Like No One Is Watching

by Jaime Samms

  “Fine.” A frown flashed over Dusty’s face. “I’ve been like this a long time, Conrad. I can look after myself.”

  “Never said you couldn’t.” Conrad all but lifted him from the counter anyway, taking most of Dusty’s weight as he hopped down.

  “Thank you.” Dusty yanked the hem of his too-short T-shirt down to cover the tantalizing sliver of bare skin Conrad noticed. “I appreciate it.”

  “No, you don’t.” Conrad leaned against the counter to watch him. “You’re pissed at me for offering a hand, which is ridiculous.”

  “I am not.”

  “Annoyed, then. Because you think you have to do everything yourself, which you don’t.”

  Dusty rolled his eyes. “I don’t have to do everything myself. I’m not remotely like that.”

  “Then say thank you like you mean it, or don’t say it at all.”

  Dusty glared at him.

  Conrad refused to look away. He was tired of his every move being rebuffed, second-guessed, or met with outright hostility. “At the very least, we can be friends.”

  “We are.” Dusty didn’t sound the least bit convinced, though.

  Conrad stifled a sigh. “Fine. Have it your way. I’m going downstairs to do some paperwork. Eliza and Adam are coming in early to rehearse, so if you have anything you need to do in the studio, best do it now.”

  He didn’t wait for Dusty’s response but hurried down to the office without a backward glance. Once there, he heaved out a breath and sagged. It shouldn’t be so hard to get through to the guy that he liked him. A lot. Why was he so damn resistant?

  A knock on the studio door hauled him out of his inner complaints, though, and he unlocked it to see Peridot with a takeout bag in hand.

  “Thought I would stop by and visit, if you’ve got the time. I know I’m unannounced, but—”

  “It’s perfect timing, actually.” Conrad moved aside to let him in. “I have a couple of dancers working on a piece, and I want you to watch and tell me what you think. The piece is lovely. Mostly choreographed by Eliza, but they aren’t quite hitting it, and I don’t know if it’s the choreography that’s off or the dancers. I could use a second opinion.”

  “Surely.” Peridot grinned wide and entered, and they set to the meal while they waited for Eliza and Adam.

  The dancers showed up soon after Peridot and headed straight in to warm up and run through the dance a few times. They did so quickly, marking the choreography without any of the lifts or jumps done fully.

  “So?” Conrad asked. “Thoughts?”

  Peridot shrugged. “I need to see it full-on to make a call.”

  “Sure.” Conrad tapped on the glass, and Adam looked up. At the motion Conrad made with his hand, Adam nodded and said something to Eliza, who sighed but nodded. They started the music over and took their starting places at the barre.

  As they began, Dusty entered, but he stopped, frozen in place as Eliza whirled about Adam, performing much the same dance she had improvised that day she had danced with him.

  “What do you think?” Conrad asked softly to the room in general.

  Peridot opened his mouth to answer, but Dusty moved before he said a word, heading straight for the studio door.

  “Stop!” he called.

  Both dancers jolted to a halt and turned.

  “Adam, if you’re going to be her foil, you have got to be less aggressive. She can’t lead you if you keep grabbing her hand.” He went to the barre and took the beginning position of the song. “Eliza?”

  She hurried into place, and together, without the music, they marked the opening sequence. “Like this,” Dusty said at the point Eliza moved away from the barre. “You are not leading her, she is leading you.” He held up his hand and waited for her to take it, not looking at her but trusting her to give him the cue with the touch of her fingers on his.

  When it came, he turned first his head, then swept his left leg out, pivoted on his right, and braced himself to take the step. She was there for him, her hand under his, ready to support him if his knee buckled. It didn’t, but he felt her confidence, her readiness to catch him if he needed it. When they got to center stage, he stopped and turned to Adam. “You see?”

  Adam frowned but nodded rather vaguely. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “I see you need the help. It’s harder if—”

  “Then do it,” Dusty ordered and waved them over to the barre. He went to the stereo and started the music again.

  This time, Adam allowed Eliza to take his hand, but he turned his head to watch her approach and reached for her too soon, though he did allow her to place her hand beneath his. Still, it smacked of him allowing her to lead. The insecurity in his action bled into her steps. His first step toward her was too aggressive, and she backed off. They found their way to center in the required number of beats, but once there, she faltered in leaning into him. He growled and stepped out of the dance. Eliza stumbled, and though Adam caught her, she was clearly frustrated.

  “It’s not working,” she said. “Let’s try—”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Adam overrode her. “Why is she leading? I’m perfectly fit. I don’t need her to hold me up.”

  “Because that’s the dance, Adam,” Dusty said. “It’s about trust. You trust her strength to lead, and she trusts you to accept her leadership and still be there for her. It’s about give and take. You have to let the dance speak and not speak for it. Not impose your societal norms over what the music has created.”

  Halfway through Dusty’s speech, though, Adam was already shaking his head. “I can’t do it,” he admitted. “Not like you can.”

  “Because you feel I need her help?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Dusty frowned, went to the barre, and did the few rather simple steps that brought him to center on his own. “I am not a cripple, Adam. I am a dancer with a bad knee.”

  “So why don’t you dance it with her, then?”

  “It isn’t my dance.”

  “Actually, Mr. Hatch,” Adam said, “it is. My duet is something completely different.”

  “Really?” Dusty lifted an eyebrow, and on the other side of the glass, Conrad smirked. He knew that look. Dusty was not buying Adam’s argument.

  “Really,” Adam replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll make a deal with you. You practice this dance with Liza and give me one week to put my dance together. If you don’t like it—”

  “Wait, wait. Why are you bargaining with me? I’m just the hired help, remember?”

  Adam shrugged. “But you and Liza made this dance. I saw you dance it with her, and it’s beautiful. I’m not the right partner for her, because you’re right. I have a really hard time switching roles with her, and that makes her not trust me.”

  “Well, even if I wanted to, Adam, I can’t make that bargain with you. It has to be a decision between you, Eliza, and Mr. Kosloff.”

  “Well. If they agree, will you?”

  Dusty glanced from him to Eliza, who watched him hopefully, and through the windows to Conrad.

  Conrad met his gaze and shrugged. He would be very interested to see what Adam thought he had that would be better than this delicate piece Eliza had choreographed. He had to admit he was intrigued by the young man’s vehemence. But he couldn’t make Dusty dance with Eliza if he didn’t feel comfortable. He saw Dusty sigh and waved all three of them into the office. It was time to be the teacher, he supposed.

  “I think you should let them do it,” Peridot whispered. “If only to see what Adam has. He’s not a bad dancer, but he’s right. He’s not the right dancer for this piece.”

  “I know,” Conrad said, “but he’s one of very few male leads we have, and he’s the only one who can match Eliza’s skill right now.”

  “Doesn’t matter if they can’t trust each other. If you want her to learn to trust, give her a partner worthy of it.”

  “I can’t ask Dusty to—”

  “You can always ask. Let him make h
is own decision about it.”

  At which point, Dusty was in the office, looking to Conrad to make this whole situation go away. Eliza looked at him with a pleading expression, and Adam with a ray of hope on his face that completely abolished anything Conrad might have said.

  “Dusty?” He met Dusty’s eyes. “It’s up to you. If Adam thinks he has something, I’m willing to give him a week to show me. In the meantime, Eliza has to rehearse. Will you?”

  Dusty glared at him, but one look at Eliza had him letting out a long breath. “I’ll rehearse with her. Yes. But if Adam can’t dance for the recital, she’s going to have to find another partner anyway. I don’t see that it’s in anyone’s interest to use me as a mere placeholder.”

  “Let me see what I can figure out,” Conrad offered. “But in the meantime, for a few days. Please.”

  “Oh please, Mr. Hatch?” Eliza gripped his arm and jumped up and down a few times. “Please.”

  Conrad saw the moment Dusty caved, and he smiled. “Thank you, Dusty,” he said. “Very much.”

  “You owe me,” Dusty told him.

  Conrad grinned. “I do indeed.”

  “Come on!” Eliza all but dragged Dusty back toward the studio. “I have a half hour of studio time still.”

  Conrad watched them go. It wasn’t his imagination that Dusty’s back was a little straighter, or that his step was a tad springier. Whatever his outward objections, something in him had perked up at the idea of dancing again.

  “I remember where I know his name from,” Peridot said suddenly. “Dustin Hatch. He was… fifteen, I think? He got into the last summer camp I taught at for the company. I remember, because he was a year younger than the cutoff age, but man, he was good. Too good to pass up. He never showed. I learned later that he’d been in some sort of fight? Or accident or something? I don’t recall the details.” Peridot’s cheeks reddened. “I’m afraid that was just about the time I was caught up in my own shit. Lots of details from those years have gone missing. I never heard of him after that, though.”

  Conrad’s attention went back to Dusty as he took Adam’s spot at the barre and began the dance. It was easy to see the dancer Peridot talked about in the lithe body, the fluid motions, the poise and confidence, despite the limp and the time that had passed since he’d last danced. “I am going to figure out how to talk him into this,” he muttered.

  “You sure that’s wise?”

  Conrad looked at his old friend. “Some of us were never meant for the stage, Perry.” He fixed his gaze back on Dusty. “Some of us should have been there all along.”

  Chapter 22

  DUSTY SHOULD not have agreed. Nor should he have continued to play along. But somehow, two weeks after that first reluctant acceptance, here he still was, walking out of a rehearsal with Eliza chattering happily at his heels.

  Conrad sat behind his desk, and he looked up when they came into the office from the studio. “It looks good,” he said. “Really coming along.”

  Dusty frowned at him, but Eliza glowed at the praise. Dusty had to admit she hadn’t balked once when she’d noticed Conrad and a few of her fellow students watching through the window. She was gaining the confidence she sorely needed, and Dusty was not about to set her back.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Eliza has worked very hard.”

  “So have you.”

  Dusty shook his head but waited for Eliza to gulp down some water and rush out of the office before he spoke.

  “Have you found her a new partner?”

  “Still working on it.”

  “Are you?” Dusty crossed his arms over his chest. “Because while I agree with you that Adam’s piece is pretty stunning, it’s been a week since you decided to let him showcase it. You must have thought about Eliza’s partner since then. I worry they won’t have enough time to work together before recital. She only has a week left.”

  “Do you know, I think that’s maybe the most words you’ve said to me all at once?”

  “Con.”

  “Why are you so adamant?”

  Dusty glowered. “Because I don’t dance, Con. Not anymore.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “Beg all you want,” Dusty growled. “It won’t get you what you want.”

  Silence.

  Dusty looked up to find Conrad staring at him, eyes wide, face slack. “I didn’t mean it like that, Con. I just meant that you can have whatever opinion you want about my dance career. It was over more than a decade ago. Before it ever really began.”

  “It doesn’t have to be, though, don’t you get that? There is nothing stopping you from starting again.”

  Dusty slapped his left leg, the sound muffled by the thick padding of the knee brace. “Just a knee I can’t trust to hold me up.”

  “But it is holding you up just fine. Why don’t you want to see that? I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t, because you’ve never been denied anything your whole life. You had people handing you things you didn’t even want—”

  “Like a law saying I couldn’t donate bone marrow to my own twin because I’m gay,” Conrad said. “And itinerary after itinerary from my father’s assistant telling me what part of the world he and my mother were in now, and invitations to Christmas dinners I sent to my brothers, returned to sender because they’d moved without thinking to send me a forwarding address. And all their blame. All the guilt because I couldn’t save her. Don’t tell me what I’ve been given or what’s been taken away from me, Dusty. You have no idea.”

  “At least you had a family,” Dusty spat. “And enough money to buy a fucking turkey. So you were lonely. That’s sad. Do you know what I had? Friends who couldn’t be bothered to call for help when I got my skull caved in and my knee broken. Who thought I deserved to get beat up because what? I was gay? Poor? A dancer? Just different? Who the hell even knows, because if they ever said, I don’t remember it. A brother who didn’t want to give up any of his new, six-digit income to pay my medical bills, so instead, he put me in foster care. I got a family who didn’t think the surgery to properly fix my knee would be worth the time and effort of recovery, even though the surgery was paid for, because dance isn’t a real career anyway, so what did it matter? And teachers and an entire fucking system that just didn’t get that my brain doesn’t work anymore! The only thing I can do right is organize CDs, and don’t think I don’t know I spelled half that shit wrong. I know. I just can’t get it right.”

  “You can dance, Dusty.”

  “I. Cannot. Dance.” Dusty snatched up his duffel from the floor, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the stairs and the door to the street. “I can’t dance. I can’t.”

  He almost ran right into Eliza, who appeared from the basement, a flowing silk dress in her hands. “What do you think?” she asked, holding it up for him to see. “Do you think you can match it? It will work so well for our—”

  “Wear whatever you want, Eliza,” Dusty told her. “I won’t be matching your outfit.”

  “But—”

  Dusty left her protest behind the slamming door.

  HE’D HOBBLED all the way to the bridge before the rumble of Conrad’s Fiat overtook him and pulled up to trail alongside.

  “Get in the car, Dusty.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. You left that girl crying her eyes out back there.”

  “You’re her teacher. You find her an appropriate dance partner.”

  “She wants you.”

  “Well, she deserves better.”

  The car jerked to a halt, and a moment later, the door slammed and Conrad was in front of him, making him stop. “Why do you keep saying that? What do you think is so goddamn deficient about you that everyone deserves better?”

  Dusty was forced to stop and he glared at Conrad. “Are you fucking with me? I’m a cripple, and my brain is half mush. I forget to pick up my mail because my landlord moved the damn box, and I get lost if I take a different route home
from work. Do you know why I didn’t stay at your house? Because I would have freaked out waking up in a strange place and not been able to figure out where I was or what to do.”

  “I would have been there, Dusty.” Conrad took him by both arms. “Don’t you see? You would not have woken up alone. I would have been there. I would have kept you safe until you got your bearings back. All you had to do was tell me this, and I could have helped you figure it out.”

  “And what about when you need to be kept safe?” Dusty asked. “What about when you do that thing where everything is in my hands and you need to be safe?”

  “You handled it just fine both times so far. I’m not worried. You make my world make sense, Dusty. You realize that, don’t you? I look around my place, and your touch is all over it. I can find my clothes, and I know what needs to be cleaned, and even the kids can find the music they want for class.”

  “So I’m great at cleaning shit up. That’s awesome.”

  “Please tell me you see it’s more than that.” Conrad met his gaze, studied him, looking for God only knew what.

  Dusty stared back, lost.

  “Will you please get in the car and let me take you home?”

  God, he wished stepping outside his little box didn’t have to be so hard.

  “Dusty, trust me. I’ve got this, okay?”

  Finally, Dusty nodded and let Conrad lead him back to the car. Once inside, with his belt buckled, he did feel better. And he felt like an idiot. And an asshole.

  “God. Eliza.”

  “Don’t worry about Eliza. She’s in the costume room replacing all the costumes she took out, looking for the perfect dress. Peridot, Adam, and Adam’s partner are helping her. That’s why I took so long to catch you up. I had to wait for Peridot to get to the studio so I wasn’t leaving the kids unsupervised. Otherwise, you would never have gotten this far.”

  “You called Peridot?” Now why did that twist his insides so viciously?

  “Perry is thinking about taking a teaching job with me. He hasn’t found a lot of work since he got out of rehab, but he’s pretty stable now, and he wants to open his own company. For now, though, he just needs to dance again and remember how it feels. And he wants to teach.” Conrad looked sideways at Dusty. “To be honest, I think seeing you out there with Eliza was half the push he needed to get back himself. He told me he was slated to teach your summer school when you were fifteen, but….”