by Cara Malone
Falling Gracefully:
A Lesbian Romance
by Cara Malone
www.caramalonebooks.com
This story is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance to real people or events is entirely unintentional.
Copyright© 2017 Cara Malone
All Rights Reserved.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright
Falling Gracefully
A Note from the Author
Books by Cara Malone
Sneak Peek: Fixer Upper
CHAPTER 1
The cramped lobby of Mary Beth’s School of Dance was packed with young ballerinas and their parents when Melody Bledsoe walked in. She was holding a newspaper in her hand, folded to the classified section with a big red circle traced around an ad. It seemed like a terribly archaic way to find a job, but Melody’s mother laid the newspaper in front of her this morning along with her breakfast, and Melody knew she had to at least ask for an application.
The job was for a front desk receptionist, and by the utter chaos happening here, it was clear that Mary Beth needed to fill this position desperately. The waiting area was only about ten feet square, and in that space there were at least eight adults and, well, Melody gave up trying to count the kids because they all pinballed around the room in constant motion. Most of the girls were wearing pink leotards and ballet skirts, a few colorful tutus took up even more of the tight space, and they were all waiting for class to begin.
Melody couldn’t have chosen a more chaotic time to arrive.
When she finally made her way to the desk, weaving past a dozen parents all trying to wrangle their kids into ballet slippers, the woman behind the counter looked just as frayed as Melody’s nerves felt. Her wispy gray hair stuck out of her bun in a dozen odd angles and she was frantically trying to do three things at once.
“Who’s here for the one p.m. beginner ballet class?” She asked, her large voice booming into the room above the ruckus. “Don’t forget to sign in on the clipboard before you go into the room. Anyone need to make a payment? Who’s here to pick up their costume for the recital? Dressing room is down the hall - please try on your costume before you leave. The time to make alterations is running out!”
Melody watched wide-eyed as the diminutive woman rattled all these things off, moving from task to task and knocking things over as she tried to move behind the small reception desk and was thwarted at every turn by a mound of costumes in plastic bags, parents clambering for the sign-in sheet, and kids running underfoot.
It was dizzying, and Melody was just about to elbow her way back out of the room when the woman barked, “Whatcha need, kiddo?”
It took a moment before Melody realized that the woman was talking to her, and then she felt tongue-tied. What did she need in this anarchy?
“Umm, you’re hiring?” Melody said meekly, her voice barely audible above the commotion in the room. She lifted the newspaper and pointed to the ad.
“Oh, great!” The woman exclaimed. “You’ve got good timing. As you can see, I could use all the help I can get, especially with this recital coming up fast. Would you mind stepping behind the desk for a few minutes? I gotta pee like a racehorse.”
“Uh-” Melody started to object, but the woman was already squeezing out from behind the desk.
“Consider it a working interview,” she called as she headed down the hall at one end of the lobby. Then she added with a laugh, “Or a trial by fire, if you prefer. You don’t have to do anything - just get people to sign in if they’re here for ballet and if they need anything else, tell them Mary Beth will be back in a few minutes.”
“But-”
“Thank you!” the woman called, and then she darted into a small bathroom halfway down the hall and slammed the door.
“Oh boy,” Melody muttered under her breath.
If this was how Mary Beth’s School of Dance functioned, she wasn’t sure her nerves could handle a job here. She thought about heading for the door – she could be halfway back to her parents’ house before Mary Beth even flushed the toilet – but then a velvety voice behind her asked, “Is this where we’re supposed to be?”
“I was just wondering the exact same thing,” Melody said, turning to find the owner of the voice. It turned out to be a stunningly pretty girl with pin-straight, carrot-red hair and vibrant green eyes. Her teeth grazed briefly across her lower lip as their eyes locked, and then she looked away, squeezing the hand of a little girl in a black leotard.
“I’m looking for the beginner ballet class,” the girl said. “I spoke to Mary Beth on the phone and she said we could sign up for the first class free since it’s the end of the year.”
Melody couldn’t stop staring into those mossy green eyes. She thought the girl didn’t look nearly old enough to have a kid that age.
“Yeah,” she found herself saying, “the clipboard’s right here.”
CHAPTER 2
Jessie Cartwright hadn’t been on time for anything but work in the last five years, and judging by the scene that greeted her at Mary Beth’s, her daughter wasn’t off to a much better start.
Ellie had been begging to take ballet lessons ever since they watched The Nutcracker on TV a few months ago, and when Jessie figured out that she could try it out for the price of a pair of ballet slippers and a leotard, she was determined to make it work around her schedule. If Ellie liked the class, it would mean extra shifts at the grocery store to cover the cost of lessons, but it was worth it to Jessie if it made Ellie happy. That was her philosophy.
Today they had to rush across town, Jessie’s speedometer dancing just over the speed limit, in order to get here on time but they made it just as a dozen little ballerinas and their mothers started filing into the dance studio.
Class was starting and Jessie still had to sign Ellie in and figure out why her ballet slippers kept falling off in the car ride over here.
“Hurry, bug,” Jessie cooed as she pulled Ellie along. That might as well have been the anthem to their lives, rushing the poor kid from place to place while Jessie tried to make it seem like she had everything under control. In reality, she never knew what the hell she was doing. She wasn’t sure if that was the plight of the teen mother, or all mothers.
There was no one behind the reception desk and Jessie wanted to throw her hands up in exasperation – she probably hadn’t taken a full breath since she dashed out of the store to go collect Ellie from her mother’s house twenty minutes ago. Thankfully, a girl standing in front of the counter heard her frustration and stepped in to help.
“I think you just need to sign your name in the column for beginner ballet,” she said as she passed Jessie the clipboard and a pen from the desk.
“Thanks,” Jessie said breathlessly, dropping Ellie’s hand to sign her in.
As she took the clipboard out of the girl’s hand, their eyes locked in a more substantial way than Jessie was expecting. The girl had large, chestnut-colored eyes and for some reason Jessie couldn’t explain, they had the effect of clearing all the chaos out of the room. She didn’t hear little feet running across the hardwood in the studio anymore, and she didn’t feel all the people moving around her in the lobby. She was locked into this girl’s gaze and for a moment, nothing else existed.
Jessie caught herself after a second and looked down at the clipboard, saying, “Umm, my name or my daughter’s name?”
“Let’s see,” the girl said, leaning over the clipboard and scanning the list of names already written on the sign-in sheet. She smelled like peppermint and she said with a wry smile, “I don’t know many dance moms named Zenith, so I think it’s supposed to be her name, not yo
urs.”
Jessie laughed, acutely aware of the narrow space between her and the girl. She was tall and lean, with nearly black hair and dark features that continued to draw Jessie in. But of course she was standing close to Jessie – she suddenly remembered that the lobby had about a thousand people in it, even if they had all vanished in the moment she looked into the girl’s eyes. She forced her own eyes back down to the sign-in sheet and she wrote Elizabeth Cartwright.
“Oh thank god,” the girl said with an exaggerated sigh. “I thought for sure you were going to write Sony or Panasonic and then I’d be in trouble.”
“Her middle name’s Toshiba if that makes you feel any better,” Jessie said, and Ellie smacked her thigh before she got to fully enjoy the smile spreading across the girl’s lips.
“No it isn’t, it’s Mae,” she corrected. “Come on, mommy, they’re all going in.”
She was right – the lobby was clearing out as everyone filed into the studio, leaving Jessie and Ellie and the girl with the chestnut eyes.
“Okay, girls!” Someone suddenly called out in a booming voice that Jessie recognized from the phone. Mary Beth herself was coming down the hall, ready to begin the lesson. “Everyone into the studio, it’s time to warm up!”
She rushed past the reception desk, throwing a quick wink at Jessie – or maybe it was directed at the girl, she couldn’t tell – and then disappeared into the studio.
“Come on,” Ellie said again, tugging at Jessie’s hand. “They’re starting!”
“Okay, okay, bug,” Jessie said. She handed the clipboard to the girl and forced herself to come back to reality. What the hell had come over her, anyway? She turned to Ellie. “We still have to figure out how to get your shoes to stay on your feet. Sit in that chair and we’ll give it one more try.”
She pointed to a chair on the wall next to the reception desk and pulled a small pair of ballet slippers out of her back pocket, kneeling down to try and put them on again. Ellie was looking over Jessie’s shoulder at the kids stretching on the floor, and she was so eager to join them that she barely held still long enough for Jessie to catch her foot and shove one of the slippers over it. She was swinging her legs and bouncing in the seat, and Jessie wanted to get her into that room as much as Ellie did – if she burned off some of that raw energy, maybe Jessie could squeeze in a rare nap this afternoon – but the damn shoes kept popping off every time Ellie wiggled her toes.
“Sit still or you’re never gonna get to dance,” Jessie warned, catching Ellie’s swinging foot again as she muttered to herself, “I don’t understand. Are these things defective?”
“Did they come with elastics?”
“Huh?”
The girl had been watching Jessie’s struggle and she asked again, “When you bought them, did they come with a pair of elastics?”
“Oh,” Jessie said, “Maybe. I just bought them before we came.”
“Oh,” the girl said with a laugh. “Well, I hope you kept the box because the elastics are kinda necessary.”
“Figures,” Jessie said. She was kicking herself for not planning all this better – it didn’t even occur to her that Ellie needed shoes to try out a free class until her mother mentioned it this morning, but who knew ballet slippers required assembly, anyway?
Jessie’s train of thought was interrupted as she realized the girl was crouching down beside her. Again she could smell peppermint on her breath and Jessie felt flushed for no reason. The girl wasn’t paying attention to Jessie, though. She turned to her daughter instead and asked, “Elizabeth, right?”
“Ellie.”
“Ellie, do you mind if I take a look at your shoes?”
“No,” she said, and just like that all of the squirm and excess energy went out of her. She always was good about minding her manners for strangers, and she held out her feet obediently.
The girl removed the slipper that was dangling precariously from Ellie’s toes, and Jessie handed over the other one. Her fingers brushed across the girl’s palm for a split second and a light shiver ran through her. Jessie convinced herself that it was nothing more than a gust of air blowing under the door that made her react like that, because if it wasn’t cold air then she didn’t know what had gotten into her.
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about these right now,” the girl said to Ellie after examining the slippers. “No matter how tight we pull the string, you’re just going to keep dancing right out of your shoes without those elastics. I bet Mary Beth would let you dance in your tights just this once if you tell her it’s your first lesson.”
“Sorry, bug,” Jessie said. “Mommy screwed up.”
“It’s okay,” Ellie said. “Can I go in now?”
“Yeah,” Jessie answered, “Go ahead, I’ll be right behind you. Be careful – don’t slip and fall in those tights!”
Ellie burst out of the chair, darting between Jessie and the girl and nearly setting them both off balance as she bolted into the studio.
“Hi, I’m Ellie,” Jessie could hear her saying to the other kids, and Jessie smiled, letting herself rock backward to sit on the floor a moment. Ellie made it to class and Jessie could finally catch her breath.
“That was dumb of me,” she said to the girl, who was still crouching beside her. Juggling two jobs, a kid, and the sleep deprivation that came along with it all did a number on her common sense sometimes and she said with an apologetic shrug, “The box is in my car so the elastics must be in it.”
“No worries,” the girl said with that megawatt smile. “When you get home, sew them in with a needle and thread – they come separate so you can fit them specially to Ellie’s feet. Put the slippers on her and tighten the string, then line the elastics up with her arches. I usually pin mine in place, take the slippers off, and then sew them in.”
“Thanks,” Jessie said. “You’ve been really helpful.”
“You wanna hear something funny?” the girl asked.
“What?”
“I don’t even work here,” she said with a laugh. “I came to apply for the receptionist job and got thrown into something called a ‘working interview,’ which Mary Beth may or may not have forgotten about already. You want to be my reference?”
Jessie laughed and said, “Sure. I’m Jessie, by the way.”
She extended her hand to the girl and felt her stomach trying to climb into her throat. She hadn’t felt giddy like this since high school and she nearly yanked her hand away, but it was too late and the girl’s fingers slid into hers.
Jessie’s heart skipped a beat, and she told herself to stop being ridiculous.
The girl introduced herself as Melody and Jessie liked watching her mouth form the word. Her lips were so pink and her tongue tapped against her teeth on the lo syllable, and Jessie had the sudden urge to try the name out in her own mouth.
“So, Melody,” she said, blushing slightly and then soldiering on, “You must be a dancer if you know this much about ballet slippers and you don’t even work here.”
“Nope, just a savant who wandered in off the street,” Melody said, cracking a smile to let Jessie know it was a joke. Her eyes lit up and Jessie could see little flecks of gold in them. Then her smile broke into a smirk and she said, “I used to be a dancer. Not anymore, though.”
“What hap-”
“Mommy!” Jessie heard Ellie shriek from the studio and she instantly went pink in the cheeks. So much for those good manners. Ellie called, “Where are you?”
It was a blessing and a curse to have such an extroverted child, and someday soon Jessie would have to go over the rules of ballet etiquette with her – including the fact that it was not polite to screech in the middle of a lesson, especially while classical music was playing serenely in the background.
For now, though, Jessie really ought to get in there. She got up from the floor and dusted glitter from her pants – the whole lobby seemed to be covered in a fine layer of the stuff from the pile of costumes behind the recepti
on desk – then she said, “It was nice meeting you, Melody. Thanks again for your help.”
“No problem,” Melody said, standing up beside her. “I hope Ellie enjoys the class.”
Jessie gave one more backward glance at Melody before she stepped into the studio. There was a row of folding chairs along one wall and that’s where all the other moms were sitting, each one of them holding a notebook in her hands and diligently taking notes about everything Mary Beth did with the dancers. Jessie found a seat and smiled at Ellie, who was doing her best to keep up with them despite the fact that they had an entire year’s jump on her.
Her mind kept going back to Melody, though. There was something about her that Jessie couldn’t shake – something magnetic, and she sensed it could be dangerous if she didn’t shut down this feeling right away.
CHAPTER 3
Melody took a seat behind the front desk after Jessie disappeared into the studio. It seemed silly to leave now, after all the work was done and before she had a chance to talk to Mary Beth about the receptionist job. Melody was pretty certain she had it in the bag if she wanted it, but that was another reason to get up and walk out right now.
She could go home and tell her mother that she tried and it wouldn’t really be a lie. She’d never have to know that Melody left before Mary Beth finalized her so-called working interview.
Melody sighed and looked at the mess surrounding the desk. There was a giant mound of sequined and glittering costumes to her left and a few weeks’ worth of sign-in sheets scattered across the desk. Mary Beth really did need help, but Melody wasn’t sure how much more dance she could handle in her life. Even if she wasn’t dealing directly with the students here, being the receptionist still might be too much for her to handle right now. Why couldn’t her mother have found her an ad for a waitress, or a deli clerk, or a telemarketer instead?
She glanced at the clock on the wall in front of her and saw that it was only fifteen after one. Classes like this usually ran for an hour, but she might as well stick around since she’d come this far. She turned to the pile of costumes and started going through them, straightening them out and organizing them according to the names scribbled on the plastic garment bags.
