Page 12 of The Escape Room
I left everything I had on that stage. It was cathartic. It felt like physically shaking off the past and stepping into the future.
Afterwards, the theater erupted into thunderous applause. I held my final pose for a few seconds—body fully extended, arms reaching, and my face tilted upward, toward the light. My heart was racing as I gasped for breath.
Finally, I relaxed my pose as the rest of my dance troupe rushed onto the stage. Dare grasped my left hand, and another dancer grasped my right. Then all eight of us raised our joined hands in the air before bowing in unison. The audience was on its feet and still clapping as the house lights came up.
When the curtain came down, Dare grabbed me in a hug and exclaimed, “I knew you could do it, Rick! I absolutely knew it. Do you know what you did out there, and how special it was?”
“It felt good.”
I was still the king of understatements, even if I’d finally learned to let go when I danced. It had feltright, as if all those years, all those lessons, all that practice was always meant to culminate in those three-and-a-half minutes.
As we headed backstage, Dare said, “So, about this party tonight. How serious are you about all of us wearing costumes from the 1800s?”
“The theme isAround the World in Eighty Days, so costumes are mandatory. And before you start to complain, I happen to know your husband Skye already pulled together outfits for both of you. All you need to do is get dressed and show up.”
“Yeah, okay. Hey, don’t forget, that reporter still needs five minutes of your time. She said she’d find you after the show.”
I frowned at that. “Why, though? You already spoke to her for over an hour. Isn’t that enough for an article?”
Dare pushed his dark hair out of his eyes and shot me a look. “It’s the price you pay for being our troupe’s featured dancer.”
Predictably, backstage was pure pandemonium. I grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off my face as I made my way through the crowd. It seemed like the entire audience had gathered to congratulate us on this season’s opening night.
I managed to reach my stuff and put on a sweatshirt over my black leotard before the reporter caught up with me. After she congratulated me on my performance and the troupe’s sold out opener, we took a seat and she said, “Dare tells me you’re thirty-two, Mr. Wilson. How does it feel to peak this late in your career?”
“It feels a lot better than flatlining beginning to end.”
“And to what do you attribute this newfound success?”
“In a word, inspiration.” I spotted pink hair moving through the crowd and smiled. “Actually, you’re about to meet him.”
A moment later, Ryan appeared with a bouquet of flowers and threw his arms around me as he exclaimed, “You were incredible, baby!”
“You say that every time you see me dance.”
“And it’s always true.” When he straightened up, he noticed the reporter and said, “Oops, I’m interrupting something.”
“No, it’s fine. You’re a part of this, so you should join us.” He chuckled when I pulled him onto my lap and told the reporter, “This man is my inspiration. He’s the reason I finally learned to open up, and to hold nothing back.”
The reporter asked, “How has he done that?”
I looked into Ryan’s eyes as he smiled at me. “He believes in me so much that I really had no choice but to start believing in myself.”
A few minutes later, we concluded the interview, and the reporter thanked us and took off. Then Ryan draped his arms around my shoulders and said, “You spent most of the interview talking about me. She’s not going to use any of that.”
“Well, what can I say? I’m proud of you! Your latest makeup tutorial has nearly four hundred thousand views, and you just landed a gig as the brand ambassador for that awesome cosmetics company. I had to brag.”
“But what she wanted to talk about was your brilliant performance. The audience was floored by what you did out there. People were literally in tears, that’s how moving it was.”
“Really? I made people cry?”
Ryan chuckled. “Look at you, smiling about that.”
“It means I did my job, and I did justice to the song.” I kissed him before saying, “We should get going, since I need a shower, and we both have to change. We don’t want to be late for our own party.”
He kissed me again, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. “I’m planning to throw myself at you as soon as we get home, so we might be late after all. But that’s okay. They’ll wait for us.”
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