The heavy velvet curtains still swayed from their last bow, the smell of sweat, dust, and old perfume hanging thick in the air. She stood near the wings, still in costume — a dress stitched with borrowed starlight — laughing with one of the stagehands. He watched her, wiping the smudge of makeup from his mouth where, not half an hour ago, she had kissed him under the lights, a practiced, perfect kiss that made strangers gasp.

The crew bustled around them, striking the set, murmuring praises. Someone whistled at them, shouting the same tired joke about being "the hottest couple that wasn't." They both laughed, because it was easy, because it didn’t mean anything. His heart didn’t skip when she smiled. Her touch on his arm before a scene didn’t linger like a phantom. Of course not.

Outside, the rain tapped against the old theatre windows, the night heavy and soft with spring. Their world was narrow here, a space between stage left and stage right, between scenes and monologues, filled with quick glances and shared breath, none of it real. None of it meant to be kept.

He pulled off his costume jacket, the weight of it falling from his shoulders like the night itself. She caught his eye across the stage — that easy grin, that familiar spark — and something in him tightened, uninvited. Stupid. Just the afterglow of a good performance, that was all.

Someone called her name, and she jogged toward the dressing rooms, boots tapping the boards, hair slipping free from its pins. He watched her go, hands loose at his sides, feeling oddly empty, like the theatre when the house lights come up and the magic bleeds out into the real world.