Finding Center (19 page)

Aly

On Tuesday, Zed goes to his meeting, and I get kidnapped by my best friends. I don’t know how they know I need them—maybe Zed told them and I can’t make myself stir up anger over that possibility—but Yana and Sofia both grab me at the end of rehearsal.

“You,” Yana says, holding on to my wrist firmly. “You’re coming with us.”

“Us?” I repeat blankly, trying to screw the cap back on my water bottle while she holds me hostage. “Where are we going?”

“Out. To relax,” Sofia says and then winks at me as she picks up her bag. “Don’t worry. We won’t leave the country. You don’t need to bring anything.”

“That’s not particularly reassuring,” I tell her as Yana drags me out of the studio and to the stairs. Our rehearsal was on the third floor today and the dressing rooms are on the main floor, near the big studio and Jonathan’s offices. Jonathan had been conspicuously absent, with Lila handling most of the day’s rehearsals. Given that it’s two weeks until curtains up, that surprised me, but not enough to worry.

Until we step out of the elevator and Mrs. MacQueen’s in the hallway, just outside Jonathan’s doors. Talking at him.

She doesn’t see us right away and instead says to Jonathan, “I mean what I said, Jonathan. If you can’t control your dancers, then how are you going to run an effective company? How do you think George Balanchine did it?”

“I wouldn’t call Balanchine’s relationships with his top dancers particularly healthy,” Jonathan replies calmly. “And that’s not how I’m running District Ballet. I’ve been clear with that from the start.”

I can’t move. I can’t breathe. Jonathan’s the first to see me and his jaw tightens, his gaze pinning me where I stand. Mrs. MacQueen turns to see who he’s looking at and her smile’s thin. She’s never fixed me with that smile. I’ve never been on the receiving end of her ire. “Ms. Miller. Hello, there. It’s a pleasure to see you as always.”

I smile back as much as I can, aware that Yana and Sofia are frozen next to me. I shake her hand. “Good to see you as well, Elizabeth. I hope you’re enjoying DC today.”

She glances down my body and her eyes crawl back up to my face. “I heard the lovely news.”

I thought Jonathan told her weeks ago, but apparently not. “Yes, thank you. We’re very excited.”

“I was hoping we’d see you dance for many more years here, Ms. Miller,” she says, and finally, the ice chips away from her voice. Her hand trembles. “Your dancing has been one of the great joys for me as a patron of District Ballet.”

I swallow and say softly, “I know. But I fully intend on returning after maternity leave. My dancing days aren’t over, Elizabeth.”

Over her head, Jonathan slowly nods his approval. Mrs. MacQueen drops my hand and says, “I hope so. I’m glad that Madison Dahl was able to take over your roles for you.”

It kills me, but I know I have to say it, for everyone’s sake. “I am too.”

It’s not wrong. What if there hadn’t been another dancer ready to take on the roles? What would have happened then?

“I’ll see you soon,” she says, touching her silver curls with a light hand. “Take care, Jonathan.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. MacQueen,” Jonathan replies, his voice bright despite the exhaustion in his face.

When she drops my hand and steps into the elevator, I hold myself together until the doors shut behind her and I can hear it going to the first floor. I shiver and Jonathan steps forward, his strong hand settling on my shoulder. “You handled that well. Relax.”

“I thought you told her,” I snap.

Jonathan shrugs. “I didn’t think it was her business. She thought differently.”

I shoot him a glare. “Of course she thinks that.”

He’s amused. “Clearly I should have asked you. She’s not that pissed. Go clear your head. It’s not that bad, Alyona. Let me do the worrying about this company and you just do the dancing. That’s your job. Let me do mine.”

But I can’t shake the disappointment I saw in Mrs. MacQueen’s face and heard in her voice. I have to dance
Rubies
, and I have to dance it as well as I’ve ever danced it before, only this time I’ll be seventeen weeks pregnant and my partner only has one leg.

“Alyona,” Yana says firmly. “I’m not being sidetracked by an old hag.”

“Yana,” Sofia says, her voice cutting sharply around us. “Careful.”

“I am careful. We’re getting pedicures, and then we’re shopping for adorable baby outfits, and then we’re getting sugar drinks at some café somewhere. We had plans and we’re sticking to them.” Yana slides her arm through mine and pulls Sofia and me toward the dressing rooms. “You can’t think about her. There’s nothing you can do to make her happy today, so you have to just put her out of your mind.”

“I was having a good day,” I mutter to Sofia as we’re changing into our regular clothes.

Sofia’s smile is sympathetic. “It can still be a good day. It just might require a little more damage to your credit card than we thought.”

It takes me a while to accept it, but by the time my toes are painted a ridiculous shade of red and we’re sipping pumpkin spice lattes—mine, sadly, decaf—as we wander around an upscale baby clothing store, I realize they’re right. There’s nothing more I can do today. Ten days until the fall ballet and the gala.

Ten days. They better all be good ones.

Zed

Aly’s father doesn’t know his daughter’s nearly sixteen weeks pregnant with his first grandchild. Aly and her father have a strained relationship—at best—for reasons I don’t think either of them really know. But he’s in town for the next ten days for work and the gala, and it’s taken both Aly’s mother and me the past week to convince Aly that she needed to talk to her father before the performance. Before he saw her pregnant in a leotard.

We’re doing dinner tonight, the three of us, if Aly and I can ever get out of this apartment. And then afterward, I have something else to show her. I’m not sure how it’ll go over but it’s another thing for which we’re running out of time. I’m still stripping off my rehearsal clothes when Aly starts the shower.

“Join me,” she says from the bathroom doorway where she’s tugging her hair out of its ponytail. “Save water. Shower with a friend. Saves time too.”

I grin at her. “There’s literally no world in which the two of us in the shower at once saves time. And I’m not talking to your dad with that image fresh in my mind. Go shower.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “You’re no fun.”

“I’m plenty of fun,” I call her to her.

The shower turns on with a hiss. She yells back, “Showerhead’s more fun than you today.”

“Jesus, Aly,” I choke out, closing my eyes. She laughs. The image of her hands on her naked body, her head thrown back and mouth open as the water runs over her, burns bright behind my eyelids. I have to name presidents to clear my head. Damn her.

She leaves the door open, something she’s been doing lately less as an invitation as a new aversion to closed doors. She says it’s not a metaphor. The steam from her shower fills the little hall between our bedroom and our kitchen. It smells faintly of her body wash, vanilla and cinnamon.

When it’s my turn to shower, she dries her hair at the mirror, her long blond hair thicker than it’s ever been before. She wears just a tank top and her underwear, her stomach a soft round bulge.

“I see you peeking at me,” she says, a smile in her voice. The mirror’s steamed up so she turns toward the shower. “What?”

“You’re getting awful fancy here,” I tease her, stretching my sore muscles and hanging on to the bar I had installed after the first time I lost my balance and fell. I stretch my left leg as far as it can go, feeling my muscles scream at me. “Blow-drying your hair and everything.”

“I can’t even figure out what to wear,” she says, turning off the blow-dryer. “You realize that this is only going to get worse, yeah?”

“If by worse you mean you’re going to be secretly delighted to buy more clothes,” I say, shutting off the shower. The silence is overwhelming so I fill it. “Then yeah, sure, worse.”

I hop out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my waist. She’s braiding her hair, hands moving quickly, until she finally reaches the end and fastens it securely. She turns, reaching for me, and I have to catch her hand to stop her wicked smile. If she touches me, I’ll take her to bed and there’s no way I can explain to her father why we missed his fancy dinner.

Aly smiles and wipes her hand against the mirror. We’re both blurry in the reflection. She lifts her chin and uncaps her mascara. “We can be late. He’ll be late.”

“You hate being late,” I remind her, reaching for my crutch so I can hop back to the bedroom.

“Sometimes I like making people wait,” she calls to me.

I snort and call back. “No shit, princess. I waited seven years and then some.”

She sticks her head out of the bathroom as I’m pulling on underwear and her gaze grows heated, aware. She leans on the doorway, absolutely fucking hot with her legs that go on forfuckingever and her tank top not reaching her waist. “Worth it?”

I press my hands onto my thighs. At this point, I can’t help but hope my body’s not going to have a hair-trigger reaction to her right now. “I would have waited forever, Aly.”

“I’m glad you didn’t have to,” she says, and then disappears back into the bathroom.

I’m dressed and carefully fitting a dress shoe onto my left foot when she emerges from the bathroom, her hair, makeup and jewelry on. She marches straight for her closet and pulls out a dark blue lace dress. She unzips it and steps into it, sliding it over her body and then her arms into the sleeves. She looks beautiful and ethereal, untouchable and entirely, entirely too gorgeous. I swallow hard.

She backs up to me, scooping her braid out of the way. “Zip me up?”

My fingers close around the zipper and I stare at her bare back. Then I lean forward, pressing kisses up her spine as I slowly zip her dress up to her neck. When I suck at a soft spot on the curve of her neck, she arches back against me, her hand coming to rest on the crotch of my pants.

I’m hard, to absolutely no one’s surprise. I close my eyes, fingers running across the soft skin exposed on her chest. “Do I get to unzip it tonight?”

“Maybe,” she says, but her voice isn’t teasing like it usually is. It’s hoarse and throaty, wanting and needing. It’s the exactly the type of voice that could have us staying in the apartment for hours. Vulnerable Aly is the version of her that can come over, and over, and over.

I press my mouth and my smile against her shoulder. “Then we better hurry up to that part of the evening.”

She catches my hand and draws it around herself. “Zed. Ask me again.”

For a second, all the air’s pulled out of the room. I don’t look at the top drawer of my bureau. I keep my eyes trained on the back of her neck where it’s safe. Where I’m not giving away all the cards in my hand. Then I manage to say, “You’re sure?”

“Not right now,” she clarifies, and then she twists, looking at me with the shadows of the room hiding her eyes. “But ask me again.”

“Okay,” I whisper. “I will.”

A few minutes later, we’re out the door. It’s easier to shake what she just said if we’re moving. It’s always been easier if we’re both moving. She wants me to ask her to marry me, again. She’ll say yes, then. Maybe. If I time it better than last time. And honestly, in retrospect, literally any other time would have been better than that. But tonight, there are too many other things that need to happen.

It’s still warm in DC on the evenings and at least we don’t have to go far. Her dad’s meeting us in Georgetown for once, and on a Friday night, this neighborhood is hopping with university students. We weave through the crowd, hand in hand. It’s hard not to see her father outside the tapas restaurant. I’ve only met him a handful of times even though he lived in NYC the entire time that Aly and I went to Lyon School of Ballet. He’s well over six feet and built like a linebacker. I keep trying, and failing, to imagine him with Cara, who reminds me of my own mother—petite, curvy, a powerhouse in personality.

“Alyona,” he says, his voice warm and kind. They hesitate, unsure whether to hug or not. If they do, there’s no way that we’re not having the baby talk out here. The dress and the dark help disguise her new curves but he’ll feel them. When Aly waits a beat too long, her father nods to me. “Zed.”

“Sir,” I say, like I’m still a teenager.

He gives me a smile. “Carlton.”

I smile. “Yes, sir.”

He shakes his head, laughing a little. When we walk in, the staff knows exactly who we are and I guess that’s the advantage to being one of Aly’s parents. Her father is an executive for a Fortune 50 company and her mother’s a powerful lobbyist. Their names open up doors that mine wouldn’t. We’re seated in a quiet corner and the waiter who comes by offers us wine and lights the two candles on the table. Even in candlelight, Aly’s pale. Her hands grip the napkin on her lap and I cover her hands with one of mine. She tangles our fingers together.

Carlton orders wine for himself, and then says, “You two look good, happy.”

Aly relaxes a tiny bit and says, “We are, thank you. How’s DC treated you?”

He’s testifying in front of Congress in support of some bill or another. There’s literally nothing I care less about than politics. I don’t pay attention. Carlton’s shrug is anything but casual though. He waits until the waiter pours him a little bit of wine, and then he says, “It’s a mess, but this city’s nice and quiet compared to home.”

Aly’s voice is soft and small. “Now you know why I like it here.”

Carlton’s head tips toward me. “Thought it had more to do with him.”

So maybe that’s what this was about. Carlton never understood why Aly didn’t want to return to New York, or at least Philadelphia, after her leave of absence. I glance at her and she looks sideways at me, suddenly a shy girl again.

“I can teach anywhere,” I say, deflecting the attention from her. “But I know Aly’s happier with the DBC. We’ve talked about other options but this seems to be the best fit for right now. We should come up to New York more often though.”

Carlton’s face lights up. “You should. I’d love to see you around there. You ever been to Queens, Zed?”

I shake my head. Carlton looks into his wine and smiles. “It’s home. Far more than Manhattan is.”

“Maybe during our summer break in June next year,” Aly says carefully. “We could come up. That’d be a nice getaway after the end of my spring season and Zed’s school year.”

Her father studies her over the candles. “That’d be nice, Alyona.”

Aly bites her lip and looks to me desperately. I know this look. She’s spun across the room and now she’s looking for me to catch her hand and keep her in balance. I don’t take my eyes off her when I say, “We have something to tell you, Carlton.”

When I look back at him, he’s staring at both of us, his wine halfway to his mouth. He sets his glass back down and takes a deep breath. And then our waiter comes and starts explaining the menu to us. The tension snaps and Aly starts to laugh, covering her mouth and looking away from us. The waiter hesitates and continues slowly.

As soon as he steps away, she dissolves into giggles, leaning against me. I grin and look at Carlton who’s shaking his head. He glances after the waiter, and then down at his menu. A tiny smile twitches at the corner of his mouth. “His timing.”

“Dad,” Aly says, and it’s the first time I’ve heard her call him that to his face. “I’m pregnant.”

His head lurches up and he stares at her, his mouth open. Then he covers his mouth as his eyes crinkle until they’re nearly closed. He reaches for her, and Aly slides around the table to hug him. She smooths her dress over her stomach and now, with her coat off, it’s easy to see the baby bump. He looks at me and stands up, so I have to stand too, to give me a hug.

“God, Alyona, Zed,” he whispers. “I thought—”

“This is no more planned than the first,” Aly says and it’s the lightest she’s ever sounded talking about the miscarriage. “But we’re really excited and happy. I’m due April first.”

He blinks and says, “Wait, but the gala.”

Aly smiles. “Still dancing it. I’m safe to dance and I’ll take barre classes until I can’t anymore. This will be my last performance until next fall at least.”

Carlton’s fingers close around hers across the table. “I’m glad I’m here for it, then. How’s the company? Jonathan?”

I like the little growl at the bottom of his throat when he says Jonathan’s name. It reminds me of when Aly first told me that she was talking to Jonathan again. He’s come a long way from being a pain in Aly’s butt as her equal at Philadelphia to being a sympathetic and trustworthy director of her ballet company now.

Aly shrugs and says, “It’s a little complicated. But it’ll be fine.”

Carlton’s eyebrows shoot up. “You sound calm about that.”

Aly snorts and I rest my arm around the back of her chair cautiously as her body pitches forward. She’s been wound up since she ran into Mrs. MacQueen on Tuesday. She came home in hurricane mode. “Right now, at least. Depends on the moment.”

Carlton glances at me. “I hope you’re not dancing when you don’t want to dance.”

“I want to dance, most days. There are days when it’s definitely more work and less fun than it used to be,” Aly admits, and then glances over at me slyly. I know exactly how she’s going to change the topic. “And, for the second surprise of the evening, Zed’s dancing it with me.”

Carlton waves off the waiter when he reappears. He stares at me and says, “You’re dancing again.”

I flush. “Yeah.”

Aly’s father shakes his head and says, “You know, after the accident, whenever Alyona woke up for a few minutes, all she’d say was, ‘Can he still dance?’ She never asked whether she’d dance again. She only wanted to know if you would.”

I glance over at Aly, whose face tells me she’s far away from this moment. She’s back in memories. I pull her hand onto my thigh and squeeze it a little harder than necessary. “I didn’t even try to come back for years.”

“What changed?”

I hesitate only for a second and then push forward. “I decided it was stupid to not try something because I might not be as good as I was before. Too much of my life has been run by fear. So I told fear to fuck off.”

I blink and add a quick, “I’m sorry, sir” as Aly starts to laugh next to me.

Carlton grins and says, “Fuck off’s the only good thing you can say to fear. Good job, son. I’m proud of you.”

My heart expands infinitely in the space of a breath. I can’t remember the last time anyone told me that they were proud of me, and definitely not about dance. Carlton’s moved on to talking with Aly about the baby but I’m stuck there in that one moment. I want to stay here forever.