Vivaldi in the Dark Box Set

Chapter 13-1

Chapter 13

The play ran for a week, and it opened on a Friday night. Darren had made his excuses—not, he suspected, that Father had paid much attention to the blatant lie—and it had only occurred to him exactly why he had avoided drama since he was about eight.

Namely: he was petrified.

In a way, it was oddly preferable. It had been…a bad week. He’d woken on Monday with that crushing weight on his chest, and even Jayden had picked up on it, watching him throughout Thursday’s dress rehearsal with a pinched, anxious expression. So to be feeling anything at all was definitely preferable to that odd, bleeding-out lethargy, but…

But then the feeling was sheer terror.

Scott laughed at him for it. Darren had been performing music on stage since he was eight years old and had never felt fear then. But acting on stage was something entirely different. The only time he’d get attention was if he f****d up, and Darren had been too good for too long to f**k up in a recital. Acting…acting was something else entirely.

In short: god-f*****g-damn Jayden and his flustered enthusiasm for this poncing about onstage crap. Darren was going to kill him.

“Hey.”

And speak of the devil.

Jayden didn’t act, as far as he’d told Darren. An ironically similar case of stage fright. “Nobody pays any attention to the playwright,” he’d said. “And you know, a whole audience just staring at you—I couldn’t.”

Darren knew the bloody feeling.

“Oh, my God,” Jayden said, catching Darren’s attention away from tuning the violin. He’d broken a string earlier that morning (and creating a squeal like a cat being buggered by an elephant) and the new one was proving a little elusive.

“What?”

“You look…” Jayden began, then cut himself off with a laugh. “You look amazing,” he finished, stepping into Darren’s space, neatly avoiding the raised violin and ducking under his bow arm until they were in an odd half-hug, half-entanglement. “I kind of want to just…steal you and ruffle up your hair again.”

Some ginger woman called Grace had gelled down his hair. Darren hated it, but apparently pristine neatness was called for. Hence he was wearing a tuxedo. It only just fit; any violent shoulder movements, and the jacket would tear. He’d last worn this when he was thirteen.

“Kiss for luck?” Darren tried.

“You don’t need luck,” Jayden said, but kissed him anyway. The sharp tang of fresh toothpaste was all over his lips. “You’ll be amazing.”

“I’m following a guy around for the better part of two hours and being increasingly annoying while I do it.”

“Like I said, you’ll be amazing.”

Darren shoved him off; Jayden laughed, apparently too caught-up in the pre-performance excitement (or nerves) to get flustered. He bounced back in for another kiss—slightly longer, slightly sweeter, and there was a hint of raspberry flavouring over the toothpaste now that Darren thought about it.

“I knew it,” he said. “You wear lip gloss.”

Jayden pinked a little, but managed to adopt a haughty expression that made Darren want to kiss it off his face again and said, “Maybe.”

Darren snorted. “Gay.”

“Obviously,” Jayden returned coolly and took a sudden step back, hands dropping to his sides. Before Darren could ask, however, heels sounded on the tiled floor, and Mrs. Phillips appeared at the end of the corridor.

Darren liked Mrs. Phillips. She was the small and fuzzy kind of mother. She didn’t look much like Jayden—she was all flyaway red hair and freckles and always looked completely haphazard and rushed off her feet, whereas her son was haphazard and flyaway, but looked perfectly put-together pretty much all of the time. But he liked her mostly because she was apparently on some sort of diet (not that she needed it) and one of the other actresses kept bringing cake. Jayden didn’t like cake, so Darren stole it.

It was good cake, too.

“There you are!” She clapped her hands. “Darren, darling, you look wonderful.”

Darren shrugged. “I clean up nice.”

“Ish,” Jayden said.

Darren shoved him; Mrs. Phillips tutted and scolded her son. “Just because you think a tie is a crime against humanity, Jayden, it doesn’t mean everyone agrees with you!”

“Oh, I agree with him,” Darren said, “but some of us have to wear one for school.”

“More fool you,” Jayden said snidely, distant and collected in front of his mother like always, and he offered her a hug. “Good luck. Both of you,” he added over his shoulder to Darren. “I’ll be watching.”

“Ominous,” Darren said, and Mrs. Phillips laughed. She lingered after her son disappeared, and Darren avoided an awkward silence by tweaking the problematic string again. He was getting there.

“Have your family come to watch, darling?”

“Nope.”

There was another silence. After perfecting the string, Darren turned to look at her, drawing out a long, wavering note experimentally in the corridor. It had awful acoustics.

“A girlfriend, then?” she tried and then showed her hand. “Or a boyfriend?”

Apparently, a lack of subtlety ran in the family. Darren kept his face still until the urge to smirk passed, then simply said, “Nope,” again and lowered the violin. “Well, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Lead on.”