This is my favorite ballet, and I’ve seen it performed in London, New York, and San Francisco, but never in Boston. My favorite part is in act II, when the four shortest girls in the corps de ballet dance together holding crisscrossed hands and moving their feet and heads in perfect sync. They’re meant to be four little swans, sticking close together, curious about exploring their new world. It’s a moment of levity in an otherwise dramatic work.

Soon after, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“From the gentleman,” the waiter says, nodding toward Emmett’s box.

I thank the waiter and take it, feeling Emmett’s eyes on me as I lift the glass of champagne to my lips. It’s decadent, both the taste and the feeling of him watching me while I sip it.

The orchestra’s sweeping score makes the moment feel all the more intense, Tchaikovsky’s haunting “Flight of the Swans” like a signifier of fate. It takes everything I have not to look over at him. I know what I’ll find, and it’s already been hard enough to sit in this box and try to focus on a ballet filled with passion, longing, and doomed lovers without comparing it to my own life.

I hate the ending. I know to expect the same every time. The sorcerer’s curse prevails long enough to fate Odette to an eternity as half-swan, half-woman. Devastated, she drowns herself in the lake. Heartbroken over her death, her lover does the same. Their mutual sacrifice breaks the sorcerer’s spell once and for all, and Odette and her lover are finally reunited in the afterlife. I should feel like that’s enough, but I want a real happy ending.

I always tear up as the corps ballerinas dance together in the final scene, mourning the loss of their queen, Odette. It’s beautiful, from start to finish. I stand and clap loudly as the dancers take their bows, forgetting for just a moment that Emmett is so close.

His gaze is on me as he claps too, and if he thinks it’s foolish of me to get so into a ballet, he doesn’t show it. When I dare to look at him, there’s sympathy in his warm gaze, as if he completely understands what I’m feeling.

Surely we aren’t as doomed as they are…

“Come along, dear,” my grandmother says, reaching for my arm so she can link it with hers. “I’d like to take a moment to freshen up before we make our way to the gala. You know how that ending always gets me. My makeup is probably smeared every which way.”

I let her lean some of her weight on my arm as we curve around the balcony chairs. There’s already an attendant waiting with a friendly smile near the door, ready to escort us to a private bathroom and lounge.

Emmett stands on the edge of his balcony, watching me walk away. My legs feel like lead weights. Every step away from him is excruciating. There’s a reason I haven’t allowed myself to go down to see him when he visits my grandmother’s house day after day. I’ve refrained for my own survival. Keeping him at a distance was the only way to preserve my strength and resist temptation, and tonight, I’ve just had that theory thoroughly proven. The last few hours were an exercise in futility. I don’t think I took in a proper breath the entire performance. The ballet loomed large, but Emmett loomed larger in my periphery. Even now, I want to pause and look back. My body is poised to whip around so I can speak to him just once more. My voice would be filled with unbridled hope: Tell me you’re going to the gala. Oh, please come.