She took the feelings the memories of that night created in her and wove them into her visualization of her performance. Created a great tapestry that was both Juliet Capulet and Willow Tamran.
That night, she wouldn’t be Willow dancing Juliet, falling in love with Romeo.
She would be Willow, telling the story of falling in love with Harry through Shakespeare’s timeless plot.
The hairdresser tapped her on the shoulder and Willow opened her eyes. She took out her earbuds and twisted in her seat.
“You’re all done.”
Willow looked in the mirror and smiled. “It looks great! Thank you.”
“Look at you,” said the woman behind her. “Even without makeup on, you’re just glowing.”
She considered telling the hairdresser it was probably still the sweat on her face from warmup class, but there was a level of happiness etched into the contours of her skin that couldn’t have come from the class alone.
“I met the man of my dreams,” she said, realizing in an instant that she was talking to a stranger about the part of her she held most dear and then, in the very next instant, realizing that she didn’t care who she told because she actually wanted people to know. She needed people to know. “He’ll be here tonight and I’ll be dancing with him the whole evening. It’ll be Giuseppe doing the heavy lifting, but my heart will be dancing with Harry.”
The woman wrapped Juliet in a hug and then let go, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry, I don’t normally hug strangers.” A blush colored her cheeks. “But it looked like you needed that.”
Willow smiled and popped her earbuds back in as she walked down the hall to her dressing room to start on her makeup. She couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that she couldn’t get her mind off Harry. On one hand, she had so many emotions swirling inside her that if she could channel them onstage it could be one hell of a powerful experience. But on the other, if she couldn’t get her head in the game because she was busy thinking about Harry, she might miss a step or lose the choreography or some other terrible thing.
Besides, the fear that Harry was going to leave her after the show kept trying to raise its ugly head. Just thinking about the fact that there was a possibility he might still be considering leaving made her stomach lurch.
She needed to stop worrying about it all.
She had enough going on without all that.
She’d be better off stepping onstage naked than stepping onstage with those poisonous thoughts in her head.
Willow stopped just outside her dressing room. She closed her eyes and took a breath—knowing she needed to put all thoughts of Harry to rest until after the show. She opened her eyes and slowly exhaled as she pulled open the dressing room door, freezing when she saw bouquets of flowers covering every possible surface.
Roses of all colors. Lilies. Tulips. Daisies. Orchids. Sunflowers. Peonies. And several others she didn’t know the names of.
A dancer stopped behind her and peered around her into the room. “Yeah, those came for you a little while ago.” The girl laughed. “It took three delivery guys like five trips to get them all in. There’s a card on your makeup table.” She leaned around to meet Willow’s eyes. “Someone sure loves you,” she said with a smile before walking away.
Willow stepped into the room and pulled the door shut behind her. The scent of so many flowers in the small space was heady, like springtime in heaven. The card was propped up on the table in front of her mirror and for some reason she was nervous to open it. Afraid to see what it said, suddenly certain that Harry was warming her up so he could leave her later without feeling bad about it.
But that was ridiculous. A man didn’t spend hundreds of dollars on flowers after spending hundreds of dollars on plane tickets just so he could leave the woman who loved him.
Right?
After a few heart-pounding seconds, Willow walked over to the card and picked it up. Inside was a handwritten note in Harry’s tidy script.
I never thought to ask you about your favorite flower. Rather than choose the wrong one on such an important day, I bought them all.
Nothing between us.
A scrawling H stretched across the bottom of the card. Willow pressed it to her chest and spun in a circle, taking in the dozens of arrangements filling the room.
“Nothing between us,” she whispered, then sat down to start applying her makeup and getting ready for the stage.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Harry
It was killing Harry not to see Willow before the show. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and draw her body into his.
Kiss every single inch of her neck and tell her that he loved her more than anything.
That he would move heaven and earth for her.
Sitting in the theater, surrounded by the conversations of strangers and the discordant sounds of the orchestra warming up, while knowing he was in the same building she was and couldn’t be with her was torturous. Somewhere behind that red velvet curtain covering the stage, the love of his life was preparing to dance in front of thousands of people.
Pride surged in his heart.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to find a text from Willow, a picture of what must have been her dressing room totally hidden under flowers.
Willow: Lilies are my favorite.
Another text, this time a picture of her, her hair piled on her head in intricate braids, happiness gleaming in her beautiful blue eyes. He read the words she sent a second later and smiled.
Willow: Nothing between us.
His love for her surged and he wanted to show the picture to the woman seated beside him. To watch as she realized that the woman on his phone was the very same woman whose picture she was
