Another Cade drabble from my writing challenge.
I walk outside to let her know it's almost time. She's just a few feet away from the door, smoking. I'm slightly caught off guard. I know she smokes; this is not the first time I find her with a cigarette in her hand. She likes to smoke before something big, like a play or a job interview. I'm just still not used to it, and I hate it.
She nods at me after I tell her. She extends her hand over the cemented ashtray after her last inhale, and that's when I see it; a tremble. It's almost imperceptible. I would have missed it, had I not been intently staring at the fingers that held the stick.
I frown at first. It doesn't make sense. It feels like a misplaced action. But as she walks in my direction, toward the entrance of the backstage, and she bores her steely gaze on me, I realize what it was. And now, it's not a misplaced action. Now it's something bigger, rarer.
I won't ever utter a word of it, of course. But it makes me want to wrap my arms around Jade. Not to comfort her, but out of happiness, because I just witnessed a human and soft side of her. She is like us mere mortals after all.
She's nervous.