by SM Olivier
I nodded slowly. “Yes, I’ve missed them. Today at lunch …it just felt right. I can’t throw away our friendship over their poor decisions and my lack of communication.”
“They seem like cool people, although I think Lucas has a crush on you,” he murmured.
I began to laugh until I realized he was serious. “We’ve never even gone there. Lucas is…well, Lucas. He has no interest in me. He never has.”
“We will have to agree to disagree.” He gave me a smug smile. “Every time any of us touched you or was affectionate towards you at brunch, his eyes told me another story.”
I snorted and shook my head. “If you saw jealousy it’s only because I never really dated in the past. He’s been the constant male companion in my life. He’s never really had to share me with anyone else.”
He gave me a look of surprise. “Were the guys at your old school and studio blind? Why didn’t you date more?”
I shrugged. “I rarely dated the guys in the studio because I danced with them for years, and I knew their exes and their dating habits. I didn’t want to muddy the waters. Plus, I never felt a connection to any of those guys. I didn’t want to date for the sake of dating. And as far as school went, did you see my best friend? She’s gorgeous. Most of the guys seemed to want to date me in the hopes of getting closer to her.”
He snorted in disbelief. “No offense to Madison, but she doesn’t hold a candle to you.”
I smiled at him before I placed a kiss on his cheek. “You’re really sweet for thinking that, but I think you and maybe a few of the others wouldn’t have noticed me as much if we had both met you together. She’s so outgoing, smart, and just has a natural…allure to her. Everyone is drawn to her.”
He shook his head. “I can’t speak for the others, but I knew from the moment I saw you fixing your bike, I was drawn to you.”
I knew no matter what I said, I wasn’t going to convince him otherwise, but I had been there too many times. I knew I didn’t have the same drawing force as Madison did, but his words were flattering.
The auditorium erupted in applause, and I felt bad for not watching Renee’s entire performance. “Come on,” Zane bid me as he took my hand. “Let’s congratulate her.”
I followed him and was surprised to see the guys stationed at the bottom of the stairs, all of them holding flowers. I saw Renee stutter to a stop, and tears filled her eyes.
“You looked lovely out there,” Grandpa spoke first as he handed her a bouquet of white lilies.
“For me?” Renee asked in surprise as tears coursed down her face.
“Of course they’re for you,” Paxton said with a wide smile. “You’re our friend, and every girl deserves flowers after their performances.”
“Thank you,” Renee cried as she took the flowers from each of them.
I didn’t know who decided to spoil my friend today, but I had to kiss them later. Every day that I spent with them, I felt like they couldn’t get any cuter, sweeter, or thoughtful, but then they did something as heart-touching as this.
“Time to get ready, girls,” Anya said with a benevolent smile. She had a subtle sheen of tears in her eyes, too, and I knew she was as touched as I was.
“Yes, ma’am.” I gave the guys a wide smile, hoping they saw the gratitude in my eyes.
I had confessed to pretty much all of them how terrible I’d felt for Renee having to come here with no moral support today but from myself. Not to mention, I’d only expected Zane to be here for me. But they had surprised me, and they kept on showing how amazing they were.
“Would you like us to hold them for you?” Golden asked Renee.
“Please, yes.” She smiled as she held them out to him. “Thank you all, so much!”
She was bright red, but I could see how happy their gesture made her.
I grinned and gave them a wave. “We’ll be back.”
“We’ll be waiting,” Kyler teased as we left..
“I can’t believe they did that,” Renee gushed. “No wonder you can’t choose between them! Well, except your grandfather.” She laughed.
I laughed back. “Yes, Grandpa is wonderful. And seriously, I’m glad the guys never made me have to choose. Each one of them has…something about them that makes me happy.”
Renee gave me a sly smile. “Do they have cousins that might be interested in similar arrangements?”
I laughed sardonically. “Not that I’m aware of, but then again, I just found out today that Lochlann, Paxton, and Golden had famous parents.”
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “I could tell it came as a shock. Sometimes I forget that you didn’t grow up around in the same town. It was just common knowledge. Other than a few girls hoping they could snare one of the guys for their money, most of us just knew who they were and didn’t care.”
“Seriously?” I asked in shock. Then I shook my head. “No, never mind. It really doesn’t shock me.”
We finally reached the dressing room, and I was immediately accosted by Bailey. “Where is it?” she screeched.
I blinked at her in confusion as I went to the rack that held our clothing. “Where is what?” I asked, baffled. I pulled my costume down and walked over to my dressing table.
“The picture,” she hissed angrily.
“What picture?”
Well, at least now I had confirmation of Bailey taking a picture of me and Lochlann earlier, but I really had no clue what happened to her image. I surreptitiously looked over at Renee, who was grinning as she changed. Did she do it?
“You went into my phone and deleted the picture of you whoring yourself out to Lochlann Isaacs,” Bailey screeched.
“Get dressed, Bailey,” Alex said sternly from her perch on the stool. She was retouching makeup for some of the girls.
“She touched my phone,” Bailey snapped. “She went into my phone and deleted the picture of her and Lochlann sucking face.”
“I never touched your phone.” I rolled my eyes as I slipped on my group costume. “And I wasn’t sucking face with Lochlann. We’re friends. We were talking. Something upset me, and he hugged me.”
I had to keep my face averted to hide my lie.
“With your mouth on his lips?” Wendy scoffed.
“Peyton,” Alex said patiently. “Did you touch Bailey's phone?”
I turned and looked her in the eye so she could see that I was telling the truth. “I did not.”
“Okay. She says she didn’t do it,” Alex said with a shrug as she gave a pointed look to Bailey. “Come on, girls! Quickly, let’s touch up that makeup so we can do a fast run-through of our number.”
I sat down at my dressing table since I didn’t need any touch-ups to my makeup. I placed the flight cap on my head and made sure it was set at a jaunty angle, then I pulled out some bobby pins to pin the cap down firmly. If we lost any of our props during our dance, it could cause point deductions. There was no excuse for losing points that were easily controlled.
“You believe her?” Bailey screeched once again, stomping her foot like a toddler. “She knew I could get her and one of her boyfriends in trouble, and she deleted it!”
“What is going on here?” Anya barked as she came into the room, looking for Alex. “Why isn’t everyone dressed and ready to practice?”
“I’ve asked Bailey and Wendy to get dressed,” Alex said with a sigh as she touched up one of the girl’s makeup.
“Peyton touched my phone and deleted a picture of her and Lochlann Isaacs kissing. She knows it can get him fired, and she touched my phone without my permission. She had no problem getting my mom fired, but she doesn’t want to get her boyfriend fired,” Bailey said in irritation.
Anya looked at me with some surprise for a second. I saw when she finally realized that it wasn’t just the high school guys interested in me. Her eyes widened with an enigmatic expression in them. “Did you touch her phone?”
“No, ma’am,” I said resolutely twisting the place where my ring usually was. I had to
take it off for my performances.
What did she think now? Did she view me differently? Would she like her son not only vying for my attention with three other guys but now five?
Anya looked at me for a few moments, then nodded. “Okay. Now, hurry, girls…get finished! I want to walk through the number one more time.”
“Okay? Okay? That’s it!” Bailey shrilled. “She’s obviously lying, and if she’s dating Zane, how can you be okay with her kissing another man?”
Anya turned to her coldly. “Continue this behavior, Bailey, and you will be off my team. Your jealousy is reprehensible and unbecoming. You need to worry about how you conduct yourself and worry less about others.”
I almost breathed a sigh of relief. I saw no judgment in her eyes, and she didn’t seem upset at me for having more guys liking me then she initially knew about.
Bailey breathed heavily before she turned and marched over to her own dressing table. “Yes, ma’am,” she said through gritted teeth.
Anya stepped up to me and held out my face mask. “Did you touch her phone?” she asked quietly.
“No,” I said just as quietly.
“Were you kissing Lochlann?” she asked next.
I wanted to deny it, but this was Anya. The cards were already out on the table. I respected her too much to lie to her. She already seemed rather open-minded about my relationships with the guys, her son included.
“I kissed his cheek,” I whispered as I looked down at my mask for the next number.
“Be more careful,” she whispered in my ear before she patted my shoulder. “There are always eyes watching you, hoping you will fall.”
I nodded and met her gaze in the mirror. I felt tears burn the back of my eyes. I didn’t really deserve her support and understanding. Most women would desire their sons find one good woman, not one woman who had multiple partners.
21
●
Second Chances
I placed my mask on my face as I heard our group being introduced. I was the only one wearing a mask for our performance for Why by Rascal Flatts. Since I was the person representing the one fighting the battle with depression, I suggested that I wear the mask. Star had jumped on the idea, once I’d explained that some people wore a mask while they fought their inner demons.
I understood all too well what it was like to pretend to be happy. Sometimes it was a daily struggle just to act and be the way others expected you to be. There were times in my life I felt like, if I wore the happy mask enough, it would come true. If I pretended to be happy long enough.
The mask I had to wear was white with a giant smile painted across it. It hid all my features but my eyes. I was okay with that. I felt like this was the best way for me to get into the character, the best visible representation of the performance.
I heard the song begin, and I slipped onto the stage to start to perform the piece. I looked at the judges and saw their rapt attention. The auditorium was nearly full. I generally didn’t like to look at the judges or the audience, but today, I felt safe behind the mask.
The other girls joined me on the stage. As part of the performance, they tried to pull me into the activities they were representing, and I played the part of pretending to join them but with stilted movements.
For the last verse of the song, we began to do our grand jetès, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a green flight cap go sliding across the stage. It skidded to a halt near my foot, and I had to make sure I avoided it.
I did a front aerial, removing my mask, placing it on the stage. I rocked back and forth, emoting the torture and pain the person must have felt, hoping the audience—both literal and figurative—understood the story. Real tears began to course down my face when I gave up my battle to the darkness. I collapsed into a ball. The others circled around me and started their á la seconde turns. The last notes of the music ended. I waited to hear the applause before I stood up and joined the rest of the girls to exit the stage.
I couldn’t help but notice the tears streaming down two of the judge’s faces. Nothing was more moving than knowing, through dance, we had touched people emotionally.
Anya, Star, and Alex were there to greet us as we got off the stage. They praised us, but you could tell their praise was somewhat stilted. I wondered why before I remembered the cap falling on the stage. I looked around our little circle and noticed− with no surprise− that Bailey had lost her hat.
“Okay girls,” Alex said, clapping her hands. “Join your families and friends. Awards are in an hour, so make sure you're in the assigned sections for that.”
Renee and I went down the stairs together, and my eyes immediately went in search of my family.
“Did you delete the picture,” I finally asked Renee.
We had no time for small talk before our performance.
Renee gave me a wicked grin and shrug. “I may have.”
I laughed. “Thank you so much!”
“Anytime,” she said with a smile. “Thank you for being my friend. I’m sure you noticed I’m not very popular.”
I shrugged before I gave her a side hug. “It’s everyone’s loss if they don’t realize how great you really are.”
“Peyton,” I heard my name being called.
I looked over in surprise to see Madam Galina among the audience. She was my previous dance instructor. I didn’t know why I didn’t think to look for her earlier, although it came as no surprise, her being much closer to the competition than my new studio was.
“Madam Galina,” I said with a smile as she pulled me into an embrace.
Galina was also Russian, with a faint accent to go with it. Her family moved to the States when she was a girl, but she retained some of the vocal intonations. She was a petite, slightly rounded woman in her mid-fifties, and due to a knee injury in her early twenties, she was unable to dance. And although her love of wine and food had caught up with her, she was still gracefully beautiful.
“I am so happy to see you dancing, Peyton! I just wish you were still with me,” she said with an overexaggerated frown.
“I found a great school, Madam,” I said after a pause. “I miss you, though!”
And I had missed her, but I was in a much better place now. She may have had some of the best instructors and choreographers in the East, but I really liked my new school. Sure, I could have done without Bailey, but at least I had my grandfather and the guys here.
She laughed, catching the fact that I wasn’t saying I wished I was back at her school. Then she suddenly frowned once more. “I saw that your family, a girl, she is missing, yes?”
“My half-sister,” I admitted with a grimace. “Did you see the news?”
She nodded. “I never knew you had siblings.”
I laughed dryly. “Me neither. That was the main reason we moved. My…stepdad wanted to move home, closer to his family. I just recently found out the man who raised me wasn’t my father but was my uncle, and my biological father has three other children.”
Madam Galina had taken a great interest in me, personally. She commented on my welfare all the time when I’d attended her school and always tried to look out for me.
She clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Poor Peyton. Life for you has never been easy. You all must be hurting, yes?”
“They are, yes,” I admitted. “I was just getting to know her, though.” I wasn’t going to pretend to have a close relationship with Claire to garner more sympathy; nor was I going to admit to our tumultuous relationship. It was bad enough getting questioned by my teachers or seeing their pitying looks.
She clucked her tongue once more. “You need me, you call me, yes?”
I nodded and smiled. “Thank you.” I had no intention of calling her, but I knew she meant it. I regretted not talking to her since I’d moved—I had only had time to briefly see her before rolling out of town.
“Ms. Peyton Delaney?” A distinguished looking gentleman in a three-piece suit made his way towards me.
/> I looked over at him in confusion, not recognizing him. “Yes, sir?” I responded.
He was a good-looking man, probably twice my age, with dark brown hair and light brown eyes. His skin was darkly tan, as if he’d just returned from an extended vacation on the beach. He even had that lighter ring around his eyes that said he wore sunglasses most of the time.
He held out a business card. “My name is Martin Brady. I typically don’t attend these events, but my sister insisted that I see my niece perform.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was wondering if you would be interested in trying out for a music video I am directing next month. I’m not at liberty to discuss who the artist is, but if you’re looking to go anywhere with your dancing career, it may be something great to put on your resume.”
I stared at his business card in stunned silence for a moment. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Brady, but are you serious?” I asked in surprise. “I mean, yeah…I mean, yes. Where? When?”
I was tongue tied, and my heart was beating a million miles a minute. Was this really happening? Was I getting another opportunity to make a name for myself?
Madam Galina and Mr. Brady laughed.
“Call me, Martin. I have my email on there.” He pointed to the card in my hand. “When you get a chance, send me an email. I’ll have my assistant send you all the required paperwork. Are your parents around so I may speak to them?”
“I’ll be eighteen tomorrow. Will you still need parental permission?” I asked hesitantly.
He grinned. “Even better.” He shook his head. “No parental slips needed at all, then. I’ll let my assistant know.”
“Thank you!” I said.
“No, thank you,” he said with a smile. “We’ve been scouring the country for the right dancers, and I really think you have what we’re looking for.”
“She really is special,” Galina said with a proud smile.