Page 42 of The Dramatic Life of Jonah Penrose
“Are you blackmailing me to take you on a date?”
“A date?” Jonah quirked a brow. “Is that what it is? I don’t think we’ve referred to it as a date, have we?”
Dexter’s tongue swiped across his bottom lip as he looked at Jonah’s mouth. “Oh, it’s a date.”
A gagging noise pulled their attention from each other and to their left where Bastien stood, arms crossed over his chest and hip cocked out to the side, watching them. “Will you two get a room?”
“Gladly, but that’s for later,” Dexter said, clapping Bastien on the shoulder before taking position with the others to do his warm-up.
Bastien’s eyes looked like they were ready to burst out of his head as he pulled Jonah to the side with an iron grip. “So, it’s actually happening? You and him?”
“Nothing’s happened.”
“You made out!”
“Shut up!” Jonah hissed as a couple of members of the orchestra peered at them. “But, yes, we are going for drinks after the show.”
“Drinks? On a weeknight?” Bastien recoiled slightly. “Jonah Penrose, you dirty stop-out.”
“Er, Jonah, Bastien?” Omari snapped his fingers at them from where he was leading the others onstage. “If you two pull a hamstring because you’ve not warmed up, don’t come bitching to me about it.”
Bastien pouted his lips and, rather dramatically, tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear before going back over to stretch with the group. Jonah followed behind him and joined in with some of the casual conversations floating about as bodies moved effortlessly across the stage with measured lunges and deep breaths. When the vocal warm-ups started, his eyes found Dexter, and the man looked back at him, a smile on his lips as they climbed the vocal scales with ease, the group surrounding them creating a beautiful harmony, something far too good for a simple practice. And then in a blink he was in his dressing room, Sherrie flittering in and out, makeup brushes floating through the air with hair spray, and needles and thread working through parts of costumes. A glossy program found its way into his hands, and he thumbed through the pages of the photographs, all of them beautiful, even Bastien who didn’t have a double chin in any of them. Bennie-with-the-bad-lens did good. He stopped on a picture of Dexter, his Trojan armor exposing his toned arms and the tanned skin he still had all those weeks ago. He stood on one side of the stage while Jonah stood on the other, their eyes intense, a rivalry brimming from the page. Hector vs Achilles. Dexter vs Jonah. Tonight, London would finally get to see the rivalry they’d been waiting for.
The fight was everything. The build of the music, the words sung in breathless agony, the sheer multitude of silence from the audience beforethe gasp as Jonah plunged the knife into the blood pack on Dexter’s neck and the red liquid pumped out over Jonah’s hands and cascaded across Dexter’s cheeks and collarbones. He died so beautifully. Jonah stood, hands trembling as he threw the dagger down on the floor beside Dexter’s motionless body and he glared up at the wall of Troy, just to the left of the box containing royalty, who he didn’t recognize at all, a D-list member of the family, and the stage turned to darkness as the revolve changed scenes. As soon as they were out of sight Dexter stood, the stage blood trickling down his arms and dropping from the tips of his fingers, and Jonah blindly followed him into the wings.
It took three steps for them to lose themselves behind a curtain and then Dexter’s lips found Jonah’s, the movement quick, so fleeting it might have not even happened, the only evidence of it a bloody fingerprint pressed against Jonah’s collarbone. All the air in Jonah’s lungs halted in his chest then exhaled in a shaky breath as Dexter moved from backstage to the dressing rooms. The desire to follow him pinched at Jonah’s soles, his feet telling him to move, to go chase his lips and kiss him until neither of them could remember their names, but his head knew he needed to stay. He had a wooden horse to build, Trojans to kill, and deaths to avenge. Oh, and he needed to die too. All in a good day’s work.
When Dexter stepped out onto the stage for the final bows, the audience erupted in the most deafening round of applause Jonah ever heard. And he couldn’t blame them; Dexter stole the show. He took a character who was previously played as a villain and turned him into as much of a hero as Achilles. He gave him warmth, with a history and a future he would never get to see. The outpouring of admiration from the audience made tears form in Jonah’s eyes, the standing ovation the longest they’d ever received, even longer than the performance after the Olivier wins. But he knew the tears didn’t come solely from happiness, he knew they also came from the crippling realization that Colbie could see how the audience adored Dexter; they clapped for the company, but the loudest cheers came only for him. She would realize she’d made a fatal mistake in casting Jonah; she’d witnessed how Dexter commanded the stage, howhe entranced hundreds of people and would now do so night after night while Jonah faded into the background.
God, jealously was the most frustrating and unpleasant thing in the world, and Jonah knew just how ugly it made him look.
He needed to shake it off.
Dexter didn’t answer the door. Jonah knocked, once, twice, three times before giving up and going back to his own dressing room to grab his bag. He let his eyes linger on his headphones, not knowing if he should put them on and escape from the crowds outside or if he should embrace the love beyond the doors and pretend they wanted to see him as much as they wanted to see Dexter. By the door, three members of the security team were talking with some of the cast, giving them a warning before finally letting them pass. Sherrie stood there with Romana, their fingers laced together, light words spoken beneath coy smiles. Jonah grinned at them and gave Sherrie a thumbs-up behind Romana’s back, which only made his friend’s cheeks turn the same pink as her hair. As Jonah stepped outside, he was surprised not only to see Dexter already out there but also metal barriers lining the pathway from the door, holding back the many people standing waiting for them to come out. He signed programs and felt more than relieved people were pleased to see him. Dexter pushed him to perform better onstage, he made Jonah’s Achilles into something it wasn’t before; so instead of being jealous he needed to be thankful. But looking over at Dexter and the absurd amount of roses being handed to him made his eye twitch slightly.
“Need a hand?” he asked, catching up to him as Dexter tried to juggle at least thirty of the flowers while still trying to sign programs.
“Oh,” Dexter said airily as Jonah took some from him and freed up one of his hands. “You’re great, thanks.”
“Is it true you’re dating?” one girl asked, smirking at them both before laughing and cupping her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just asked that, sorry.”
“He wishes.” Dexter winked back at her.
“Hey!” Jonah laughed and nudged him with his elbow with a fond smile. He turned from the crowd and leaned in to Dexter to whisper in his ear. “I’m gonna wait over there, I’ll look after your flowers, sir.” He nodded toward the wall where the barriers tapered off.
He fished his headphones from his pocket, managing not to drop a single rose, and placed them over his head before walking away, smiling at some more fans who were respectful enough to leave him alone as he leaned against the wall. He watched Dexter, his interactions with the audience effortless. The man was the definition of a social butterfly, a genuine star. The green monster bubbling away inside his chest calmed down; Dexter needed this, after the heartbreak of losing a role he so clearly loved. This would help heal him and bring back his shine.
With his eyes on Dexter, Jonah didn’t see the figure approaching from his right until they were practically standing in front of him. He opened his mouth, ready to ask whoever it was to politely give him some space, but the words died in the back of his throat as he recognized the man standing before him.
Jet-black hair. Piercing blue eyes. Wes.
“Oh, Wes, hi, I—” The words he managed to find were torn from him. It took Jonah a few seconds to register what happened. The pain shot through his left cheek then circled his eye socket before going numb for several seconds, before bursting into tiny specs of electricity that burned his skin.
Wes had hit him.
Jonah braced himself for another punch, Wes’s hand pulling back into a fist again, before movement scurried around them, the sound of radios buzzing in his ears. The security team. Someone pulled him along the barriers, back toward the stage door where people gasped and cried out his name before angrily shouting back at Wes as security guards swarmed him. Jonah’s body trembled as hands touched him. He didn’t know who was there, who the voices belonged to, the ringing in his head louder than the world swirling beneath his feet. Something hot and wet trickled down his chin, and he raised his fingers to his nose only to pull them back and see they were covered with blood.
His blood.
