He lets out a breath and adjusts himself to face me. I have no idea what to say. I sense his hesitation as the tops of our heads sink closer together until they are almost touching. His cheek moves in next to my cheek. We pause, and I close my eyes. His breath is warm, while mine is tight, and we slowly exhale. We release a little more, and his rough jaw grazes mine, then his smooth nose and lashes. I imagine this is how blind people see each other. We get lost in the touching, maybe because we don’t have the words, as we respond to each other’s signals. Before I know it, we are lying on the bed. He looks unsure about this development, but it’s happening so naturally.
Then, finally, he brushes his lips against mine and we gradually open and join inside, and he is seeing me through his lips and touching every detail of my soul. I feel so utterly visible as his fingers trace the outside of my sweater. It doesn’t take much longer for the kiss to become heavy, desperate, as though we are trying to consume one another and can’t get enough. Ever.
Kent pulls back. He rubs his hands quickly over his face and looks at me. “Is this a good idea?” His gaze pleads with mine.
“What? Sleeping together?” I’m dozy. Weak.
The muscle in his jaw clenches.
He stands up from the end of my bed and starts pacing in my tiny room, his hand scrubbing that worn spot on his neck. “I don’t know what my problem is,” he smirks. “This isn’t something I do.”
I reach for him and rest my hands flat on his hard, warm chest. “It’s okay,” I whisper, and he looks at me in a way that is disapproving, or maybe questioning. “Maybe you put too much pressure on yourself. We are human.” I’m not sure if I know what I am talking about, but it seems like something he needs to hear.
But my fingers have a mind of their own as they travel the cool cotton draped over his shoulders and curl over the collar of his shirt. I study his sharp eyes where his focus slices into me.
He inhales through his nose, my fingers tremble as they pull him closer by the collar, and our noses brush as our eyelids graze together.
“If I sleep with you…” His voice is coarse breath.
If you sleep with me…
The rest is said in our eyes as our focus falls away and our heads drop. We both fall onto our backs with a heavy sigh. I roll onto my side in defeat. My eyes follow the lines of muscle on his body lying languidly on my small bed. I observe the way his jaw is tightly gripped as his eyes pierce a hole through my ceiling. His physical arousal is very apparent.
My fingers crawl toward his fingers as his hesitantly twitch under mine. He slams his eyelids shut, his hand pulling away from my grip, and tension takes over his body.
“What if you just enter me for a moment—no moving, just once—to feel you inside of me?” I smirk as it comes out, it sounds so absurd, but I’m so aroused my mind isn’t working right, either. “I mean, it’s not technically sleeping together.” I gaze up at him.
He strokes the hair away from my face with the tips of his fingers and rests his nose along the line of my jaw. We’re back to touching instead of seeing as his stubble tickles my skin. He pulls back and holds my focus with a pensive look in his eyes, and I wonder if he will stop or keep going. He places his hand flat on my belly and lets his fingers slide slowly down. “Technically…” His voice is husky. “Not.” He places his fingers on my pant button, and I suck in a breath.
“You’re right,” I gasp. “Technically… it’s not.” Or at least I don’t want it to be. My eyelids slam shut. “But… if I lose it”—my voice is coming out jerky, and I try to smooth it—“it might be.”
His breath whisks against me. “So you’re saying that as long as neither of us lose it, we’re okay?” He cocks a brow, and my breaths stops.
“That’s a fair estimation,” I gasp. But when he moves his fingers over me a second time, my jaw twitches open. Oh god, no. I slam my eyes shut, forcing back the pleasure with all of my might. He lifts his hand off of me, and every last drop of air in my lungs escapes with it. He props an arm to one side so he is hovering over me as I lie like a mess on the bed. “Let me get this right.” His voice is all breath. “If I enter you once without moving, and neither of us loses control, it doesn’t count.”
My eyes go wide at his comment, and I nod in agreement. He lets out a harsh exhale and pushes himself up in one swift movement, bending the kink out his neck as he reaches for his coat. “Technically,” he says, turning to look at me, “I couldn’t stop.”
16
My mouth is dry and my head is pounding. My body aches, a familiar feeling, and shit, I have to run. I slip on yesterday’s clothes, run a comb through my hair, squeeze the toothpaste on the toothbrush while throwing a few things into my dance bag, and wash down a couple of painkillers. It’s three minutes to nine, and I run the last few blocks from the subway to the studio.
We have been rehearsing relentlessly all week, and everyone is either lying flat on the floor, limply stretching, or hanging off the barre zapped of life. Daniela walks in and scans the room.
“I think a coffee class is in order. These dancers look like crap.” She leans into her hip and adjusts her outfit in the mirror. It is awfully cesspool-like in here.
Katherine takes a vote. Somehow we’ve gone from a dictatorship to a democratic society, and all because we look like crap.
Coffee class is a ritual that occurs only a few times a year, when we are given permission to skip and go for coffee instead. Almost everyone ends up at Fuel, the coffee shop across the street. We order extra-large coffees of the personalized variety: soy, non-fat, mocha, anything other than decaf. There are a few people working on laptops or reading at tables, and I have no idea how they can concentrate with the noise in here. Maybe they are just hiding behind their devices like I sometimes do, reading the same page over and over again, listening to the conversations around them. The huddles in line are non-mixed: the apprentice dancers hang together, then the Corps, the soloists, et cetera, et cetera, and none of the managing staff would be caught dead with any of us except for Londyn, who really wants to be one of us, though she often isn’t at work in the morning. I wonder where Kent and Miss Katherine go for coffee. Kent doesn’t do mornings at the studio, and I hate to think Katherine drinks that horrible coffee we have in the lounge just to avoid us. It’s hard to imagine Katherine mingling with people in her free time. It’s hard to think of her as anyone other than the teacher devoted to the polishing of our stubborn vehicles.
Everything seems uncolored again; it’s a fuzzy haze of chitchat and moving through the motions, which will unlikely be resolved by caffeine. Because, I now know, whatever is going on between my director and me can never go anywhere as long as I so desperately seek to be his muse, which is really depressing. The thought of losing my ground as his muse for all eternity is depressing, that is. Sterling is flicking around on his phone, and Daniela is standing behind us not saying anything, as if we are all strangers. I start thinking about the time Daniela and Ariana—the bestie that came after me—stranded me at an underground nightclub at two in the morning without cab fare. That was the last moment of our friendship. I could ask her why we aren’t friends anymore, but she’d never say. She probably wouldn’t even admit that we were close in the first place. We used to spoon, for goodness’s sake—she wouldn’t walk from her car to her front doorstep without me—and yet she pulls herself off as a semi-well-adjusted human being. Not that spooning means anything around here. Just look at the line-up at the till. The way everyone is hanging off of one another, you would think these were Roman times.
Sterling is fixated on his phone as we approach the counter.
“I’m glad you find my company so riveting.” I lean into his shoulder.
“Lindsay’s become re-enamored with me since I started working with The God.” The God is his latest moniker of choice for Kent. He reaches for his chain wallet when the barista takes our order.
“I’ve got it.” I pull out a twenty. It’s my turn to buy.
“Have you seen these Driven tweets? They’re getting a lot of hits. Seems that our fans are more interested in our dirty laundry than the work itself. Tsk tsk,” Sterling rambles as I stir stevia into my coffee and daydream about Kent, which I have to stop doing. But there is something about social media gossip that has me lost in dreamland evermore, as Sterling focuses his dramatics, in the form of gasps of shock and horror, at his phone.
Before you know it, coffee class is over, and we are all almost late for rehearsal, and none of us are warmed up. At least we are in it together; it will take one person to get up for the flock to eventually follow. Still, I am panicking; the idea of not being warm for rehearsal terrifies me. What if I wake up one day and my knees give out on me, or what if I dance like shit? Will I lose my place as the muse and give up possibly the best sex of my life? Suddenly, it’s as though being a muse is so much worse than dating. You never know where you stand, and you can be dropped at any moment, and there is so much more at stake—like everything.
Sterling presses his hands down on the table. “Giddy up.” He stands up. Shit, is it time to go? Things felt better when he was messing with that little phone.
“Do you think Kent will be in rehearsal?” It comes out more panicky than I would like.
“Fuck—I hope not,” Sterling says, and I can’t disagree.
When we return to the studio, there’s a mass of confusion—it just seems to be one of those crazy days—and no schedule is posted on the board. Every day, every rehearsal, since I joined the company has been documented on that board like a regime. It’s pathetic how lost we are without it. Things are getting out of control between the twenty-something over-caffeinated bodies, the chaos, and the anxiety that resides between these walls. Let’s just say it’s reminiscent of a kindergarten jungle gym. If there were rafters, there would be swinging. There are food fights, flexibility competitions, screaming, spitting, laughing, and crying going on. Basically, even though we are supposed to keep working on our own, the rest of the day is a free-for-all, which is completely fine by me. Now, to find a private studio away from the madness. The lights are out in studio C, and I walk in to find Daniela stripping off her black suit, confident in her nakedness. Everything on her body is perfectly manicured, trimmed, and polished. She is not a classic beauty, but there is no denying she is h-o-t. She steps into her black thong—she is the thong queen—and I can see the pink lotus tattoo on her back when she bends over to pull on a pair of black Diesel jeans.
I’m backing out of the doorframe and about to look for another open studio when she looks over her shoulder.
“It won’t last,” she says. It’s the most eye contact we have had all year, and it’s rather eerie. “Not with Kent, no one has, and—not that he has a choice at the end of the day—you are certainly no different.” She pulls a loose shirt overhead. “You can have the studio,” she says.
“Why do you hate me?” I lean against the barre, barely in the door. “We used to be friends.” My face must be sheer red with anger or embarrassment, could be either one. Mostly I feel small, because deep down I miss having Daniela as a friend. Girlfriend-dumped is way worse than boyfriend-dumped. You just feel like the biggest loser, even if I know more about Daniela’s deep-seated wounds than most.
“I don’t hate you.” She blinks up at me. “Are you blind? Do you not see that he wants us to hate each other? He wants us to hate each other because it’s all part of his creative ‘alchemy.’ He always does this. He stirs shit up.”
Her words singe me. I don’t know what to say or do, my cheeks stinging as though someone has just slapped me.
She smirks, slinging her bag over her arm and applying pink lip-gloss in the mirror. “Don’t tell me.” She smacks her lips together as she whips around to face me. “You thought you were special. Let me guess: he took you to Cayman, too.”
My heart stops. What is she saying? And how the hell does she know about Cayman?
She steps in closer. She is taller than me, and I have to crane my neck to meet her in the eye. Her skinny brows furrow. “Why do you think he hired you, Branwen O’Hara, curvy dancer whose only claim to fame is the neurotic Raina Freehurst, when he could have hired anyone in the world?” Her small blue eyes look sharp and narrow behind the thick eyeliner and mascara. “He knew how devastated you were when our friendship broke off. You can’t hide anything these days with social media, and you did go a little cuckoo. That’s exactly the kind of thing he looks for in a dancer; it’s the kind of thing that inspires him. It means he can mess with your head.”
Even though my eyes are stinging, my gut is boiling.
It’s true. Everything she just said is true, except for the parts about Kent—those I don’t know. I had a meltdown when Daniela ended our friendship, because I have no brothers and sisters, my mom is dead, my dad is otherwise occupied, and I have never been close to anyone in my entire life like I was with her. Daniela and I did everything together. She made me believe she needed me, and then she just gave me the hey, thanks for coming out, like I was nothing. She wouldn’t even give me the time of day, not one coffee date, after Ariana became her new door-to-door escort. Does that make me nutsy, or does that make her a bitch? I think the latter, and I’m over it. I never forget when I make a promise, especially if it’s to myself.
“If you believe that, then why go along with it? You don’t have to be a bitch to me just because Kent wants you to.”
Her eyes contract as though she is thinking about it. “I’m a bitch because I worked hard to get here, and I am not going to stand by and watch you do whatever you can to take my place.” She looks at my chest. “And you should really wear a bra.”
Her eyes pull from mine, and I wrap my arms around my chest, scowling back at her.
She storms out of the door. I walk over to the stereo, plug my iPhone into the jack, and turn the music on, channeling everything inside of me into the steps. The dance is consumed by the dread and angst of the possibility that Daniela is right and that Kent is messing with me in a way I perhaps already suspected. It shouldn’t matter; it’s not like Kent and I have any kind of relationship that can be pinpointed, yet the connection we had last night was so incredibly genuine. I let myself go into that safe place inside the movement where no one can touch me. The music pulls me into my most extended lines and tightest contortions, spinning into webs of darkness and distortion.
What if Daniela is right, and just like Raina Freehurst’s brutality, Kent Morgan has his own way of getting what he wants?
I look at the clock. I almost forgot about the doctor’s appointment scheduled this afternoon with Driven’s resident. I tidy myself up and head to reception where Renee the administrator greets me.
“Dr. Scott will just be a minute.”
A few minutes later, Sterling walks out of the office and down the hall to the area where I am sitting.
“You’re looking at grade-A stud.” He flexes a bicep. “Imagine if he’d seen my package.”
“I don’t blame him for not wanting to look.” I don’t smile at the joke. I’m in no mood. Renee stands up in her Driven, black, Londyn-designed suit and black pumps.
“Dr. Scott is ready for you now.” She holds a folder up to her chest, and I follow her down the hall. Dr
. Scott is the same doctor I saw the day Sterling dropped me in the face plant.
“How is your shoulder?” he asks over his glasses, and Renee hands him my file. He nods and wheels his chair to the desk and slides his thumbs over the electronic pages. We were instructed to have our medical records sent over, and I am just happy for doctor-patient confidentiality, since that means he can’t discuss my health with anyone else, particularly Driven staff. He only comes around for annual check-ups and emergencies, as far as I know.
He sucks in a deep breath, and removes the eyeglasses from his nose. “These knee X-rays don’t look very good. Have you gone over them with a doctor?”
A twenty-pound lead ball swings straight for my solar plexus. I swallow down the bile. It was my last year with Raina. In the dress rehearsal, my knees were so bad they were swollen with bone spurs floating around in them. I went to one of the best sports medicine doctors in LA. I had to get through the show. Raina didn’t have an understudy. I lived on painkillers. I let myself believe he was overreacting when he told me my knees were like apples, rotting from the inside, and told myself that all I needed was a second opinion. This is my second opinion, and it’s making the blood rush out of my head.
“I suggest you take a strong look at the possibility of curbing dance altogether. With knees like these…” He shakes his head. “From the outside you look fine, but according to these X-rays, you shouldn’t be bending your knee past a ninety-degree angle. You’re looking at a knee replacement soon. The thing is, we can’t give you one until you’re at least forty, because they only last twenty years.” He looks at me with concern. I adjust in my seat as the white room fills with fuzzy black dots.
17
The sun nukes my face. My eyes close, and my lips curve. The waves are constant: the tide comes in, and the tide goes out. It’s an even and gentle rhythm. A shadowy figure moves toward me. It’s a woman. She stands over me. Rays of sun flicker around her. She is white light through my cracked eyelids. She says something. The words are mumbles. I wake up.
CURTAIN CALL: Driven Dance Theater Romance Series Book 1 (Standalone) Page 13