The Saint of Petersburg (Dancing Dream #3)

by Leslie DuBois

  Chapter 29

  Sonya and Will Chat

  A week later, I went into labor. It wasn’t real labor. At least that’s what the emergency room said. The contractions were something called Braxton Hicks, but they felt just as painful as the real thing. But of course, since this was my first kid, I wouldn’t really know that for sure.

  After a scary midnight visit to the emergency, I wanted nothing more than for Will to hold me in his arms. But I would settle just to hear his voice.

  Phone calls to Will usually resulted in two things: a lame excuse from Julia followed by a dial tone. I would know. I’d tried calling him every night for two months. Tonight was going to be different. I didn’t care if I had to hop on a redeye to California and kick down his door, I was going to talk to my husband. I still wasn’t sure if I would tell him about the baby or not, but I knew that I absolutely had to talk to him. It had been too long and I really couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Maddox,” Julia answered when I called. I would have thought it was adorable how she answered the phone exactly like her brother if I didn’t hate her so much.

  I momentarily froze. I didn’t know what I could say this time that was different from the other fifty-eight times I had called. What could I possibly say to change her mind? It was kind of ironic how just a few months ago it was Will blocking Damian’s calls to me. Now his sister was doing the exact same thing. I wondered if he even knew.

  “Please, I just need to hear his voice.” Tears threatened to choke all sound out of me. It took all of my energy to keep the sobs inside of me.

  “Sonya, he needs time --”

  “I’m his wife. His family. You know how important family is to him. Think about your parents.”

  There was a pause. No dial tone. It was a lot further than I had ever gotten before. I decided to keep pushing. “What would you give to be able to talk to your parents just one more time?”

  Julia took a deep breath and said, “If you upset him in any way you will have me to deal with.”

  Seconds later I heard, “Maddox,” in Will’s deep baritone voice. It was a sound so beautiful I couldn’t hold in the tears any more. “Sony, is that you?”

  I nodded as if he could see me.

  “Are you crying?”

  “No,” I choked out.

  “You’re a horrible liar. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”

  “I love you, too.” I smiled through the tears and hoped he could hear the sincerity in my voice. “How are you? How are you feeling?”

  He sighed deeply. “Some days are good. Some days are bad. Some days are really bad.”

  “I miss you, Will. I miss you so much.”

  “How is Russia?”

  “Russia? Will, I’m not in Russia. Is that what Julia told you?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Will, I’m back in Jersey dancing with Ms. Alexander again.”

  “You are?”

  Oh I hated that bitch of a sister of his even more now. How could she keep that rather important little detail from him?

  “Don’t blame my sister,” Will said as if he was reading my mind. “She’s just doing what’s best for me. She has saved my sorry ass so many times over the past couple of months. I owe her everything.” He paused. It was actually kind of nice to know that Julia was taking care of him so well. Lord knows that he had helped her out countless times during her drinking days. Once, he even had to bail her out of jail after she got a DUI. Unbeknownst to us, she had spent most of the past year in drug rehab. Now it was Will’s turn to rehabilitate. “Besides, I told her I didn’t want to have any contact with you,” he continued. “I didn’t want to distract you from your career. You deserve your success.”

  “I don’t want it anymore.”

  “What?”

  “Here’s the thing, okay? I realized I don’t need to be a world famous dancer to be happy. I will never dance again if it means I can have you.”

  Will sniffled. I think he had started crying. He cleared his throat. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t want me. No one in their right mind could ever want to be with me.”

  It was the depression talking. What had happened to that confident blond Bridgeton boy I’d met almost two years ago? He was gone forever and replaced with this self-loathing shell of my husband. But he was still my husband and the father of my baby.

  “Don’t say that, Angel.”

  He chuckled. “That was my name for you. You were my angel before I ever knew your name.”

  “Am I still your angel?” I asked, lying on my side and putting my hand on my belly. I could feel the baby moving inside me. I wondered if little Bary could hear his father’s voice.

  “You will always be my angel.”

  “Well then why can’t I see you?”

  “I just need to know I can work things out on my own. What’s going to happen if you leave me again?”

  “I will never leave you again, Will. I swear.”

  “Sometimes the leaving part isn’t planned.” I knew he was talking about the accident that took away his parents.

  “That’s exactly why we have to cherish the time we do have together. You never know what the future will bring.” Even though I said this, I knew he was right. He did have a lot to work through. When his parents were first killed, he never really dealt with the grief. He just launched into one addiction after the next in order to dull his pain. I became one of those addictions. He had to let me go for a while in order to have me forever and I would wait for him forever if I had to.

  One thing was certain though. I definitely couldn’t tell him about the baby. There was no telling what that would do to him in this current state. On the one hand, it could help in his recovery. But there was also the chance that he would feel so guilty about trying to kill himself when he had a kid on the way that it would send him into another downward spiral. I didn’t want to take that chance. His pitbull of a sister would chew my head off.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” I said trying to think of something to talk about that wouldn’t lead to either one of us crying. I decided to tell him about Tiki.

  “That’s amazing,” Will said after I told him Tiki was able to learn fouettés in one day.

  “I know, right?” I sighed. “I kind of feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I mean, I can’t help but think how many other girls are out there with that same kind of hidden potential. How many Tiki’s are out there just thrown off to the side and considered useless just because of where they came from or who their parents are?”

  “Why don’t you find out?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean go find out. Open a dance school or academy or something specifically for underprivileged kids.”

  “But ... But ... how?”

  “What do you mean how? Buy a building, put down some floors, put up some mirrors and start teaching dance.”

  I thought about this for a second. He made it sound so simple and easy. Just one, two, three.

  “You really think I can do it?”

  “I know you can.”

  “How is it you can have so much confidence in me, but think so little of yourself?”

  “I have a disease, babe. A disease that I will probably never ever be able to cure. I can only hope to learn to live with it.”

  Will and I chatted until the wee hours of the morning. For a few moments, I forgot that we were a teenage married couple with a baby on the way. Just for one night, we reverted back to a young lovesick teenage couple completely absorbed in each other and oblivious to the time as if we didn’t have things to do in the morning.

  Around three in the morning, I started to drift off. The last thing I remember hearing was, “Goodnight, Angel.”

  Chapter 30

  Foot in Mouth

  My family hadn’t owned a car since I was like seven years old. I was raised using public transportation and good old “righty and lefty” to get where
I needed to be. While most teenagers had the day they turned sixteen marked on their calendars in happy expectation of getting their driver’s license, I never even attempted to take the driver’s test. What was the point? I knew we couldn’t afford a car for me to use.

  Sasha got her license a few months after she turned sixteen and her then boyfriend, Desmond Long, lent her his Mustang from time to time. Even after I was with Will, I never had the desire to get my license. Now, things were a bit different. Walking and taking the bus after teaching a full day of classes was not fun to say the least.

  For the first time in my life, I think, I regretted not having a license. I would have asked Tyrell to borrow his car or something. But perhaps if I had a car, I would have missed a very important discovery about Tiki.

  A month after I taught her fouettés, I was walking ... well ... waddling home and working up quite a sweat even though it was a pretty mild October evening and on the verge of chilly. I knew it would be even hotter inside the apartment since my mother didn’t believe in turning on the air conditioning after September. So, I decided to sit outside for a while.

  After squeezing my big butt into a little swing on the playground, I sat back and relaxed. I had a perfect view of the main door to my apartment complex and that was where I noticed the nefarious activity involving Tiki.

  She took what looked like a wad of cash from a teenage boy and then they both entered the building.

  Considering what her mother was in jail for, my thoughts immediately went to that. Was Tiki selling her body to make some cash? She was actually following in her mother’s footsteps.

  I felt a sort of righteous indignation swell up inside of me. I was giving her the opportunity of a lifetime by teaching her dance. And here she was throwing it all away and purposely choosing a life of crime. Well, not on my time.

  I got up from my comfy position on the swing and stormed toward our building. I didn’t exactly think this thing through. I mean, what was I going to do? Bust through the front door and scare them to death? Should I call the police or something? That might land her in jail. I wasn’t convinced jail was where she needed to be. She was only twelve and simply a product of her environment. Tiki had not been given a fair shot in life.

  But then again, now that I was giving her one, she was throwing it away. The anger came back. I had to stop her. The police wouldn’t get here in time. I decided to scare some sense into her myself.

  Standing in front of her door, I decided to try to kick it in just like I had seen countless people do in movies. I leaned back and kicked my foot toward the door.

  Unfortunately, my kick didn’t have the same effect as it did in the movies. I ended up half standing, half falling, and with my right foot all the way through the door.

  Completely stuck, I had no choice but to pitifully yell, “Little help here, please.”

  “Ms. Sonya? Is that you?” I heard Tiki’s voice from inside the apartment.

  Though I really wanted to lie, there was no point. I would have looked even more ridiculous once she found out the truth. So, instead, I said, “Um, yeah.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” a deep voice asked. I assumed it was her john, or the john, or whatever you’re supposed to call a prostitute’s clients. Whatever he was called, I chose not to answer him.

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Sonya, we’ll get you out.”

  “Why don’t we just push her foot out,” the john said.

  “She’s pregnant. If she loses her balance, she could fall. Been there, done that.”

  “All right, I got another idea,” he said. “She needs to hop back a few steps as we open the door so you can squeeze out. Once you’re on the other side, you hold her steady as I push her foot out. That way, she won’t fall.”

  “Well, unless we want to call the fire dept., I can’t think of anything else better to do. Ms. Sonya,” Tiki said to me, “on the count of three, I want you to take a couple of hops back.”

  So, there I was on the count of three, big belly and all, hopping backwards with my foot stuck in a door. I was sure I looked like some sort of pathetic elephant.

  Once out of her apartment, Tiki held my shoulders up as they pushed my foot out of the door. I completely lost my balance and would have fallen if Tiki hadn’t been there to steady me.

  Seconds later, as we stared at a foot-sized hole in the door, Tiki asked, “So you wanna explain why you be kickin’ down people’s doors?”

  “Maybe I will explain if you use proper English to pose your question.”

  Tiki rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. “Ms. Sonya, will you please tell me why you kicked a hole into my door?”

  “Thank you. Now was that so hard?” Looking at Tiki, I momentarily forgot why I was there.

  “Is this going to cut into my time because I paid you up front,” the boy said.

  That’s when I remembered why I was there. I had come to stop her from selling her body.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself! She is only twelve!” I yelled.

  He nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, it’s a little embarrassing going to a twelve year old for help. But what can I say? I was desperate and she guaranteed results.”

  I gasped. He was openly admitting to soliciting a twelve-year-old child. How could he be so crass about this!

  “How old are you?” I asked, trying to restrain my anger.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen, huh? Well, I’m pretty sure you’re going to be tried as an adult,” I said whipping out my cell phone.

  “Tried as an adult? For what?” he asked. “It’s not like she’s giving me the answers.”

  I paused in my dialing. “Answers?” What was he talking about?

  “Yeah, the answers to his Algebra test,” Tiki said crossing her arms in her trademark combative way. It was like with that one simple arm cross she could declare war on anyone around her. She was only twelve but even I got a little nervous when in the presence of her arm crossing.

  “Algebra test?”

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “I have an Algebra test tomorrow. If I fail, they’re gonna kick me off the football team.”

  My mouth went dry. There was nothing I could say even if I had the ability to speak at the moment. I put my phone away and prayed that the floor would somehow open up and swallow me whole.

  “What exactly did you think was going on here, Ms. Sonya?” Tiki asked, arms still crossed.

  “I ... I ... “

  “You just assumed I was turning into my mother, didn’t you?”

  “I ... I ... “

  “You are no better than any of the rest of them. I thought you believed in me. What was all that crap you were talking about potential? Why don’t you just get out?”

  Without saying another word, I turned and exited the apartment. After Tiki slammed the door behind me, I stared at the hole I had created. It was amazing how with one simple assumption, I was able to put my foot in the door and in my mouth at the same time.

  Chapter 31

  Making Amends

  I paced my living room for over an hour thinking about what I had just done. How could I completely embarrass myself like that?

  She was right. Tiki was exactly right. I spouted all that stuff about her having so much potential and about me believing in her yet I jumped to the worst possible conclusion about her without the slightest bit of evidence. I was just as prejudiced and judgmental toward her as everyone had been toward me throughout my entire life. I knew what it felt like to be judged based solely on my appearance or zip code but I had done the exact same thing to her. I had to figure out a way to make it up to her. I had to fix things. Everything. The easiest thing to fix first would be the door.

  I stared at the disgusting beat up couch in my living room. I hated that couch. No one ever sat on it. We’d found it for free on the side of the road after it had been rained on. And even though my mother had covered it with a sheet to make it look attractive, it still felt like you were sitting on
straw. But today, that couch was about to come in handy. I pulled a piece of wood off of the bottom of it and then went in search of a hammer and nails.

  Tiki didn’t even acknowledge my existence as I nailed the piece of wood to her door. She had to know I was there. It was kind of hard to miss the hammering, especially since it reverberated throughout the hallway. But she chose to ignore me. How you could ignore a pregnant woman on her knees banging nails into your door was beyond me, but she managed to do it. When I was finished, I stood up and actually rang the doorbell.

  “Can I help you, Ms. Sonya?” Tiki said icily after she opened the door.

  “I’d like to apologize if that’s okay.” She didn’t respond. She just stared at me as if waiting for me to start right there in the hallway. “Can I come in?” I added.

  “Why ask? Why not just bust down the door again?” she said while flinging the door open. I had to step back to keep from getting hit in the face.

  “You know what? Maybe I shouldn’t apologize,” I said as I entered her apartment and slammed the door. I didn’t expect to say this. I had a sweet and sincere apology all planned out, but her attitude once again had set me on edge. “Sure, I jumped to some wrong conclusions but maybe the way you act and the way you speak to people influence the way people view you. Have you ever thought of that?”

  “It don’t matter how I act, okay? No matter what I say or do people only see one thing. The kid of a hooker.”

  For a split second before she turned away, I saw tears develop in her eyes. Instantly, I remembered that she was just a fragile child hiding behind a hard exterior. She was determined to hurt others and push people away before they did the same to her.

  I wrapped my arms around her and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tiki. I didn’t mean to assume the worst about you. I just ... I just really care about you and I didn’t want you to make the same mistakes as your mother did.”

  She wiped away a tear and said, “You care about me?”