Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
“Once a week, but competition night is only the last Thursday of every month. The other nights are lessons.”
“Huh?” Cillian blinked. “You come here for lessons?”
Brendan let out one of those short, deep chuckles; he rarely laughed, Cillian realized, but when he did it was like he packed a full belly laugh, warm and inviting, into a single quick burst of sound. “You seem so shocked. Am I disappointing you again?”
“No—no. I was just…surprised. It’s…” Cillian couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “It’s honestly pretty fucking cool.”
Brendan flashed him another quick glance, more startled. “I wasn’t really expecting that.”
“No, I’ve seen swing dancing and it looks really fun. I’d probably break my neck trying, but it’s pretty fucking epic.” He laughed, relaxing to slide down in his chair a bit, nibbling at one of his cheese crackers. “How did you get into it?”
“I took lessons for a part,” Brendan said, and picked up a deviled egg. “It turned out to be fun. Good stress relief. So I kept it up. It’s honestly helped my acting. I firmly believe any actor should take dance classes, whether you ever take a musical role or not. It does wonders for your poise and range of movement.” The deviled egg disappeared in two bites—he ate large, but ate neat—before Brendan glanced at him again, the darkness of the room giving his eyes a reflective gleam where they caught the lights. “Do you dance?”
“I,” Cillian announced, “can do a perfectly serviceable waltz.”
Brendan pursed his lips in a mock whistle. “Waltzing? Fancy.”
“Learned as a matter of obligation.”
“Hm.” Brendan eyed him thoughtfully, then pointed a stick of celery stuffed with some sort of pale concoction at him. “That explains something, though,” he said, before biting off the end of the celery.
“…ah? What’s that…?”
“Look at them.” Now the half-bitten stick of celery pointed toward the open area in front of their table; across the clear floor, on the far edge a man and a woman in brightly colored matching outfits, a suit and a flared skirt, bent and stretched in synchronicity, moving into each other in slow-motion pantomimes of turns and twists and shimmies. “Watch how they push and pull on each other. You can almost see it, can’t you? This invisible thread. When they lean away from each other, it stretches thin but never breaks; when they draw close it pulls them in closer still, like it’s desperate to erase the distance between them. They’re always in synch. Always aware of the gravity of each other.”
“…yeah.” Cillian tilted his head, watching them. He could almost see it—how they followed each other’s motions instinctively, each reacting to the smallest change in the other as if on a wavelength, faster than conscious thought could even recognize to adapt. “It’s like they’re thinking the same thing.”
“Partner dancing teaches you that,” Brendan said. “Once you’ve learned to read a partner, you can work with just about anyone to find your flow together. You start responding to the smallest subconscious cues of body language to adapt to them. That gets carried into your acting.” Suddenly those deep eyes weren’t on the practicing couple, but on Cillian, penetrating into him with no warning to catch his heart as if holding it on fine and pointed tips. “I’ve seen it with how you flow into scenes with Sophie. How you flow into scenes with me. You don’t just act your part. You react to us. It’s not an easy talent to cultivate.”
Cillian’s lips moved, but he couldn’t say anything at first—not until he looked away, breaking the spell of that gaze. “I don’t know how to take compliments. Not from you.”
“They’re not compliments. They’re just honest observations.”
“…that just makes it even better,” Cillian said softly, but almost hoped Brendan didn’t hear under the noise and clamor.
Whether he heard or not, Brendan said nothing, and together they watched the different pairings of dancers warming up, eating quietly, yet the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. After Cillian had nibbled away a few finger sandwiches, though, watching in fascination as a girl half his height somehow swung a man almost Brendan’s size up into the air multiple times in a row, he glanced at Brendan.
“Acting is everything to you, isn’t it?” he murmured. “You put your entire self into it.”
Brendan smiled faintly, thoughtfully, idly swaying a cup of soda between thumb and forefinger. “If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. It’d disgrace the art not to.”
That was just it, though.
Brendan loved his craft so much that to him it wasn’t just a job…but something to be respected, honored, given his all.
And Cillian’s chest ached with something sweet, as he lingered on that small, introspective smile on Brendan’s lips—before he looked away as the band wound up a song with one last wild spray of soaring trumpets. As silence fell in the wake of the music, one of the band members bounded forward to a microphone.