“You worked hard,” Daisy said. “I feel terrible you keep getting all these chances taken away.”
“One chance got taken away last fall. But I got a matinee out of it. And now I am gifting this chance to the person who should have it. Look, Dais, I have years ahead of me. This is Will’s last concert and it’s your last concert with him. Let me do this.” The plea was impassioned, but John’s voice didn’t skitter once. Like John, it had made up its mind.
“Opie, you’re a prince,” Will said. “But I don’t know if Marie will—”
John held up a finger. “One, don’t fucking call me Opie. Two, I got this. What, you think you’ve cornered the market on charm, Kaeger?”
“The puppy bites,” Erik said under his breath.
Will crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. “Well. I’ll just sit my schooled ass down.”
“And I’m getting up,” Daisy said, rising from the couch. “Come here and hug me, Opie.”
John blushed. “Fine, you can call me Opie,” he said, going over and hugging her. “Next year, no more Richie Cunningham bullshit.”
“Next year you will be the fucking Fonz,” Will said.
“Damn right, bucko.”
Out of the Shadows
John went into Marie’s office with charm and a solution. He and Will switched roles: Will would dance “The Man I Love” with Daisy and John took Will’s place with Taylor Revell.
“Was Taylor all right with it?” Erik asked. He was walking Daisy up to the studios for rehearsal.
“She was,” Daisy said. “She was a complete sweetheart. Plus…” Daisy checked back over her shoulder and leaned in confidentially. “I think she digs Opie.”
“Win-win.” He slid his arm around her, brushing his mouth along her head. “Are you happy now? Happier?”
“Much.” They lingered outside the studio door, kissing, until Will came out and broke up the clinch.
“Ease off, Fish,” he said. “Excessive snogging makes her stupid.”
“I’m just getting into character,” Daisy said, smiling and letting herself be led away.
At Marie’s invitation, Erik sat on the floor to watch a few minutes and John sat by him.
“The Man I Love” was an elegant, romantic piece. Sensual, but in an understated way. While first rehearsing it with James, Daisy had said the partnering was a bitch. John had agreed. Now Erik watched as Will wrapped his body around the steps. It was odd to see him struggle. Both he and Daisy were struggling. As they deconstructed one particularly difficult lift, Will’s brow kept twisting in concentration and Daisy had on her war room expression. Erik looked on, fascinated, as they worked it out with Marie, flailing, dismantling physics. Gradually they stopped talking, and then stopped thinking.
Erik watched Daisy poised in the far corner of the studio. She was in her soft slippers, an elastic brace on her left ankle. She gathered her body and ran to Will and caught his hand. He lunged, weight low, as she threw her leg over his back, rolled like a cartwheel and came to a dead stop, poised on his shoulder in arabesque. In previous tries she held his hand for support. This time she let go right away. Her arms free, she relied completely on Will to turn momentum into stillness, convert the roll over his back into a pose on his shoulder. And he did it hands-free.
“How do you do that?” John said, holding his head. “How do you stop her right there? Jesus, I wanted to shoot myself with this lift.”
Will bent his knees and put Daisy down, not letting go until she had both feet on the floor. “I feel it,” he said. “She’s got those sharp hip bones. I feel them roll over my back and I catch the left one with my shoulder blade. Come here, Ope.”
John went into the lunge and Will picked up Daisy as if she were a pillow, put her precisely on John’s back, fitting her like a puzzle piece. “Feel her hip bone?”