by Tracey Ward
“You should go watch the show,” she suggests evenly. “You’ve never seen anyone compete before. It’ll be good for you.”
I let my chin fall down against my chest. “Oh good. We’re going to talk about the pen drive again.”
“You should have watched at least one of the episodes I sent you.”
I turn to face off with her. “So I could see how amazing you are at this? I don’t need to see it. You make sure to remind me that you’re the expert every day.”
“I am the expert! You’re just some jock that’s doing this for laughs, but this is my career! You could treat it and me with a little more respect.”
“And you could respect the fact that I am trying. I’m coming into this with no experience and I’ve been working my ass off all week, and all you ever do is tell me how terrible I am and how fucking amazing Jace Ryker was. I get it. He could dance. Someone get him a goddamn medal.”
“It’s not that he was such a good dancer. What I liked about him was that he was professional. He showed up prepared.”
“He was also on the Disney Channel for most of his life,” I argue, gesturing to the stage outside the door as though he’s there now. “He grew up on TV. He knew how all this worked before he learned how to play with his own dick. You can’t compare me to someone like that. You can’t compare me to you.”
“I just want you to take this seriously.”
“I’m here, aren’t I? Do I or do I not show up to every rehearsal?”
“You do.”
“Then give me some credit, Sutton. Damn!”
“Showing up isn’t the same as being invested.”
“Fuck you,” I growl, fed up.
She fearlessly steps up to me, pushing against me with her tiny body like she’s ten miles tall. “No, Shane. Fuck you!”
Her eyes are burning. They’re cold fire but they hurt just the same. Her beauty is an agony that I just can’t take anymore.
I kiss her. I lean down to close that distance to her mouth and I take control of the moment as I lose control of myself. The second my lips touch hers, I brace myself for a hit. I’m going to get slapped or kicked or clawed to ribbons, but it’s worth it for that one brief breath of relief. Kissing her is like breathing after being underwater. She’s like air in my lungs, and when her arms come around my neck to pull me closer instead of push me away, I’m as alive as I’ve ever been before.
She’s angry. I can taste it on her tongue. She feeds it to me until I’m angry too. I’m fighting for more of her. All of her. I want to lay her out on this hard floor and strip her down to nothing but the fierceness of her spirit that pushes me to the brink where I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m an animal as I kiss her. As I fight with her. There’s no difference in my mind. Everything she does is a battle, and I’ll gladly let her win this one. I’ll give her anything she wants, just so long as she shuts the fuck up for two seconds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SUTTON
I’m a mess on opening nights. I’m insane. It’s just the way I am. I never sleep well in the week leading up to it. Sometimes I throw up before going on stage. Sometimes I break out into a cold sweat that leaves me trembling for an hour after. There’s no telling what I’ll do before a performance. I definitely didn’t see this coming.
Shane’s hands are on my ass. They’re in my hair. His tongue is in my mouth. He’s everywhere at once, overwhelming me in a way that feels completely decadent. I feel myself letting go. I feel the tension leaving my body and pouring into his, and he drinks it up with a vigor that makes me dizzy. My mom used to dope me to get me through my jitters, but nothing she gave me comes even close to how good Shane feels. How amazing he tastes and smells. And the sound of his rough grunt as he hoists one of my legs up high, yanking my body hard against his… God, that sound could be the end of me. The feel of him is like my beginning.
Knock! Knock!
“Wardrobe needs you, Ms. Roe! Mr. Lowry!” a stagehand shouts through the crack.
Shane hesitates, his mouth hovering and panting over mine. “We’re on our way!” he shouts roughly.
I’m breathless in his arms. I’m boneless and limp as a jellyfish. I’m relaxed in ways I wasn’t sure I could be anymore, and it feels amazing.
But the second Shane releases his hold on me, I feel it start to slip away.
He steps away from me slowly, running his hand through his hair. He’s avoiding my eyes. “We have to get changed.”
I nod loosely. “I’m ready.”
We’re not going to talk about what just happened. That’s obvious. We don’t have the time and I don’t think either of us has the desire to define what the hell that was. It doesn’t matter. It happened. It had to. But now it’s over and we have a show to do.
Shane opens the door for me, letting me pass through his shadow before he silently follows me down the corridor to wardrobe. It’s a madhouse inside. The music that’s blaring from the stage takes over everything. It’s in the air we breathe. It gets in my blood. In my mind. I feel the energy of the competition flood my system, and suddenly I’m buzzing. The thrill of the kiss with Shane is replaced with the thrill of the competition. I’m excited from the tips of my toes to the ends of my hair.
They strip me down until I’m nearly naked before squeezing me inside my dress. It’s a short flapper style in a red color that reminds me of my car. My shoes are like stilts, they’re so tall, and even with them I know I’ll barely reach Shane’s chest with the top of my head.
“Makeup!”
I’m pushed from the wardrobe room to hair and makeup where they pile my long locks high on my head in a mess of curls that they finish with a glittery band across my forehead. While someone sticks pins in my hair, someone else is painting red on my lips. Pink in my cheeks. I’m not a person in the chair. I’m a project. I’m a doll they’re dressing up to put on display, and I sit with the perfect stillness of one while they work.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Shane being brought to makeup as well. He’s in a black tuxedo with red stitching to match my dress. I heard they had to special order it. They didn’t have anything on hand nearly big enough for him. What they managed is perfect. His jacket is left unbuttoned to expose a cummerbund in the same red as my dress. His red bow tie is left undone along with the top three buttons of his stark white shirt. I can see the dark hair on his tan chest peeking through.
He winks at me when he catches me looking.
“No smiling!” the girl doing my makeup scolds.
I straighten my face immediately. I hadn’t realized I moved.
When we’re painted pretty and ready to go, Shane and I are ushered to the edge of the stage. We’re hidden in the shadows but I can see almost the entire room from here. The show is on a commercial break as the crew moves the last set of props away and brings out ours.
“Break a leg, you two,” Clara whispers from behind us.
I reach back to take her hand. She squeezes it lovingly before disappearing into the darkness. I know there are people everywhere, but suddenly it feels like me and Shane are very alone. Just the two of us in sparkling clothes, pinching shoes, and more makeup than a drag queen at Mardi Gras.
The lights on stage dim. Jerry, our announcer, goes to the center with his microphone in hand. I lead Shane out to our marks, but he finds them just fine without me.
I watch as the lights on the cameras turn red; recording.
My heart stops. It won’t start again until the dance is done.
“Welcome Sutton Roe and Shane Lowry to the stage with the Charleston!” Jerry bellows.
“Are you ready?” I whisper to Shane through the shouts of the crowd.
He casts me a crooked grin that loosens every muscle in my body. It’s his lips, I’ve decided. They’re my new drug. “As I’ll ever be.”
Lucky Strike begins to play, sending the crowd into a frenzy. When the quick tempo starts to thump through the room, I feel it in my chest. The song is inside me when
I smile with my crimson lips. I slip into character, ready to play the part of the flapper with her man at the club.
Our dance is mostly us in sync with each other. That’s the Charleston. It’s not a lot of flips and flying and throwing my body around like the crowd wants. That comes later. You can’t start with the theatrics or you’ve got nowhere to go but down. This is the first week and this dance is all about quick feet and happy hands. Shane takes hold of me a total of three times in the two minutes we dance together, and I’m proud of his form every time. His body is rigid. Straight, the way I’ve been begging him to be for days.
He doesn’t take things as seriously as I’d like during practice, but I’m relieved to see that when it comes time to perform, he’s not playing around. Shane wants to win as badly as I do.
We come to a stop with him on one knee and me sitting on the other. Our arms are wrapped around each other like we’re about to kiss, but we pull up short, just like we practiced a million times. It’s harder tonight, though. The memory of the kiss in the rehearsal room floods my body, making me warm. Making me want. Both of our bodies are heaving, breathing hard with exertion, but I don’t feel a single breath. All I can feel, hear, taste, and smell are the applause.
All I can see are Shane’s eyes.
“That was perfect,” I tell him breathlessly.
He nods, licking his lips. Staring at mine. “It felt good.”
“You were amazing.”
I hug him hard for the audience. For myself. For him. For the love of God in Heaven because I’m so proud in that moment. I’m proud of both of us.
Shane stands with me still in his arms. I dangle there against his body, my shoes hovering at least a foot over the ground. The audience chuckles lightly as they applaud and I feel myself flush with annoyance. But then he puts me down gently and I forgive him as quickly as I got angry.
“Sutton and Shane!” Jerry cries excitedly. He ushers us over from the dance floor to the judges.
We hurry hand-in-hand to the mark next to him. He gives me the customary kiss on the cheek. He shakes Shane’s hand. Jerry’s about forty but he looks sixty up close. The lines around his face tell a story of a short life lived hard. He used to be a singer in a band in the nineties. I guess they were huge for a while. I don’t know. I was barely born in the nineties.
“Beautiful work,” he gushes. “The audience definitely agrees, but let’s see what the judges think. Milan?”
Milan, an ex-ballerina turned pop star in the UK, falls forward against the judges’ table. “I wanted to love it so badly, Jerry! I really did, but I just couldn’t.”
The audience gasps and boos quietly.
Jerry holds up his hand to silence them. “Now, hold on. What was there not to love, Milan?”
“Technically, their performance was perfect, darling. It was spot on. But I didn’t feel a connection between them.” She looks at Shane. “You, my sweet, were lovely. I adored you. I didn’t know what to expect when you came lumbering out there like Paul Bunyan, but you were graceful and energetic. The look on your face! Ah! I loved it. I loved you.”
Shane smiles boyishly. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, darling. But the problem I had with the performance was how stiff the two of you felt as a couple. There was no… spark.”
“I have to cut in and say I agree with you,” Desmond adds in his thick New York accent that makes me homesick and just plain sick at the same time. “One hundred, Milan. You’re dead on. The performance was clean but it didn’t have any oomf.”
“No love.”
“No love,” he agrees sadly.
Jerry nods in understanding. “Alright, then, so since you’re both in agreement, can I get your scores together? Out of ten, what do you rate this performance?”
Milan and Desmond look at each other for one dramatic moment before lifting their score cards.
They’re both sixes.
My heart crashes in my chest. I haven’t seen a six since the first season I joined. The Joey Lawrence season where I made him cry and call me a cunt after I worked him too hard because I never wanted to see a six again. Now here it is. Two of them.
Shane puts his arm around my shoulders gently. He doesn’t squeeze me or hug me. He just holds me loosely, like he’s worried I’ll float away up into the sky if I’m not grounded. And he’s not wrong. I feel dizzy. Airy. Too light to be alive because we might not survive these scores. Sixes are what send people home.
Jerry cocks his head to the side, his face drawn sadly. “Oh dear. These are not what you want to see on the first night, are they, Sutton?”
I shake my head, holding back my tears.
“We can recover,” Shane insists staunchly. He looks to the final judge – the worst of them. Richard ‘Dick’ Malone. “What have you got for us, Dick? Any love?”
I’m surprised when Richard chuckles. If I were him, I’d be worried that old withered face of his will crack if he emotes too much. He normally keeps himself propped up like an inscrutable corpse through the entire competition, doling out agony to every dancer who dares to step in front of him like it’s his lifeforce. Like other people’s pain is his mana.
“I’m not sure I’ve got much more love for your performance than the others do, Shane,” he laments theatrically. “They’re right. You’re more talented than I expected, but your chemistry is off. I wanted to love it but…”
“The best part of the performance was Shane!” Desmond interrupts excitedly. He holds up his hand to me. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I lie through gritted teeth. “He’s a surprise. To me more than anyone.”
“You lucked out, sweetheart,” Milan praises me, as though my luck in landing Shane is award enough for the night.
Jerry focuses us back on Richard. “What’s it going to be? What score will you give Sutton and Shane, Richard?”
Richard stares at us for a long time. He does it for the show and also for fun. He likes to watch people sweat; especially women. He’s a member of the old guard. He thinks women should be lovely and men should be strong, so Shane should tick at least a few of his boxes. Hopefully enough to get us to the next round.
Finally, he raises his card without explanation or expression.
It’s an eight.
I fold in half with relief. My fingers dangle down to touch my toes while I take a deep breath to fill my lungs with something other than fear. When I stand up, my head rushes almost painfully. I feel lightheaded, and I’m actually grateful for Shane’s arms around me. He pulls me into a bracing hug that leaves my feet on the ground and my face against his chest where I can feel his heart beating wildly.
“That’s good, right?” he asks in my ear. “We’re good?”
“We might be okay, yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head like I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I do. He’s sorry they said he was the best part of the night for me. He’s sorry his star shone brighter than mine because while Shane might not know much about me, he knows enough to see what I’ve never tried to hide. I need to be loved and adored by the world. I need to be the sun, the stars, and the moon in the sky, all at once. All on my own. To be stripped of it is to be flayed raw. Dissected and broken into pieces too infinitesimal to repair.
We leave the stage for our exit interview. It’s quick. So quick I can’t remember much of it afterward. Shane did most of the talking and I’m grateful for that. I wasn’t ready to discuss what the judges said. I’m not ready to feel safe yet, either. There are still three more performances tonight and I haven’t bothered to look at any of the scores we’re up against. As far as I know, we’re at the bottom of the heap.
“What’s the score?” Shane asks Brett the second he sees him backstage. “Were we the lowest so far?”
I put my hand on his arm to ask him to stop, but it’s too late. Brett is shaking his head.
“Nah, man. Tina and Vic are probably out. They got seventeen.”
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“What’d you get?”
He smiles proudly. “Twenty-three, baby!”
Shane gives him a half-hug where they thump each other on the back roughly. “Nice! Congrats!”
“Yeah, thanks. You too. We live to see another week, right?”
“Barely, but yeah.”
“I gotta bring this water to Ana. I’ll catch you later, okay?”
“Definitely.”
Brett nods to me before disappearing into the lounge where the rest of the judged dancers are waiting. Shane looks to the room, then back at me expectantly.
“We going in or staying out?” he asks.
I hesitate, not sure. I don’t want to go in. They saw the feed. They know what the judges said. My skin feels too paper thin to handle their scrutiny tonight.
“You go ahead and celebrate with them,” I tell him as warmly as I can manage. “I’m sure Fiona and Ginger would love to get their hands on you right now. They’ve got a thing for sweaty man meat.”
Shane scowls. “Those aren’t really their names, right? Those are stage names like Madonna and Cher.”
“I’m not their mother, Shane. I have no idea.”
“But if you had to guess?”
“I’d say those are the names that their parents gave them because they never expected them to be anything but dancers. On the pole or on the stage, it really doesn’t matter.”
“That’s bleak as shit.”
“You asked me,” I remind him sharply.
He smiles at my bitterness. It’s kind of becoming his thing and it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.
“I need a breather,” I remind him, taking a step away. “I’m going to get some air.”
“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
“I’m sure.” I smile brightly for him. “Go. Have fun. You earned it.”
“We earned it,” he reminds me excitedly.
I nod. “Yes. We earned it. Now, go. I’ll find you before the end of the broadcast. We have to stand up on stage for the final ranks going into next week. But remember, the votes and donations from viewers will count too. We aren’t safe even if we’re not the lowest scored tonight.”