by C. L. Donley
“Holy shit,” I finally say.
“God, I missed you,” she moans breathlessly.
“I could tell,” I pant.
“Sorry I yelled.”
“You fuckin’ scared me,” I say.
Mya laughs, the way she’d laughed on the phone with Kim that day I eavesdropped on them. It’s adorable.
“Sorry,” she smiles.
“No it was good. It was like a… hormone speedball.”
“Would you like me to do that every time?”
“Can you?” I ask thinly.
Mya drops her head to my shoulder, completely melting into giggles.
Mya
The next morning, I’m already awake and on the terrace doing exercises when Dale finally opens his eyes. I’m an early riser, only get about six hours of sleep a night. Any more makes me feel sluggish. I’m wearing my “eat, sleep, dance, repeat” shirt as I balance one leg on my toning platform. It’s something like a lazy susan except, instead of a stand it has a ball joint in it so that I have to rely on my ankle muscles for balance. I put objects all around me on the ground that I have to pick up, all while keeping my balance on the wobbly platform. It takes time to do it without falling, and it’s really fucking hard. It’s my go-to workout on the days I’m not in rehearsal. Eventually I turn around to see him watching me.
“If I knew what muscle groups that entailed, mine would be hurting on your behalf.”
“I thought I heard stirring,” I smile. “Good morning.”
“It is indeed,” he says provocatively. “You really do love pushing your body to the limit. It’s pretty hot.”
“What?”
“At dinner. Before we went to Spain. You said you loved pushing your body to the limit.”
The memory hits me, and I’m embarrassed. To the point that I feel gross. It was a far off, disgusting attempt to get Grayson’s attention at the time. But he’d noticed. Right away, apparently. No wonder he talked shit about me on the way there.
“Jesus. Don’t remind me,” I say, hoping he doesn’t read me any further.
“Why not?”
“Not my finest moment.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If you don’t know, then I won’t tell you.”
“I love thinking about the dinner.”
“Really?”
“Of course,” he knits his brow, as though it were obvious. I indulge my own memory and it instantly brings a smile to my face. I get it. All the memories with him in it are just as good. I can feel myself trying remember him more, trying to reconstruct his face and zoom in on it. I lament. I was paying attention, but not close enough. I turn and resume my work out on the terrace.
“I still mean what I said about the black ballet studio,” I send over my shoulder.
I hear him chuckle as he repeats his initial statement. “Fair enough.” This time I know he means it, that he understands. Maybe even supports it.
“You gonna watch me all morning?” I tease him.
“I might.”
“Such a voyeur,” I say.
“Only when it comes to you,” he smiles.
He watches me a little longer before he gets up to shower. I’m done with exercises by the time he’s out and somewhat dressed, his thick hair the last to dry. Typically I take quick showers, but I adore Dale’s multi jet shower and I can’t help my impulse to indulge. By the time I’m dried and dressed, Dale is already in the kitchen making breakfast that will inevitably get cold and have to be reheated since he’s already technically started working, pacing and talking to himself via his bluetooth device.
I watch him, all serious and straight laced business and laugh to myself. He’s a bit intimidating to me this way, only distantly resembling the man he’s ever shown me to be. When I think about the lonely, haunted man in the bath, the silly confident groomsman at a wedding, the steady, brilliant friend to a tortured genius, I wonder how I could’ve ever been preoccupied with anyone else, how I could’ve ever been blind enough to hate him. He stops pacing for a moment as he speaks authoritatively to whoever’s in his ear and I glance down at his feet, that are very nearly in second position. I break into a smile. He really had taken ballet.
As I make my way to the fridge he grabs me by the waist and holds me close. He clasps one of my hands in his and commences slow dancing with me, unbeknownst to his phone call. I cling to him and bury my nose in his chest, smelling his cologne and dreading the next eight hours without him.
After only a week at Dale’s, this becomes the routine.
Bryan had my car towed to a shop where it was discovered that my alternator needs replacing.
I refuse to let Dale pay for anything, which he says is ridiculous, but I caught him texting back and forth to Bryan about cars. He doesn’t know I know, and he hasn’t said anything about it so I think he’s planning to surprise me. He’s still driving me in the mornings and picking me up in the afternoons, which he assures me is no trouble. Honestly, I think he just really likes being someone’s boyfriend. It’s sweet.
Dale
Even though we’re essentially at the “extra toothbrush at my house” phase of our relationship, I’m resolved not to confess my feelings toward Mya, at least not yet. In my mind, this seems to always be the stage where my previous relationships faltered. Besides, I’ve a lot to overcome. The whole “white wife” misunderstanding, her fears about me using her, her mistrust of wealthy men and their best friends’ sex contracts. I don’t want to risk another relationship conversation based on faulty ideas. She needs to get to know me, and not for just a weekend. I want to have a proper chance to show her what I can do. The sex and the fancy lifestyle change is not enough to sway her. I know her well enough to know that she values more the things she can rely on, like herself, for example. I need to show her that I’m just as reliable, if not more so, before declaring my feelings. She may want love as any woman does, but not just from any old so and so, and the money only makes it ten times harder for her to open up. Everyone in her circle—- Amara, Kim, even her ballet teacher— the people she dearly loves and trusts, all showed their worth by busting their ass, and I will have to do the same.
Done.
The night before her first show for Sleeping Beauty, we bathe and tease each other in the tub until we’re pruny. I bring her to orgasm with the handheld showerhead before we reconvene in my giant bed where we make love, this time slow and gentle. It’s a bit late for a school night, but neither of us are ready for the evening to end. I confess to her that I’ve declined several invites to dinner from Grayson, and expressed the need to have some time alone for a while, just the two of us.
It’s a first for me. Being in a relationship always turned me from a social butterfly to a social bat. But something about Mya makes me want to hibernate.
“Amara is dy-ing right now, you know that right?” says Mya as she lays beside me, our legs intertwined. The two made up about a day or two after the smackdown. I did my best to eavesdrop on the conversation that seemed to be a lot of profanity about how much they love each other. Mya was crying so I know Amara was balling. Immediately after that, Amara begins calling her everyday in ten minute intervals, little more than the amount of time it would take to get to their house from mine. I have no idea what they talk about, but it’s fascinating. After “hey,” Mya basically laughs in varying degrees of intensity until the phone call is over.
“She’s more than dying. But she’ll get over it,” I simply say.
“They are only a few minutes away…” she waffles.
“Whatever you want,” I reply, “this Saturday, maybe?”
Mya grimaces and lets her tongue wag in a response of non-committal. I chuckle. She obviously feels the same urge to hibernate as me.
“That wedding was a lot,” I suddenly confess.
“Right?” she says.
“Bel probably wanted to claw his fuckin’ eyes out.”
“Dale,” Mya says my name.
�
�Mya,” I smile drunkenly.
“I got an offer to dance with Nederlands Dans Theater in The Netherlands. I didn’t even have to audition.”
My eyes go wide, nothing but happiness in my face.
“That’s fucking amazing. When do you leave?”
“I’m not going.”
My brow furrows.
“What? Why?”
“Because… I want to stay here. With you. I wanna be with you.”
I don’t hesitate.
“No way. You have to go,” I insist.
“I don’t want to go. Like, not even a little bit.”
“Mya—”
“I want to live right here in this bed, with you. I don’t even want to go to practice tomorrow.”
I revel in my success, the way I did in Spain after I’d pleasured her cliffside, and she hadn’t wanted to leave me then either. I sigh and shift my position so that she’s nestled against me.
“Listen, Mya. I love you, but I can’t be the reason why you missed out on a great opportunity like this.”
Mya doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“Is that how it was with your dad and mom?”
I take a breath as I choose my words. “She loved being a wife and mom, and they were happy but… she grew to resent him, I think. On some level. She was in her prime, and she was landing auditions when she met my dad. It probably didn’t feel like a sacrifice to her at the time…I won’t let you do the same.”
“You love me?” Mya doesn’t move from her place in my arms as she asks.
She says it as though it’s written on my forehead. My body tenses and I stutter, as if weighing the question.
“I mean, ‘love,’ is kind of a strong word, we’re just getting to know each other,” I somewhat recover.
Mya raises up on her elbows and looks at me.
“But you just said it,” she blinks.
My expression is frozen. I am thoroughly busted.
“I did?”
Mya laughs. Then slowly nods.
“Well, you caught me off guard when you said you weren’t going,” I backpedal, “I was thinking in a future context at the time, if we were to end up together and—”
“I love you too,” Mya blurts.
I go quiet, though my heart is galloping. I hear it with my own ears but I can’t believe it. I did it. I fucking did it. I won. Finally. I want to hear it again.
“You what?”
“I love you,” she says again. I want her to tell me the exact moment it happened, the exact moment she knew. I may not get it, she’s incredibly private about her emotions.
“Since when?” I ask.
Mya swallows. She struggles, more than I anticipate. She’s taking one for the team, I can tell. She knows how much I like to hear it.
“I danced my heart out for you. Every night,” her voice wavers.
…Waaaaait… what are we talking about?
She danced for me? Every night? Was she talking about Midsummer Night’s Dream??
But that was weeks ago now…
“Mya,” I speak her name tenderly, speechless. She lays back down with her arms underneath her head, facing me.
“The moment I heard you had been there to see m— the show,” she closes her eyes, stammering, “my troupe said you’d brought a different girl every night. Then I looked and saw they were your sisters.”
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I still can’t believe my ears. She was already fucking in love with me. She was already fucking in love with me??? She shares it like it is a burden. I want her to continue, so instead of being sincere, I tease her.
“Jealous?” I smirk.
“Shut up,” she laughs. “I thought maybe you would… I don’t know what I thought. I couldn’t call you—”
“Of course you could have.”
“Okay, I was embarrassed to call you, after I turned you down. I didn’t know if you would come to another show. I hoped you would. And I didn’t know which show you would be at so I had to dance like mad at all of them.”
Beyond touched, I’m floored. And yet I feel like I’m floating. High. Like hot air balloon high. I remember how much better the subsequent shows had been. I had something to do with that?? Emotion catches in my throat. I stroke her face.
“I came three times,” I say.
She grins. “I know.”
“And then I went to a few more shows,” I add.
Mya shakes her head, softly laughing.
Her brown eyes are glittering, and just as suddenly her face crumples into a frown.
If making her laugh is my addiction then making her cry is its direct opposite. My heart plummets as she tries to blink back tears.
“Now what did I do?” I try to lighten the mood. She doesn’t respond, only wipes her tears as she tries to get the words out. I can’t imagine what she would have to tell me that warrants ths. I brace myself.
“I’m so sorry for what I said. About your mom,” her voice is a whisper.
I frown. “What did you say about my mom?”
“That she was a quitter,” she pouts.
I chuckle, fondly remembering another classic moment from the dinner before Grayson’s wedding.
“She was,” I joke.
“I had no idea she’d passed, you have to believe me,” she says as her tears keep accumulating. She dabs crudely at her eyes with the tips of her fingers.
I smile. It oddly gives me a happy feeling that someone else has lived in a reality where my mom was still alive, if only for a little while.
“When did you find out otherwise?”
“Like, three weeks ago. The same time I found out that she’d played Helena. I’m such an idiot.”
I’m a little taken aback. I’m not sure what exactly Mya is freaking out about.
“How does that make you an idiot?”
Mya shrugs as if she doesn’t want to admit something.
“I assumed that you probably didn’t know, when you said it,” I add, “I didn’t take it to heart. Are you really saying that you’ve been carrying that around for four months??” I ask.
“No. Just three weeks.”
I scoff, confident that she’s overreacting. “Let it go, sweetheart,” I say softly, happy to absolve her, concerned that she’d been tearing herself up about it. Mya nuzzles her head into the crook of my neck.
Suddenly, like a beautiful sunrise, it dawns on me.
“You thought I would bring her to see you,” I say.
She’s lifeless in my arms as though embarrassment has stiffened her. She doesn’t lift her head as she nods.
At that I grab her, emotion welling up in me. I kiss her on the ear.
“I did,” I whisper. I stroke her hair.
“I was looking forward to meeting her,” she mumbles into my shoulder. She’s so adorable that I may actually pass out.
I laugh as I cradle her, rolling her on top of me.
“How are you comforting me about your mom,” she sniffs.
I’m still smiling. “I think the two of you are connected somehow.”
“Like a ballerina thing?”
“Like a ballerina thing.”
“I still don’t want to move to Holland.”
“Mya, you have to.”
“Dale, I’m tired. There’s no joy in it anymore.”
“Would it help if I came to every single show?”
She huffs a laugh, but she doesn’t deny it, so I know that it would. She nods a confirmation.
“Then that’s what I’ll do.”
“How can you come see every show? In Holland?”
“Um, I’m a billionaire, we’ll make it work.”
“I thought we established money doesn’t fix everything?”
“It’ll fix this.”
Mya sighs, skeptical.
“We’ll see each other every weekend,” I continue.
“Every weekend?”
“Every. Weekend.”
She lifts her head after a moment.
“Shit, let’s go now,” she purrs.
I giggle.
“Now you’re excited?” I ask provocatively. She nods. My heart is bursting, and this time I don’t squelch it.
“I’m in love with you,” I whisper.
She gazes at me wordlessly and I gaze back, expressionless. After awhile I smile. Mya laughs a bit.
“What’s funny,” I ask.
“Just thinking what are the odds,” she says.
“That we were right under each other’s noses?”
“What? No, it was the opposite. If it wasn’t for Amara we would’ve never met.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “You’d still be dancing, still would’ve gotten into the SF ballet company stealing roles from unsuspecting dancers,” Mya giggles as I continue to ruminate, “I probably would’ve still gone to see Midsummer…the way I see it it was inevitable.”
“And I would’ve caught your eye?” she laughs skeptically.
“Of course,” I say.
“I would’ve turned you down,” she says.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” I reply confidently.
“Is that so?”
I smile. Mya shakes her head, fingering a random freckle on my shoulder.
“My parents are gonna be…less than pleased.”
“Really?” I exclaim, a mix of intrigue and concern.
She scoffs and rolls her eyes as though the objection isn’t worth mentioning.
“They don’t like white boys, huh.”
Mya’s giggles a confirmation.
“I see now that I’m going to have to dig deep into my charm arsenal,” I conclude.
“That’s the most frightening sentence I’ve ever heard,” she laughs.
Thirty Five
Epilogue
In the subsequent months that followed, Dale essentially moved to Holland.
First, he bought a jet and put a lot of miles on it, traveling three times a week. Mya had found a quaint little apartment with a garden in the back, but her commute to and from The Hague was pretty terrible, a concession she’d long been accustomed to having lived in Palo Alto and traveling into the city to work. But it meant an hour and a half drive, three hours of quality time he was losing when he came to visit. So he rented a gorgeous apartment in the city, and they spent their time there.