As soon as Bea heard the greeting that fell from her mystery captor’s lips, she knew she hadn’t been accosted by an attention seeking Wardo or a mischievous Nate. Unless either of them had somehow perfected a French accent in the past few hours, she was almost certain the person with their arm fit around her waist was Pace. Letting out a lighthearted giggle, the dancer relaxed visibly. Bea liked spending time with Pace a lot, something she’d found herself doing more and more recently. The redhead couldn’t help but light up when she watched Emmeline bound excitedly into the dance studio, Pace in tow, face half obscured by his camera. They’d become part of the furniture in her weird life, and Bea was starting to suspect she’d miss them terribly whenever they decided to venture back to France, in search of croissants and people who didn’t use the word ‘chocka’ quite so much in everyday conversation. Cece, she’d certainly miss less. While Bea liked to think she’d tried hard to befriend the other girl, in the spirit of girlhood and camaraderie and all things Angelica Crawley, Bea just didn’t particularly like her. She always seemed so snippy and bored, like at any given moment she had some place better to be.
Shaking herself free of negative thoughts, Bea turned her attention back to her current predicament. She was unsure whether or not to chance leaning her full weight on him - all one hundred and fifteen pounds of her - given the fact she could distinctly smell alcohol on his breath. Not that she was here to judge, it was Halloween, after all, but she didn’t fancy toppling backwards and ending up with her knickers on display because Pace wasn’t quite so steady on his feet. The alcohol did, however, explain why Pace was suddenly so touchy-feely with her. The two of them had never really cuddled before, and Bea thought this definitely was veering into cuddling territory. Still, there were worse things to be than an affectionate drunk.
Be that as it may, the moment Pace’s lips brushed the pale skin of her cheek, Bea found herself involuntarily stiffening in his arms. Her shoulders squared a little as she shot up, no longer content to pliantly be cradled against his chest. Now she knew they didn’t do that. Her mouth opened a little to vocalise her shock, but no more than a soft, idiotic squeak came out as it occurred to Bea that she was embarrassed. As much as her friends liked to tell her she was pretty, and amiable, and that boys certainly looked at her, Bea had never noticed the weight of a boy’s full attention on her. Bea always got halfway down the street before Angelica good-naturedly informed her that some guy or another had been checking her out, leaving Bea whirling her head around manically, wondering whether or not Angelica had made it up.
But she certainly had Pace’s attention now, and Bea’s face was quickly growing to be the same colour as her hair. She tried to ignore the way her heart was hammering, already preparing three or four colourful jibes along the lines of ‘just how drunk are you?’ in order to lighten the mood, when he slid his fingers into the gaps between hers. He gave Bea a quick twirl that left her wondering if he was as bad at dancing as he made out, or whether it was simply liquid courage that had made his dancing so fluid. She’d open her mouth to ask, but it appeared she couldn’t get a word in edgeways.
Drunk Pace was sloppy and sweet, and made Bea want to laugh. He was nothing like the boys she’d met at the parties her one-time foster brother, Theo, had thrown. She remembered how they’d gotten drunk and broken things, and how Bea had hastily had to put in a call to Helen and Clark and ask them to come home to straighten him out. Bea remembered how hard the lines of his face had been, how cross with her. Pace was playful and excitable, still smiling, and Bea gently laid a hand on him to steady him as he leaned in to whisper something. At that precise moment, her heart dropped. He thought she was Cece. Oh, this was bad. This was massively, colossally, pretty fucking bad.
“Pace!” she warned, breathily. He didn’t relent though, quickly leaning in to brush happy, affectionate kisses to her cheek, and finally to her nose. Bea pushed down even the mere idea of butterflies, refusing to let them surface. Instead, she merely squeezed his arm in warning. Words had failed her, but it was a silent plea for him to back off.
“I - I…” Bea started, eyes darting over Pace’s shoulder in sight of the brunette she’d been mistaken for. It didn’t take long, given that Cece had the tendency to commandeer every room she went into. Bea’s eyes fell on the French girl, clad in a costume exactly like hers, only a few light touches differentiating the two girls. The curls tumbling down Cece’s back were hers, of course, and her pretty, unsmiling face was bare for all the world to see. Bea swallowed dryly, suddenly very aware of how bad this may look to her should she glance up.
Panic coursing through Bea’s veins, she abruptly placed a hand on Pace’s chest, and began marching him backwards and out of sight. The two disappeared behind a row of bookshelves, towering high, providing a clandestine cover for the pair. Casting a quick glance behind her to make sure she hadn’t been followed, Bea dropped her hand where it was still, for some reason, resting against his chest.
“Uh, Pacey?” Bea started, lifting a hand to her mask to pull it off.
Cece was being a lot more giggly than Pace was used to. It had been a long time since the two of them had been overly affectionate with each other, and Pace wondered if it was Cece he missed, or just someone who responded positively to his kisses and cuddles. In truth, it had seemed like an age since he and Cece had adored each other like they used to, and it had been somewhere in between Berlin and Rome that Pace had realised he didn’t feel as strongly about his girlfriend as he should. It was a relationship of convenience nowadays, which made it sound like some sort of arranged marriage that existed in one of those classic hardcover books Emmeline so loved. The characters in those marriages referred to each other by a formal Mr and Mrs, despite being husband and wife, and Pace could at least say that, although he and Cece weren’t the happiest of couples now, he couldn’t see her turning around and referring to him as ‘Monsieur Prouvaire’.
When he leaned into kiss her cheek again, the tip of his nose bumped clumsily off of hers and he giggled himself. He had drank enough for her apparent discomfort to go amiss to him, but then his girlfriend went and surprised him by planting a firm hand on his chest and pushing him backwards.
His eyes widened at once as he stumbled back between two of A Novel Idea’s towering bookshelves that cut off everyone else’s view of them. His brain, slightly addled with alcohol, provided him with a rather unrealistic interpretation of what was about to play out. It was maybe dumb of him to think so, but from Pace’s point of view everything pointed towards Cece pushing him behind the shelves to indulge in one of those clandestine make out sessions that he had only seen in movies before. He’d actually thought they were quite cringe-worthy, his face taking on an awkward wince when he watched the couple onscreen desecrate the non-fiction section. As he was marched backwards, his newsboy cap slipped over his eyes and he supposed he was grateful. He didn’t necessarily want to kiss his girlfriend when Stephanie Meyer’s most popular works were staring at him all the way through it.
He could still hear the music from the party but given that they were as far away from the speakers as possible, it was a little fainter hear, meaning he could hear Cece speak – only to realise that it wasn’t Cece at all. He stiffened a little, noting that the girl’s voice lacked the brunette’s distinct French accent. The accent he did hear was familiar though, especially when it wrapped around the five letters that made up the nickname only those close to him tended to call him by. Cece rarely referred to him as ‘Cece’ these days, but someone who held Christine Daae in the same high esteem as his girlfriend certainly did.
He pushed the rim of his newsboy cap back up, just in time to see Bea lift her mask from her face. All he could do was gape at her dumbly for a moment.
“Oops…” was the first thing that sounded from him. Quickly, he reached to the side and pushed a few paperbacks along the shelf, creating a window through the books, through which he could look and search for Cece. When he eventually found her, she was caught up in a conversation with Emmeline, who looked less than pleased to be on the receiving end of what was presumably one of Cece’s complaints.
Turning back to Bea, he winced a little, before cracking a sheepish smile.
“If it is any consolation, I think your costume is better,” he teased, sobering up a little and whipping his cap from his head, leaving his hair sticking up in all directions in its wake. He bunched the material of the hat in his hands and awkwardly glanced up at Bea. He hoped she wouldn’t be too mad at him, as it had been an honest mistake. Cece had never been so forgiving about honest mistakes though, and his mind flashed back to the tantrum she had once thrown when he accidentally recorded over one of her performances with footage of him and Emme feeding a squirrel they found in the park.
“I’m sorry,” he apologised. “I think it was the wig that fooled me.”
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