by R. R. Banks
"Everything that you've wanted," Jude said.
I nodded.
"Exactly."
Jude continued to stare at me in the mirror and I felt his eyes burrowing into me as if they were making my skin melt away where they touched so that he could look inside me and know what I was thinking and feeling. I felt him scouring the inner depths of me, trying to find out if I was telling him the truth, seeking out what he wanted to know. Finally, he turned to look at me.
"Then I guess that you should get to work," he said. "You want to make sure that you're ready to impress them. Opportunities don't come along as often as you might want them to. "
He took the two steps that it took to close the space between us and touched a kiss to my lips. It felt somehow different and a chill settled through me as he walked out of the studio. Somehow, I felt that there was more in that kiss than just the words that he had said. The thought that had gone through my mind as soon as he mentioned me not going to the rehearsal building came back and I felt it sink into my stomach. I hated that was what I thought. I hated that I felt like I needed to explain myself to him, or that there was the hint of fear inside me when I wondered what happened, how he would react if I wasn't able to explain it the way that I did.
That wasn't the way that I should feel. That wasn't what he should do to me. I should still have the thrill inside me, still get the butterflies when I thought of him without them quickly being chased by the sense of pressure and control that started to surround me. In the time that I had spent with Jude, I had learned so much about myself. The hidden, secretive feeling that had once been so exciting now felt wrong and I realized that I was really disliking it. I was building the confidence and strength that he said that I would, but now I felt that it was backfiring because as I grew in that confidence and strength I realized that Jude wasn't giving me what I needed.
I needed to take control of my life again.
Jude
She was with him again.
I had seen them together.
This time they went to a tiny Italian restaurant tucked on the corner of an obscure part of the nearby neighborhood blocks from her grandmother's house. The very house that I had twice more tried to convince her to go inside and start to empty out. I had seen the way that she looked at the picture hanging on the wall in that house the first time that she went inside. It was hidden behind a layer of dust, but it was the family that she had lost, the family that she had then struggled to put behind her. I wanted her to do what I hadn't been able to do, to fight through what had been holding her back and crash headlong into the life that was waiting for her on the other side. It might be too late for me, but it wasn't for her.
Then I saw them.
I kept seeing them.
She told me that she was going to rehearsals or that she needed to meet with the department representatives about the intensive. But then she would go to be with him.
I watched them. Not realizing at first how far I was falling, how far I was going. Then not caring.
I watched every word that they said to each other even though I couldn't hear them. I watched every time that they looked at each other. I watched every time that their hands slipped closer to each other across the table or when they parted, waiting to see if this would be the time when he kissed her.
I tortured myself with thoughts about when they might see each other that I didn't know or what they might do when they were alone. I clawed for more time with her, wanting to fill every minute with her so that she couldn't be with him, but I could feel her pulling away. Even when she was with me, she wasn't all there. There were moments when I looked at her and found her staring at me, her eyes as deep as tide pools, and I could see the plea in them. Words tingled on my lips, but I couldn't say them. I had made myself completely vulnerable when I opened up to her. I turned myself inside out and lay myself unprotected in front of her as much as I could. Now she was drifting and I felt like she was slipping from my fingers.
I couldn't hold her down.
That wasn't me. That wasn't why I had hired her as my T.A. and it wasn't why I had pushed her against the office door and took her on the desk. It wasn't why I kept letting her draw me back in. I wanted her body and then I wanted her companionship. She had given it to me openly and willingly, but if she wasn't willing to any longer, I wasn't going to try to drag it from her.
But I wasn't willing to hand her to him.
I watched them sit across from each other and lean gradually toward one another so that they could hear each other over the sound of everyone else around them. People looked at them, but they didn't shy from the attention. They didn't care if anyone saw them. I wondered what they would do if I walked into the restaurant.
I didn't.
By the next week, I wished that I had.
Veronica stepped into my office and I smiled.
"Well, this is a surprise," I said. "Your phone has been off all day. I didn't think that I was going to see you."
She nodded and closed the door behind her. There was no smile on her lips as she came to sit in the chair across the desk from me. I knew with that gesture she was telling me something. Not since before Halloween had she come in and taken that seat without moving the chair closer. Usually, she perched on the corner of the desk or came and sat in my lap. By sitting in that chair, she was putting space and a tangible barrier between us and I immediately knew what was coming. I felt my heart harden and my blood chill.
"I needed to talk to you," she said.
"Alright. Talk."
"I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I have really enjoyed the time that we've spent together and I will never be able to tell you how much it's really meant to me. But I think that we might have run our course."
"Run our course?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Jude, come on. You know what I'm trying to say. We've had a lot of fun together, but things have changed. I'm not your T.A. anymore and with the intensive coming up, I'm going to be spending even more time dancing. If the company asks me to stay with them permanently, I'll be moving out of state. What then? We won't be able to just get together whenever we want to. I don't want to hold you back. I might be gone for months at a time. Maybe even longer. If you want to see someone else, you should be able to. I just feel like this way nobody gets hurt, right? Everything that we've been through has meant so much to me and I want for us to be able to part with respect and continue to be friends."
I felt like my lungs were crushing under the pressure of her words, but I didn't show it. I intertwined my fingers on the desk in front of me and nodded.
"Thank you for sharing that with me," I said.
She looked at me expectantly.
"Is that it?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "If that's how you feel, then that's what matters. I appreciate you telling me."
Veronica looked visibly confused. Her face had fallen and she seemed to be sagging slightly in the chair, unsure of how to process what I had just said. She continued to stare at me, obviously waiting for me to say something, but I wasn't going to. If she had made the decision to leave, that meant that that was what she wanted and she needed to do it. I needed her to get out. I needed her to leave.
"Alright," she finally said. "I guess I'll see you around."
She stood and started for the door. I picked up a pen and started sifting through the papers on my desk, busying myself so that I didn't have to look at her. I nodded.
"Sure," I said. "I'm sure that we'll run into each other on campus. Best of luck with your intensive."
She hesitated for only a few seconds longer and then walked out, closing the door behind her. I waited until I knew that she was gone and then slammed my fists on the top of the desk. The cold control that I had been able to maintain cracked inside me and I felt the fury flow out, seeping to every inch of my body and burning in the tips of my fingers and behind my eyes. I couldn't believe that she was doing this to me, but I a
lso wasn't going to chase her. I wasn't going to plead with her. I knew what she wanted, but she had no right to want it.
I shouldn't have to say those words to her. I shouldn't have to tell her how I felt about her. If she didn't know from the way that I treated her and how much we had shared with each other, then she couldn't feel it. Hearing arbitrary words wasn't going to change that. She should know what she meant to me from those alone and if she was going to walk away from me so easily, then I would let her go.
But I couldn't let her go to his arms.
The thought alone infuriated me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Veronica
I had been completely confident when I walked into Jude's office. I knew that this was the right time. This is what I had to do. But now it hurts so much.
I still knew that I was making the choice that was right for me. I needed to take control of my life again, not just for right now but for what was lying ahead of me. I had begun to pull away from Jude in small ways, not because I didn't feel anything for him but because I did. I knew with every passing moment that I was falling in love with him, and that was making it so much more difficult for me to cope with looking into his eyes and not seeing what I needed to see coming back to me. Not hearing what I needed to hear. It was because I was falling in love with him that I needed to take that step that I needed to break away from him now. I knew that we were never going to have a real relationship. He had made it clear to me that it wasn't something that was in the cards for us, and never had been. I couldn't keep going that way. I couldn't keep devoting myself so much to someone who wasn't willing to devote himself to me in the same way.
I knew that I needed to accept it ending and to be willing to move forward with my life. Though I had an amazing time with him and would always treasure the memories that we had made together, I needed to just move ahead. I couldn't cling to those moments and what I wished that they would be. It would be better to just begin the process of disengaging from him now so that I could get through it. I didn't want to be lost in my thoughts of him and mourning the end of our time together when I needed to be focused on the intensive or when I left to join the company, which could happen in a matter of weeks.
I didn't really know what I was expecting from Jude when I told him. I knew that his reaction could have run a range, meeting any marks along the spectrum. But how it had unfolded had hit me harder than I could have anticipated. I felt like I had been hit in the center of the chest, a painful throb around my heart that I tried to breathe through as I walked out of the building and hurried toward my next rehearsal. Always another rehearsal. But that was what I thrived on. With dancing, there was nothing else. I could close myself from the world and put everything into what I was doing. Dancing was my constant. There was always another rehearsal. Always another performance. I knew what to do, I knew what to expect and what was expected of me.
I let my rehearsals carry me through for the next week. I filled every possible moment with dancing. When I wasn't at a rehearsal or conditioning, I was stretching or listening to the music. I tried as much as I could to keep myself fully immersed in the experience of the pieces that I had been working on for so long. It wasn’t long until all that work would culminate and I couldn't let it fall apart now. I had to be true to the energy and the effort that I had put into every movement and remind myself of what had crafted each element of these final projects of my college career. The fact that I had already been chosen for the summer intensive meant both nothing and everything. It meant that the company didn't even have to wait to see the final performance, that they were impressed enough with the exhibitions and workshops that they had seen throughout the years to select me. It meant that some of the pressure has been taken off my senior performances and that I could give myself permission to relax and simply enjoy. At the same time, knowing that I had been chosen for the Intensive did nothing to take away the critical importance of every moment that I could dance until the semester was over. Just because they had selected me didn't mean that they couldn't change their mind or that they might not see someone else who impressed them just as much or even more.
I had to hold on to my position. I had to live up to what they had seen and what they hoped for, for the future of my career. It gave me somewhere to hide and it had been a long time since I felt like hiding as much as I did right then.
A week after my confrontation with Jude in his office, I still hadn't seen him. I didn't want to admit it to anyone else, but I found myself waiting to hear my phone ring or to hear him knock on the door to my apartment. I found myself waiting for him to come to me. But he didn't. I felt a heaviness in my stomach as I walked into the bar where Michael was waiting for me. He had been out of town since before I had gone to see Jude and this was the first time I had seen him since he had come back. I knew that it was going to be different now. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to look at him the exact same way that I had before I ended things with Jude. But I hadn't expected to feel as much hesitation as I did as I walked into the building and saw him sitting at the bar. He looked up and smiled at me.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
We sat beside each other in uncomfortable silence for several seconds before I turned to him.
"I ended it with Jude," I said.
I could have built up to it more. I could have tried to be a little bit more cautious with the way that I presented it or given some sort of explanation, but I didn't want to hesitate anymore. I didn't want to take any more time or any more effort. I just wanted the admission to be over. Michael blinked a few times and then stared down at his hands where they rested on top of the bar.
"How did he take it?" he asked quietly.
"Almost disturbingly well," I said. "But that's alright. It doesn't change anything."
"It doesn't?" he asked.
I shook my head.
"Of course not. I still want to do this. Nothing is different about that."
Michael looked as though he was starting to say something, but then his mouth fell open slightly and I saw the muscles tense throughout his body. I looked over my shoulder as he scrambled to get off the bar stool where he sat. Jude was stalking toward us, his eyes dark, his jaw set, and his nostrils flaring. I could see his hands clenched by his side and his shoulders were squared toward Michael.
"Jude," I said, getting down and trying to get in between the two men.
"Get out of my way, Veronica."
He walked around me, easily pulling himself out of my hand as I grasped at him. His hands grabbed onto Michael and he pulled him up close to meet his eyes. Their faces were only inches from each other and even from where I stood I could see the terror in Michael's.
"Jude, stop," I said.
My stomach was in knots and tears were already streaming down my face. This wasn't how this was supposed to happen. This wasn't the way that it was supposed to be.
"Leave her alone," Jude growled. "Get out of here and don't get near her again."
He pushed Michael away from himself and ensured that his body was positioned to prevent Michael from getting anywhere near me as he grabbed his jacket and rushed out of the bar. Jude stayed in place only long enough for Michael to disappear out of the building, then shot me a single look before walking out himself. I choked on my tears, stumbling back until I caught myself on the stool behind me and used it to hold myself up. I didn't know how to process what had just happened. I was devastated, but in the same breath, white-hot anger was coursing through me.
It was obvious that Jude thought Michael and I were on a date, and his reaction both infuriated and confused me. I didn't understand how he could be so casual, almost unfeeling when I told him that we should end whatever was going on between us, but then fly into a rage when he thought that I was seeing someone else. I felt like I was being torn apart and I didn't know which direction to go. I could feel the eyes of everybody in the bar staring at me, but I didn't care. It didn't matter to me what
they thought or the questions they had. They could think whatever they wanted and make whatever judgments they felt like. It didn't impact me. It didn't matter to me anymore. I could see a man walking toward me, and I quickly let go of the stool and walked quickly and steadfastly toward the door of the bar. The last thing that I needed at that moment was someone thinking that they could comfort me into a one-night stand.
I got out into the parking lot and sat in my car, feeling as though I didn't know what I was supposed to do next. I didn't know where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do. I was being pulled in so many directions and I didn't know what decision I was supposed to make. I felt like any decision that I made, anything that I did, anything that I said, was going to shatter everything that I had built and the life that I thought I had. This wasn't the way that this was supposed to be and now that it had happened, I didn't know if there was any way to repair it. Finally, I cranked the engine over and started for home. I no longer felt like I had the energy to do anything else. Not now.
The door to the apartment opened before I could even get my key in the lock and Javi's arms were waiting for me. I curled into them and let him squeeze me close, tucking his head against mine as if he was trying to protect all of me. I held him until I felt like I had cried out everything that I needed to and then I pulled back and looked at him.
"You know what happened, don't you?" I asked.
Javi nodded, reaching up to brush a piece of my hair away from my forehead.
"Oh, honey," he said. "It's on YouTube."
"Fuck," I said, letting my head fall back and walking into the apartment where I dropped onto my face on the couch.
"What exactly led up to that?"
"I broke up with Jude," I admitted.
"Can you break up with someone who has never said that you are in a relationship?" he asked.