I'm feeling cute.

In a grey cashmere sweater that hangs loosely against my body, a pair of dark blue jeans, and sleek black boots that give me an extra two inches of height, I stare at my reflection in the Academy's elevator. My black coat, something out of a fancy department store that my sister convinced me to buy—along with the rest of this evening's ensemble—extends to my knees. I'm not usually one for expensive outfits, but tonight's a special night.

And I'm feeling cute.

I put on some mascara and lip gloss that tastes like strawberries. I let my hair out of its usual bun so that it's falling halfway down my back in satiny locks. I had to refrain from curling my hair or applying another layer of mascara.

I'm just going to the Met.

The Met.

You know, that beautiful opera house that I've wanted to go to for as long as I've been dancing.

The Academy elevator doors glide open, revealing a familiar lobby bathed in gold. But today, I'm just as glamorous as it is, and my heeled boots click across the marble in graceful strides.

Maven and Cal, just as they were this morning, are waiting for me near the elevator.

My boyfriend looks better off than he was this morning, even if his outfit gets progressively more casual as it goes down. He wears a navy blue coat over his black sweater along with a pair of jeans and Converse.

Cal, meanwhile, has a leather jacket over a maroon sweater with a quarter zip at his neck. In washed jeans—they must be the same ones that I met him in—and men's black dress boots, Cal stands with his hands stuffed in his back pockets. As usual, nothing about his clothes hides his tall, broad, and muscular frame.

He has his hair combed back for once, and it looks nice. He's cleanly shaven, and he matches the glow of the lobby with his tan skin and rugged ensemble. Cal looks handsome.

"You can't wear a leather jacket to the Met, Cal," Maven hisses at his brother.

"I think that I'll wear what I want," Cal replies. "If I have to deal with you and Mare, I might as well be comfortable."

But neither Maven nor Cal is paying much attention to his brother anymore. Instead, the brothers both stare at me as I make my way across the lobby.

Maven's eyes trail me as I get closer. Wearing lip gloss was probably a mistake.

He gives me one of those dorky, innocent smiles as I finally stop before the brothers.

"You look—"

Cal raises a hand. "No. I thought I made it clear that there would be none of that this evening."

Maven sneers at Cal. "But she looks—"

"Don't say it, Maven. Otherwise, I'm not taking you to the Met with me and Mare."

Cal eyes me the way that his brother does, starting at my feet, traveling up my short stature, and settling on my eyes. He pauses for a moment, as though deciding what to say. He's probably never seen me with my hair down, and I haven't worn makeup in a while.

"You look pretty, Mare."

I'm already starting towards the doors as I make a face, looking over my shoulder so Cal can see. His bronze eyes burn into mine.

I turn my head around even faster as I shove my hands into my own coat pockets. For a few odd seconds, my heart starts to beat a little faster.

"Be nice to your brother, Maven," I tell my boyfriend when I come up with nothing else to say. I sound ridiculous. The Calore brothers are paused behind me, apparently frozen in place as they stare at my back. "What are you two losers waiting for? Stop just standing there. We're going to the Met."

Cal called me pretty.

Just to annoy his brother.

Having taken a taxi up Broadway, past Billionaires' Row, and through Columbus Circle, Maven, Cal, and I arrive at the Met.

I've never seen it at night.

My heels now click against massive slates of black and tan stone, arranged into arching patterns across the plaza. Behind me waits the rest of Manhattan in its glittering glory, lights mixing with a darkening sky. The glassy buildings around the plaza illuminate the stone in their golden light, stretching to the Met. Their marble columns serve as giant fences, like hulking guards before the Lincoln Square's crown jewel.

The horizon can't seem to make up its mind, turning purples and pinks before the Metropolitan Opera House. We walk in the direction of the Hudson River, where the sun's making its descent into the water.

A grand fountain before the Met still spits water in October. Streams vault ten feet up from a massive basin, again painted in the Met's golden light.

The Met itself is a gorgeous, ten-story building in the shape of a rectangular prism. Its front is made entirely out of glass panels cut into squares and rectangles framed by bronze. Five arches and six towering columns of concrete hold the paragon together. It's like an aquarium, where I can see the looping red staircases and the extravagant, two-story-tall paintings displayed inside. But molten gold replaces water.

Plenty of other ballet-goers saunter towards the Met, wearing their own fine clothes. Cal might be an exception in his leather jacket and jeans, but he doesn't seem to care.

The doors, stretching across the front of the Met, are made of gold and glass. I have to stop the spring in my step that urges me to start skipping towards the doors. The three tickets to Manon are burning a hole in my purse.

"You're looking a little antsy, Mare," Maven tells me at my side, noticing the way that my eyes are glazed over as I take in Lincoln Square. Maven and Cal, despite having plenty of height over me, have to pick up the pace to keep up with me.

"So I might be a little excited," I return, keeping my tone bored and bland.

God, I'm acting the way Gisa did when I took her and Mom shopping last week. She was skipping all over the place with a ridiculous grin on her face.

I'm so excited that I can't even get annoyed with Cal or his no-PDA rule.

It takes me far too long to reach the glassy doors, always gliding open and shut with a steady flow of sophisticated people. Only sophisticated people, in their sophisticated clothes and with their sophisticated interests, go to the ballet on a Saturday night.

Cal gets ahead of me, using his tall legs to his advantage.

He pulls open the door in a slick, balletic motion. With a glance, I notice that he's not wearing some mockingly chivalrous expression. His face is impartial, as though he didn't even think about grabbing the door for the lady he's accompanying.

If I know anything about Maven, it's that he's about to smack Cal in the shoulder or scold him for not letting him open the door for me.

But I don't wait for the brothers or their bickering. Instead, I choose to advance into the holy grounds of the Metropolitan Opera House.

A grand staircase of red carpet arches upwards towards tiers of winding staircases painted in gold. Hanging chandeliers explode like dying stars suspended in midair. It's like the most elegant jungle that I've ever seen, composed of the finest architecture and people in New York City.

Being here, dancing here.

It's all that I've ever wanted.

Manon and her lover, Des Grieux, dance across the stage of the Met in their bedroom pas de deux.

They're in a bedroom somewhere in Paris. An oversized bed with a twenty-foot-tall canopy graces the left side of the stage, and a chair and a desk, draped in a rather ornate tablecloth, waits at the right side of the stage. The scene is out of eighteenth-century France, where everything has this classical, lavish feel to it. Manon wears a pretty beige dress along with her pink tights and pointe shoes, and Des Grieux wears a white nightshirt with some nice cuffs, men's tights gracing his muscular legs.

I sit with around four-thousand other ballet-goers, suspended in silence. The opulence of the Met has been dimmed and quieted by the ballet. The air hangs heavy with that scent that all theatres have. The orchestra, only partially hidden in its pit, plays a romantic melody, strings singing.

There's only the stage, the orchestra, and the fifty-foot-tall bronze curtains that hang from the wings. Otherwise, I only find shadows and dim, faraway exit signs. Cal and Maven sit on either side of me, but they too have become faraway.

Manon. The ballerina's movements send shivers down my spine. Her dancing is so beautiful, so flawless. The emotions that she writes upon her face are effortless.

It's hard to believe that I'm not caught up in some dream.

Des Grieux kneels in front of Manon as she arabesques, his hands at her waist. He lifts her in a graceful motion so that her hips are balanced on his shoulder. He brings her down, carrying her bridal-style for a moment. It's a more romantic gesture than any groom could achieve.

Then Manon's returned to the ground. But Des Grieux keeps her close, enveloping Manon with a strong forearm at her back. Manon's arms don't seem to know what to do, traveling along her lover's ribcage, his shoulders. Her arms finally loop around his neck.

Manon and Des Grieux kiss. I expect it to be more of a polite, brief kiss, but they keep going.

The orchestra picks up the pace. The soft notes grow a little louder in a romantic swirl.

The lovers have vice-like embraces on one another. Their lips crush together, thoroughly addicted.

It's only Maven's hand, cool and familiar, that draws me from the ballet. His sly hand slips under the shared armrest and quickly finds mine. His fingers intertwine with mine, only resting in my lap.

No.

That's not allowed.

Trying to keep my eyes on the ballet, I slip my hand out of Maven's and deposit his hand back in his lap.

He tries again.

Our fingers don't come together this time.

I smack my palm against Maven's wrist. He hisses a little bit.

The hulking bronze curtains of the Met draw to a close, along with Act One.

My fellow ballet-goers clap their hands together again and again. The sound of skin and bone hitting skin and bone echoes through the Met. The lights, curving across balconies and overhead, brighten until the opera house is again bathed in light.

I let my back sink into the wonderful red velvet seat and lean my head back against the top of my chair.

Even the ceiling's magnificent.

The Met, brimming with red velvet seats and white and golden lights, holds just under four thousand people between its ground floor and four stories of sweeping balconies and boxes.

The theatre is hulking, and the rows and rows of seats might as well stretch into infinity. The red aisles cutting down the length of the theatre certainly do. Only the balconies and boxes stop the seats, and they begin a climb of their own up the walls of the Met. Hanging lights in their exploding star-like forms arch across the ceiling, tracing golden petals; they form a gigantic fanning leaf that droops away from the ceiling and into the open air.

We sit on the ground floor of the theatre, where everything makes me feel so, so incredibly small.

Luxurious red and gold and light mix. They combine with the laughter and sophisticated chatter of the thousands of ballet-goers. Some of them start to push themselves out of their seats and scuffle down their aisles in search of bathrooms and drinks.

"Oh."

The syllable, nothing more than a contented sigh, escapes my lips.

"It was perfect."

Maven knows better than to interrupt me from my ogling of the Metropolitan Opera House. He knows me well enough to know that I've probably forgotten about him and Cal altogether and am only talking to myself.

I don't think that I've ever had such a wonderful evening. I feel like a starry-eyed little girl, and at the same time, a young woman who's been waiting her entire life to see the ballet, to sit in one of the world's greatest auditoriums and listen to an orchestra as dancers twirled in their pretty costumes.

"It's not over yet," Cal reasons with a bit of laughter in his voice. He probably enjoys seeing me like this, subdued and content. "And then we'll go backstage and see what's up."

See what's up. As though we're only going to say hi to a friend.

I'll have to find some way to thank Cal before the night's over. I doubt that he wanted to spend his Saturday evening with Maven and his girlfriend, but he's here anyway, offering me nothing less than a tour backstage. This is the sort of thing, dammit, that makes it hard to be cruel to Cal and abuse him the way that I'm supposed to. I'll either have to thank him or buy him another sleeve of gum.

I release another long sigh of content.

"Aw, shit."

Maven, on the other side of me, stares discontentedly on his phone. Now that the curtains have drawn, he's pulled it out of his pocket. He has some email up, and one of his hands is already thoroughly stuck in his hair.

I shift my head so that I can look at Maven. His eyelids are narrowed as his eyes re-read the text across his screen.

"What's wrong, Maven?" I murmur.

It eludes me how anything could possibly be wrong at the Met.

"One of my professors just . . . just assigned an English paper that's due on Monday."

Well that sounds illegal. Julian would never do something like that.

I narrow my brows. I see the stress already forming across my boyfriend's features, from his concerned brows to his frowning lips. His eyes are already calculating how he'll spend his Sunday night, between his physics, calculus, and new English paper. Then his face drops a little, realizing that he'll no longer have time to go on our date to lunch tomorrow.

"Hey," I say. I reach for his shoulder, only to remember that Cal's on the other side of me. My hand drops to the armrest. "Do you want to leave to get going on it?"

His eyes widen in alarm. "We're not leaving the ballet, Mare."

"Well I'm obviously not." A little giggle comes out of my mouth. "But if you want to, I won't hold it against you."

He might pretend to be modest about it, but I know how proud Maven is of his immaculate GPA. He might have a career in ballet ahead of him, but Maven's also spent the last three and a half years pushing himself in every way possible when it comes to academia. His schoolwork is the one thing that he'll always have over Cal, I suppose.

"What?" His brows narrow to match mine. "No way. I'm not leaving you with Cal."

But I see that conflict raging across his features. He wants to get his paper done.

"I'll manage with Cal," I reason.

Glancing at Cal, I find that Maven's brother is smiling a little. I turn back to Maven.

"You're going to be stressed all day tomorrow if you don't go."

"But Mare—"

"And if you go, then you'll still have time tomorrow to go on our date. Where PDA is allowed."

Maven's eyes shift between me, Cal, and his phone.

"The ballet's only another hour long."

"The trip backstage might last for hours," Cal chimes in.

Maven huffs at his brother.

"I'll just pull an all-night—"

"You're not doing that," I tell my boyfriend.

I remember how Tyton told me that Maven acted like a "little puppy dog" when I kissed him in the lobby. It's time to put that assertion to the test.

I force my eyes to drop a little in their temperature. "You're going to go home, and you're going to get your paper done. It's important to you, and it's important to me too. It's more important than spending time with me. In fact, you won't be seeing any more of me until you get that paper done. And you can also spend your extra time thinking about how your performance could've been better at brunch. Because Shade wasn't impressed. Bree and Tramy won't be impressed either."

I think about Shade and how he acted once we left the Calores' penthouse this morning. He didn't say anything in the elevator, didn't haul me back to his apartment to reprimand me. He didn't call up Farley, not as far as I know. He only mentioned that we should start running together again. With a smile on his face, he just told me that he had to get going and hopped in a taxi.

The silence, the easiness of that conversation unnerved me then, and it unnerves me now.

I push the memory to the back burner of my mind, forcing myself to recall the lovely details of the Met.

Staring at Maven, I dare him to challenge me.

With a smirk, I decide that Maven's going to have to learn how to listen to me every so often.

Acquiescing, Maven starts to nod his head. The memory of Shade Barrow is all-too fresh. "Yes, Mare."

In an instant, Maven's up out of his seat, collecting the coat that he deposited underneath him.

I don't slap him this time as he grabs my hand in a graceful, quick movement. He gives it a squeeze, smiling. "We'll have our date tomorrow."

Left with Cal, I still don't have the energy, the annoyance to abuse him.

The eldest Calore brother is currently giving me an exhaustive tour of the Met. He leaves nothing to my imagination, taking me through every twist and turn of the Met's backstage. My heart pounds in a strange rhythm, far too excited to see where Cal will take me next.

Most of the halls are plain, made of grey cement floors and big cement bricks painted cream and blue. Red pipes and industrial lights dance across the ceiling in no particular order. For all that the Met is, nothing seems to be organized especially well.

Stage props for various ballets and operas line hallways and massive rooms behind the theatre, from gigantic statues of Greek angels and elaborate canopy beds to thrones and staircases that go nowhere. Rooms that Gee would faint over hold endless bolts of fabric, sewing tables, and mannequins dressed in elaborate costumes. There's a single room that's dedicated to holding thousands of wigs. Another is armed with professional makeup artists. Expansive studios not so different from Blonos's hold barres for ballet rehearsals, and others wait for the Met orchestra.

A gentle but strong hand brushes against my hip, and a corded forearm cradles my back.

It guides me away from the poll I was about to walk into.

The intestines of the Met aren't quite as opulent as the theatre is, but there's a different sort of allure back here. The cement walls are oddly intimate, and I feel at home. Like a great ballet dancer.

I feel so great, apparently, that I think that I can walk into polls.

I'm not exactly paying attention to what's in front of me as I walk. My eyes linger on whatever I find the most interesting in one moment, and Cal has to say my name every few minutes to remind me to turn down a hallway or watch a step in my heeled boots.

Cal's bronze eyes, glittering with humor, peer back at my own. His hand lingers at my hip for a beat before he pulls away.

"There was a poll there," I say, pointing back at the cement pillar that suspends the ceiling high above. We're right backstage, where the lighting has turned purple and ethereal and where massive stage wings and backdrops and props from Manon lie in wait. Ropes and ladders and complex mechanization wait upon dusty black walls. The floor is marked with the footprints of a thousand feet and the scuffs from a thousand props. Stage lights glare, and stagehands scuttle back and forth.

I smile like a drunk.

"Yes, Mare. There was," Cal returns. "And as I've said for the ninth time, you need to watch where you're walking."

My incident in the stage rafters puts this one to shame. That said, Cal might have a point.

Still, I go back to staring at everything except for the path ahead of me. We've been roaming the halls and the rooms backstage for an hour, so most if not all of the dancers are long gone. But there's still plenty of life to Met, between the dazzling, blinding lights and the workers that bark orders about where things should be.

"So," I start, sighing. I don't look at Cal as the words drip from my mouth. "Grandma knows."

Because I'm not looking at him, I only hear his innocent, casual voice. "What do you mean?"

None of the stagehands seem to pay much attention to me and Cal. They go about their work, usually ignoring us as we pass by. Still, I lower my voice.

"Nanabel knows how we met," I whisper in his ear, rising up on my toes for a moment. My shoulder knocks into his biceps. "You know. On the street."

This time, I look at my teacher. I glare at him.

Cal's playing with me. He cocks his head. "If I recall correctly, we met in the Academy's theatre. You know, you were sprawled out on the stage floor, and I was in the audience. I asked if you were okay. You said you were fine and tried to walk off stage."

I might not have irises that look like molten flame, but I like to try. I like to try to burn him with my gaze. "There was no pulp in the juice, Cal. And I saw the way she smiled. When did you tell her?"

Dropping his act, Cal shrugs. "At the gala. She was asking me about you, and I told her how—" Cal cuts himself off, as though he's said something improper. His throat bobbles then releases a breath. "How you were the princess of the Academy. Queen, now, actually. I told her about your fouettés and your audition. We were upstairs at one point catching up, and when no one was around, I kind of slipped and told her about how we met."

He pauses again, as though he's waiting for me to slap him and scold him for telling a soul how we met. I only shrug.

"That's fine. I told my brother, you told your grandma. I guess we're even. Unless you told other people too."

Honestly, I'm hardly worried about Nanabel letting the cat out of the bag. She seems like a reasonable woman, and she also doesn't care much about her younger grandson.

He shakes his head. "No. I didn't."

We share a moment of awkward silence.

"Okay then. I guess—"

"That isn't Cal Calore, is it? What's he doing back here?"

A man's voice rings from a number of yards away.

Cal's hand is already at my back, applying a little more force before.

He starts steering me away from the stage wings, beeling past props for another bland complex of hallways that I'd get lost in alone.

Ah.

We're hiding from someone.

I've gotten that sense, as Cal's guided me through the twists and turns. He always has his head on a swivel, as though he's looking for someone. Someone to avoid. We steered clear of the ballerinas, too. When we first came backstage, Cal pointedly looked for a door that didn't have a black-suited man standing at it. Apparently, there's someone here who doesn't want Cal backstage at the Met.

I shouldn't be surprised. We are at the American Ballet Theatre's performance, after all. The Manhattan Dance Academy and American Ballet Theatre don't exactly get along, and Cal is currently in the process of making sure that I don't sign a contract with them. Not to mention he's the Academy's heir.

We pass more props, and Cal quite literally ducks behind them. We make it to the hallway, and Cal's careful to keep me right ahead of him. I find the situation so ridiculous that I don't even fight him as we advance down a long stretch of hall.

"Cal," the man's voice calls. His voice is deep and rumbling. I hear his footsteps now too, advancing quickly. "You better not be here on your father's dirty business. Who are you with? I know you can hear me, boy. Come back here and explain yourself."

Cal takes a sharp turn to the right. We end up at the base of a grey stairwell. He makes to shut the door behind us, but the man is already pushing back against it, forcing his way inside of the stairwell.

The man, as tall as Cal with dark skin and eyes like polished stones of jet, emerges through the door. His skin is smooth and perfect, and his hair curls in strands to match his eyes. His teeth are glistening white but his smile is sharp as stone. Otherwise, he wears a fine black tuxedo, and I recognize him as the man who came out onstage and offered Manon flowers at the end of the ballet.

Two other men follow behind him. I recognize one as the man who played Des Grieux with his dark skin. The other is a Soloist. They've changed out of their ballet costumes into sweatshirts and sweatpants, more than likely exhausted after a long ballet.

All three of them forget about Cal as they eye me like something that they hadn't thought really existed.

The man in the tux grins. "Mare Barrow. No one informed us that you were coming to the ballet this evening. Had we known, we would've made sure to accommodate you." He pointedly glares at Cal.

Cal sighs.

Yup. Cal's trying to keep me away from the American Ballet Theatre dancers and directors. Last I checked, Mister Calore told me that the other great ballets of Manhattan were after me.

"Mare." Cal raises his hand, gesturing to each of the three men. He points at the two dancers first. "This is Alexandret and Daraeus. They're two of the American Ballet Theatre's best dancers."

Alexandret smirks at Cal. "Better than you are, Cal." He has the thicket, most obnoxious French accent that I've ever heard in my life.

Cal ignores Alexandret. "And that," he continues, pointing at the man in the tux, "is Bracken. The director of the theatre."