hand.
“Wait,” he said. She looked back at him. His eyes dropped to the walkway beneath their feet. “I want to tell you something,” he said quietly, then pulled her into a hug. “I’m so proud of you, Chlo.”
“Ah, thanks, Seany. I’m proud of you too,” she said, smiling into his damp shoulder, his shirt sweaty from the performance.
“No, I mean it.” His voice was serious now. “You come up with these ideas, and you make them happen. You bring out the best in everyone. We make a good team, don’t we?”
“We do,” she said, feeling a shift in the air. Sean was never sincere, not like this.
“You light up the stage,” he said, leaning back just enough to look at her, and his eyes were glassy now.
“Thanks,” she murmured, beginning to pull away, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he slid his arms down around her waist, holding her there, eyes locked on hers. And then, slowly, he leaned in.
Chloe didn’t move. She felt herself brace.
Was this what she’d been waiting for? Or had she always known this moment would come and hoped, blindly, that it wouldn’t?
It was a running joke that Sean and Chloe’s friendship was the most drawn-out courtship in history.
“When are you guys just going to sleep together?” was a constant refrain in Deepers, the Lincoln bar.
She usually laughed it off; so did Sean, insisting they were nothing but friends, the best of collaborators.
And yet—there had been moments. The late nights.
The Imp’s notes. That feeling of being known.
Sean was handsome, with his floppy dark hair, his kind eyes, that warm, electric energy that could charge a whole rehearsal room.
He pushed her as a performer, as a writer, as a person. In many ways, they made perfect sense.
But now, as his lips touched hers, dry and hesitant, his hands fumbling at her waist, Chloe felt a coldness rising up her spine. A sinking in her chest, then some instinct buried deep within her that told her, Not this. Not him. She pulled back sharply.
“No, Sean, I can’t.”