And like a moth to a potentially lethal flame, he couldn’t step away.
* * *
Just about every bone in Lexi’s body hurt. Physio wouldn’t be open for at least another day, so she would have to wait to get the help she needed on her ankle. For tonight, alternating baths of hot and ice water would have to do. She slid down the wall. When her butt hit the floor, she gasped.
Most of her friends were with their families celebrating Christmas. Those who weren’t Christian were simply enjoying the time off. Her father held with the Orthodox tradition, so they wouldn’t really celebrate until the seventh of January, in accordance with the Julian calendar. Not that “celebrate” was the right word for their miserable excuse of a day. It would begin the same as any other, with her limbs being stretched to the point where her muscles screamed in pain, and escape, briefly, to the sanctuary of her classes and rehearsals. The only difference was the addition of a church service that would be twice as long as usual.
Lexi untied her pointe shoes and slipped them from her feet, flexing her toes in and out. From the outside, her peers were mostly envious that such an accomplished dancer as her father was so heavily invested in her career. Especially those who had never witnessed his behavior toward her. They didn’t understand that his presence was constant and that over time his goals had taken over her own because she’d run out of steam fighting him. She looked at her feet. All dancer’s feet were a mess, but hers doubly so, her father giving her no time to heal.
What she wouldn’t give to spend the majority of her career in the beauty and fluidity of the contemporary pieces in the company’s repertoire. But her father strove to train her for the classics. He was determined that she would achieve, through his training, what he’d failed to accomplish in his own career once he’d defected. The world had changed so much since her father’s time at the Kirov—approaches to classes, fitness, and nutrition had all moved on—and his frustration grew as he became more and more out of touch with the career he’d once loved yet felt abandoned by.
Lexi grabbed her shoes, wrapped the ribbons around the pair, and shoved them into her bag. Decisively, she planted her feet on the floor as she walked, heel first, then toes spread wide, savoring the connection with the floor.
Her father had dedicated the last decade to her career and to trying to forge her into a dancer worthy of being the first Canadian Prima Ballerina Assoluta, a title awarded to honor the most distinctive and exceptional dancers. The idea of having to spend her life chasing it by choosing only those roles most likely to get her there made her stomach flip and her chest tighten. There was a reason only a dozen or so had held the title in one hundred and twenty years. Some of her favorite dancers, Sylvie Guillem and Darcey Bussell among them, had never received it. Rumor had it that their repertoires were too varied, too contemporary, for consideration, but those repertoires were the kinds Lexi craved. Classical ballet was beginning to feel a little too much like wearing a straitjacket.
Lexi crouched down and winced as she unplugged her phone from its charger, and the charger from the socket, rubbing her butt as she stood up. It hurt from the constant tap of the cane her father had used earlier as they’d rehearsed. He’d insisted that in the previous evening’s performance she’d been lazy in her leg lifts, said her muscles needed to be stronger if she insisted on carrying more weight. She caught sight of her frame in the mirror and tried to decide if she was indeed heavier than last season. The scales didn’t show it, but that didn’t mean anything.
Though she knew her father’s methods were somewhat archaic, they had helped propel her to principal dancer at a very young age, the repeated, painful practices responsible for her having to spend only the minimum amount of time as a second and then first soloist.
It wasn’t just her body that ached now, though. It was also her heart. She looked around Bruhn, her favorite rehearsal studio in the Walter Carsen Centre. Everything she’d ever learned about dance that mattered, she’d learned in one of its studios. It had been her home since she’d graduated from Canada’s National Ballet School, where she’d earned her stripes. The staff here was her family. But today her father, who placed too much emphasis on name and legacy, had been pushing her to move. The very idea had made her feel ill. He wanted her to dance at the American Ballet Theatre, or the Royal Ballet in London. Sometimes she was tempted to apply to the Kirov or the Bolshoi simply to escape him, to move to a place where he couldn’t follow. Everything she’d achieved up until now he’d taken credit for. The weight of it settled like lead in her stomach. She wanted ballet to be all hers.
She stared out of the large window despondently and saw a large man standing on the pavement. Watching. It wasn’t uncommon for passers-by to stop and take a look inside, but there was something about this one. The orange glow of the streetlights of Lake Shore and the Gardiner illuminated him in the darkness. Underdressed for the weather, he wore a leather jacket over a thick sweater. Despite the snow, he didn’t wear a hat or hood. One side of his head was shaved close to his scalp; the rest of his hair was long, swept over to the other side of his head.
If she’d met him in the subway, she’d have discreetly moved away from him or changed cars. Tall and hulking, he scared her a little, yet she found a confusing sense of comfort in being watched by him. The stroller he rocked back and forth softened his intimidating looks. And in the moments he looked away from her, she could see he was checking on its inhabitant. She wondered what would cause a father to take his child out in the cold on Christmas, and for a moment she wondered if he was also a husband.
She dimmed the lights in the studio a little so that he could still see in but she could see out more clearly. Focusing on one person as she danced had always brought a more personal element to her performances, and this was no different.
The dance would be for herself; the show would be for him.
She took the pins out of her bun, touching the grooves they had made in her scalp, and removed the elastic holding her ponytail together. It was one of the favorite moments of her day, shaking her hair free of its bindings. Running one hand through her hair, she reached for her phone and changed the music. Clams Casino burst from the speaker. “I’m God” was her current favorite. Her bloodied toes ached after a day spent en pointe. Gel packs and tape could do only so much. She pulled the pain deep inside and used it to fuel her.
Aware that the man hadn’t moved, she began to dance, treating the window as her audience. Slowly at first, she focused on the narrative she’d created for the movements—a woman trapped by a man who believed himself to be God. It was a blend of aesthetically beautiful and deliberately ugly combinations as the woman battled the two sides of herself and her reality. It was easy to be transported, transformed even, by the combination of movements and music. And it was even easier to identify with the ugly moments. She only had to look in the mirror to see the ballerina who’d struggled to maintain her weight her whole career. But this dance, this song . . . they led her to another place. A place where she could embrace freedom, and her own power. A place where worries about the size of her thighs were replaced with the beauty of what they could create. A place where she could dance like this every day. As always, the dance spoke for her, gave voice to what she could not say. Her father hated when she danced like this.
But him . . . he was transfixed as his eyes followed her. Such intensity should have scared her, but it didn’t. It aroused her. A feeling she was unused to. To have a man’s focus, especially one who looked like he did, fed her creativity.
This time—the hours she spent alone at night in the studio—was her escape, her sanctuary. The room embraced her as she stopped thinking, stopped criticizing, and let emotion take over. Worries about the clarity of her lines disappeared as she became the subject of the narrative, letting her true self speak. She let the real Aleksandra rise from the ashes like a phoenix. This Aleksandra was strong. This one had the courage to walk away from her father. This one didn’t feel gui
lty about her mother’s death and her father’s battles with depression. This one didn’t need to count every calorie she put in her mouth to feel in control of something . . . anything. This self had the strength to get through another day.
Everything blurred except the man watching her. He pushed the stroller back and forth, the small, repetitive action pulling her out of the dance. She felt it shifting beneath her feet, her steps changing into something softer. Her anger dissipated as she focused on him, and a warmth she couldn’t identify filled the void it left behind.
The music faded until the only noise left in the room was her jagged breathing. She ended the dance less than a foot away from the window and had to press her palms against the panes, which felt freezing cold to her heated skin, to stop falling forward. Sweat ran in a cold line down her spine.
The man ran his hand through his hair, and even through the transparent drapes, she couldn’t miss the disappointment on his face. For a moment that felt like hours, his eyes were on her. He knew she was watching him. She wanted to know what color his eyes were and whether that was a tattoo on his neck peeking out from his coat collar.
He held her stare, and she licked her lips to soothe their dryness. The connection between them couldn’t have been anymore real had they been touching. It was solid, and heated, and unlike anything Lexi had ever experienced.
The man took a step back, severing it, and Lexi jolted as if disconnected from a power source. He shook his head gently and took off in the direction of the city.
Lexi’s heart pounded, and she knew it wasn’t just from the exertion of her dance. She pressed her cheek to the glass and watched him. At every step she waited for him to take a look back. But he didn’t, and disappointment stabbed at her like needles dragged across her skin, the sharp points stinging.
It wasn’t until he disappeared from sight that she realized just how foolish she’d been. She’d just given the performance of her life, and it hadn’t been enough for him.
CHAPTER TWO
In the recording studio in the basement of the home he shared with the rest of the band, Jordan placed his bass on his lap and began to play. He needed to do something, anything to distract himself from all the messed up thoughts playing around in his head. They’d gotten worse, had become harder to keep at bay since Dred had proposed to Pixie and announced he was moving out. And seeing the dancer at the ballet company had been a sharp reminder that there were things of such fucking beauty in the world that he’d never get to experience. He wasn’t sure there was anything left of his heart, but something in his chest sure as hell hurt.
Even the dreams were getting worse. The latest had taken him back to that first year in care, and the first time he’d played a musical instrument. It was still on his mind.
“Go ahead, Jordan,” Maisey encouraged. “Annika won’t mind if you touch it. It’s a piano.”
Jordan wandered over and ran his fingers over the smooth wood. It was dark and cool, and he fought the urge to press his cheek against it. Since he’d been taken from the room, everything had felt too warm. He’d lived in the attic for so long, four or five years he’d overheard Maisey say to his foster parents, that he had become used to the cold, making the heat feel unbearable, oppressive as it pressed against his chest. Paul, his foster dad, had told him off just that morning for standing in front of the fridge with the door open for too long. The cold took him back to a place where he was comfortable, and he hadn’t been able to move.
He vaguely remembered a piano in a large room with lots of kids around it from before his time in the attic, but he’d never been allowed to play it. Tentatively, he lifted the lid and touched one of the white keys. The sound felt round. For years he’d strained to hear what was going on around him. Unable to visualize what was happening outside of the room, he’d focused on the sounds and rhythms. The sound of rain on the roof, of sirens going by outside, the dreaded sound of footsteps on the stairs. He’d been so scared of and yet intrigued by the sounds he’d heard that sometimes he’d lain on his back and tried to imagine what the sounds would look like as shapes.
He pressed another key, this time a black one. It sounded like the shape of a triangle, sharp and hard. He’d heard a song that morning on the radio. His foster mom, Debbie, had been all excited because a guy from some band she liked—Matchbox Twenty, she’d said—was singing. And the guitarist was famous. Carlos Santana or something.
One by one, he ran his fingers along the keys in order. The progressive lifting of the sound, higher and higher, thrilled him.
“Are you ready, Jordan?” Annika had asked, but he ignored her.
He didn’t know why or how, but he knew where the keys for the song were, and he didn’t want to draw dumb pictures to express his feelings to Annika anyway. She could go get lost along with everybody else. Except Maisey. He was going to play this song for her.
At first it was a little slow. His fingers stretched over the keys, one at a time, but the notes played exactly how he wanted them to. It wasn’t smooth, like the song suggested, but it was definitely a song. His left hand itched. Not knowing what to do, he just played the same keys as his right hand, just further down the piano. With two fingers, he made the most glorious sounds in the world. They were his sounds. He controlled them. For once he’d created them exactly how he wanted them.
Pleased, he turned to face Maisey. Who was crying.
His heart dropped. She hadn’t liked it. Anger flooded him, and he turned and slammed the lid shut. Then he lifted the lid and slammed it again. And again. And again. Until he let out a cry of frustration.
Maisey tore him away and hugged him tight. He didn’t like the feeling. It hurt, made him choke. The scent of her laundry detergent was too strong, her proximity too startling, and he shrugged out of her hold.
“Jordan, Jordan,” she said, tears in her eyes as she gripped his biceps. “That was wonderful. Wonderful.”
“You liked it?” he croaked. The very first words he’d spoken since stepping out of the attic.
“Oh, my boy. I loved it. Listen to me. Do you know why I named you Jordan?”
Jordan shook his head.
“Because it is such a strong name for such a strong little boy.”
“What the fuck is that?” Jordan heard, and he was ripped from his thoughts.
Jordan jumped at Lennon’s voice and pulled his fingers away from the strings of the bass guitar that Maisey had bought for him when he’d been removed from his ninth foster home in two years and placed in a group home run by Maisey’s now-wife, Ellen. It was one of only a few things that he actually owned, and it was certainly the most valuable.
“‘Bach Cello Suite Number One,’” he said casually, trying to pretend that he played classical music every day. Which he didn’t. The look on Lennon’s face said he didn’t buy it either.
“Fucking pretentious shit. Should have recorded that and put it on our website. Girls would go crazy for it.”
Jordan stood and put his guitar back into its case.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Lennon said. “Let me guess. You heard it on TV a half hour ago and now you can play it perfectly.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Jordan replied without any malice. It was hard for him to be angry when it was very nearly true. The psychologists had had a field day when he’d been delivered to them at nearly ten years old, unwilling to speak. He might not have had words, but they’d had plenty for him: “selective mutism”; “social anxiety disorder”; “autism spectrum disorder”; “elective mutism”; “posttraumatic stress disorder.” Term after term had been used to try to define him, except the one that mattered the most. Terrified.
But that day with the piano, he had amazed them all. Using old music books that Annika provided, he taught himself how to play reasonably well within the first week. Someone had commented that he was like the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who preferred to study music by reading it rather than playing it. There was no piano in his temporary group home,
so reading music was the only thing he could do between visits to Annika’s. Either way, he didn’t give a shit because music was the only thing that kept his focus.
So, yeah, he was a fucking “savant.” But it was a dumb-as-shit label.
He had listened to Bach’s first cello suite prelude for the first time last night, twice all the way through, and could play it perfectly on his bass this morning. If that wasn’t fucked up enough in itself, he’d learned it because it seemed like the kind of music a ballerina would dance to.
Damn if he could shake the thoughts of her. Inspired by her, he’d started to record different types of music that he imagined her dancing to and had even loaded it all onto a private website.
He’d walked by the studio a couple of nights in a row to try to see her again, but it had been dark. Finally, six days after he’d seen her on Christmas, he’d left an envelope—her description and a link to the website written on the front—in the studio’s mailbox.
Unable to resist, he would do one more walk-by tonight and if he didn’t see her, he was determined to put her out of his mind. He’d tried to on New Year’s Eve, even found a girl with long blonde hair and a slight frame and made it as far as the staircase to her bedroom before he realized it wasn’t what he wanted. He’d tried to disengage politely—it wasn’t her fault, after all. But she’d gone off at him about being a tease, and that he mustn’t be able to get it up. If there was one thing he couldn’t handle, it was a woman yelling at him from a stairwell, especially not with all the other thoughts filling his brain, so he’d quickly left and had spent the night walking through Rosedale. He’d passed Dred’s soon-to-be home. The temporary fencing put in place by the contractors had been taken down, and the house looked almost ready.
Jordan Reclaimed Page 3