by C. L. Donley
I shake my head. I don’t want to go into my complex relationship with Grayson and Amara’s happiness. But if anyone can understand, it’s her.
“I was engaged once. Technically twice,” I confess.
“I didn’t know that,” Mya simply says.
“The first time, I was nineteen.”
“Aww, teenage Dale,” she smiles.
“Maybe I am a little envious of Grayson. But it’s not because of Amara.”
“Because he found love? Because… he found it and he didn’t even want it?” she surmises.
I nod, looking over at her.
“I agree with you, she has changed. But it’s love that you’re seeing. Not money.”
Mya
Love. I’d like to one day also be able to tell the difference.
I return his gaze, but then face the windshield before he can say or do anything else. I can tell there’s more on his mind, more that he might say to me, but I’m still in a bit of a trance from all the new information coming my way.
The dinner was his idea.
And it was on the day I decided to stop giving any fucks. What. An. Idiot.
They must’ve all been in on it. No wonder Amara was blowing me up on the way.
Which means the dancing had worked.
And now I’m finding out that he’s not only not a playboy but the marrying kind. Amara was plainly trying to tell me and I wouldn’t listen. More punches to the gut. I didn’t think I was in need of humbling, but this day is telling me different.
I open my car door and stay put for a moment as Dale makes his way out and onto my passenger side.
“So if the dinner was your idea, then… what was your plan exactly?” I ask as he takes my hand chivalrously.
“Tonight?” He shrugs. “This, essentially,” he waves his free hand around as we head up the steps to the front door.
“Convenient,” I say, “I should’ve checked under my hood for sabotage before I let you whisk me away.”
“I have a rock solid alibi,” he chuckles as he opened the door to his house.
The moment I see the dark chocolate floors, Spanish archways, and the neutral colored warmth that envelops me, I’m transported back to that amazing weekend in San Sebastian. And I realize yet again that I’m a colossal idiot.
This was no bachelor pad, this was a home. The home of a man who wants to share it.
When he’d asked to continue the relationship, it was no small invitation.
“The kitchen’s this way,” he says needlessly, since I’m following him closely.
He opens his colossal fridge and invites me to look inside.
“Not sure what to make you, honestly. My mom never ate this late, as a rule. But she swore by her yogurt,” he says.
The subject stings my eyes. I’m not quite ready to confront that blunder just yet.
“So do I. I make my own.”
“Of course you do,” he says.
I help myself to plain yogurt with fresh fruit and candied pecans. Dale grabs me by both hands.
“Where are we going?”
“Are you ready to be the plaything in my sick rich bubble?” he smirks.
Thirty Three
Chapter 33
Dale
Mya smiles and lowers her gaze sheepishly at my invitation. I get the distinct feeling that she was mostly offended not by the way Amara found herself in our world, but the fact that Mya had been left out.
Should I share my theory with her?
No. Tonight, the last thing I want her to remember is that she hates me a little.
I give Mya a rudimentary tour of the house, including the master bath.
This particular bathroom has seen a lot of action. I’m not proud of it.
The natural stone mosaic bathroom has a crystal chandelier, oversized clawfoot tub and tall, folding balcony doors that overlook trees masking the nearby beach.
“Your closet is the size of my living room at home,” she says as she undresses and helps herself to one of my robes. Meanwhile I’m running the water, having rolled up the sleeves to my black v-neck sweater. The tub is an antique re-creation, with one of those ornate, traditional fillers on the side of it that looks like an old timey rotary phone.
Mya clears her throat announcing her presence. I turn to see her in my metallic gray silk robe tightly cinched at her waist to keep it from hanging off her. Her skin sings against every color and texture I’ve ever seen her in. Her long thin locs are in a messy, makeshift updo. My wet hand is on the edge of the tub and I can’t tell if it’s dripping, or if I’m just melting.
“I can tell you right now, it’s not hot enough,” she teases.
“Come test it out,” I confidently assert, adding a touch of aromatic bath salts.
Mya unties her robe and sheds it without ceremony as she makes her way to the tub. I give her a hand and help myself to the view as she climbs in, first one leg then the other. A bit of the water spills over the sides. Her tiny frame is enveloped by the massive tub and its perfectly tempered water as she extends both arms atop its wide lip, emitting a deep sigh as she sank.
She looks like the Queen of the Mermaids and I can tell I’ve proved her wrong. Yet again. Instead of looking out the balcony doors at the view, her eyes are closed.
“You’re a pro at this,” she says.
“At what?”
“At whatever this is.”
“Mind if I join you?”
Mya opens her eyes and cuts me a look. My lower lip juts out in a pout as I try to look pitiful. She laughs.
“Hurry, before I change my mind,” she replies, amused.
Instead of disrobing right there, I take her words literally and run like a bullet out of the bathroom as she giggles.
I return a moment later just wearing a robe, with an exaggerated “cool as a cucumber” air.
She cackles. “You are corny as fuck!” she exclaims, which makes me laugh.
“Don’t fight it anymore, girl,” I say. I begin untying my robe and she puts her hand in front of her eyes.
“No peeking,” I chuckle. She peeks a little. I enter the tub on the opposite side and without my prompting, Mya makes her way across the water and into my lap, her head on my shoulder. My erection grows as I take a sponge and soap from the tray and run a sudsy streak across her back.
“So…before we were blindsided, I believe I was asking you how you liked the flowers,” I say.
“They were beautiful,” she replies, “it was a nice gesture.”
“You’re gonna make me beg aren’t you? ”
“Beg for what?” she asks innocently.
“I want to know how you feel, Mya,” I prompt her.
“About what??” Mya is wide eyed as she smiles.
“You’re worse than Grayson, you know that?” I raise one of her elegant limbs to wash it.
“You had a blowout in your kitchen with him too?”
“Worse. We’ve physically tried to kill each other on more than one occasion.”
Mya giggles. “What happened after that?”
“Nothing. I mean, we’re guys, so. We just moved on after that. My sisters had blowouts all the time.”
“But me and Amara aren’t like that. We’ve never fought,” she says.
“I could tell. You were massively overdue. Turn over.”
Mya gingerly turns to lay against me on her back. She is quiet and trying not to tense and seem like the novice she technically still is as I bathe her, her dark glistening breasts like two hand whipped dollops, her nipples taut.
“You need time to be yourselves— apart from each other, which you’ve never really had,” I offer.
“Having a rich friend, when you’re not rich, sucks.” she confesses. “The whole thing is just a mindfuck, and not a pleasant one.”
“There are some perks, aren’t there?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“Some, but they’re not worth the excruciating return to your own life.”
She moves
provocatively. Ready for me to make a move. It’s now been longer for me than it was before the wedding. I wish I could know if she’s been with anyone else. The way she responds I don’t think she has, but I can’t go by that. I’m enjoying the scene, and showers are for rushing, not baths. So I keep talking.
“I’m lucky,” I continue, “my best friends were along for the ride. But if they weren’t… I don’t know. I would think it’s just the same as a fancy vacation.”
“Yeah, except everyone you love gets to stay and you have to go home.”
“Touche,” I say, sudsing up her breasts a bit too long. Her tongue goes to the corner of her mouth. She likes it.
“You don’t feel like that with me, do you?” I ask.
“It’s ten times worse with you,” she plainly confides.
“Is that because I’m rich, or because… how you feel about me?”
Mya sighs. It’s time to birth another emotion.
“I thought it was because you were rich,” she begins, “at first. But now I think… now I know that…”
She sits up to see me grinning at her feeble attempt at transparency.
She shoves me with an elbow and starts faux attacking me, which I interpret as “I don’t hate you anymore.” I laugh, but she’s stronger than she knows and I’m scared I’ll fucking hurt her. I cry “uncle,” suddenly very excited for my love life. Water sloshes out of the tub onto the floor.
“Maybe if you were just a regular person, I wouldn’t have been so… turned around,” she blames me.
“I am a regular person.”
“You know what I mean.”
I’ve never seen a woman so suspicious of luxury. I dunk the sponge in the water and begin to rinse her.
“After ten years of it…I feel like I’m pretty grounded but, what can you do? Money changes things.”
“You are grounded. Maybe that’s what’s annoying. You’re all so wildly successful.”
“So are you,” I point out.
Mya scrunches up her face. “Not really.”
“Mya. You’re a revelation on stage.”
To my utter delight she beams at the compliment and nestles herself closer to me, giving my manhood an appreciative stroke. I groan, biting my lip.
“I’m just lucky. The dancer that played Hermia got hurt and the understudy didn’t know her part well enough.”
“Just lucky, huh? Maybe we should check your trunk. For assault weapons.”
Mya spins an imaginary mustache as she chuckles.
“No need. The moment I noticed she wasn’t doing ankle rolls during warm up I started learning her part.”
“Fuck me,” I laugh. “And here I thought your being cast as Hermia was a stroke of genius.”
Mya takes the sponge from me and faces me in the bath as she begins to return the favor. She starts at my shoulders.
“Nope. I’m just a vulture.”
“Well the ballet is better for it.”
“You really thought I was good?” she purrs, eyes on my body. She’s fishing for the compliment. For the validation. It’s adorable. And so out of character I can’t resist.
“You made me cry,” I reply, granting her request.
“What?” she smiles.
“We were all a blubbering mess, me and my sisters,” I confess.
Mya pauses. She brings my arm forward and runs the sponge up the length of it.
“Because your mom played Helena,” she says.
I straighten my head to look at her.
“That’s right.”
“I read about it,” she shrugs dismissively, “you brought the place a lot of publicity, apparently.”
“You did,” I say, gazing at her.
She grins. “You think so?”
“I know so.”
She stares at me, at my lips and I look at hers before returning her gaze. Neither of us move. I’m rock hard and she’s beyond ready. It’s going to happen… but it’s not time yet.
“Go back to your side,” I command.
She smirks, eying me skeptically before she complies. When she does, I reach in front of me and grab one of her legs at the ankle. She resists me.
“What are you doing?”
“Gimme your feet,” I say.
“No,” she flinches.
“You don’t think I noticed you hiding your dogs from me?”
She laughs out loud at that, wriggling her leg out of my grip and hiking it elegantly, weightlessly out of my reach.
“I had one job in my house when I was a kid,” I begin, my arm still outstretched to her rogue limb, “and that was to take care of my mom’s feet. I was the only one young enough that could still be bribed to do it.”
The memory makes her smile.
“I thought you said she stopped dancing professionally?”
“She did, but she was always doing something with the community theatre. Even with rheumatoid arthritis she danced.”
She has a look on her face as though the mention of my mother makes her sad.
She slowly complies, lowering her leg and placing her left foot under my outstretched palm. I soap up my hands and firmly began to rub.
“FuuuUUuUuck,” exclaims Mya.
“See what you were about to miss out on?” I chide her dramatically.
More groans. Then silence as I focus on her beat up, dance deformed feet. She looks at my hands as they work and I let her enjoy the silence. Usually a quiet room kills me, but I’m fine. It doesn’t feel like a quiet room usually does. Suddenly her mouth opens.
“I started dancing when I was five,” she begins.
I look up at her, my hands still busy.
“It was right around the time I met Kim actually,” she smiles distantly.
I picture a five year old Mya. And Kim. I grin, eyes attentive, encouraging her to go on.
“The teacher made me practice in the very back, because none of the other girls wanted to dance next to me— not because I was black, but because I was ‘too black’? Their words,” she makes a face. My heart sinks like a stone to my stomach.
“I never told my parents because I knew they would pull me out. I asked one of the girls to pretend to be my friend at the end of class, so that when my parents came to pick me up they could see it. And she did. Every day.”
And now my heart is broken. Well that explains the black ballet school, I think. She continues.
“One day I asked if she wanted to be my actual friend and she said ‘okay.’ Sometimes she came over after practice. But then one day I heard her talking to the other girls in our class,” Mya has a bashful, somewhat embarrassed look as she recalls. “She told them she wasn’t really my friend, that she was just trying to be nice. She told them that my house stunk, you know, all this weird shit. I don’t know, maybe our house really did stink to her,” she shrugs.
“What a little bitch,” I say, somewhat seriously. Mya laughs.
“Whatever. None of those bitches even went on pointe, so fuck them,” she dismisses. A pretty good indication that she cares a lot.
“But I stayed in the class, outlasted any of them. The teacher was… mean. She told me how ridiculous I looked in pink tights, that ballet dancers are supposed to be pale. She made me put powder on my face like the rest of the girls to look pale, and then they all laughed. But I don’t think she hated me. She was trying to teach me a bigger lesson— she was Russian,” she fills in at the end.
“Ah,” I simply say. Surprise, she’s fucking fascinating. I’m trying not to picture the perfect place to propose while she’s talking. Or our next vacation. That Grayson will totally be down for, because duh. No more, “I’ll have to ask Amy,” which I know is code for “Amara doesn’t like your girlfriend and doesn’t know how to tell you.” Focus, Abernathy.
“She was preparing me. Ballet is a harsh world, if you can believe it. She wanted me to be ready for the naysayers, for everyone. And dammit, was I. No teacher was ever as mean to me as she was. She taught me until I was fifteen
.”
Her face suddenly falls. She stops a moment, emotion waylaying her.
“All my technique, all my stamina, my lack of injuries everything. I owe to her,” Mya’s voice trembles. She looks at the crystal chandelier and blinks the tears away, in awe of the memory of her badass, well meaning teacher. “She’s the one who taught me how to take other ballerinas parts,” she laughs. “The day she told me I was her favorite student, like ever…” Mya does a “mind blown” gesture with her hands at her temples. I smile.
“I love her so much. She made me strong,” Mya sniffs, letting the tears fall since her hands are too wet to be of much use.
Now I’m starting to understand why I’m in love with Mya.
It’s not just because I’m in love with love, though that is true. Nor is it because Mya is probably everything I could ever want in a woman, which is also true. It’s not just me, she really is special. I think back to the gorgeous girl in the little black dress two sizes too big. I’m the first to make love to her. And I can be the first to spoil her, to show her how singular she is. The level of love that could be hers, the level of love that she deserves, she is genuinely oblivious of it. Which is quickly becoming my catnip.
I botched my first, second, third, hell all the impressions. She pushed me away to see if I would stay away. But I didn’t. And now here we are. I passed the test. Now I’ve hit the jackpot and she’s opening up to me. The universe really is taking pity on me.
Mya
“Amy said that Kim lived with you,” Dale asks conversationally.
For some reason, Dale is going into full Oprah mode, interviewing me about my life. Also for some reason, I’m letting him.
“For four years. Her brothers even longer. Four more years, after we graduated.”
I don’t quite recall such an early memory as how I actually met Kim, or how I even ended up at Kim’s house that afternoon, but I distinctly remember picking the chair next to her in Sunday school, then looking over only to find that she was gone.
A little later I spotted her on the far side of the room, and by the end of class she was on the front row.