During previews, Cora hadn't been panicking much about opening night. There wasn't time to panic about opening night, not with rehearsals all day and a show every evening. All of her spare moments were spent eating, washing the grime of the day off of her body, or sleeping.

But then it was suddenly their day off, the day before they opened, and she panicked.

It finally dawned on her that all along, her fear had never been audiences. It was critics, whom they'd been shielded from thus far—the press wasn't allowed to come to the show prior to opening because it was expected that changes were still being made to it. But come opening night, everything was fair game, and the majority of the people in the room tomorrow would be there to pick her performance apart like vultures stripping her down to the bone. Like she was a butterfly under a microscope, pinned down by her wings for their amusement.

Cora felt so far in over her head that she was drowning. It took all her willpower not to dissolve into a total wreck all day, to not call her parents or Simon and start sobbing as soon as she tried to speak.

Rasmus wouldn't be like this, she thought bitterly as she choked down the lunch that her knotted stomach didn't want her to eat. He'd be enjoying his day off. Maybe he was out running again like a normal, functional person.

She'd thought that maybe, just maybe, she'd gotten him to crack open just a little bit for her that night after they drove home from Rothbury—when he admitted that he was nervous, too. But ever since then, he'd been as charismatic as always onstage and as closed off as a jail cell off of it, like he'd locked away any emotions he felt and then thrown away the key.

Cora didn't want them to be like this. She was so sick and tired of being so cold to each other that she'd be the first to wave a white flag if she had to be. But would it change anything at all? While she ached to feel like they were a part of something bigger together, he seemed as hellbent as always on keeping her at arm's length at best.

It wouldn't be so terrible if she knew that he was simply a vile person through and through, but she'd seen how that twisted heart of his was still capable of goodness. She'd seen the way he used to make Natasha smile, the way they'd laugh and lean their heads close together when they talked, like they were sharing old secrets. Cora knew it when she saw it because she had the same thing with Simon, but perhaps it was still true that Rasmus North only knew how to drive people away.

After all, she had also been around for the part where he broke Natasha's heart.

Natasha could bring entire worlds to life with just a touch of her fingertips.

After school, Rasmus would often go next door to her house instead of his own. On one such day, when they were still fourteen and he was not yet quite so callous, they lay sprawled on her bedroom floor flipping through a beautifully illustrated edition of Romeo and Juliet that she'd gotten for Christmas a few weeks prior.

He wasn't even a massive Shakespeare fan, but the book itself hardly mattered. There was little he enjoyed more than passing the hours with her, letting her transport him to a world that was kinder to him than the one he knew outside of these four walls. Her parents, oblivious to what he might go through when they sent him back to his own house, would let him stay for dinner and make him hot chocolate while snowfall lightly pattered against the roof.

If it weren't for Ava tethering him to the rest of his life, he would have begged them to let him stay forever. He thought about it at least a little bit every single time he was over. But then he'd see his boots by the door, still wet with the day's snowmelt, and feel guilty that he ever even contemplated a life where he left his sister behind instead of trudging through their snowy front yards to return to her.

But they still had a couple of hours left until dinner, so Romeo and Juliet it was. The drawings were pretty, sure, but he had much more interest in watching her. Her hair the color of fire, eyes crystalline blue, a constellation of freckles on her cheeks. Rasmus felt his face turn warm for reasons he didn't want to think about, and yet it was also all he wanted to think about. Did she ever want it, too? Would she hate him if he leaned over right now and clumsily pressed his lips against hers?

He'd always wanted her to be his first kiss.

But she was so focused on the book right now that she might not even have noticed if he left. She ran a fascinated finger along the glossy surface of a page, stroking it as if it were a pet and not an inanimate object.

"Aren't they just marvelous?" she murmured.

Rasmus shrugged. "They're not as good as yours."

That at least got her attention. Now, she looked over at him with a goofy smile, nudging him with her shoulder. "Don't be silly."

"I'm not being silly. I can't even imagine being able to do anything half as well as you can draw."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean? You can act."

"Not like that." He nodded to one of her drawings that was hanging on the wall, an intricate map of Middle Earth from the Lord of the Rings series that she'd spent weeks on.

Nat let out a tiny little harumph of displeasure at being contradicted, clambering to her feet as she did. She walked over to her giant chest of art supplies and started searching for something as if he'd given her inspiration.

What she retrieved was a modest, black sketchbook with a slightly dusty cover. She wiped it off as she brought it over and set it down on the carpet in front of him.

He carefully opened the cover, expecting to see every last page brimming with sketches. But the first page was completely blank. So was the second. He flipped through the entire thing to make sure that he wasn't missing anything important, but it was completely empty.

"What's this for?" he asked her.

She held out a pencil that she had procured from seemingly nowhere, but she was never too far from one—she kept them hiding in cupboards and clothes pockets and even in her hair. He took it, turning it over in his hand. It was still warm from her touch, the lead a little bit dull.

She didn't speak, just showed him how to correctly hold the pencil and then covered his hand with her own, moving it around the page like she would. Showing him how to do that magic she did.

At some point in the evening, Cora decided that she had to get out of the apartment.

She wasn't doing herself any favors by staying here, pacing the rooms like an animal stuck in a cage because she was too restless to stay still. And she definitely wasn't doing any favors to Siena, who was struggling to concentrate on her homework while so much anxious energy radiated from her roommate.

So that was how she ended up outside even though it was pouring down rain, her boots sloshing through filthy street puddles as the downpour thundered against her umbrella. The sky was angrily churning above her, the vortex of dark clouds just as uneasy as she was. And the air was cold enough to bite, nipping at her skin as she slogged along. The weather was so unpredictable on the East Coast this time of year; it could have been twenty degrees or eighty and she wouldn't have been able to say in either instance that it was unseasonable.

Why she wanted to go for a walk in the park during the worst rain they'd had in weeks, she was unsure. Maybe it just eased her conscience to at least be able to say that she channeled her agitation into exercise. Maybe she was hoping she might stumble across some wisdom on one of the footpaths or run into a very excellent distraction. It was New York, for Christ's sake. Surely something could convince her that tomorrow was going to be the most exciting day of her life instead of the scariest—or, perhaps more realistically, that the joy was going to outweigh the fear.

Cora had probably walked a full mile by the time it occurred to her that this wasn't her brightest idea—the last thing she needed tomorrow was to wake up feeling like she had a cold. But she wasn't ready to go back to the apartment, either, so she reckoned it was about time she found a drink somewhere.

There was a good place not too far from here, she recalled, a little hole-in-the-wall Irish pub that was usually pretty clear of tourists. A creature of habit, she was always more comfortable returning to places she already knew as opposed to trying out new ones, so once she got a sense of her bearings—it was easy to get turned around on all the winding pathways in Central Park, and even more so when it was raining enough to limit your visibility—she headed that direction.

It ended up being a short walk from where she was, ten minutes or so. When she pushed the heavy door open, she was greeted by the salty, greasy scent of fresh kettle chips and the low hum of music crooning from somewhere. It was dark inside, but not much darker than the dreadfully dreary scene outdoors, so Cora was comfortable as she made herself at home in a cushioned chair in the corner.

She was in no rush to be attended on by a server and allowed her eyes to lazily scan around the room while she waited. At the bar, a man and a woman softly chatted with each other, the man occasionally setting his drink down to gesticulate with his hands. There were a few groups of people dining at the wooden tables. Then there was the edge of the room that she was on, the armchairs and little side tables set up for people like herself who just wanted light refreshments but didn't necessarily want to chat with the bartender. She overheard snippets of conversation from a pair of older women who were talking about a book they'd recently read.

Across the perimeter of the room from her, there was a dark-haired boy with his head bowed over a notebook. No—not a notebook, a sketchbook; his hand was moving in too short of bursts, in motions that were too nonlinear for him to possibly be writing. But why he'd pick here of all places to draw when he had the rest of New York at his disposal, she didn't know.

She was so distracted by the man across the room that she barely noticed when a waiter came over to take her order. Not even having glanced at the menu, she let the first request that she could think of tumble off her lips: a Moscow mule. He departed with a polite nod and her eyes were back to the boy.

There was something fascinating about watching people draw. Some of it surely had to do with it simply being a realm that was quite unfamiliar to her, but she could never wrap her head around how people were able to absorb a three-dimensional world and place it on a two-dimensional surface. When she thought of it that way, it sounded even harder than shedding her whole personage to turn into someone else for a few hours each night.

Maybe a minute had passed or maybe it was ten, but the waiter was back with her drink before she knew it. She watched as he crossed the room to bring another drink to the boy, who lifted his head from his drawing to thank him.

Oh, for fuck's sake. She should have known him as soon as she saw him.

Before she could talk herself into leaving him alone, she grabbed her glass and walked across the room to slip into the closest seat to Rasmus.

"Hi, stranger," she mumbled.

When he glanced up and saw who was there, he slammed the sketchpad shut as if she'd caught him doing something illicit. Expecting nothing less than for his gaze to cut into her like a knife, she nonchalantly swirled the ice around in her glass and quietly asked, "Whatcha up to?"

"Same thing as you are, I imagine," he said curtly.

It was only then that her attention was drawn back to the thick book in his hands. The cover was massively frayed, even taped in a couple of spots where it had torn. She didn't see why it would be so precious to him that he didn't just stop using it. Unless—

"Is that from Nat?" she asked tentatively.

Rasmus nearly flinched at the sound of her name being spoken aloud, but he seemed to know that he would lose that fight if he tried to deny it. "No, just my other ex-best friend who also happens to be a brilliant artist," he said dryly.

Brilliant. That word hung heavily in the air. The two of them didn't talk about Natasha, even though she was the singular thing they shared that they both loved. Or loved. If she's so brilliant, why were you such an asshole to her?, Cora wanted to shout. But she watched the tired way Rasmus ran a hand through his hair, the slight sag of his shoulders, and sensed that this was not the time or place for a confrontation.

"Why did you come?" he questioned under his breath like he wasn't quite sure if he actually wanted her to hear it. But she somehow knew that he was asking her why she approached him, not just how she ended up here in general.

If she didn't get straight to the point, she wasn't going to get it out at all. "I've been thinking a lot..."

"As you tend to do."

"I want us to work together. I mean, we're adults...can't we be amicable?"

She'd caught his attention. He raised an exaggerated eyebrow, but she supposed that was the actor in him. "I already gave you that whole pep talk about us being a team," he reminded her.

As if he deserved a trophy for doing the bare minimum.

Pep talk was a stretch, but she let that part slide. "Yes," she agreed. "And then acted like you never said that. You're still so stiff with me."

"Coming from the most uptight person I know."

Cora's impulse was to snap, but she forced herself to calmly take a sip of her drink instead. The warmth that pooled in her stomach was pleasant after stomping around in the cold rain. "I might be a little stressed about performing the biggest role of my life without my co-star supporting me at all."

Rather than directly address the accusation that he wasn't being supportive, he opted to go another route. He'd set his drink down and was looking at her intently, guilting her with those eyes that looked like they'd seen all the secrets of the world.

"I know you, Coraline," he said gently, his tone quite contradicting what he was about to say. "This isn't just about a role—it's how you've always been."

There was an uncomfortable twinge in her chest. "Fine," she sighed. "You're right. I'm not past admitting that I can be kind of a bitch sometimes, and you already figured that out anyway because you do know me. You know me better than anyone else backstage and that's why it terrifies me that you're not going to be the one to have my back when I need it."

Another gulp of alcohol. She refused to look directly at him; she couldn't believe she'd just admitted all of that out loud. But it was true. He'd save her onstage, sure; he'd help her if she forgot a line or a prop or missed a cue. But what about the days when she'd be crying in her dressing room because she felt sick and didn't know if she could get through the show? When she needed someone to cheer her up or calm her down at their five-minute call so that she could go do her job well?

Anais would be there for her. The other girls would be there for her. But none of them knew her like he did, and she hated it.

He gave her a weary look over the rim of his glass. "What are you asking me to do, then? We've burned too many bridges to be friends. You know that."

"I know we can't be real friends," she assured him. "But I'm asking you to try to be one for a few hours a day. I don't care if it's real—hell, I don't want it to be—but I need you to convince me that it is. Be so good at it that I have no choice but to suspend my disbelief."

If she didn't feel like it was anything more than an illusion of smoke and mirrors, it wasn't going to do anything for her. He eyed her warily for a moment, then shrugged in indifference.

"That sounds like a sure path to self-destruction."

Cora tapped her fingernails on her glass. "Self-destruction is kind of my thing, as it is yours. If you didn't notice that before now, you don't know me nearly as well as you thought."

She saw a flicker of epiphany in his eyes, a switch as he realized the full extent of what she was truly dangling in front of him. She needed this. She needed to feel anchored, secured, but she knew what it was going to cost her.

When this was all said and done and Rasmus could simply walk away from it, dropping her like a means he'd used to get to an end and had no further use for, it would crush her more than he'd ever hurt her before. And she was giving him her consent to do it.

So there was a new, devilish glint in his eyes as he raised his glass. "To the best day of our lives."

Something withered inside of her. Tonight was the eve of their Broadway debuts, the biggest moment of either of their existences to date, and here they were bartering their sanity away to one another like poker chips. But if it bothered him at all that he had to be friendly with her, he didn't let it on.

So Cora raised her glass to his and smiled sweetly like this was all just good fun to her, too. "To the best day of our lives."