Page 29 of Reverence

“But I was thinking that this one won’t. Her Imperial Majesty and I had our first rehearsal together. Francesca has this idea for a scene where she seduces Prince Siegfried. I have to say, she’s special.”

His handsome face shone with honest pleasure. A pleasure that only people like them understood. Ballet nerds, both dancers and spectators, obsessed with the performances and the skills. His excitement was infectious, and she allowed herself to be genuinely happy for him. Gabriel was safe and secure in his position at Garnier. She dared not blame misogyny for always being singled out when their shows floundered, but Gabriel Flanagan rarely had to contend with the same level of vitriol lately poured over her and Francesca.

She made a face, and he—as always the perfect partner tuned to her every move and mood—touched her elbow.

“Jett, she’s not after your job. We talked a bit, you know, like this, while cooling off or whatever, and she’s actually kind of all right.”

Juliette nodded and was glad that while he felt her disquietude, he misunderstood it. How to explain it all to him? How to convey her fear? Or her confusion?

And so Juliette said nothing for the moment, reachingout and tucking a too-long curl behind his ear. It sprung back almost immediately, making her laugh.

“Don’t worry about me, Gabe.” She deliberately used his boyhood appellation, which in turn made him grimace. A shrill whistle from the center of the studio interrupted their cozy tête-à-tête.

“Now, you lazybones, care to return to the issues at hand? Or shall I say feet?” Francesca laughed at her own joke, and Juliettestretched her back one last time before stepping closer. Gabriel clapped for her a few times and cheered as Katarina took her place in front of Juliette.

And then they were off to the races. The pianist’s fingers danced over the keys, the centuries-old piano coming to life with the notes that were both so familiar yet so haunting to performers and audiences alike.

In the previous production ofSwan Lakethey had staged, Siegfried was ensnared by Odile, forsook his true love Odette, and picked the wrong swan. In Francesca’s new, reimagined version, it was Juliette, the white swan, who was enchanted and ultimately seduced by the black one, and boy, did Francesca ever lean into the “seduction” part of the scene.

If Katarina was uncomfortable with how the choreography brought them together, into each other’s space time and again, she never once showed it. In her role as the so-called aggressor, her arms tugged and pulled and encircled Juliette at times brazenly, at times shyly, and then toward the culmination of the pas de deux, once Odette surrendered and allowed herself to be taken by the black swan, they were just a hair away from openly sexual.

For those who wished for two women to all but make out on the stage of Garnier, they’d get the spectacle they desired. Katarina would sell it to them in a heartbeat. The person who turned crimson at the very mention of Juliette sleeping with women could apparently play gay quite convincingly.

By the look on Francesca’s face, she was elated at their progress, and the entire room—the chosen soloists who accompanied them these days, Gabriel, and even Dione, their unflappable pianist—seemed mesmerized.

Juliette set her jaw and followed all the instructions precisely, though her mind was screaming that surely she wasgiving away too much, she was not doing her best to keep up appearances, she was being too obvious…

Perhaps reading the apprehension on Juliette’s face, Francesca consented to something she rarely allowed in the beginning stages of the rehearsals. With one pull of the cord, she opened the heavy black drapes that shrouded the mirrored walls and the barre along them. As the room filled with her own reflection, suddenly Juliette could see why the audience seemed to be holding its collective breath.

She jumped, her split absolutely flawless, only to be followed by a mirror image of it from Katarina, dressed in a dark leotard and training tutu. Juliette executed a fouetté and then another jeté that almost brought her within Katarina’s grasp, and then the form in black was slowly slithering to the floor in front of her, the incarnation of supplication, and yet, the way Katarina was playing it, it had nothing of submission and was all sly temptation.

In the mirror, her own face was suddenly so young, watching this ballerina at her feet, so credulous and a touch taken with the performance that she almost ruined it by wanting to drop the act and recoil.

This couldn’t be. Katarina was acting. It was only a role. Juliette gritted her teeth and finished her steps, but as soon as the last note of the piano faded away and Francesca and the rest of the room exploded in applause, Juliette was like a bird set free from a cage, running out of the studio, not stopping to change her shoes, the pointes really not fit for the marble floors of the Palais Garnier.

Her back hit the bathroom door, firmly closed now, her body still on the adrenaline high from the performance, from Katarina’s touch, and that look?—

“Jett?” The latch rattled with the force of Gabriel’s knock. “Are you okay?”

Juliette watched herself in the distant mirror. How to tell her best friend that she was so far from okay, they might not even be on the same planet?

She stepped farther into the bathroom and opened the cold faucet even as he knocked again and cracked the door just enough to stick his curly head in.

“Darlin’?”

Face splashed with water, she gave him a stern look through the mirror.

“Gabriel, I’m fine?—”

“Then why did you?—”

“It was hot there. Hot. I felt faint. It’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t you have your rehearsal with Her Imperial Majesty to get to? Please don’t keep her, Francesca, and the rest waiting.”

He huffed out a breath and gave her a long look that was too serious for eyes that always twinkled with merriment. They tended to never have conversations like these. The life-and-death kind. The “I think I am falling for someone who hates me” kind. And even if he didn’t know it yet, here they were.

Juliette took a breath before shooing him again, but he beat her to the punch.

“I’ll go, as I do have that rehearsal, and Francesca be damned, it’s Her Imperial Majesty that I’d rather not piss off. But I am taking you out one of these evenings and we will talk this over, you and I. Whatever is happening with you.” When she started protesting, he simply disappeared behind the door.

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