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Author’s Note:
This is the fifth and final part. Thank you so much to everybody who has gone on this enormous, 137,000-word journey with me, and I really hope you enjoy the conclusion!
——————-
Brittany
“There’s so many people here,” Ivy observed, her offhand tone betrayed by a nervously tapping foot.
Brittany glanced up from over the top of her book. The waiting room was filling up more than she’d expected, but they were mostly younger people, which was according to her plan. She’d picked this particular audition for Ivy because it seemed to occupy a middle ground for serious amateurs. People who could legitimately act and wanted to have some fun on stage, but weren’t trying to make a career out of it. It was located near Amherst, one of the universities close to town, and part of her plan was that Ivy would stick out from amongst all the college age competition.
Brittany smiled to herself and turned the page. This book, Gideon The Ninth, was the most recent in Ivy’s immense stack of literary suggestions for her, and it was really heating up. “I can’t get enough of all of Gideon’s quips. She’s so sassy, it’s great,” she said, then raised the book just high enough to block Ivy glaring at her. She’d gone back and forth between extremes in the days leading up to now. Alternately thanking her for signing her up for this audition, taking the initiative she’d always been too nervous to… and then other times insisting she’d never forgive her for it.
She hadn’t fully appreciated it before, but now Brittany thought she did. It wasn’t just that Ivy was shy about her acting passion, like she was with her art. It was more that she liked having the dream. Like, as long as she didn’t try to pursue acting, then she couldn’t fail at it, and the dream of someday doing it could live on. But, if she tried and failed, it would mean she wasn’t good enough, and the dream would die.
If she’d understood that weeks ago, she probably wouldn’t have signed Ivy up. She thought she was just helping Ivy overcome a bit of nerves! Once she’d realized how much of her identity hung in the balance, she’d done her best taking responsibility by helping Ivy prepare. They’d watched what felt like a dozen versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, gone over Titania’s lines and her motivations in every scene, again and again until Brittany felt like she could get the part herself if she’d been auditioning.
And Ivy… well, everything had come together, and any doubt Brittany might have had was gone. Ivy didn’t just sound like the Shakespearean queen of the fairies, she moved like a mystical creature and gave off an aura like royalty.
All Brittany had to do was keep Ivy calm and get her out on stage without having a panic attack. “It’s also the way Tamsyn Muir describes things,” she said, hoping to distract Ivy with book talk again. “I feel like I could stare at a blank page for a year and never imagine all these unique creative images she comes up with every few paragraphs.”
Brittany heard Ivy sigh from the other side of her book shield. “What part are you on now?”
“Gideon and Harrowhark are trying to puzzle out what’s happening in one of the labs.”
“Oh, you’ve still got a ton to go.”
Brittany repositioned the book to steal a glance at Ivy. Tense. Very tense, like the folding chair she was perched on was a roller coaster about to go over the drop. The door to the audition room opened and somebody came through, looking much less confident than he had when he’d gone in, Brittany thought. The next person was called, and Brittany could practically hear Ivy’s mind reflexively counting through how many more people before her turn.
She thumbed through the pages all the way to the start, looking for one such line she’d quite enjoyed. Somewhere close to the opening… where… there! “Like, here,” Brittany pointed at the page and passed the book across to Ivy. “Crux advanced on her like a glacier with an agenda,” she quoted. “It’s little things like that, that make me wish I could come up with stuff like that myself. Or this other one. I actually wrote this one down,” Brittany went searching again, finding the spot more quickly and quoting, “… Teacher watched with the air of a man with front-row seats to back-alley dental surgery.”
Ivy gave a little chuckle, which Brittany counted as a major victory. “She is really good at those.”
“Right! Like, who the hell has ever imagined what a back-alley dental surgery would look like? But after you read it, you can totally picture Teacher’s expression!”
They’d arrived far too early. The idea had been that Ivy would be more relaxed if she wasn’t checking the clock every few seconds and worrying about traffic. Waiting while one hopeful at a time took their turn in the other room was worse. The vibe in the room didn’t help at all. Everybody was tense. No conversation, everybody on their phones, and sidelong glances whenever Brittany’s voice broke the silence. She eventually let the attempts kırşehir escort at conversation lapse, and scooted her seat closer to Ivy so she could read alongside her.
When Ivy’s name was finally called, it was a pretty sweet relief. For her, at least. Ivy herself gave a little jump, even though they’d known she was next. She stood hesitantly, like she was walking to her execution and trying to draw out the last seconds of life.
Brittany met her eyes and held them, firmly. “Who are you?”
Ivy shut her eyes for a second, took a little breath, then very softly said, “Titania…”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
This time, a deeper breath. “Titania, queen of the fairies,” she said, a good deal more firmly.
Brittany nodded, approvingly, and gave Ivy’s shoulder a squeeze. “You got this!”
She would have loved to accompany her into the audition area, but apparently moral support had to wait with all the other hopefuls. Taking another look around the room, Brittany really thought she’d picked a good strategy for Ivy. So many of the women here were college age, probably chasing the two lead parts, Helena and Hermia. Even though she and Ivy weren’t that much older, Ivy would still stand out. She was perfect for Titania. The role was so multi-faceted, strong and regal in some scenes, and comic in others. If anybody could jump seamlessly between that, it was Ivy.
She was perfect! Right. No doubt. None at all. Brittany gripped the sides of the book tight, forcing herself not to look at the door, or the clock, or anybody else, even though she was too distracted to actually read any of the words she was staring at.
When Ivy finally returned, she swept through the door in full queen mode. She strode directly up to Brittany, firmly took her by the hand, and without saying a word, practically pulled her out of her chair and out into the hallway.
Did that mean it had gone bad? Had she ruined Ivy’s dreams forever? Brittany desperately wanted to know, but couldn’t make herself ask.
As soon as they were alone, Ivy spun around. There was a spark in her eyes – a bright, lively passion that answered Brittany’s questions immediately. It was good. Everything was good. She started to relax, but the tension leaving her body seemed to trigger Ivy to pounce. Before she knew what was happening, Ivy had backed her into a wall, wrapped one hand possessively around the back of her head, and was kissing her.
In a way, it was the most surprising thing that had ever happened to her in her life! In another way, she’d been expecting it for ages. Brittany closed her eyes and let herself get swallowed up in being kissed. Ivy tasted so passionate, like her excitement and joy was a distinct flavor on Brittany’s tongue, and her smell pressing in from their closeness was just as wonderful. Ivy’s hand brushed through her hair, the other tenderly caressing her neck, and Brittany thought she understood Ivy’s emotion. How much of a release she was feeling – her hands and mouth felt like they were pressing little thank-yous into her.
When they finally came apart, it was like their entwining tongues had somehow transformed making out into a full on conversation without words. Ivy wanted her to know how much it meant that she believed in her, and Brittany felt every bit of that appreciation. She felt the same way about Ivy, and they both felt it back from each other, tossing the love between them again and again, making it resonate higher and louder with every pass. Ivy gave her a coy little smile, pecked another kiss over top of her lips, then said, “Let’s go climbing.”
——————-
Rose
The end of the summer was always bittersweet. Rose’s summer of private tutoring, where she saw each student for an hour or two once a week, was really no substitute for her classroom family. She missed having kids she saw every day and could really build relationships with, and she always looked forward to the school year starting up again even if it did mean giving up a lot of her scheduling freedom.
However, the administrative work before every school year was terrible. Getting lesson plans updated and logged and other things like that weren’t the problem, Rose had been teaching for long enough that she had all that set and ready to go. No, the sad part was finding out how many more of her friends and colleagues had lost the will to put up with absurd parents and education budget cuts, and had left the field behind. That, and the invariably useless string of trainings all teachers were required to sit through. Those always made Rose slightly depressed. The most recent one had been about how to keep modern day kids off their smartphones and engaged in class, and the answer was so painfully obvious to Rose, she genuinely didn’t understand how so many people didn’t see it. Just treat the students like people! Build relationships with them, respect them for the individuals they are, and they’ll love you back.
But there malatya escort was one part of the start-of-year blur of activity she always poured her heart and soul into. Forming class groups. The process of picking and choosing which students to put together into classes they’d be with for the entire first semester. So many other teachers approached the process with a simple objective: keep the bad apples as far away from them as possible. They ignored all the nuance of the student’s social structures and lives. Who got along with whom, whose personalities would clash despite being good kids, and who could be great if they were put in a class with the right friends and given a chance.
Rose’s mission was to advocate for all of them by making the best class arrangements possible. The good news was that she had enough seniority, and a long enough history of very positive results, to have been given dictatorial control over the process. The downside was how many dozens of hours it took to solve the puzzle for a school with a 280-person student body.
“You know you can just give yourself all the good kids, right?” Olivia said, watching over Rose’s shoulder as she pored over a mess of Excel sheets and notes on her laptop.
“I am.”
“No, you’re not.” Olivia pointed at the screen, where one of the classes she’d be teaching math was up. “You’re giving yourself Jacob White and Kenny Wu. I know I remember those names from last year, they were always in trouble.”
Rose smiled to herself. This was why she did this job. “Jacob gets in trouble because he thinks Drew and Chris are cool and he wanted to impress them. Separate him from those two and give him better role models, and he’ll turn around.”
“And Kenny? Not all kids are misunderstood geniuses, you know. Some kids just suck.”
“You really wouldn’t last 10 minutes in charge of a classroom,” Rose laughed. “I think Kenny will take some effort, but I’m guessing that he’ll do better in an environment where he doesn’t feel pressured to be competitive.” Rose could sense Olivia rolling her eyes without turning around, and she laughed again. “He just needs to relax a bit, and not be around people who set him off. That’s why I’ve got him in with Delilah, Anne and Rodrigo, they’re really chill and they’re the sort he’ll make friends with.”
“You make those three sound like stoners.”
“Liv! They’re just kids!”
“Fine, Ritalin then, or Adderall or whatever they’re pumping children full of these days.”
“That…” Rose began, then trailed off. “That is a deeper rabbit hole than you probably want to dive into.”
“You’re wrong, I’m totally down for that,” Olivia said, then gave up the pretext when Rose turned and gave her a look. “Fine, I’m trying to distract you. You’ve been obsessing with this project forever! When I dragged you out of the house, the point was to get you to take a break from all that. Not for you to just keep working from another place.”
They were at the climbing gym, up on one of the balconies with a countertop area overlooking the main floor and rock walls. As lively as the gym got, it was actually pretty quiet here away from the action, and it made for comforting background ambiance. Something to look at while puzzling through things in her mind. “But I’m so close to finishing.”
“You said that a week ago!”
“But–“
“Come climb with us! The great mystery of where to put Dain Aetos to make him less of a tool will still be here in two hours.”
Rose glanced up from the screen at Olivia and raised an eyebrow. “Who’s that?”
“Christ,” Olivia laughed. “Nobody. I was trying to trick you. You really do know every kid in that school.”
Rose got the point, but wanted to tease Olivia back for testing her anyway. “Of course I don’t.”
“Yes you–“
“There’s 68 new students this year, including 14 coming into the older grades from other schools.”
“Oh, great technicality, bitch. It just proves my point even more. You’ve still spent so much time sorting their names, you immediately knew Dain wasn’t one of them.”
“It’s a pretty distinctive name! If you’d gone with John someone or Katie so-and-so, that might have thrown me off.” An idea struck her. It was a distinctive name, and Olivia was terrible at names. She wouldn’t have pulled something Scandinavian sounding out of the air. Unless… “Is that one of the characters from that dragon book of yours? The one you keep looking for updates on the TV adaptation of?”
Olivia immediately flushed. “NO!”
Rose met her eyes and they both laughed together. “Which one is he? The one who gets the girl?”
“No spoilers! Watch the show with me when it comes out!” Olivia reached out and gently closed Rose’s laptop, pulling her away from working and into the break she was probably right about her needing. “And don’t you dare ask Ivy either.”
“The love triangle subplot of the dragon story is so compelling, it needs to stay spoiler free?”
“Um–well, no. niğde escort If Ivy finds out I liked those books, she’ll disown me.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Think Twilight but with dragons, except not really, and with actual sex scenes.”
“Oh, right, that totally paints a picture for me,” Rose’s sarcasm dripped through her laughter. “I thought society had come around to deciding it was too harsh on Twilight before, and it wasn’t all that bad in retrospect.”
“It’s complicated. That’s one you should ask Ivy about, she’s got some interesting thoughts.” Olivia packed Rose’s closed laptop into her bag, then handed the bag up to her. “Now go get changed! You have to belay me.”
Rose hurried off to the locker rooms, but lingered by the entrance, watching Olivia as she walked to where Alex was belaying Hazel. There was so much happiness and life in her movements, from the spring in her step to the pitch of her voice and the fullness of her smile. Rose’s heart fluttered inside her chest. Olivia had been like this ever since their heart to heart, and it made Rose feel incredibly loved. For Olivia, simply being around her and able to show her feelings was enough to be that happy. How could Rose not feel like the luckiest person in the world?
On the surface, things were mostly the same. They did the same stuff, talked and teased each other like normal, climbed and worked out, cooked together and relaxed together on their couch as usual watching whatever they were bingeing that week. Basically everything was the same, and it mostly felt the same too, which made articulating in her own head why it felt so different very hard.
She and Olivia had always loved each other, and that hadn’t changed. Being together still felt like… well, like them. No tension or awkwardness, no fights or forebodings of impending disaster. Her best friend loving her as more than a friend felt like the same Olivia, but more of her, in a very good way.
Rose had tried to analyze her own feelings in as scientific and unbiased a way as possible, but she still wasn’t sure whether her responses meant she’d always had some more-than-a-friend feelings for Olivia, and she just hadn’t realized it, or if the gap between best friends and romantic partners was much smaller than she’d imagined.
And maybe that was the core of it. She was different now, herself, than she’d been at the start of the summer. She wasn’t afraid of losing Olivia. Not now, after Olivia had proven how far she’d go to keep them together. There were plenty of things she was afraid of, but that wasn’t on the list. Which, in this case, wasn’t just a figure of speech. She’d actually made a list. It helped to organize things.
Most of the list was taken up with things that were meaningful to her, but ultimately, wouldn’t wreck her life one way or the other, like losing Olivia would.
At least, that’s what she kept trying to tell herself, because it made logical sense. Like, whether she and Lydia would be able to repair a friendship, for example. Even at worst, if she and Lydia really never came to terms… it would suck, but life would go on. The sun would rise again, and all that stuff. Logically, she knew that. Emotionally…
Emotionally, Lydia was still painful to think about, and she could only do it in small doses with Olivia there with her. They were working on it, a little at a time, but sorting through her feelings was really hard.
Anyway, only two things on the list involved Olivia. One was a repeat of the breakdown of communication between them that had driven Olivia to feel like she needed to make herself miserable hiding her feelings for months, just to make Rose happy and maintain their friendship. However admirable of motivations, Rose really hoped they’d never end up in a spot like that again.
The other… well…
From across the gym, Rose made a conscious effort to stop looking at Olivia like she always had, as the best friend who noticed her smile, radiant even at this distance as she chatted with Alex. Instead, she tried to see her as a lover. To train herself to see Olivia as an attractive and sexual being, whose body she desired. The first part was easy. Olivia was, as a simple objective fact, a beautiful woman. The way her hair tucked around her ears when she had it tied out of the way for climbing, that framed her face in a…
Rose sighed, and reminded herself again to stop looking so respectfully.
She dropped her eyes to Olivia’s chest, then quickly up to her lips, and back down again. Just like when Olivia had challenged her during their heart to heart, and like she’d been training herself to do every day since then, Rose tried to imagine kissing her. Their eyes meeting, an excited little giggle, them slowly coming closer together until their lips finally met, then separated, and things escalating as their tongues got involved and Olivia reached for her chest and Rose mirrored her, cupping her breasts and tweaking her nipples.
Rose nodded to herself in satisfaction. She’d been able to get further into the fantasy over time before her reflexive “it’s Liv, this is crazy!” kicked in, and now she could reliably make it as far as thinking about groping her without triggering it! Progress! Maybe it was finally time to take this training to the next level.
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