Turning Pointe (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Aly

I lose track of how many hours later it is, how many streets we’ve wandered, how many canals we crossed, how many times people smiled with affection at my arm linked through Zed’s. He’s oblivious to all of it, tilting toward tipsiness, either staring at me or lifting his face to the sky. No matter where he’s looking, the only word for his expression is wonder. Uncontained wonder.

After the second bar, he runs his fingers down my cheek. His brow furrows and he says, his voice hoarse from whiskey, “What’s happening?”

Our bodies are trashed after three days of performances, but we can’t stop moving. I catch his wrist with my hand, turn my mouth to kiss his palm. “Does it matter?”

He laughs and ducks his head to touch his nose and mouth to the corner of my jaw. All these years, and here we are. He kisses the edge of my mouth, like a warning, and then kisses me again fully, his mouth confident and sure, steady and soft.

He pulls back and whispers, “You know it does. And that’s not an answer. You can’t dance away from this question, Aly.”

I don’t know how to tell him that I’m afraid of losing him if this goes south, whatever this is, and I don’t know how to tell him that I know. I can feel it, here, in the dark of the bar, beads of sweat sliding down the glasses sitting on the worn wood table. I tore open my chest three nights in a row with him—in front of an audience—and let myself be as vulnerable as I was defiant. This is real. It’s standing on the cliff, hand in hand. It’s the start of a new ballet. It’s improvising. It’s terrifying, but there’s no one else I can imagine doing this with.

I dance around the words, even in my mind.

Zed leans forward, hesitates and then whispers, “Want to go home?”

I do.

We wander from the bar down the main street full of honking cars and noise, even hours after the performance. I don’t know what time it is, but it doesn’t matter. My body hums with aliveness, anticipation. The light drizzle that began earlier in the evening is a steady light rain now, and it tempers the heat on my skin. The cold is irrelevant. My hands and feet could be freezing. How would I know?

Zed runs his hands along a wall, his fingers open and loose so raindrops slide between them, and that’s when I decide that tonight, nothing matters but us. Everything else can fall away, carried down the storm drains and rushed away with the splashes left behind by footsteps. No tomorrows or next weeks or when we get homes. No yesterdays or past boyfriends and past girlfriends. There’s no ballet and nothing hurts. Just him, and me, and everything how it should have gone, if we were a fairy tale. If fairy tales were real life.

Here is the cliff, and here we are.

A crack of thunder jolts me and Zed yanks his hand off the wall and grabs my hand, tugging me hard. We break into a run just as the rain turns from a soft patter into a torrential downpour, fat, heavy drops beating against us, sure to leave bruises like fingertips. Needy, wanting fingertips.

In the hotel elevator, he pulls me against him, shielding me like I’m not already soaked to the bone. His hair sticks to my forehead as he fishes out the key and unlocks the door. I start to laugh because I am tipsy, and he is wonderful, and it’s raining in February in a city made of water and wandering streets and bridges that twist against the sky.

“Is anyone here?” I whisper, realizing we are in his room.

“I told them to get the fuck out,” Zed says, shutting the door behind him with a solid click.

“Oh my God, everyone knows.” Of course they did. They’ve seen the way we’ve danced the last three days. They probably didn’t miss the way he kissed me before each performance and held me after, different from the way we used to lean against each other.

The post-performance high used to be enough for me. Not anymore. I lean against the wall, covering my mouth and smothering the laughter threatening to bubble from my chest. I twist my ponytail, watching the water splash on the carpet.

“Is that bad?” The anxiety in his voice tugs me from the reverie, and I look up at him.

I don’t have to think when I say, “Not at all.”

From here, I can’t see his pupils but I know they are wide, swallowing me, eating me up. He used to be so curious and careful. And in the wings of the stage, the darkness hid his expression. In the harsh light of the hotel room, the lust fills his face.

“You’re staring,” I say, smiling.

Sometimes, it can bring me to my knees how vulnerable he can look. How vulnerable he isn’t afraid to look. His head rolls a bit against the door and then he says, “I can’t help it.”

A part of me can still hold back. A part of me knows that this is the point of no return. But when I let go of my hair, I know without a doubt that even if I could go back, I don’t want to. I want this. I want it to be us alone without the world tonight. I can’t walk away, because if I have one chance to make this work between us, I have to seize this moment. Right here. Carpe momentum. I’m making up Latin.

So of course, the dumbest question, the one that’s always been there, as much as this feeling’s always been there, slips out. “Why?”

His laugh is harsh, almost startling, and he turns his face away from me, fingers sliding through his hair. He shakes raindrops off his head. “God, Aly, that’s the wrong question.” His voice hungers for the answer.

“What’s a better one?”

I am in love with the way his head lifts up, the way his lips part. I am in love with the way he steps toward me, backing me up and against the wall. I am in love with his height, the way he towers above me, and I am in love with his hand, slipping up the side of my neck, holding me steady. Holding me. He smells like whiskey and rain and I am in love for the first time since I found ballet.

We’ve walked a fine line for so many years that here, with his thumb pressing into my hairline, my equilibrium is tossed out the window. I settle my hand on his hip, feeling the fierce muscle beneath my fingers, and I’m not sure if I’m tempering his movement toward me, or encouraging it. He steps close enough that the knuckle of my thumb brushes back against my side. The last time we stood this close, we were interrupted. There’d be no interrupting tonight. Not now. It’s just him and me, and nothing. It’s glorious.

“When.” His voice breaks through the mist in my mind. “When, is the question. Aly—” and I shiver at his voice, dropping lower, like his hand traveling knuckles-first down my neck, “—yes or no?”

“Yes,” I say without any hesitation. Yes.

* * *

He takes the lead like he’s been waiting for my invitation all this time. I’ve barely finished the word before his mouth closes against mine and his hips press me against the wall. He kisses me with the force of a storm, catching me off guard. One of his hands slides up my side and his fingers leave traces of fire on my skin. His tongue slides against mine, and when I gasp, he grins ferociously. My fingers find the edge of his shirt and I barely know what I’m asking for when I grip it, pull at it, but he lets me go, lets me take a breath just long enough for him to strip the wet shirt from his body and toss it somewhere behind him, for someone else to find.

My mind mentally catalogs the room: the couch, the kitchen counter, the two doors into separate bedrooms. Stark and plain, like a stage. The shirt I don’t mind someone finding. We, on the other hand, can’t stay here.

I’ve seen him shirtless almost every day of the week for the last six and a half years, but this is different. I press my hands flat against his stomach and he hums against my throat. He kisses me again, rocking his hips against me as my fingers slide from patches of damp skin to dry, starting and stopping, like my heart and my lungs. His tongue slides into my mouth and my hips tilt up toward his, making both of us groan and then press smiles into each other, embarrassed. Like losing yourself in the dance only to land at the end and find yourself in awe that the audience is clapping for you.

His hands slide up my sides, like they have so many times before when I’m covered in spandex and tulle and satin, but this time, they carry my shirt with them, as well. His thumbs count my ribs, his mouth runs down my sternum and I am his, his, his. I’ve seen what his fingers can do on a piano, on a violin. I know the power in his body from watching him in the mirrors and feeling him lift me into the air.

This is what I want, to feel wanted and loved and vulnerable and seen. Without losing myself. I once thought this was impossible, but in his hands, I am strong and fragile, wanted and wanting, seen and revered.

His thumb brushes over the cup of my bra and we both stop for a moment, breathing in deeply, our lips bruised and full. I can’t look at him but he brushes his lips against mine, so painfully sweet, so wonderfully anxious, and my fingers curl into his back. Don’t leave, I want to say, but he doesn’t move, and maybe he isn’t leaving me. To be sure, I hook a finger through his belt loop and pull him flush against me. He groans, ducking his head to my shoulder under the veil of my wet hair.

“What are we doing?”

I don’t like lying to Zed, but I think he knows it’s a lie when I say, “Don’t know, don’t care.” I palm him through his jeans, just to make sure he gets the point. I don’t want words for this. I just want you.

“Aly.” He whispers my name. It isn’t my name, it’s his name for me and suddenly that’s made all the difference. It’s what I needed, right now, a reminder that at least right now, it’s only me. His voice tightens as his hips rock against my hand. “I don’t have any—”

He is my best friend and he’s my other half and he’s the only one I’d ever want in my bed, in me, and still, it’s hard to say the words. It’s hard to tell him that my body’s given up on this particular aspect of what makes me a woman. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t.” I breathe out, inhale his strength. “Zed. I want you.”

“Alyona Miller,” he says, and his voice cracks. He shakes his head, his lips brushing back and forth against mine. He kisses me again, so slowly I think this is the only way he knows how to dismantle me, lay me out with all my parts so he can learn how I tick.

I wait for him to say something else but he doesn’t, just slides his hands down the backs of my thighs, and I take the hint. He carries me back to his room, lays me down on the bed and then asks once more if I am sure.

“Yes.”

* * *

I wake to fingers marching down my spine, kisses pressed to the back of my head where my hairline meets soft skin. I stretch, pointing my toes, testing my arches, rolling my shoulders, the same way I do every morning when I take immediate stock of what will hurt when I dance that day. I close my eyes, memories digging through my hungover mind and pulling at my skin. Zed, sucking one of my breasts. Zed, his head between my legs. Zed, on top of me. Zed, holding me when I fell fell fell from so high. So high.

I am frequently sore when I wake up. I am not frequently sore in the places and ways I am sore this morning.

I roll over and immediately have to bite back a grin. I am unprepared for how adorable Zed is in the morning when he’s worried and anxious and rumpled. His dark hair sticks every which way and his eyes brim with worry. He’s been chewing on his lower lip. Or I was last night.

“So that’s why I’m sore,” I tell him, even though I remember.

Some of the anxiety slips from his eyes and his shoulders drop a little bit. “If I didn’t have to take a cold shower before, I do now.”

I smile and lean forward, slipping a hand through his hair. It’s impossible to tame it like this, dried all wild from the rain and the sex. “Unfair that you look like this after a night like that.” I imagine I look like an albino yeti.

“Why?”

“Because I won’t get this out of my head now.” I mean it honestly. We’re going to have to get out of bed at some point and the rest of the world will come back into focus. We might never get this moment again. I don’t want to lose it, but the inevitable presses down on me, making it hard to breathe.

His voice stumbles drunkenly into the space between us. “Aly...”

I wiggle closer to him on the bed and his eyes flutter closed when I kiss him. I want to stay there, naked and pressed against him, finding all the curves of our bodies and the variations in which we fit together.

“Zed,” I say in return.

He runs his fingers down my ribs and I almost, almost combust against his chest. “I’m going to shower. We’ll talk.”

This is what it’d mean to be with him, I think to myself. To be vulnerable, all the time, day in and day out, and to find ways to be strong when I’m not on the stage. To be strong, despite feeling constantly open, constantly understood. There’d be no more safety in being an enigma.

He rolls out of bed and tugs on pants, starting for the bathroom door. Halfway there, he spins around. He comes back to the bed, blushing, and leans over, brushing his lips against mine. My heart in my mouth is now on his tongue.

“Stop thinking so much,” he whispers. “We’ll figure this out. We have three more weeks of the tour. Let’s just enjoy it.”

I’ve never been good at letting go, at letting myself just enjoy something without feeling I needed to earn it. And I haven’t earned Zed. I might never earn Zed. But I don’t want to lose this, so I nod and promise myself I’ll try.

Chapter Nine

Zed

The tour’s a blur, but our pas de deux isn’t. Every city we land in, we get better and better. Our lines are more electric, our chemistry more palpable, our ferocious hearts left on each stage, beating for the audience to see. We’re left breathless and aching, and we’ve found the cure for that in each other. Sure, the first time that Adrian walked in on us made Aly turn as red as her leotard, but she got over it. It’s nothing the company wasn’t expecting anyway.

I remain enthralled by the way Aly comes to bed. Sex is another stage for her. She leaves her secrets and her walls on the floor with her clothing. She’s demanding and needy, intense and emotional, captivating and elusive. And each time I come back from the bathroom and she’s still there, naked, her hair tousled and knotted, kicking her feet lazily in the air as she checks her phone or reads the ballet blogs, I’m floored.

I wake still smelling like sex, sweat and her. It’s the only way I know this isn’t a dream.

At breakfast before our flight home, Aly slips around the table and sinks into my lap with a sigh, one thin cool arm around my neck and her legs tucked beneath her.

“Hi,” I say, wrapping an arm around her. She’s wearing flip-flops, which means her feet hurt too much to slip into her flats. “You’re cold.”

“And you’re warm,” she says, sounding sleepy. She slept in her own room last night so at least I can’t blame myself for that. I offer her a piece of toast that she takes and munches slowly, getting crumbs all over and down my shirt.

It’s like how we always were, but more. Maybe it was always like this and I never noticed. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Now when I touch her, she’s entirely mine. I always knew I was hers.

A part of me worries as we fly home that we’ll land and she’ll step away, retreat back behind the façade she’s carefully manufactured over the years, where we’re just friends and nothing more. But she doesn’t even go back to her apartment from the airport. She comes home with me that night, and pretty much every night after that. I don’t know why I worried. We’re Aly and Zed. We’re A to Z and everything in between. We’re still each other’s, more than we’re ever going to be anyone else’s.

She takes a few days off for her shins and her knee, and then another week because she gets the flu. I must have an immune system of steel because after dancing six days a week again, I return home to her—God, that’s just so fucking brilliant to say—and never get sick.

Now, asleep next to me in bed, she looks washed out and tinier, more so than normal. She spent half the night tossing and turning and bitching at me.

“Aly,” I say, sitting up. “Come on, we have to get up.”

Our morning company class starts in an hour and we’ve been grabbing breakfast at this little place around the corner from me on our way up to the studio. Aly sighs and opens her eyes, glaring at the clock on her side of the bed. There’s a pile of clothing on that side of the room too. Her side of the room.

It’s funny how quickly something shy and unfamiliar turns into something close to normal.

“I’ll make it for pointe class,” she murmurs, closing her eyes again.

I raise my eyes doubtfully but shrug. She’s still bouncing back and the company isn’t technically mandatory. Just highly recommended. She hasn’t missed one before, but she doesn’t look like I’m going to convince her to come this morning. “Alright. Want me to grab you anything?”

She shakes her head against the pillow and by the time I get dressed and grab my bag, she’s out like a light again. I press a kiss to her forehead and head uptown.

The rehearsal space in Philly feels like home, with all the glass windows overlooking South Street, the sound of trucks, the beep-beep-beep-beep of a bus stopping and letting passengers on and off, the way the floor shakes a little bit when the subway rattles deep beneath us. It’s good to be home. There’s something reassuring about knowing exactly where you need to go to clear your mind, to recharge, to take a deep breath.

Some days, I love class. Other days, class is something you get through because you know that excellent technique isn’t born, it’s made and drilled and pressed into the veins and bones of your body until it’s second memory. This morning it’s sunny and warm after two days of a late snow, so the concrete outside glimmers and our street shoes are wet, but we’re all delirious with spring fever. We’re a little too lazy with our arms and legs behind us and our necks and mouths too loose, but we hit all the heights in our jumps and nail all our turns. Those of us who show up for class anyway. At the break, I rehydrate in the corner and text Aly.

She doesn’t text me back until just before I go off to a rehearsal for a modern ballet I’ve been cast in, where she’d normally go off to pointe class before her rehearsals, and then it’s a simple, short

be there soon :(

At the end of my rehearsal, I head over to the pointe class, leaning on the doorway, above all the younger girls watching the advanced dancers. Aly’s there, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Her blond hair is pulled back in a tight bun, her body arching backward in midair, defying gravity. Her long legs, protected by light purple leg warmers, move like the fluttering wings of a hummingbird as she and the rest of the girls cross the room.

“God, look at her feet,” whispers a girl on the floor below me. “I bet Alyona Miller was born with perfect turnout.”

“Have you ever seen her walk down the hallway?” whispers another girl. “She walks like a duck. Do you think that’s how we’ll be when we’re her age? That it’ll feel weird to point our toes forward?”

“Probably,” says the first girl.

I smile and Aly catches my eye as she reaches my corner. She smiles back at me over her shoulder and gets scolded for being distracted. Grinning, I step away from the doorway.

I’m halfway through my book when she slides onto the bench next to me and leans her head on my shoulder. Her leotard peeks out beneath her old Phillies sweatshirt and her hair’s in a low ponytail. It’s that easy to transform from a prima ballerina into just your average girl. I lean my cheek against her head and wait for her to speak. Sometimes it takes us a few minutes to get ourselves together again, shed the protective skin we wear here, turn from professionals back into kids.

“How was class?”

I shrug. “Good, actually. I think we’ve all got spring fever.”

“Is that Adrian’s excuse?” she asks as Adrian tries, clumsily, to flirt with one of the other corps dancers on her way out the door.

“I’ll have to give him some pointers,” I say with a grin.

“Oh, so now you’re the king of flirting?” She laughs and sits up. “I taught you everything you know.”

“No, you just gave me a reason to compete,” I tell her.

She rolls her eyes at me and then gets to her feet, offering me her hand. When I take it, I’m surprised by how clammy it is, like she’s nervous. “Can we walk?”

“Yeah.” I get to my feet and try to calm myself. “Want to hit up the halal food truck on the way? Chicken and rice?”

No matter how much you remind this girl she needs fuel in order to dance, she’s never had a positive relationship with food. I think in the real world, they’d probably say she had an eating disorder, and maybe she does. I don’t know. She eats because she has to, and as long as she’s eating, I don’t complain. But I’m used to needling and harassing, poking and prodding, and offering about seven thousand options before she reluctantly picks one.

Today, her eyes light up. “Yes. That sounds good. Can we take it to the park?”

I’ll say yes to anything if it means she’ll look this bright for the rest of the afternoon. She hasn’t even mentioned missing company class, or being late. Add it to the list of things I’ll ignore because it’s Aly and she’s happy. I think. We walk down Walnut Street, hand in hand, dodging the dirty water splashes from the buses and tourists and shoppers milling on the sidewalks.

“You’re quiet,” she says when we stop at the truck on Sixteenth Street and wait for our food. She chews on her bottom lip.

“Is there something you’d like me to say?” I tease her, and then touch her chin. When she glances up, I kiss her softly. She tastes like toothpaste still, like she barely rolled out of bed when she arrived at work. She slips her hand into my back pocket and tucks her chin onto my shoulder. We sway, like we’re dancing, until they call our order and we pick up our barely stable Styrofoam plates for the final few blocks to the park.

The benches are still wet, but the park’s bustling. We sit on the ground by the fountain instead, watching a swing dance club’s lessons next to us.

Aly stabs at the chicken in her plate with her plastic fork and then takes the tiniest bite. So not everything’s changed. She glances over to me, her gaze careful beneath her half-lowered lashes. She smiles around the bite of chicken. “You’re staring.”

The last time she told me that, I nearly fucked her against a wall. I have to look away from her for a minute before I shrug. “Yeah.”

She smiles a bit, color lifting up her cheeks. “King of flirting?”

“Can’t say this is my A game today, to be honest.” My lamb gyro’s fallen apart and I pick at it with my fingers. It’s picnic style. What do I care?

“Okay. I need to talk to you. Can you stay calm for a minute and hear me out?” The words spill from her in a single breath and my head jerks up. She’s looking at the swing dancers. My mind blinks off and I force it to come back online. She’s breaking up with me. This is it. I want to say that I’d be okay with it, that I could go back to being friends to avoid losing her. Because I can’t imagine her not in my life, that’s true. But I’m not sure if I can be just friends anymore. I don’t know if I can rewind to the way we were before Amsterdam.

“You look panicked already,” she says, and then she squeezes my hand, turning to face me, crossing her legs. “We’ve known each other for how long now? Almost seven years?”

“Seven years in June,” I say, trying to focus on her words.

“My favorite thing about us,” she says softly, “is that we’ve seen each other’s dark secrets and we’re still here, right?”

“Aly,” I manage to say, “if you want to go back to how this used to be, just spit it out.”

She blinks and then shakes her head hard. Our hands tremble in the space between us. “What? Oh, God, no, Zed. That’s not what I wanted to talk about. I want this.”

“Then what?” My voice cracks, just on this side of sounding harsh.

“I’m pregnant.”

The funny thing about parks is how absolutely absurdly bright they are at midday. Even when you’re under those giant trees and surrounded by buildings tall enough to block out the sun, it still seems so bright to be sitting there in the middle of the park. Maybe it’s because we spend so much time indoors.

“You said—” I begin quietly, unsure of where my eyes are supposed to go. What I should be looking at. Anywhere but her right now. I try to pull up that first night, when neither of us were concerned with protection, when she said that she couldn’t get pregnant. At least, that’s what I thought she meant and that’s certainly what we’ve been operating on since then. That particular part of the conversation isn’t usually the part I’m seeking from my memory.

“I know,” she says, and I can’t help but look at her because she chokes up. She swipes at her eyes. Tears. She’s crying. I try to think of the last time I’ve seen Aly cry from something other than physical pain. She shakes her head a bit. “I haven’t gotten my period in years but apparently that doesn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t ovulating. And—I’m so sorry, Zed. I’m so sorry.”

“Stop,” I manage to say. I close the lid to my food and push it to the side, feeling sick to my stomach.

She turned twenty on the flight home. I turned twenty a few weeks later. We’re young. We’re so young still. And here we are, knocked up and oblivious to our bodies. What the fuck happened to better safe than sorry? And if not the first time, every time since then? We can’t handle real life or adulthood. And now she’s pregnant.

We fucked up. I know. We were both so fucking naïve and desperate. And in love. The thought pops up unbidden to my mind. We haven’t said it, but it’s there and it’s been there longer than the twelve weeks since we flew to Europe.

“Okay,” I whisper. I swallow, say it again, just to reassure myself. “Okay. We can handle this.”

Liar.

“It could destroy my career,” she says, turning her fork around in the rice. “I mean, I’m young. I could bounce back. I know that. There have been others who have done it before. I—I didn’t want to—this is a joint decision, if you want it to be.”

I take a deep breath. I don’t know what I’m agreeing to, but she’s right. This is a joint decision, no matter what we choose. “I’m in, if you’re in.”

“You were in, that’s why we’re in this predicament,” she mutters, and at my shocked face, bursts into laughter. Loud, wild laughter that turns heads. She doubles over, forehead brushing her knees, and when she sits back up, there’s color in her cheeks and a brightness in her eyes.

“Aly Miller,” I say, grinning despite myself. “You just made a dirty joke.”

“I know,” she says, and then laughs again. She brushes her hair back and glances at me, the side of her mouth still tilting up. “So yeah? I mean—I know this is weird, for where we are right now.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I say, thinking that’s becoming the theme of our relationship, and then lean back, suddenly realizing something. “This is why you’ve felt like shit.”

“I should have realized it sooner,” she admits. She looks at the swing dancers again as the music shifts to a new song, one I kind of know. “It’s not like I get sick that often. I just feel run-down right now.”

I don’t want to sit still because if I stay here, I’m going to throw up. Like Aly probably did this morning. I’m twenty. I still have to give my roommates cash to buy me beer when we host anything at the house. I can barely make it to class on time and remember to do laundry.

I need to move. If I’m moving, if I’m dancing, I’m not thinking. The song playing catches in my ear again and I know it. It’s “De-Lovely.” I get to my feet and offer Aly my hand. She accepts it, and it takes us a few steps and a spin to join the other dancers swing dancing by the boom box and the fountain, kids jumping up and down in their version of dancing between each couple. We dance the whole song without saying anything else, because there’s not much else to say at this point. When the song ends, though, reality crashes back through me. The song only held it at bay, like a dam. When my feet stop moving, my mind starts spinning.