Streetlights work badly but they create the right atmosphere by flashing their yellow lights that unknowingly illuminate the scene and make it simmering.
"I want to dance" I tell Matt when I realize that I have exuded and that I need more oxygen than I breathe.
My feet move frantically like my thoughts, I'm agitated and I know that dancing would calm me.
If I thought about the notes, the steps, the music, I would not think of her, I would not think of today.
"Why?" Matt looked at me. He knows I have not done it for some time, that I wanted to do something else, to become something else.
That I stopped with the challenges for a few changes, with the risks of the fights that then derive, with revenge, with the rascals and all the other crap.
It 's true, usually we come here to bet, or, most of the time, just to see the good Street Dance, the one that once began us, before becoming heroes of the flashmob and fighters of the competitions that animate this genre that now depopulated, but not tonight.
There are real organizations, however, that challenge each other to win real soldiers every night.
I shrug at his question because I do not want to tell him the truth.
"Because i'm going tonight."
He shakes his head, i dance and move my glance towards.
"God, mate, she really fucked your brain!" he says insinuating and then he laugh shaking his head too, incredulous.
"Who?" my question is stupid and the answer is granted.
"You know well who i'm referring to. Do you really want that i underline the thing? The little kid has fucked your head" he says again.
"Bullshit" everyone scream extolling the winner while my anger presses.
"And Freyaaaaaaa, wins, ladies and gentlemen, who bet on this young sexy dancing chocolate?" the speaker screams with a fortune megaphone.
"What's, the vergin to teach, all that contact, that hour together in the gym, they are more excitating than the beautiful Caroline, is not true?" Matt is joking on me and my anger presses more and more.
I look at him very badly, almost snarling on his face and he laughs victoriously for the purpose reached: we are very friends, we two, and for this reason he loves pissing me off.
"So, nice people, who's next tonight? Who will challenge El Gringo?" the speaker shouts and everyone screams, including Matt, which makes me immediately shoot.
I take a step forward, my fists closed and tight along the body.
"I" say as soon as the crowd calms down because he notices me and almost everyone is silent and they look at me.
I open my hand, i raise the hood of the sweatshirt of the black overalls, which I wear and then loosen the same, discovering my hairless and muscular back delimited by the first signs of the tear that emerge from above the right shoulder at the top and from the elastic band of the dark trousers under.
"I'll dance" I repeat seriously, just lowering my head but not the look and talking hoarsely.
I were a fighter ready to get in the ring and leave the feathers.
But deep down for us it is the right. We also fight when we enter the circle, when we dance here in the dark or under the sun of the city and among the people.
It's a match against our demons, against ourself, against our limits, and we don't always come out victorious.
I won't beat with El Grinco tonight, but against myself; against that part of me that desire Koala, against that part of me that feels unworthy even to think of her.
That fells unworthy for any way.
"Wow, people, this night Jax comes back on the track also for ghetto bets, is it incredible? The big Jax, the star of Melbourne, bets the Mexican for ten minutes of pure madness! Come on... let's start the betting!" the speaker screams for us now, for me. And everyone scream.
They incite us, they cheer me, and I see Matt laughing and waving, because he wants to see me dancing and because he knows he will help me. I will need it.
The music starts, in the darkness of this alley and of this night full of demons and emptiness.
And I fill everything with the dance.
I look at my challenger and I imagine he is my family. I guess it's my vitasbagliata.
I guess it's my desire for her.
And dance, unrestrained, exhausted, sweaty, without giving me respite. Without giving it to my opponent.
I dance with anger, I nourish and move every step with rancor.
And when I finally win, I cry my happiness to heaven and with a few pennies in my pockets, I know that tonight I'll be able to go home.
I'll be able to give my old money back, call Melita to get her to clean the house, and I'll even be able to do the shopping.
It is not so much, in fact, it is a disgusting as always, but maybe I should start doing it every night.
Because I will never win the competition and I will never have the money to run away, and then maybe I should go back to earth and stop with the semi-empty curriculum I carry anywhere without being called almost never, stop the dreams and do this.
Dance until it hurts.
Until I will be really someone.
I'll come back home with the moto feeling like both a god and a nullity.
And the worst part of this huge mess that i have in my mind, it is that i only want to come to her.
Only to her.
And this is the less sane thing of everything.
.15.
Talia
I'm at letterature lesson and it's since yesterday that i have the head in the clouds.
The big room that welcomes us is too big enough and enough empy to mask my poor attention, even if i don't believe that at the professor amounts other than final exams, he teachs, i make presence but i'm lost somewhere.
Today is one of that dull day, where everything is distant and near that is only the pain of memories that you try to drive away for a normal life.
Isaac is already lost and i don't keep going on like this.
I'm nibbling at the pen's cap when i was nudged by Wiley, that is by my side, nudging me and coming back to the present.
When i look at her weirded, she winks something.
I take very little to see the figure of Jaxon outside the door.
Oh my God.
He has a pair of jeans and a clear shirt that bands his shoulder, smiles and makes the full a few steps from me.
In here you take a lesson and he passes and goes back to the door doing the fool.
I winked at him and stopped pretending not to look at him and he gaped open and with a big smile, calling me waving his hand.
He makes fun of me, wants me to go out and go to him and he makes me laugh, but I will not give up.
"The right one for you, not a married man" my friend whispers nonchalantly
"Wil..." I look at her sideways, grateful that she has not asked me anything about my thing with Isaac, but unhappy that you remember. Despite me I expected it. "And anyway they talk very bad about Jax too."
"But that's here for you" she points out to me with his pen and the air on her face becomes obvious and falsely pedantic.
I sigh and Jaxon's head outside the room winks to follow him and leave the class.
Fuck, I do not do these things.
I do not do more follies, I do not run away, I do not abandon the lessons and I do not give credit to an unpleasant type, even if I am collaborating because of my feelings of guilt.
On the other hand I am the queen of guilt.
"Ladies, there, at the back of the classroom, you have a lesson topic more interesting than mine, perhaps, do you want to share with the rest of the class ?" the professor of literature with his huge mustache takes us back and, listless, all those present turn to look at us.
Wiley immediately straightens up in her chair but instead of intimidating me, I decide that this is the ball to take and I will do something I would never do.
"Actually," I say then, and my friend looks at me sideways with head bowed towards the sheet. Bad. "I urgen
tly need to leave the classroom, Professor."
"And then go, go!" he does that exasperated by shaking his hands and head.
He makes me laugh but I do not do it or it would kill me forever from his course.
But I appreciate the fact that I ask questions, even if I had the excuse ready, however I pull up, smile at the empty door, retrieve the book, notebooks and rucksack, and go down the stairs to get out of here under the eyes radiant but amazed by my friend that I have to watch.
I do not do these things, damn it!
When I go out into the corridor, I do not see him anyone.
I stop just over the door that i closed after i was exit and i look around me.
"You are fucking, really!" and Jax, obviusly, is behind my shoulder.
I jolt with the back and the head and i suddenly half-hearted my eyes annoyed.
"What do you want? I was having a lesson!"
"I do not think you disliked my interruption, however, seen as you escaped like a roe deer "Jaxon has the look in my now, and two eyes so clear that they remind me of our ocean.
"Of course, you are here that made the idiot! So, what do you want?"
"I want to free yourself from the oppresion and train with you."
"Now?"
"Yes, now. There is a fantastic lawn here behind."
"I can't do this outside. It's already so much that i try indoors and in front of you. And then it said only two hours for a day, Jax. You can't come here while i'm at lesson with this claims. I have some studies to gounder, i have something to do and i can't pass my day with you."
Oh my God, no!
Or maybe do i like it?
Judging by how I breath with breath maybe, and it makes me pissed off even more.
While we talk we start to walk because, grabbing he from the shirt with a gesture that I would never have done before, I go behind and out, where maybe I can not be surprised.
If there's one thing I realize now, it's partly what Wiley says, or rather, what she has foreseen, it is true: Jax is making me, not to my self-esteem rather to my social ego, to my way of interacting with others, and I would never have expected it.
"I want to dance with you, Tal. Now, today, tonight... who cares! I think you're here, right?"
"You're absurd."
"And you are clumsy and you have to train."
"Oh, but fuck you!" I react immediately and I leave the shirt and he laughs with taste.
"Come on, don't be touchy, you know what i mean" the features of his face soften slightly.
The sun beats on the forehead and his skin is almost luminous.
"Okay. To the gym, but. And i'm not touchy."
"I don't believe it's free, it's only in the late afternoon."
I look at him and the sun shows me better the shine of his smooth skin and the brown color of his hair, which lighten under those rays.
He has also a beard thread in regrowth that makes he even more sexy and I know I should not think about these things. I should not think of him for any reason in the world, yet here I am, who i'm trying, I am confused, I would.
Gate the last thought right away and luckily Jaxon starts talking again, so it distracts me.
"Then tell me where" he spreads his arms smiling at me.
My God, he is so... so...
"There's a place near here... we can go there, I used to go to Wil with my first time studying, it's a special place and it's quiet" I say but I know that I'll regret it for a moment.
He claps his hands together and nods. "I have the moto out here, let's go now" cheers me happy and I'm going to do it like crazy, pity that the phone will start to ring just as I'm about to implement that madness. I grab it from my pocket and see the name on the display.
"Excuse me for a moment" I tell him by answering and trying to get away from Jax, because it's Isaac.
"Hi, it was time for you to make me feel."
"Sorry fo the absence, i had some difficult case and some problem to fix" replies the sensual voice of my therapist on the other side of theline.
" You must send me a mess or a pigeon traveler"
"Tally, you know how the thing goes"
I have when he calls me like that. Because he knows who calls me like that. And i also hate that he says to me that i know how the thing goes, hell, of course i know, but not for this reasoni can be content with crumbs forever.
"This doesn't mean you have to treat me as the last of your priorities" in saying it i turn while walking and despite trying to sow Jaxon to talk in peace, I find he behind me, certainly careful to listen to the conversation.
I look at him badly and with his hand I mime him to leave.
Go ahead, get off, stop walking at me! I would like to tell him, but now I am busy with the man who is my therapist and lover, apparently.
"This afternoon at the studio?"
"Today I can not."
"Do you have a lesson?"
"I can not, I have other commitments."
"Tally, you should not refuse the sessions."
"Yes, if they're sitting on your cock, and then it's not today the day we set for the calendar... so I'm not missing anything."
"You are angry and i understand it, but moderate. Listen, make a thing, i'll call you among two hours, so maybe in while you have calmed down" he decided says, as a person who thinks and thinks he knows me, but he is wrong, he does not know me at all and I begin to tire of being the other woman alone, only the patient to be enmeshed when he goes.
I hold the phone in my hand firmly and with my back to Jax, who is looking at me too intently. He stares at me as it should not because I'm not his business, nor are my personal phone calls.
"Do not call me right, leave me alone. We will resent "I murmur underneath.
"You have the session the day after tomorrow, the one on the calendar, do you remember? Look, you see, Tally, or I'll have to tell your parents."
Threats, threats, threats, at this point I wonder what he really wants from me.
Does he use me? Does he use my condition to have me and then threaten to continue to have me in my grip? To do his dirty comfortable with a girl, get excited and empty with the poor, small, easily dragged Tally? To do something in his monotonous life that is not just a husband? In short, he abuses his power by threatening to speak to my parents if I do not give it to him when he so desires.
I can denounce him for this.
Anger sends my brain into smoke, but luckily I understand that it is not the time to do nothing.
"Goodbye, we will see soon" I pretend indifference but when I close the communication, I would scream and I'm so nervous that I kick a stone in front of me, making it even fly against the wall facing me at the moment.
Then i turn around, i fix Jaxon near me and i move only my head to say him to go.
"Come on" i decided say. "Noone told you that you can't listen he other conversation?"
"You have a realtionship with an asshole that he has already get you angry" he says, reaching me puffed up, with that arrogant smile.
"Very good, Sherlock, yuo have discovered the flame."
"Ah! That is incredible!"
"What?"
"That you have a relationship" he admitts seraphic.
Now i kick he.
I look at him very badly. "Ah, thank you so much, idiot."
"No, Koala, i don't want to say this. You are so pudica and detached from everything that is difficul to imagine you in that sense."
What a disgusting sentence he just said.
I want to vomit.
Is really this the impression that i do to the other people?
I seem... what? A nun?
I don't want to talk because i already feel a suck.
Noone consider me.
Noone see me.
Noone think of me in that sense.
I'm like a ghost.
Anything normal becomes abnormal if made by me, even a romantic interest.
How did I reduce myself like this?
Maybe I could break a leg to him too.
Jax laughs and approaches; I know he thinks he called him that way to remind him of the nickname I gave him at the beginning but it's not like that, mine wanted to be an insult this time.
Because he really is a perfect insensitive asshole.
At the moment I do not even cry, despite him, despite Isaac, despite all.
"You're unbelievable, Talia," he says, bending over and taking two helmets, one of them immediately gives it to me.
He had already designed everything, then.
"Tell me where I have to go" he continues.
"Let's get on the march I'll show you" I'm more confident than I am and he settles on the moto, welcoming me behind him.
And when I sit down and shake it from life I feel that strange tingling of the limbs that then spread everywhere, even in the lower abdomen, just the one already tried in the same situation.
The skin of my mutilated and covered arms is sensitive to narrow and I have to concentrate very hard not to faint or fall.
While the bike starts slowly and goes into the roadway, I put my face on Jax's back.
He has a good smell.
It's a life I do not touch anyone who is not my therapist.
Someone who knows good.
Someone like him.
And it's like a dizziness that takes me elsewhere.
.16.
Jaxon
Lilydale lake.
After fourty minutes of running, following Koala's directions, we are arriving here.
In the middle of lawn i remove the helmet and i see her do the same, that is already down the bike while i'm on the saddle yet.
There is a little sunshine on our head and she smiles, letting her face be illuminating.
"I come here when i was a child" when she says it, handing me her helmet, however, she frowns for a moment, as if on these banks she has memories that do badly and well together.
I look around. The lawn, the lake, the bridge, the vegetation and the plants, it's all incredible.
And we are alone.
I want everything of you Page 10