What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG Book 8)

by Sabrina York

  I sighed. The last thing I needed was for him to feel he was on his home turf. “Hop on the freeway, take the last exit before the stadium. I’m a few blocks off the off-ramp.”

  The motion of the car made me vaguely queasy. I always had difficulty with motion sickness when I wasn’t driving. He said my name a few times, tried to start a conversation, but I ignored him until it came time to direct him to the parking lot.

  My apartment building wasn’t terribly appealing. It was in a cheap neighborhood, and hadn’t been renovated in any of the tenants’ memories. Half the time, my lock stuck shut, and I had to thump on the walls until one of my neighbors came by to help lean on the outside to get it un-jammed. And the lock on the building’s entry was perpetually broken. I didn’t want Ben to know that, so I made a show of jamming my key into it before opening the door.

  “I’m home, then. You can go.” I tried to glare at him. I didn’t want his pity, and his concern was useless and infuriating for lasting so long.

  He gave me a wounded look, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice how much of my weight was on the door. I definitely felt more rubbery than I should. “You really don’t look like you can make it up any stairs. Are you sure I can’t help you, make sure you get settled safely?”

  “And then you’ll leave?”

  “If that’s what you want. I’d feel better if I could make sure you have something to eat. You look like death.”

  “Why are you making a big deal of things?” I glared. “You know perfectly well it was just a bloody nose.”

  “Well, the longer I’m around, the more likely you’ll talk to me. When I first saw you on that stage…it was that moment the pins and needles leave a limb. If I leave now, it would be like losing you quietly all over again. I don’t want tonight to end on that note. But I meant what I said. This feels like more than your typical nosebleed. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I turned and slid through the open door. He caught it behind me and followed. Since I didn’t object, he didn’t turn back. I led him up two flights of stairs and down a corridor.

  “You looked really good up there tonight.” His face contorted. “Ugh, that sounded creepy—I’m not…” he stuttered slightly. I bit my lip and raised an eyebrow, although he couldn’t see it. “I just meant, you looked at home up there. And you’re as strong a performer as you ever were. It’s good seeing that…retirement hasn’t affected your energy. Seeing you up there, it just reminded me of our senior pas de deux. Remember?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” I practiced a little too hard in the shoes I meant to wear for the performance, and my shank broke onstage.

  Pointe shoes, by their nature, come apart with use. The sweat and pressure breaks down the layers of stiffened fabric and leather, and without that support, a dancer is prone to injury. The shank—the bottom of the shoe—and the box—the area encompassing the toes in all dimensions—were the most crucial areas to watch for overuse and weakness.

  By the time I left the company, I would be breaking through a pair of shoes a day. But when I was training, it was only three or four a week. From the moment I did that first slow eleve and we both heard that shank crack, I knew I wasn’t going to let a stupid broken shoe kill my chances to show our work to those in the audience who were, no doubt, recruiting for next season and our futures. I tried not to let my tension show in my jaw, and flew through the first variation, until my stage exit before Ben’s solo variation. I had a backup pair of shoes and was back on form for my variation. The rest of our performance went without a hitch.

  Our peers had been dutifully impressed that I managed to perform difficult choreography on a broken shoe without hurting myself, and with only a few minor improvisational tweaks to the steps to make up for the dead shoe. At the time, it felt like I was untouchable. When the offer came through a month later, I was ecstatic. I saved the shoe, waste of space though it was, as my own Cinderella slipper. Six months after the injury that led to my euphemistic ‘retirement’, I burned it on my balcony in a fit of depression.

  My shoulders slumped. I really didn’t want to relive this stuff. Ben seemed to realize he’d upset me, because he fell quiet. I slid my key in the lock and put my shoulder into the door to get it open. He stepped away from the door. I shut it behind him, being careful not to shove it too far, lest the failing lock trap him in with me.

  I flicked on a light. I knew that some bastard combination of feminine modesty and social insecurity demanded I lead with ‘sorry about the mess’, but I didn’t have it in me to apologize for myself. So instead, I offered, “Tea? Coffee?”

  Happy to have the out, he asked, “Do you have anything with ginger?” I hid a wistful smile, knowing what he really wanted. His obsession with ginger tea was another sharp reminder of how much we shared. Our first year, he caught a nasty bug and fainted during rehearsal. He sat on the sidelines until it ended, and then I dragged him to my apartment and took care of him until he was safe to return to practice. I force-fed him some nasty smelling tea my grandmother recommended for stomach upsets, and despite his protests, he ended up loving the sharp flavor. Every time we visited home, and he saw my family, he would beg my grandmother for a little more of that tea.

  I rummaged in the cabinets. “You’re in luck. I was rationing that stuff out, since I can’t find anywhere here that carries it. I’ve still got a few bags.”

  “Can’t you just get more next time you visit your family?”

  “No, I…I haven’t been able to spend more than a few hours with them since…” I trailed off. I didn’t like explaining my personal life to him, but he knew them. I felt almost obligated to tell him something. “I talk to my mom on the phone a few times a year maybe, but I don’t want to be any closer to them than that.” I had an excuse to avoid looking at him: finding my teapot and setting some water on to boil.

  “That’s a shame. What happened? I keep in touch, and I even asked about you a few times. She always avoided answering anything.”

  “What do you think happened?” I asked bitterly. “We never had anything to talk about, other than ballet. And she’s never danced herself, so she didn’t understand what I was going through when I couldn’t anymore. Ballet was really the one point of connection we had, and when we lost that…we both said some nasty things, and I promised myself I wouldn’t give her the chance to say any more about the choices I’ve had to make since then. We just gave up trying to put anything other than a token effort in at keeping track of each other.” I looked back at him, dared him to comment; I was used to being challenged about my choices.

  He moved to put an arm around my shoulders. At the last minute, he realized he was covered in blood, while my clothes were comparatively clean. He let out a self-deprecating chuckle. “That almost got messy. And I know this is an awkward time to ask, but do you think I could wash up a little? I don’t have a change of clothes or anything, so I might be cabbing back shirtless, but I’d feel a little better if we could at least get the blood off me.”

  “Bathroom’s on the left, past my bedroom. There’s towels in the cabinet.” While he cleaned up, I scoured my closet for a shirt for him. Somewhere around here, I had to have some of the crappy extra-large t-shirts I used to sleep in. I found them in a box I’d never bothered unpacking, high on a rack in my closet. I seized the first one at the top of the box and waited outside the bathroom door.

  He seemed to feel he had some kind of answer to the awkward conversational thread we’d abandoned, and talked loudly through the door. “I went through some of that, too, after you left. At some point, your whole identity becomes dancing, and even when you don’t know where that point is, everyone else does. My brother and I are reduced to ‘how’s the weather?’ and that’s just from apathy, not awkwardness.”

  I was grateful he couldn’t see my facial expression and was out of slapping reach.

  I hoped to shove his clean clothes in the moment the door cracked open so I wouldn’t have
to look at him, but my reflexes were still muddy. He had the door open and himself halfway through before he walked into my hand, clutching a bundle of fabric. For a moment, we both just stared.

  I had no clue what the hell he was looking at. On my own end, I was entirely too distracted by his chest, lean and sinewy, familiar enough that I’d never forgotten its feel under my fingers. I dropped the shirt, and he barely managed to catch it. I beat a hasty retreat to the stove and glared at the teapot.

  “Is there a laundry room here?” He asked quietly, as though he was upset at having to inconvenience me. I realized he wasn’t fully dressed, and was simply holding his pants in front of him—the wad of clothes he carried was more than the fucked up shirt. “There’s more than a bit of blood on these too, and I’d rather not try explaining to my cabby that I’m not really a serial axe murderer.”

  I sighed. “In the basement. I’ll take them down in a second. I want to get my dress, too. Blood’s stubborn.” I picked up the plastic bag Kitty had given me to take my bloody dress home in and offered it to him.

  “Here’s hoping we don’t spook your neighbors.” He flushed, shoving his shirt and pants into the bag on my arm. I grabbed a vase filled with coins off the table and fished out several quarters.

  “You don’t have to come,” I said, looking for an excuse to leave him behind.

  “But now I kinda do want to spook your neighbors. And I said I wanted to make sure you’re OK. That doesn’t include sending you alone to the laundry room at one in the morning.” I shrugged. The detergent was under the sink, and if he was going to come, he might as well carry it.

  He mostly hid behind me as we made our way down. In the old days, he never would have gotten self-conscious about someone seeing him in his underwear.

  As strange as it sounds, I love the smell of laundry. Apparently, one of my neighbors had finished a load of their own not long before, and the room still smelled like fabric softener. I appreciated that comfort, with the uneasiness of having Ben at my back. I emptied the bag into a washer with a disturbingly wet plop. How much had I bled, anyways? I felt vaguely queasy. I’d never been one to balk at the sight of blood, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worrisome seeing a vampire’s meal soaking through your favorite dress.

  The room was long and narrow, really just several of the square storage closets that lined the parking area in a row, with the dividers removed, and only one door. Ben stood too close to me. I couldn’t blame him, since there was barely room to turn without elbowing him. I shoved the coins into the machine and turned back to him to take the soap. I poured some in and screwed the cap on.

  “We should wait a few minutes—sometimes, when it fills, if it’s not balanced right, it shuts down, drains, and you have to pay all over again to adjust it and start it if you don’t do that within five minutes of the buzzer sounding.” I shut the machine lid.

  “You know best,” he smiled at me. I remembered that quiet smile, which I usually only saw at the end of a long rehearsal, when we were both cranky and taking pains to avoid showing it to each other. I tried to be angry, tried to snap and let the tension be evident. I’d rather be cranky, and see him cranky too. At least then I’d have something to distract me from the light filtering through his hair as he looked down at me.

  I took a step backward and braced my weight to pull myself onto the washer. I needed to not feel like he was looking down on me. I dangled my calves off the side of the machine and twisted the hem of my shirt.

  “So, James is getting married. That’s exciting.” I also needed a distraction; as much as I didn’t want to care what was happening in his life, it was better than talking about mine.

  “Yeah, it’s been too much excitement. I’ll be happy when it’s over.” His tone was carefully bland, and I recognized that he wasn’t happy with the conversation. I sighed. Let him do better, then. “I’m teaching now.” Well that was abrupt.

  “Oh yeah? How’s that treating you? You always seemed even less likely to enjoy teaching than me, and I was a disaster at it.” He raised his eyebrows. “A bit after the surgery, I tried teaching a class or two at the Y. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. There is not enough money in the world for me to subject myself to that for another day.” I shuddered.

  He sighed, and I could tell he was collecting himself. I cocked my head, but kept my mouth shut. “I miss performing, but what happened to you—it was the nightmare I always imagined for myself. And especially seeing what it did to you—I didn’t want to get chewed up and spat out. I wanted to leave on my own terms. So now I just teach a few advanced solo and pas de deux classes.”

  “Whatever makes you happy,” I said, but wished I could tell him off for giving up the opportunity to perform. I was angry that he equated his quitting out of fear with my injury. “It, uh, sounds like it makes you happy.” I clenched my jaw and tried to focus on it as a net positive, despite my anger at him using my experience as a crutch.

  “It makes me happier, but not as happy as dancing with you did. And it’s isolating. Only marginally better for making friends or learning to love.” He smiled at me and let that linger. I forced myself not to let my own smile show—his had always been infectious, infused with the same charisma he’d performed with, and the same affection he’d treated me to every second he wasn’t performing. “What I didn’t get free of was company drama. The studio has been on me to find a co-teacher, so I can demonstrate things better, but I don’t really want to find and train with another partner, not when I can just pull students aside and talk them through the move. It’s good for them to be used to even one more person’s style, and you know how few dancers make it to that level.” He cocked his head to the side with a softer smile, almost conspiratorial.

  I think he recognized that if he talked any more about dancing, I was going to throw the soap at him, so he pivoted. “I never heard past the initial x-rays. Tonight you were, I never would have known it was hurt. But how is your leg?” I tore my eyes away from him, grateful for the distraction from his firm physique, shifting weight awkwardly.

  I pulled up my skirt to show him the scars centered around my kneecap and the incision down my calf. He stepped a little closer to look. “It still hurts some, but the surgery made sure that the only thing I’ve lost is pointe and the ability to actually train regularly. It took me months to relearn all my barrework, and some of the combinations are fucked because there’s not really room for a solid exercise in my kitchen. The insurance payout really only covered the surgery and a little physical therapy, so I’ve done most of the work on it on my own.”

  He hesitantly traced the scars and rested his hand on my kneecap. I shivered, as that touch combined older memories of flurried encounters and slow seductions with a clinical analysis. I focused on his face while he touched me, and eventually his eyes found mine.

  “I’m sorry.” His hand traced further up my thigh, and his lips tightened a moment. “Fuck, I’ve missed you.” He wrapped his arms around me and I froze. I willed myself to pat his back, but I couldn’t dispel the awkwardness. He kissed my neck and tightened his arms. “You have no idea how I’ve missed you, Lani.”

  His voice caught, and it was the most emotion I’d ever heard him show. More, even, than his desperation as I shut him out. I rested my palms on his shoulders and held him until he composed himself.

  I buried my face in his shoulder and inhaled. He smelled like my soap, but beneath that was his own faint musk. He’d always been fastidious, so it wasn’t any more subtle than I remembered. But breathing him in, I was twenty again, in a bathroom off an empty studio, celebrating a soloist announcement. His skin was soft under my lips, and with his muscles’ every shift, I remembered a lifetime of movements and music, and how very much we depended on each other. I felt how much I’d hurt him, and wondered what, exactly, I’d deprived him of.

  He kissed his way up my neck and looked at me with a hungry energy. His breath sank into my skin, though it reminded me of the sti
ckiness of my blood, and I fought with myself not to pull away. “I love you, Lani.” His lips crashed into mine forcefully, sucking and clinging with just as much need as his hands on the small of my back, crushing me against him.

  I felt I should say something, but every time I tried, he kissed me harder. I realized he was afraid of what I might say, and another well of guilt collected inside me. Dimly, I realized I was crying, and that even with my legs wrapped around his hips, I had to feel closer to him.

  I caught my feet in his waistband and shoved his boxers down. He moaned into my lips and slid his hand underneath my shirt, and under the elastic on my skirt. I never wore underthings home from work—it was a holdover from so many long days in a dance studio, trapped in layer after layer of sweaty dancewear: tights, leotard, chiffon skirt or practice tutu, layers of warmup-wear… After I exerted myself, I wanted nothing against my skin, and wearing loose clothes home with no underthings was the closest I could come.

  I felt him smile into my lips, and realized he was testing me to see exactly that. I had never thought about where that habit came from, although I had tried to prune out some of my other ballet-related mannerisms in the years since my retirement. But that one had slipped by, and as he shoved my skirt up and stroked my thighs, I was glad.

  He almost fell into me as he rose to tiptoe, pulling me toward him along the edge of the washer to angle me as close as he could manage. He slid into me with a broken moan, and for a moment he was dazed, no longer struggling to hold me back from saying whatever might hurt him next.

  “I love you, Ben,” I demanded his ear, holding his head in place and kissing the lobe as I spoke. He froze. “I’m so sorry. I had to get away, and I didn’t see any way we could have a life together without everything I lost.” My lips trembled, and I lost my grip on his hair. He pulled back enough to meet my eyes, and kissed me again as his breath caught. I couldn’t tell if the tears on our cheeks were mine or his, and it made sense to believe they were ours. He trembled against me. His touch loosened to unconscious pats before he sobbed and clutched me tighter, his hands sliding under my shirt again, searing my back with his pain.