Page 48 of The Dramatic Life of Jonah Penrose
Dexter smiled. “Exactly.”
“Was... was Riff a dream role of yours?” Jonah asked somewhat carefully, not wanting to add any salt to the wounds, but also genuinely intrigued.
“No. The role was only meant to be short-term anyway, just a six-month contract because... well I thought I would get the Achilles role.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Riff was great to play, but I have my heart set on another Sondheim character.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“George.”
Jonah raised his eyebrows and smiled brightly. “FromSunday in the Park with George?” Dexter nodded. “I could see you doing that. Maybe when you’re older, though?”
“Well, I’m hardly getting any younger. I’m thirty-three.”
“No. You’re not.”
“I think I know how old I am, Jonah.”
“Then you’re older than me.” It made no sense. Dexter’s skin glowed with the youth of someone in their twenties, not someone in their thirties. “I’m aging terribly,” Jonah groaned and went to wipe his hands over his face, but stopped, feeling the sting on his nose as soon as his fingers brushed his skin.
“You’re gorgeous.” Dexter took his hands into his. “Tell me. What’s your dream role?”
“Emcee.”
“FromCabaret? Haven’t you been in that show before?”
“Yeah. But I played Cliff. I didn’t even audition for Emcee, didn’t think I could pull it off. But now... now I think I could.”
“It can be a pretty dark role.”
“It’s perfect,” Jonah said, as Dexter gave his hands an encouraging squeeze. “If you have the right director and production team, you can make that character whatever you want it to be. Playful, sinister, sexual, a mix of all those. And the songs, Emcee has the best songs ever, the opening number alone is one of the best pieces of—” The sound of his phone vibrating cut them off. Jonah reluctantly peered at the device, half expecting to see Edward had somehow bypassed all his blocking, but instead he saw his mum. “Sorry, I better take this.” He pried his hands out of Dexter’s grasp and went to get out of bed, but stopped, aware of how naked he was, which made Dexter snort from the back of his throat.
“Dude, I literally had your dick in my mouth last night, don’t be shy now.”
Jonah scowled at him before grabbing his phone and darting into the bathroom while Dexter wolf whistled behind him.
“Mum, hey, you’re calling early.”
“Gilly from down the road popped down with my milk because the milkman left it at her door again and told me that her daughter Kelsey, you remember her, the one with ginger hair who you used to play hide-and-seek with on the beach when you were kids, you remember, well, she told me Kelsey said it was all over social media that someone was attacked in your show last night. And I said I didn’t know about it, and she looked it up on her phone, and there was a photograph of you with blood all overyour face.” His mum spoke with such speed he could barely keep up. “And I had to stand there looking stupid because of course you haven’t told me anything. and then she said oh no it’s your son, and then there were loads of other photos of you being escorted by security guards.”
“Mum. It happened after the show,” Jonah said slowly. “It was late, and I didn’t want to worry you. Everything’s fine. It isn’t as bad as the pictures look, and I was taken care of straight away.”
“You’re not hurt?”
“Well. I’ve got a bruise,” he said as he looked at his face in the mirror and grimaced. “But nothing serious, Mum. Please, don’t worry.” He turned his head to the side to see a red mark on his neck left behind by Dexter’s mouth. “How are you?”
“I was fine until this morning. No parent should ever have to find out their child was assaulted secondhand like that.”
“I was going to call you this morning, I promise. But it’s still early and, like I said, I didn’t want to wake you up and worry you last night. I was taken care of, there’s really nothing for you to be upset over.”
“Nicola’s son lives in London, and he calls every day to see how she is, and you never call me. You never come and see me. I sometimes think I’m just going to rot here alone. You’ve abandoned me.”
The words hurt. He knew he’d been there, maybe not physically, but he’d done all he could from afar and returned when it mattered most, but now wasn’t the time to argue. He recalled the conversation he had with Aunt Penny, her words, asking if his mum sounded drunk when he spoke to her in the middle of the night. She didn’t sound tipsy now, thank God given the early hour of the day, but something still played in the back of his mind. A small worry. The seed started to sprout. “Mum. Have you been drinking?”
She laughed, the sound not happy but filled with something different, a sadness Jonah couldn’t describe. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Mum,” Jonah pleaded. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You’ve let me down.”
