Page 50 of Pretty Little Game

Bianka gives a pouty moan as I leave her, and I laugh.

“I’ll be right back. I have to get rid of this rubber.”

I return a moment later to find Bianka still sprawled across the bed, and I join her, pulling her close as she rests her cheek on my chest.

“Cass?” she asks after a moment.

“Hmm?”

“What did you mean when you said you must have a guardian angel looking out for you?”

She peers up at me innocently through her thick lashes, and I press a kiss to her forehead.

“Just that I must have someone looking out for me up there if they knew to send me you.”

Bianka smiles warmly, her eyes sparkling with emotion. “You’re kind of a romantic, aren’t you?” she asks playfully.

“Honestly, I hadn’t really been before you.”

15

BIANKA

“Places, everyone! And remember, you can have your script in hand, but I want as much of this done from memory as possible,” Professor Burgmann calls from the front of the stage.

In class, our practice has moved on stage as we piece together larger scenes. And today, we’re ready to do our first official run-through of as much of the script as possible in an hour. That means Cassio and I will have to perform our on-scene kiss for the first time.

It’s still a bare-bones set, with a simple metal staircase that will represent my balcony for the time being, but we have a rough layout of where everything will take place.

Ellie and I stand to the side as the actors playing Sampson and Gregory take the stage. While I won’t appear for several scenes, I’m excited to see how everyone has been coming along, particularly Cassio, who I’ve been working with overtime to help him make up for his lack of theater education and experience.

His acting, at least, has come together nicely over the past few weeks since we’ve been forced out into public spaces, where we have to convincingly practice our lines if we want to spend time together. We have the majority of our collective scenes down pat. I’ve even started to hone his skill on the scenes he’ll be doing with others, seeing as Cassio will have far more performing to do than anyone else in this play.

The production starts a bit rough, the lines coming across clearly, but as it begins with a fight scene, the three servants don’t quite know their sword choreography yet. Professor Lihn has only just started working with us on the details of swordplay.

Still, they get through it, and the conflict resolves as the prince appears to scold his subjects. Then it’s Cassio’s turn to enter, moping across the stage as he pines for his fair Rosaline–a point that has made Cass call Romeo a cad more than once after he understood the opening scene is Romeo longing for someone besides Juliet.

“How can that be true love when the idiot thinks he’s in love with someone else not twenty-four hours before?”A smile tugs at my lips as I recall his rant with perfect clarity.

But as he performs it now, I wouldn’t know that he holds such disdain for the mercurial hero. Instead, he seems authentically distraught over the lady love who he’s fallen out of favor with.

It’s hard not to see the parallels between our own rough start, and I’m sure he’s drawing upon it after I’ve coached him on using his own life experiences to help relate to Romeo’s emotions.

Honestly, we both have a lot to work with when it comes to drawing upon real life. Just like Romeo and Juliet’s secret marriage, Cassio and I have had to get increasingly inventive about our secret dates now that my apartment has proven unsafe. Ilya’s shown an increasing proclivity to show up unannounced since he found Cassio and me making out on the couch a few weeks ago.

I can’t tell if my brother is doing it because he wants to repair the rift between us or if he’s just checking in to make sure that I’m not spending my time with Cassio. Whatever the reason, it’s made the fact that Cassio and I are dating that much harder to hide–and, like the Montagues and Capulets, our families’ disapproval has grown that much more apparent.

As his scene comes to an end, I’m suddenly scrambling to take my place in the middle of the stage as the imaginary set transitions to the Capulet house. Ellie practically has me in stitches with her long-winded speech about seeing me–Juliet–grown and ready for marriage.

Hannah, playing Lady Capulet, does a wonderful job of seeming positively put out by the nurse’s overflowing emotion and ensuing nostalgic word vomit. Meanwhile, I play the innocent child prepared to be sold off to Paris to make his wife.

Then it’s Cassio’s turn to come back on stage in order to sneak into the Capulet house for a masquerade. I wonder whether this might not have inspired the Arts Department’s idea for later this semester.

When it’s my turn to enter the party, I stride dutifully on stage, capturing Cassio’s eye so he can ask a servant who I am. It becomes a fun dance as Tybalt identifies Romeo amidst the young romantic’s attempt to make it across the room to me.

And then he’s standing in front of me, his long, artful fingers finding mine as he takes my hand. Electric anticipation crackles through me at the delicate touch, and suddenly, all I can think about is him.

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,” he says, his voice carrying as it raises goosebumps along the back of my neck. “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

---