Chapter 8 – Elise #3
Nick leaned closer to Elise with the practiced subtlety of a theatre kid trying to whisper.
“You’ve already missed a lot. The Bennet sisters convinced Stage Left Steve to sing, but they won’t tell anyone what song they signed him up for.
Bex’s S.O. brought cupcakes—chili chocolate. Oh—and Lark bailed.”
Elise tilted her head. “Oh?”
“Lovely Lark,” he said, dragging out the name. “She ghosted—or at least, hasn’t showed her face yet. Not that anyone’s complaining.”
He looked at her sideways—soft, deliberate.
Elise blinked. “Did something happen?”
Nick only raised one brow and sipped his drink, leaving the silence open.
Elise was unsure whether he was teasing or warning.
Before she could decide, Marcie swooped in, beer in hand. “You are singing tonight,” she said with mock authority.
“I am not,” Elise replied.
“She’s shy,” Nick explained.
“I’m observant,” Elise corrected, folding her arms with theatrical calm.
Marcie grinned, unconvinced.
Just behind them, Romy’s voice piped up from near the snack table. “Hey—anyone else notice that Ellen didn’t show? She lives for cast parties.”
That made a few heads turn. Elise caught a quick glance exchanged between Bex and Sienna. Someone murmured something about last time.
Elise made a mental note of that. Ellen hadn’t struck her as the cast-party type—but then again, maybe that was before the drama.
The last party had been right before the company transfer, and the tension between Ellen and Lark had practically curdled the punch.
It wasn’t hard to imagine both of them deciding it was easier to sit this one out. Self-imposed exile.
Devon had finally surrendered to the cursed karaoke tablet, leaving “Do You Hear the People Sing?” blaring at full volume over a mismatched light show.
Benji and Lex leapt up to choreograph an impromptu dance number, dragging Mila and Morgan into the chaos.
Ed took a deep breath and joined them—arms stiff, expression solemn, moving with the tragic grace of someone deeply committed to the bit.
Elise laughed despite herself, caught between affection and secondhand embarrassment.
“I need a drink,” she said, mostly to Nick.
He bowed gallantly. “A woman of taste.”
She slipped toward the bar, weaving between dancing bodies and waving arms, the noise trailing after her like confetti.
The bar was quieter than the karaoke room, blessedly so.
Elise slid onto a stool, the hum of conversation and the faint clink of glassware wrapping around her like cool cloth after too much sun.
She set her bag down carefully beside her, grateful for the momentary stillness.
Graham leaned against the bar, sipping something golden, eyes brightening when he saw her.
“Escaped the secondhand Broadway chaos?” he teased.
“For now,” Elise said, settling in next to him. “I needed a brief reprieve from dramatic renditions of Les Mis.”
“They were waving breadsticks,” Graham murmured. “I don’t think Hugo would’ve approved.”
She laughed—really laughed. It caught her off-guard, and she let it linger a beat longer than expected.
The beertender arrived, and she ordered something mild and light. Something uncomplicated.
She rested her forearms on the bar, letting the glass cool her palms.
A quiet fell between them, but it wasn’t awkward. It just was.
“I feel like I owe you an apology,” Graham started, carefully. “For calling you the wrong name the other day.”
Elise tilted her head. “Why? You just remembered it wrong.”
“I didn’t, actually,” he said, glancing down at his glass. “I asked Lark.”
Elise paused. “You asked Lark?”
“She seemed…” he hesitated, “close to you. I assumed if anyone knew, it’d be her.”
Elise let out a breath of disbelief. “And she told you my name was Emily?”
He nodded once, sheepish. “I thought maybe it was intentional,” he admitted. “Like maybe she didn’t want me to know.”
She tilted her head, studying him. “Because…?”
“I assumed it had something to do with you two being a thing,” he said. “And that she was being… territorial.”
Elise stared at him for a second, her brain catching on the words.
You two being a thing.
Territorial.
He hadn’t been dismissing her. He hadn’t filed her away as some forgettable backstage person whose name he couldn’t be bothered to learn. He had noticed her. Asked about her. And then, misguidedly decided she belonged to someone else.
“She gets that way,” Graham added, like a confession. Something in his voice made Elise look at him more closely. Not gossip. Not judgement. Experience.
Elise gave a soft laugh. “She’s sweet, but… I don’t see her that way. I only realized she had feelings for me like, two hours ago.”
Graham blinked. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “I’ll let her down gently next time I see her.”
He leaned back slightly, looking at her with new eyes. Or maybe not new. Maybe he had been looking that way for longer than she realized, and she had been too busy assuming she was too invisible to notice.
“So it’s not mutual,” he said.
“No. Definitely not.”
A slow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Huh. That’s… unexpected.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Disappointed?”
“Not even a little.” He said it lightly, but not carelessly. Like he knew exactly what he was admitting and had decided not to soften it.
Elise’s fingers tightened around her glass. The condensation slicked against her palm.
Oh. That was interest.
Not vague politeness. Not leading-man charm scattered indiscriminately across the room. Interest, directed at her with unnerving precision.
Elise took another sip of her drink, mostly to give herself something to do with her mouth besides smile like an idiot. The buzz of the party hummed behind them like distant applause. “And here I thought that you just couldn’t be bothered with us backstage types.”
“I mean,” Graham said, meeting her eyes, “I wasn’t asking Lark about her name.”
Heat climbed Elise’s neck before she could stop it.
Ridiculous. She was a grown woman. She had survived haunted theatres, quick changes, and actors who believed “five minutes” was a flexible concept. She could survive one handsome man implying he’d wanted to know her name.
Probably.
Graham sipped his drink, eyes flicking toward her—not casually, but with a kind of quiet deliberateness. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t performative. It felt like something just for her.
“So,” he said, voice mild, “no girlfriend waiting back home?”
Elise let out a short, surprised laugh—more reflex than reply. The question should have felt casual. It did not. It landed with the warm, startling specificity of someone checking to see whether the door was actually open.
“No girlfriend.”
Graham tilted his glass, considering. “Boyfriend?”
She glanced at him, not quite meeting his eyes. “No,” she replied, voice softer now. “No boyfriend either.”
The words hung between them, simple and suddenly not simple at all.
Graham smiled. “Interesting. Come on,” he said, nodding encouragingly toward the front of the brewery. “Let’s escape the chorus of drunken show tunes while we still can.”
They moved toward a pair of worn, overstuffed chairs near the window, a pocket of calm where the music dulled to a distant hum.
As they passed, Nick caught her eye from across the room and made an exaggerated face—wide-eyed and giddy, looking dramatically between the two of them, mouthing something that looked suspiciously like “I LOVE THIS FOR YOU!” with the intensity of someone performing all the way to the back row. Elise bit her lip to suppress a grin.
The mismatched chairs by the window creaked a little as they sank into them, the light from the nearby sconce washing them in soft amber. Outside, rain misted the glass. Inside, the muffled chaos of karaoke faded into background noise.
Elise shifted, glass in hand, trying to play it cool even as her pulse danced in her throat. She hadn’t expected this—him, here, now—and she definitely hadn’t expected to enjoy it. Enjoying things made them harder to walk away from.
She tilted her head, studying him. “You always this charming? Or am I just getting the good version tonight?”
Graham’s grin was slow and self-aware. “I save my best material for when the only other alternative is bad karaoke.”
Elise laughed, the sound slipping out before she could temper it. She looked at him for a moment longer than she meant to. He didn’t look away.
“This is a good look for you,” he said softly.
She blinked. “What is?”
“Relaxed. Still a little sharp, but… less guarded.”
The word found a bruise she hadn’t realized was showing. Guarded. Not wrong. Not even unkind. Just accurate enough to make her want to look away.
She could’ve deflected. Probably would’ve, any other time. But something about the way he was watching her—like she was a secret he was glad to have stumbled across—made her stay with the honesty instead.