What Happened Backstage

Leaning back and against the cool floorboards, I stared up and into the brilliant stage lights. I loved the feeling of the wooden planking, I loved listening to the vibrations that came to my ears at every step. It felt like heaven.
The group was gathered all around the stage, singing karaoke together as usual. Tyree and I were singing As Long As Your Mine, and we tried as best as we could to smooth over the bad notes. It’s hard to sing when your flat on your back, but I tried.
As Danny went over some sort of Thespian thing offstage, and Emily watched us, it was no wonder that we didn’t notice that the two of you were missing. It was the same day as our musical productions final, so our usual mob of people weren’t with us. It wasn’t surprising that the two of you had slipped off.
How could we have known that while we were singing, talking, and laughing, that the two of you had gone and done what you did?
Hidden behind the monstrous sets and mountains of wooden chairs, with the single light shining dimly above you, together you stared with trembling hands and wary, nervous eyes. So much rested on what was about to happen. One slight movement could work to destroy everything that the two of you had created, one slight movement could change everything.
Yet, the confusion in your hearts only worked to push you both together. A nervous hand touching a cheek, an inexperienced pair of lips moving down to brush against another’s. Sweet and oh so powerful were the feelings that coursed through both hearts. A lone bead of sweat drips, a moan of anticipation. This single breath of intimacy that was so longed for, finally delivered to the one who thought of it in his most tender dreams.
The searching, prodding feeling of a tongue parting two soft lips was felt as he was pushed back against the scratchy wood of the sets. The coarse touch of the curtain, rubbed against an elbow and a leg. Eyes closed, legs spread and tangled together, a gentle hand explores the plane of a stomach. Two delicate arms encircle a waist and pull two bodies together. The hand on the stomach moves lower, dancing unconventionally towards a place that the two of them both knew, but were unaccustomed to seeing in one another. Groping, blinding, searing heat.
“Where are Nick and Alex?” I asked, sitting up and looking around. The song had ended and a new one had begun.
Tyree shrugged.
Emily motioned offstage somewhere.
Looking a bit more disheveled then usual, Nick stepped out from behind the curtain of right stage. He pushed a hand through his hair and then walked over with his usual, casual grin on his face. “Do you have the…”
“So Nick, how did you think we did today?” I asked, switching on my camera and turning it on him as he knelt beside the CD player.
“I think we did good. I think we did really, really good,” he said. He stuck out his tongue at the camera. Then reaching out a hand, he gave a playful, “Rawr.”
“No, no, look at me!” Tyree said. I turned and focused the camera on him. In a hilariously feline way, he pawed the camera. “Rawr. Rawr. Rawr.”
“Lovely,” I laughed. “Hey Danny? How do you think we did. Talk really really loud!”
“What!?!”
Bouncing the camera from face to face, the rest of the group were to distracted to see the tiny shadow slipping out through the backstage door. It was only by a little twist of luck, that I was able to see Alex departing from the darkness, and stepping into the light of the afternoon. I was about to ask where he was going, when a remark was made about me and I had to turn off my camera and put it away.
It was another three weeks before Alex confided in me, what had happened between he and Nick. In all reality, I really have no idea how things came to pass. I can only wonder how it was that no one saw what they were doing, or how no one noticed it earlier. The two of them are no longer friends, after Nick declared that he did not have any romantic interest in Alex. He’s still trying to get over him.
However, as I listened to the soothing buzz of his voice over the phone, I remember one thing that he said to me. His voice was absent, and there was a hint of softness about it, as he whispered, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll still have that memory of backstage, when it was just the two of us.”