If (26 page)

As those words came out, I knew I had made my decision. I wasn’t leaving Ash. I was going to help him through this.

BIRD

THE WAITING GAME
. It might be the most socially acceptable form of mental torture. Waiting to hear back about a casting call. Waiting for a much needed check to clear.

Waiting for your boyfriend to be sane again.

The excitement of the impending show should have distracted me. It should have made the time pass quickly. But it didn’t ease the tension that sat heavy in every cell of my body as I waited to be reunited with Ash. As promised, Miller stayed in touch, but Ash was not himself yet, he told me. It would take weeks. The ECT made his short term memory foggy, it frustrated him, and he was still coming down off the mania. He was still not my Ash. I respected the fact that Miller was family and he thought I should wait to see Ash, but that didn’t mean it was easy. I wanted to tell Miller to shove it, and tell Ash I didn’t care if he was embarrassed for me to see him in that state. That’s what I wanted to do, but I knew they were right.

It had only been a week, but with each day that passed since I last saw Ash, I only grew more heartsick.

“Come on, Bird!” Jordan snapped as I missed a step. He knew where my mind was, but that didn’t lower his expectations of me. It was his job to make his act the best it could be and he saved his mercy for our time outside of the rehearsal.

“He lowers you, then one and two and three . . .” He demonstrated the pique to jeté I was to execute.

I wiped the sweat from my brow. “Shit. Okay. I got it. Let’s go.”

My partner thrust me into the air and lowered me. I executed the moves and completed the sequence.

“There you go! Finally!” Jordan clapped. “Give me that five more times and we’ll break for lunch.” I’ll admit, during moments like these, I wanted to high kick Jordan in the head. He was a great friend but he was a demanding choreographer. He expected perfection from everyone, and I didn’t get a pass.

By the end of that day, I was ready to soak in Epsom salts and the misery of missing Ash. Trevor’s family was out of town and I passed on his and Jordan’s invitation to tag along. I waited for an Uber with Marley, when a car pulled up.

“Bird, come in. I’m taking you to dinner.” The unmistakable accent floated out from the darkness of the vehicle. Of course I had to go, but I looked over at Marley apologetically.

“It’s okay girl. I’ll see you tomorrow.” We hugged and I crawled into the back of the Mercedes.

“Hi Alana,” I said nervously. She insisted I call her by her first name, but it always felt like I was not revering her accomplishments when I did.

“You don’t have plans, do you?”

“No, just a night alone, soaking in the bathtub.”

“I thought you had a boyfriend.”

“I do . . . he’s . . . out of town.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s an artist.”

“Hmmm,” she said with a sly grin. “My second husband was an artist. A bastard when he wanted to be, but they are very passionate. Not just the sex, but they love with fire.” I watched as she recalled something, coiling her lips into an impish smile.

I nodded, afraid to continue down this line of conversation. I wasn’t ashamed of Ash, but now that I loved someone with a mental illness, I learned how little people understood about them.

“What is his name? I know many local artists.”

“Well, he’s um, yet to be discovered.”

She raised her chin and peered down towards me as if seeing my words from another perspective. “Well, I’d be interested in seeing his work. Let us arrange for that.”

“Of course,” I said excitedly. What a dream it would be for both of us to get big opportunities back to back.

We arrived at a quaint Italian restaurant only a few blocks from my apartment.

“I’m a mess,” I said, straightening myself out before entering.

Alana laughed to herself mockingly. “A tall, thin, twenty-one year old saying she looks like a mess. My darling, you aren’t even capable of that yet.”

After water for me, and a glass of red for her, she squinted her eyes as she looked me up and down. She pointed as she leaned in.

“You remind me very much of myself, decades ago.”

“I do?” There was hardly anything more flattering than being compared to one of the most powerful women in the dance world by the woman herself.

“Jordan told me about you, how hard you work. How you left your family to come here.”

I nodded.

“I did the same, coming from Belgium.”

“What I did is not nearly as brave.”

She tsked, chastising my humility. “No, I see that in you. There is a fearlessness. Do you know why I chose you? Even though you hardly danced professionally?”

“I guess I would like to say it’s because you loved my dancing.”

She waved off what I said as if it was an annoying triviality as she sipped from her glass. “But there are many technically sound dancers that come to me. You, my dear, pull people in. You have a warmth, relatability. Yes, you move with power and grace. But you also dance with your soul. You have the ability to show emotion with your body. Before you even took one dance step, when you walked into the audition, I knew.”

I was speechless. Weeks ago, I had cried into Ash’s arms, convinced I would never have a chance at a professional dance career, and now I had Alana Roché DeMill telling me I was her younger self.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing is needed. If I thought you thought you could rest on that alone, I wouldn’t have chosen you, but Jordan said you were the hardest working person he knew.”

Jordan would be getting a monster hug when I saw him next.

“Anyway, my rambling has a point. Danse Nocturne is proving to get a lot of attention. Not just locally, but across the states. I need representatives of the brand for appearances and such. I want you to be one, Jordan will be the other, and Louis.”

I was stunned. All my fears about having my face on camera dominated any excitement regarding the honor of being chosen.

Before I could reply, the server came back. He was handsome with luscious blond hair and grey eyes. Alana leaned seductively in his direction and eyed him like a cat lurking beneath the brush. I guess we were similar. When we wanted something—or someone—we went after him.

After some flirtatious banter and taking our orders, he left the table. The entire time my mind was still on her proposal and I was grateful that Alana being such a cougar gave me time to think.

“So you want me as the face of Danse Nocturne?”

“You already are, we’re just making it more . . . public.”

I had to accept. You don’t say no to Alana. But my stomach contorted with anxiety.

“Are you nervous about being on camera?”

“Honestly, yes.”

“Well, get over it. I won’t allow such foolishness.”

I looked down shamefully. I wish I could get over it. I wish looks didn’t matter. But I knew the reality all too well. People would make comments on online videos, people would ask, my face would become the center of attention.

“Bird, I have learned that if you don’t make a deal of things, others won’t too. Like that waiter for instance. I could take him to bed tonight. Some women would think they are too old to have someone like that. I don’t give a shit.”

That was by far, the most unique pep talk I had ever gotten.

“If you don’t want it, I can give it to someone else. But it should be you. Now, you can tell yourself that you are too old for young men, or you can fuck the blond waiter.”

She sat back in her seat and finished her glass of wine.

I nodded. It was time to metaphorically bed the waiter.

ASH

I tasted licorice as I walked towards the visiting area. It would be my first time seeing Bird since I lost my shit three weeks ago. I missed her, but I was glad that she and Miller decided to wait until I was becoming myself again before having her visit me. It was bad enough that she saw any of what went down.

I was afraid of the way she would look at me now that she knew—sympathy with a sprinkle of pity. I would never be the same in her eyes. I don’t know how I convinced myself that things wouldn’t end up back here. That this all wouldn’t end in Bird crying, my brother being thrust out of bed with his pregnant wife in the middle of the night, and my parents desperately trying to visit and me turning them away.

It’s the cycle of hurt I was afraid of. It’s why I quarantined myself. But Bird pulled me out, and now she would be added to the list of people I had let down. But this time there was something different. I yearned to get back to her, to resume the life we shared. I could do it. I messed up, but that wasn’t uncommon. Relapses happened.

I just needed to find a treatment that wouldn’t dull my synesthesia as much. It might take time, but Bird was worth the time. That is, if she wasn’t here to tell me it was over. I fully expected that.

And if she did that, then the one reason I had to try would be gone.

The ECT put me in a mental fog for hours afterward. I’d preferred she didn’t visit on a day where I had that treatment, but the show was around the corner and this was the only time she could come.

An orderly opened the door to the visiting area and I took her in for a moment. Her back was facing me. Her deep red curls nearly covered what I could see of her back, and it made me smile. Smiling didn’t come easy in this place. Her purple hue hugged her, and I was grateful that the ECT and meds still hadn’t taken that away. She would always glimmer no matter how much the rest of the world dimmed.

“Bird.”

She turned around with a huge smile. I sighed, such a great relief rolled over me that I thought I would cry. But that would really make me look unstable, so I choked it back.

She had dressed up for me. Red lipstick, her hair pinned up on one side, a floral dress. It was a lot like how she looked on Thanksgiving. The ECT also had another strange side-effect—it made me horny. I don’t mean a normal horny. I mean an insatiable, throbbing internal ache that needed to be addressed when I found myself alone. I hadn’t had a chance to relieve that yet today, and seeing her made the temperature rise from my neck and down below my waist. I had almost forgotten about how her presence literally made me hot.

My inability to swallow her in my arms and see her moans reminded me how much I needed to get out of here. I wanted to own myself again. Most of the people here were certifiable. I mean hopelessly insane, pulled off the street for everyone’s safety. There was lots of rocking back and forth, mumbling to oneself, and random outbursts throughout the day. One could see it as entertainment, but seeing someone scream about the Mexican cartel out to get them for the fiftieth time was also becoming a monotonous routine. I was not one of them. I know it might have seemed that way a few weeks ago, but I was
not
one of them.

Bird walked over and embraced me. I took in the smell of her tropical shampoo and her signature lavender scent. That scent made me feel like Ash again. I had forgotten what it was like to smell anything but the unpleasant faux sterility of a psych ward. I felt Bird quiver in my arms. I saw the thin waves of her tears. I felt like shit that I was making her cry. But unlike Sarah, she was alive. I could still fix this.

We pressed our foreheads together and we kissed. It was tentative. “I missed you so much,” she whispered, hugging me again.

“I missed you too, Bird. I’m so sorry,” I breathed into her sweet-smelling hair.

We sat at a white Formica table. Everything about this place was cold. There was so much to say and yet this room stripped us of intimacy. Getting comfortable in here would be like warming up a car in the freezing cold. I wanted to be on the roof with Bird, where we felt the freedom to have our most open conversations.

“How are you doing?” was the first thing she asked.

“Good. I feel normal and I just want to get the hell out of here.”

“You sound like yourself.”

I nodded.

She looked me over with her bright hazel eyes, at first pleasantly, but then she jolted. “What happened?” she asked, grazing her finger against the faint scar just underneath my hairline. I was hoping that she didn’t notice since it wasn’t too big of a cut. The lump that was there for a week, on the other hand, was huge. Head wounds bleed like hell though, even the small ones. “Did the police do this to you?”