Love Card

The dance practice continued; although it was only an hour, I felt ten times as long. My ankle didn’t hurt, but it definitely made things a lot harder than they needed to be. Sure, I’ll go with blaming my ankle and not because I was distracted by the thoughts of Marco’s body.

“Alright, halt,” the instructor called.

We all froze in our spots.

“That’s time,” the instructor clarified.

“Oh. We’re done?” I asked.

“You’re free to go.”

“Awesome, same time tomorrow?”

“Nope.”

“Ok, see you… wait, what?!”

“No practice tomorrow.” He reiterated.

“Why?” Given how fast the competition was approaching, I couldn’t imagine a reason for us not to practice.

“Well, the next parts you have to get down involve a lot of movement. With Blake’s ankle not being quite right, I am worried we could injure it further.”

“It’s already feeling much better.” I tried to reassure him. I didn’t want the rest of the band to miss out on account of my ankle.

“I don’t care. I’m following the instructions from above.”

“Let me guess, Stephanie?”

“That’s correct.”

I sighed. “Alright, I won’t be in tomorrow. So, do you know what she wants us to do instead?”

He pulled out his phone and quickly scanned the message.

“Doesn’t say. Perhaps check in with her.”

As much as I wanted a day off, I also worried about missing out on practice. We needed as much time as possible at the moment.

“Will that be alright?”

“Don’t worry. I managed to swap our session with another act, so we will have a double session in two days.”

Great, I’m going to die. I thought to myself.

─── ༻ ☼ ༺ ───

We quickly hurried off to get changed and then b-lined straight to Stephanie’s office to see what she had in store for us tomorrow. There was no way in hell she would give us a day off. She was a ruthless tyrant. She probably had us appearing on every breakfast program in the country.

“What are you lot doing here?” Stephanie asked as we all entered her room.

“You said we have tomorrow off from practice, so what are we meant to do instead?” Noah asked, taking charge.

“I dunno, sleep maybe?” she sighed like she didn’t have time for this conversation.

“We’re serious. What do you have planned for us?” Noah seemed as frustrated as I was. In the short time we were the representatives, we learnt that we had little control over our performance. We were owned by the SCS and all the other stakeholders.

“Like I said, I don’t care. We cleared the schedule for you to rest.” She sighed again, shifting her attention to the stack of papers piled on her desk. “Do whatever, as long as you don’t damage our image or injure yourself; I couldn’t care less what you do.”

We looked at each other. I don’t think any of us actually believed we would get a full day off.

Stephanie looked up at us, and for the first time, we could see the bags under her eyes.

“Have you got anything else to say or ask?”

We looked at each other.

“Nope,” Jet commented.

“Great, now can you please step out? I have a bunch of things to sort out.”

We didn’t need to be told twice. I had seen way more of her than I liked in the last few days.

In the hallway, we once again looked at each other. Jet quickly got on his phone and began typing frantically. I chose to ignore him.

“So it looks like we have the day free. Got any plans?”

“I’m gonna sleep,” Pete commented, waving as he walked off to his room.

“I’ll likely spend the day in town with Jane,” Noah added.

Jet looked up from his phone, “I’ll head to town as well. With my owner ~woof.” He didn’t need to say anything else. I gathered he was talking about Darcy. How had Darcy tamed Jet so thoroughly in just a few days? Did she peg him that hard? I didn’t want to think about it.

I turned to Luca, the only person who hadn’t said anything.

“I saw there was a baking competition on. I wanted to go to that, but with rehearsals, I thought I wouldn’t be able to. So now that’s cancelled, I’m going to go there.”

I stopped questioning Luca. How he found these things, God only knows, but it was in keeping with his character.

Great, so it was just me without any plans.

“What about you?” Noah asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, take it easy regardless.”

I gave a thumbs up but felt a little lonely; everyone else had plans. If I couldn’t arrange anything, I might join Luca, but baking was not my kind of thing.

I walked back to my room feeling somewhat glum. The moment I entered, Darcy came running towards me. At first, I thought she would say something about her date with Jet tomorrow or perhaps about my ankle. But instead, she just looked at me suspiciously.

“What’s up?”

“This was slipped under our door a short time ago.”

I looked at what she had. It looked like an envelope. She handed it to me, and I carefully opened it and pulled out the card inside. Darcy peered over my shoulder as I read the card.

“If you have time, meet me here tomorrow. Love Marco XoXo.”

It was romantic how he hand-wrote a letter. He could have just texted me, but he took the time to write it. The letter contained an address that seemed relatively close. Given that I had no other plans for tomorrow, I knew exactly what I would do. Sure, Stephanie would probably be upset if she knew about it, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

“You’re going, right?” Darcy asked.

“Of course,” I replied.

I pulled out my phone and sent a text reply to Marco.

“I’ve got the day off. So I’ll see you there.”

A few seconds later, a reply came through.

“Wonderful, it’s a date.”

─── ༻ ☼ ༺ ───

End of Chapter 17