* * *
That Friday, Pride and Prejudice: The Musical opened in a small off-Broadway theatre. Relatives and friends crowded inside, along with a healthy dose of Austenites and, in the fourth row of the orchestra, half a dozen members of the New York Leopards.
“What’s this about, again?” Keith asked loudly. Briana, sitting between him and Malcolm, batted his head.
The orchestra swelled with the familiar strains of “Universally Acknowledged/In Want of a Wife.” I clutched Ryan’s hand, grinning madly, and he glanced over in surprise. “I am so excited,” I whispered. “Eva has been working on this for so long. And Mr. Darcy! Singing! What could be better?”
Mike spoke up from where he sat on Ryan’s other side, his red hair faintly gleaming. “Mr. Darcy in a lake?”
Ryan and I both stared at him.
He shrugged. “Two sisters. We must have watched the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice twice a month. They’re insanely jealous that I’m here.”
Well.
The curtain rose on the Bennet family; five unmarried daughters, a crotchety father, and a nosy, marriage-minded mother. Soon, the entire village of Longbourn had joined the dance number. Then a carriage rolled across the stage, bringing the joyful Mr. Bingley and his family, along with the proud Mr. Darcy, to the estate they planned to let, while their new neighbors whirled among them. I studied Mr. Bingley, who had hooked-up briefly with Eva, and decided he was probably good-looking under his stage-makeup, and he definitely had a good tenor.
Mr. Darcy, an Indian-American with gorgeous curls and smoldering eyes, drew as much attention as his £10,000 a year character had in Austen’s novel. It was while watching him stride across the stage that I finally saw Eva, dressed in a black-and-white maid’s uniform. She glowed. I squeezed Ryan’s hand.
The play swept by in a whirl of dance numbers and swooning romance and Austen’s social commentary, biting even when sung. Everyone played their part to perfection, and since the actors obviously got a kick out of their roles, the audience enjoyed it. Everyone relaxed more after the intermission, when it had become clear that the show wasn’t a bust, and that the audience wasn’t going to have to cringe and wince through a travesty of their favorite novel.
The musical ended in a triumphant number after pride and prejudice had crumbled, and Darcy and Elizabeth leaned in for one perfect, endless kiss.
Afterward, we met Eva at the stage door and I threw my arms around her. “You were brilliant!” I squeezed her tightly, then presented her with the bouquet Ryan had been holding.
“We wanted to bring you a football, but Rachael was against it,” Mike quipped.
Eva laughed, brimming with endorphins and energy and high spirits. “I’m so glad you all came!” She embraced each person in turn. Dylan looked uncharacteristically shy, and offered her another batch of flowers. Eva kissed him on the cheek and grinned at me.
“They called intermission half-time,” I told her.
“Shut up.” Keith bumped my shoulder. “Honest mistake.”
Bri added several flowers to the bouquet. “You were wonderful.”
Malcolm leaned his head close to Ryan’s. “I think we’re doing this wrong. We always end up with concussions, not flowers.”
Eva already had plans with the cast and crew, but the rest of us ended up in a bar. I leaned against Ryan as I chatted with Bri. Every part of me felt warm and content. We weren’t talking to each other, or even looking at each other. But his arm was around me, his side lined up with mine. How was it possible that someone’s mere presence could make me so happy?
“So why aren’t you coming to Baltimore?” Bri asked. Tomorrow, the team would fly down to Maryland, and Bri planned to join them. On learning they’d be playing a team called the Ravens, I’d made a “they’ll win nevermore” crack to Ryan. He’d grinned and shaken his head and told me that the Baltimore Ravens had beaten me to it—they were actually named after Poe’s poem.
Bri took a sip of her cider. “You could drive down with me.”
I shrugged. “I have plans with some of my college friends.” I wasn’t sure yet how I was supposed to balance my work, social, and dating life. But it seemed like if I spent every other weekend out of state, I would never see my friends. Or breathe.
Bri groaned. “It’d be way more fun if you came.”
“You must know a ton of people there by now.”
“Yes, but most of them aren’t people I’d hang out with in real life.” She shook her head. “They’re nice, but a lot of them have small kids and conservative values and sometimes I feel like a total sore thumb.”
“Do a lot of them go to all the games?”
“Mm-hmm.
I can’t, when I have papers due, but there’s a group that’s there each time.”
I wondered who paid. I still couldn’t swallow the idea of letting a guy spend that much money on me. Maybe they only flew out wives and fiancée types, in relationships so close they basically had joint-finances? Which begged the question—when was Malcolm going to propose? I decided on some investigative questioning. “Is it mostly girlfriends? Or are there a lot of wives?”