It starts with a tingle down your spine.
You can’t stop looking at her.
The lean line of her body in the black leotard, the fall of her dark hair.
Her hands around the jail door bars she dances with.
The tingle is spreading, and you shift restlessly, squirming a little, behind your own bars.
Your movement catches her eye. She looks up, meeting your gaze.
And with a sly smile, she winks.
You turn back to your bars, gripping them, palms slick with sweat, your heart pounding with more than performance nerves. You and the other dancers stand in the hot darkness, invisible behind a black scrim until later in the number. But right now, the other dancers don’t matter. You can’t turn your mind from one. Rebecca.
You sneak a glance again. She’s still looking at you, and when your gazes lock, her grin widens. You can feel yourself blushing as you look away again, and the flush doesn’t stop with your face. Your whole body feels like it’s on fire.
He only had himself to blame.
It all started two months ago when you and Rebecca had been assigned to the chorus of Chicago. The two of you had always been friendly, but she was a couple years older, so you mostly saw her in passing. Once you two saw one another more often in rehearsal, you found yourself drawn to her. Conversation came easy, and you found yourself chatting with her more than the other girls. It came naturally to look for her each night, to sit with her, stretch with her, and share jokes and laughter.
Anything more than friendship would never have crossed your mind. She was just fun to talk to. If she missed a rehearsal, it was only natural to be disappointed. When she laid a hand on your arm in conversation, it didn’t mean anything if your whole body tingled from her touch. Playing with her hair during practice was something lots of other dancers did. And when she’d lay her head on your butt, there were 3 or 4 other girls in the room doing the same thing. Her putting an arm around you when you walked out of the theatre felt completely natural, and the heat in your body was from a long night of dance. It was.
Thinking back, you can’t really decide when it became different. Was it when she asked you to check her lipstick, leaning close? Your eyes fastened on her mouth, and you had to swallow before you could answer. The look in her glittering brown eyes was mysterious…and smug? Or maybe it was when you caught her watching you change. She was in another part of the dressing room, and you felt eyes on you while wriggling into your leotard. Your eyes locked on hers in the mirror, and the look on her face was appraising, and heated. Her eyes slowly raked you up and down, from your bared breasts, to your ass wiggling as you pulled up your costume.
That night in your dorm room, laying in the darkness, your mind was fixed on that look. Confusion swam through your thoughts, but one thing was clear. You wanted more of this. Whatever it was, whatever it meant, you’d never felt like this before and you couldn’t, wouldn’t, turn away.
Rebecca began to touch you more, backstage. A hand in the small of your back. A palm up and down your arm. Fingertips massaging your neck. Bodies brushing together in the crush as people entered and left the stage. You couldn’t think straight after you felt her breasts brush across yours, lips only inches away. If only… Once you felt a hand cupping your ass, and when you whirled, there was only a familiar fall of long brown hair and taut body walking away behind you. When you and she would talk, her eyes would search yours, looking for something. And with little comments, she flirted. Compliments, carefully worded phrases that could mean more than one thing. Cautiously, you began to return them, though sometimes the words seemed to stick in your throat.
And now you are here, the pounding drumbeat of the song scaling up, your cue nearing. Your shake your head, trying to clear it. Right now, the dance is what matters, not the eyes you can still feel on you. The seconds tick by, and then the lights come up, illuminating you and the other dancers, and then it is the movement. Moving in concert, the steps and turns your body knows by heart after these long weeks. There is something right in the feeling of your body coiling in coordinated movement, bringing movement together to create meaning and art.
Then, in what seems like a blur, the number, and then the act is over. The cast is getting a pep talk from the director, but Rebecca catches your eye from a darkened doorway. The dressing room lies dark behind her, and she’s staring at you, waiting. You lick your lips, unable to tear your eyes away. Smiling, she raises her eyebrows, and crooks a finger, beckoning.
You look around quickly, and see no one. Heart pounding, body tingling again, you follow Rebecca into the dark.
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