by Amy Daws
“Like I said, the whole City is talking.” Ivan picked up the Rotten Apple to read it. “Care to share the details of your bubble-bath gone wrong?”
“You mean my ex—partner.”
Ivan set his cup down and looked at me—truly looked at me. The adoration in his gaze was unwarranted with last night’s outburst. He pointed to the caption. Prima gives Aerosmith’s, Walk This Way, a new meaning to the Ballet World. “This isn’t a lie. I know an opportunity when I see it. We have a connection on stage that’s undeniable. Even if you weren’t my best friend, it’d be my worse career choice to break up our partnership now.”
“Oh, you don’t think that Higgins has enough reason to kick me out of school?” I yelled and then felt terrible. It wasn’t his fault I couldn’t keep my cool. I certainly ruined our careers. My stomach knotted up. I couldn’t stand to look at myself for what I’d done, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I wrecked Ivan’s career.
“You really think Joffrey is going to let you go? You’re their money-maker! And if they don’t, some company will snatch us up even before we finish school!”
My gut ached. It wasn’t just because of last night. I couldn’t bring Ivan down with me. I wouldn’t do that to him. I didn’t care what he said. He had to stay with them. The future was unknown, and I didn’t know what I would do if a ballet company wouldn’t offer me a contract.
“Listen, I know warm-ups aren’t until this afternoon, but I have to get my purse.”
I needed an excuse to talk to Ms. Higgins alone. I didn’t want to get kicked out of Joffrey’s in front of my peers, and I suspected that my expulsion was exactly what was going to happen.
Tossing the paper down, he walked up to me. He placed his hands on my shoulders and cocked his head to the side to the point that I couldn’t shield my face from him.
“Of course I’ll go with you, Addy Girl! But I’m not going to let you out of your apartment looking like you do. There is a good chance that some of the Rotten Apple’s friends will be seeking a follow-up shot. Let’s start with a shower, shall we?”
A shower did sound like a good idea. “We won’t be doing anything, mister.”
He laughed. Suddenly, he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. Even so, I refused to drape over his shoulder. Instead, I stood perfectly straight, penciled in his grasp.
“I thought you liked being carried like this,” Ivan chuckled, bringing me to my bathroom.
I good-heartedly slapped at him. He was doing a good job of making me feel a little better about what went down last night. He set me down in the shower. For half a second, I actually thought he might try to join me. I pulled the curtain shut and undressed.
“So, care to tell me what really happened?” Ivan asked after I tossed my clothes over the curtain rod and started the shower.
Just thinking about last night made my heart pound so hard my ribs were in jeopardy of breaking. It made my gut just churn. Mostly, I wanted to find a hole in which to bury my head. “I sort of…”
“Yes?” I swear I heard Ivan smirking.
“I sort of got the taste of Blake out of my mouth,” I confessed. “I got a little motion sick and…barfed on Leo after he dropped me off.”
Ivan was a good enough sport to attempt to hold back a laugh. Attempt.
“I was so mortified that I ran up to my studio apartment with his helmet in tow…You don’t think he would want it back, do you? I didn’t puke in it, but still. I guess it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t like he was stopping to ask for my number.”
Ivan grinned. “If he wants it, he’ll find you.”
CHAPTER 10 ~ Leo
“Leo! Are you going to answer that damn thing?” A voice bellowed from the other side of my door. I instantly recognized it as my fraternity brother, Chase. I stuffed my head beneath my pillow. “No…leave me alone. I’m still sleeping.”
“You’re going to want to answer it, dude,” he stated ominously.
“Why?” I mumbled.
“Actually, you’re going to want to talk to me first. Open up.”
I hauled myself off my bed and adjusted my junk, which was annoyingly restrained in my black boxer briefs. I opened the door and propped my hand on the frame, eyeing Chase hard.
“This better be good.”
Chase’s gaze dropped to my raging boner. “Dude! Down boy! It’s not that good!”
“You wake me up, this is what you get.” I lazily glanced down at my morning wood. Damn it, living in the fraternity house was really fucking annoying sometimes.
“I gotta show you these.” He shoved past me and strode into my room, dropping his skateboard noisily on the scuffed, wooden floor.
He turned and leaned back on my wooden desk and fluffed his wavy blond hair out of his eyes, like he was preparing for something big. His appearance always made me smile because you could take the beach bum out of Florida, but you couldn’t take the Florida out of the beach bum. He was the epitome of a laid back surfer in his cargo shorts and neon pink T-shirt. New York City didn’t change that one bit. His year round tan and sun bleached shaggy hair was so incredibly different than the other brothers in my fraternity. It was probably why I befriended him my first year at Columbia. He was one of the only brothers that didn’t have an arrogant stick up their ass.
He held out three different newspapers at me. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head when I caught a glimpse of a frilly tutu draped over a dude’s shoulder.
No fucking way!
In three strides, I had grabbed the papers out of Chase’s hands and spread them across my tan duvet. I dropped to my knees, and my eyes couldn’t move fast enough to take in the horror that was before me.
New York City socialite, Leonardo Richards sweeps Joffrey ballet apprentice, Adeline Parker off her feet.
After one of the most moving performances in Joffrey history, Adeline Parker celebrates a bit too much.
Sole heir to the Richards & Brown Fortune 500, Douglas and Evelyn Richards refused to comment on their son’s new relationship status.
All of the papers before me were plastered with various photos of Adeline and her partner dancing or some really lovely shots of me carrying her over my shoulder. There was even one of me using her pointe shoes as a prop as I spoke to her on the steps. Fuck my life. This was bad. This was really bad. I was usually pretty good about noticing paparazzi, but apparently having her tutued ass draped over my shoulder last night made me lose all common sense.
My phone rang, snapping me out of my internal horror. I stood up and snatched it off my bedside table noticing I had thirteen missed calls…all from my mother, my father, and Sasha.
“Dude—” Chase started.
“Don’t.” I pointed at him and pinched the bridge of my nose. Fuck, she did not deserve this mess.
“You gonna tell me about the chick?” he asked. “You know I recognized her name instantly right? I can’t be the only one.”
I clenched my jaw in frustration. I was not prepared to deal with everyone else’s noses in my business right now. Yes I knew this was Blake’s ex fiancé, and yes I knew that complicated matters but fuck! I hadn’t even seen the girl again to know yet if what I felt last night was a fluke or if it was real.
“She’s nobody,” I started but then silenced myself. Chase was my best friend at the House, and I knew he’d see right through me. There was an unspoken bro-code that transcended the fraternity that we reserved only for each other, so I knew I could trust him.
“I can’t explain it man. I saw her at the ballet last night and shit, something just clicked.” I sat down on the edge of my bed, hunched over and rolling my hands together nervously.
“This is the ballet you went to with Sasha?” he asked, skeptically eyeing me.
“I know, I know. But you know Sasha and I aren’t like that anymore. Anyways…I don’t know. As corny as it sounds, I saw her dance…and…it moved me.” Fuck this was embarrassing. I couldn’t even look at him right now.
; “Like your dick stood up and saluted, you mean? She’s hot as hell to be sure,” he said, balancing on his skateboard.
“It’s not just that.” I snapped my head up and sternly eyed him. “I saw her at the bar afterwards, and we talked. We didn’t say much…but I don’t know man, I’m into her.”
“You know how fucked up this is going to get right?” His blue eyes pierced me with a look that couldn’t be said in words.
“No more fucked up than the way our night ended.”
He cocked his head curiously.
I sighed and haphazardly ruffled my hair. “She kind of…yacked down my back.”
“Is that like…code for something really sexy?” Chase grinned excitedly.
“No. No, Chase, it’s not.”
His excited expression morphed into pure disgust as he let the words sink in properly this time. He shook his head disappointedly. “I don’t understand you, Richards.”
I’m not sure even I understood me right now. I tried to go after Adeline to make sure she was okay, but she slammed the door to her building before I could catch up. I didn’t know which apartment number was hers, and it was way too late to just buzz random people’s places. I ended up ditching my ruined suit jacket in a nearby dumpster and drove my pathetic ass back to my frat house.
You’d think getting puked on would put me right off of her. But she was all I thought about all damn night. And she was who I woke up thinking about. Suddenly, all I could think about was how drunk she was and how she could have passed out in the hallway.
Fuck, I should have started buzzing doors.
Without hesitation, I hauled myself up off my bed and threw on a clean T-shirt and a pair of my favorite tattered jeans.
“Where are you going?” Chase asked.
“I gotta check on her. Make sure she actually made it inside her apartment last night. Plus, she still has my helmet.” I smirked.
Chase shook his head as I shoved my feet into my brown combat boots and wrenched open the door to my room. Several Gamma Phi brothers stood in the hallway, murmuring quietly amongst themselves. I saw a couple of them stash newspapers behind them and shot them all an annoyed glare. Damn fraternity brothers could be worse than girls when it came to gossip. I moved past them and down the steps of our four-story Victorian house.
“Where are you going?” a voice asked from the dining area as I jogged by.
“I got things to do,” I hollered over my shoulder, not bothering to look at our House president, Micah Fitzgibbons.
“Things or a ballerina?” he sneered.
This stopped me dead in my tracks. I slowly turned from the front door to eyeball him. “It’s not your business,” I stated, casing him foot to head.
Micah strolled toward me until we were face to face. He stood a good four inches shorter than me, but the prick acted like he was as tall as the Statue of Liberty. He was stocky with buzzed dirty blond hair and always had a pinched expression to his face, like he’d just sucked on a lemon.
“If it involves a brother of mine, it’s definitely my business,” he said, putting his hands on his hips.
I bit my lip hard and squinted at him. “I’ll be back,” I ground out and turned to leave. I didn’t have time for this shit.
“You better be,” he threatened.
I stopped again. In a split second, I towered over Micah, and his face morphed from anger to amusement. That only pissed me off more.
“Make no mistake Micah. You might be the house president, but only because I let you be.”
“Please. You’re not the only legacy here, Leo,” he scoffed.
“Nope. I’m not. But I’m the only Richards. And whether you like it or not…that means something in your twisted and pathetic world.” I leaned into him and watched with satisfaction as he visibly shrank beneath my glower.
“It’s your world too, Leo,” Micah replied, refusing to break eye contact with me.
I glanced down at his determined expression. “So it is.” I turned on my heel and strode out, nudging past a nervous-looking Chase on the porch. I could talk to Chase later. Right now, I had to see a girl about a helmet.
CHAPTER 11 ~ Adeline
Priority number one: Get my purse. Number two? Convince Ms. Higgins, Joffrey’s Board of Directors, or whoever needed convincing, that I was worth the trouble. Until now, I’d been an exemplary apprentice. Besides, Joffrey’s dancers made mistakes all the time. Granted, theirs weren’t typically advertised in smut publications. Nevertheless, whatever happened I had to ensure that Ivan wouldn’t go down with me. His natural talent and continual strive to be better never failed to impress.
Wrapped in a towel, I applied my Urban Decay war paint. Ivan kept busy as he rummaged through my closet and tossed clothes onto my futon that were reserved for clubbing. He threw me a white skirt and a hot pink top crop top that I’d worn once, and only because of a dare.
“I’m pretty sure Higgins is straight.” I chucked the clothes back at him.
“So am I.” He snatched the skirt out of the air before it messed with his black eyeliner.
Ivan was the epitome of a punk, rather than a danseur. He was practically a billboard for Hot Topic. Not all guys could get away with wearing skinny jeans, but he was one of them.
With a full blown smirk on his face, he walked up to me and spun me around so quickly that I yelped. He clutched my waist to keep me still in front of my ten-dollar full-length mirror, then positioned the skirt in front of my hips.
“She’s straight. I’m straight. So are a million other men in the City. Strut your stuff, Addy girl!”
“I’ll become a ballerina whore! What are you then? My pimp?”
“If paparazzi is following you, then you might as well take advantage of it, should Joffrey lose their damn mind and do something rash like not to take you back.”
“Parading around like a stripper isn’t going to help matters,” I said, eyeing the hot pink top.
He shrugged his shoulders, walked over to my bed and flopped down. “Badmouth your clothes all you want. You bought them for a reason. Don’t try to deny it.”
I walked over to the trashcan where Rotten Apples belonged and dug it out. Shoving it in his face, I tapped on the picture of my ass. “This isn’t how I want to get recruited into prestigious ballet companies.”
“Fine,” he contested, pulling the paper down and smoothing it out like the trash was the last place in the world for a publication of its esteem. “Besides, who knows if Blake reads, but there is a good chance he’d take one look at this piece of gold and know he fucked up bad.”
That gave me pause. “If I wear them, will you shut up?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
I slipped the skirt on but paired it with a light blue t-shirt, not the hot pink top. After shrugging on a jean jacket, Ivan walked up behind me and slipped a pair of sunglasses over my eyes.
“From what I hear, the limelight can be bright.”
With that, I was ready to face the world. Ivan offered me his arm and escorted me down the four flights of stairs. We barely got outside the door when the shrill pitch of two girls’ screams and a man arguing dulled the noise of the City. I recognized one of the blondes as Blake’s wife. Slammed by guilt, I lost my footing. Ivan caught me before I skinned my knees on the cement steps that lead to the street.
“Are you okay?” Ivan held me upright. “You look like you’re going to blow chunks.”
As much as I wanted to make sure I was welcome back at Joffrey’s, I needed to deal with this before it blew up into a bigger deal. “Ivan, would it be horrible if you picked up my purse for me and then give it to me when we meet up for practice?”
“And leave a perfectly good bitch-fest with two hot babes?”
Blake’s curvy wife was ranting about dating etiquette. I wondered if she knew her husband and I had slept together last night. Oh God. A part of me hoped not. As much as I’d never want her to know…she deserved to know the truth about Bla
ke.
Next to her was a girl with breasts so perky they had to have been purchased. Her flawless skin and shimmering blond hair screamed money. She pointed her well-manicured finger against Leo’s chest—wait! What was he doing here?
I knew it wasn’t the time or the place, but when a guy like Leo showed up to my doorstep in stone-washed jeans, military grade boots, and dressed in a black leather jacket while posing in front of a motorcycle, I damn near tripped and fell again. He hung his sunglasses on his shirt collar, giving me a peek at the sexiness that was Mr. Fucking Richards.
Leo stood next to his motorcycle that was on its side—flat on the asphalt—in the parking space. From his clenched fists and choice words, I got the distinct impression that it had not been an accident his bike was knocked over and scratched all to hell.
“Well if you would have just let me on, it wouldn’t have fallen over!” the blonde yelled.
She was talking too dang fast for me to keep up with the why or how Leo’s bike was wrecked because she’d moved on to complaining about a library and him ditching her for homework.
Oh God! Was she his girlfriend? Please tell me he didn’t have a girlfriend! That had to be a record: screwing a married man and then picking up a taken guy at the bar.
“Is that the Leonardo Richards?” Ivan asked.
“Ivan, just go. Get my purse so I can take care of this drama before it blows up.” I pushed him down the front steps. He started to argue, but I stopped him short. “If you stick around, I’ll never dance with you again.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” I countered. “The only reason I can afford Joffrey is because of the R&B scholarship. I put every cent into my tuition. I pick up as many shifts at work as humanly possible. It would be so much easier to quit right here, right now. And that isn’t even taking into consideration my recent debut in today’s paper!”