Sasha: Book Two

by Tonya Plank

  “What about Holly?” Alessia said.

  I sighed. It was true; I hadn’t expected her to leave simply because I made one of her weekly lessons available to another student. I was dumfounded someone could be so offended by something so minor. “That was different. I did something directly to her. Who’s going to leave because another student is mad and tells them to?”

  “I don’t know, Sasha.” Alessia put her head back into her hands. “Another student canceled her one weekly private—it’s unclear if that’s related—and Luna said she’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks and will call me after she returns. It appears Cheryl has had some influence.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I just wanted to dance, and teach dance. Why did studio politics have to make that so difficult?

  “And, yes, she also threatened to sue the studio. As you know, her husband is a big-name lawyer,” Alessia added.

  “For what?” I laughed. Alessia didn’t.

  “She didn’t say. But I assume sexual harassment, the way she was talking.”

  I wanted to punch my fist through the wall. But no. I could control my emotions and let reason rule. I wasn’t a violent person. “As I said, there are plenty of witnesses who saw, who know how insane she is. You can’t seriously be scared of her? How is everyone so scared of her and Luna?”

  She rubbed her fingers together, indicating their money was their weapon. I looked through the window that opened onto the lobby. No one was there. The school was still on vacation for two more days. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue teaching here. I had my students I liked, who had promise, whom I was helping advance, possibly to their own professional careers. I liked teaching. But the politics were ruining it for me.

  “What are you going to do?” I said, still gazing out the window, not looking at her.

  She hesitated as if she knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say. Or maybe she was waiting for me to look at her. I didn’t avert my gaze. “Sasha,” she finally began. “I want you to try to make amends with her. I don’t mean you have to continue as her teacher. But just apologize for the misunderstanding. Try to get her to come back, and bring her friends back. Or just…just try to make things right, give it closure.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was disgusted. After what Cheryl had done. If she could harm my partner, she could do the same to another teacher. Alessia cared only about her business. I suddenly had no desire to work for this woman anymore.

  “I need…I need you to make things right with her. Please, Sasha. I’ve worked hard to build this…” I could hear the tears threatening to overtake her voice. She wasn’t a whiny person, definitely not one who cried in public. She was a hard-ass businesswoman. She really was worried. But damn her for not trusting me.

  I stood and looked at her straight on. I wanted badly to quit. But instead of stomping off like a child, I said simply, “I will continue to work hard with my students, teaching and taking them to championships. I will continue giving showcases and performing at events outside the studio for the studio’s benefit. I will not, however, have any dealings whatsoever with Cheryl. I will not teach her, I will certainly not apologize to her, I will not speak to her at all. Ever. If you would like, you are free to fill the hours left vacant by her, Luna, and this other student you think she has convinced to leave, with some of the students on my substantial wait-list.” With this, I turned and left without waiting for her response.

  ***

  “So, what did Alessia have to say?” Rory asked me from the tub, where I’d just served her a glass of chilled white wine. She looked slightly worried. I could tell she was trying to figure out from my body language if it was good or bad.

  I smiled. “I can see your brain working. My little lawyer,” I said kissing her rosy cheek. “My smart, very, very smart, beautiful, lawyer girlfriend.”

  “Stop it! You’re making me want to pull you right down into this tub with me!”

  I raised my eyebrows. Sounded enticing.

  “Seriously,” she said. “What happened?”

  I told her what Alessia had said, and what I said in response.

  “Oh, wow. I can’t believe she wanted you to do that,” she said, looking off in the distance, shaking her head.

  “I think she’s just worried. She knows Cheryl’s crazy. I don’t think she was serious.”

  Rory shook her head, a haze in her eyes. “But that makes it worse. I could see if she truly believed a student’s claim. But it’s like she’s letting her get away with what she did. And what she can do. I mean, she scares me now. I’m proud of you,” she said with a flirty smile, though there was still worry in her eyes.

  “Please stop worrying. I will never, ever let her touch you again. I prrrromise,” I said, rolling the r’s and making her giggle. I squeezed her soapy hand.

  “I know. I’m just mad at Alessia now. I know it’s her business but she should be above that. I mean, what if she insists you make amends? And she doesn’t make Cheryl leave? She’s out to sabotage us. It could just get really…bad. I can’t believe she cares so little about her employees.”

  I took a breath. I’d been thinking about other work possibilities a lot lately. Especially since this happened, but really starting with Alessia’s insistence that I persuade Rory to do pro/ams, and turn her into another cash cow. I squeezed her wet hand again. “In the event I decide to leave the studio…there are other possibilities. I can’t imagine it seriously coming to that. I think Alessia knows how bad Cheryl is, and she’s not going to let go of me. She’ll come to her senses. But, you know, there are other possibilities,” I repeated.

  “I just don’t want you to have to leave the country,” she said, her voice almost a whisper now.

  “It’s not going to come to that.” I laughed. “There are different types of visas, or other studios where I can work that will make me eligible for the same visa I now have.”

  “But that would still entail you having to leave the country for a time,” she said. We hadn’t talked about this in detail. She must have done her own research.

  I nodded. “There are also others ways to qualify for U.S. citizenship.” I said this before thinking about the exact words coming out of my mouth. In my heart and mind I thought of us getting married. But I certainly didn’t want to ask her in this way. I wanted her to know I wanted to marry her because I was so beyond in love with her, that she was everything to me, that she was half my soul, not for some stupid political reason. What had I said?

  Her big doll eyes widened and her cheeks grew rosy red. Sweet. Then she gulped, breathing in some of the bubbles that had inched up her neck, resulting in a minor coughing spell.

  “Are you okay?” I gently patted her back. But I could read just what was going through that beautiful, powerful mind of hers. We were on the same wavelength. Of course.

  She looked away, obviously embarrassed. “Mmm hmm,” she mumbled.

  I nuzzled my nose into her hair. “That’s a very serious possibility,” I whispered, without elaborating further, just leaving it in the air. I kissed the nape of her neck. I would marry her in a heartbeat. But right now we really needed to focus on the competition.

  She giggled. She understood. She could read my mind as well.

  ***

  Rory’s two weeks of doctor-ordered rest were officially over and we were both psyched to make up for lost time. Luna’s temporary and Cheryl’s permanent departure from the studio worked out well. It freed up a lot of my time to work with Rory and Greta. Alessia wisely dropped the apology-to-Luna issue, and I asked her to wait to replace Luna and Cheryl until Blackpool was over so I could work hard with Rory. I convinced her that if Rory and I won, and were Blackpool champs and not just finalists, it would mean all the more honors bestowed on the studio, all the more demand for privates and pro/am comps, and all the more demand for local performances, for which the studio would receive a good share of our fees. I knew it was hard on her temporarily. S
he needed to bring money into the studio on a regular basis. And I was her main source of income in terms of the privates and the pro/ams. But she agreed with me, and so yielded.

  Now we just had to work on getting that bastard Gunther to let up a little on my love. He was becoming a bigger pain in the ass every day, telling Rory he’d never had any employee work less than eighty hours a week. But she was a trouper. She struggled hard to do well at both her job and our training. I worried it would eventually take its toll, though.

  Greta and I, despite our usual resistance to doing so, made little videos of our rehearsals so that Rory could watch during breaks at work. There were too many times we’d made a tweak to a tiny bit of choreography and forgotten to tell her. Rory was getting so serious about Blackpool, she’d get as upset as I did when she made a fumble. I didn’t want her too anxious. Especially when it was my fault. But Gunther caught her watching a video on her phone at her desk. Even though she was eating lunch and obviously on break, he’d made a reference to her not taking her job seriously. So she stopped “practicing” during breaks. She continually assured me that if it wasn’t for the case she so believed in, with the innocent potential death-row client, she would seriously be entertaining my earlier suggestion about leaving this job.

  The man’s asshole-ishness came to a head the Friday of the weekend she and her mambo team were to have their first competition in Irvine, when he conveniently forgot that she’d be away Saturday and Sunday and insisted she spend the entire weekend working on Jamar’s case. She called me from the ladies room of her office, very upset.

  “I just asked him this morning if he had any more work and he totally blew me off, told me he was too busy to talk. So, I was getting ready to leave a little early to come home to get mentally prepared for everything and Samantha called to wish me luck. And right when I’m on the phone he stops by as if he suddenly has something for me to do. Then he stomps his foot, like a friggin’ child, Sasha! And shakes his head and leaves, looking very pissed. So I tell her goodbye and run down to his office and he tells me he needs the memo before I leave. I’m like what memo?” She was crying so badly I couldn’t hear her well.

  “Calm down, sweet. Just take a breath. I can’t understand well.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a pause. “Apparently there’s hearing for Jamar on Monday and he told me I’d agreed to write a memo for him. I was like, what hearing? He never told me about any hearing! He totally excluded me. And now…” Now she sounded pissed. Her crying had turned to anger. I didn’t blame her.

  “Rory, the bastard is totally playing mind games. Is there really a hearing that you know of? I’m really starting to think this guy is whacked.”

  I could hear her working to catch her breath. I could practically hear her pulse racing. “I don’t know. The courts are closed. I swear he said nothing about any hearing, about any memo, the entire week. He told me I was totally irresponsible. He acted like he was genuinely mad. I think in his mind he thinks he gave me the assignment. And now…he’s making me question myself. Have I been that out of it with all this training and the injury and Cheryl and everything that I totally—”

  “No,” we both said in unison. She knew she wasn’t the problem. She had a psycho for a boss. My heart sank for her. It was impossible to deal with these kinds of people. I should know. My family, Cheryl… I tried to think of something helpful I could do about it besides going downtown and beating the living shit out of him, which wouldn’t do any good.

  “Anyway, he says I have to work all weekend to get this memo done. Sasha, I just don’t know what to do. The team’s counting on me. And I know my job comes first, but I’m not even entirely sure what he wants from this memo. He was so pissed, he stomped off and I only have a vague understanding of the research.”

  “Because he made it up, Rory. There is no memo for you to do or he definitely would have had you do it. He’s setting you up to fail.”

  There was brief silence on her end. I knew she didn’t want to hear that. I knew she wanted to trust her boss. Who wouldn’t? But this was simply the truth as I saw it. “I know,” she said after a lengthy exhale. “But if I don’t at least try to give him something, he can fire me. And that will look very, very bad from my very first legal employer.”

  “Do you really think he would do that? He needs you.”

  She laughed through tears. “Yeah, he does. But we’re talking about a guy who’s nuts, remember?”

  “Well, I’m no lawyer, but if you want my advice, I’d go to Irvine tomorrow, think about nothing but mambo until you kill it! And then I’ll drive you back early Sunday morning and you can work all day on his memo.” I immediately regretted what I’d just said since Sunday was our practice.

  She took a deep breath. “Sasha, that would be perfect. Would you mind?”

  And now, of course I had to say no.

  ***

  I picked her up at her office, her briefcase overflowing with file papers, her face still a little tearstained, though I could tell she’d tried hard to wipe off all of the mascara.

  “Feeling better?” I said, enveloping her in my arms and giving the crown of her head a long kiss.

  “Mmmm. Yes, thanks to you. My ever-so-understanding man with all the answers!” And with that, she giggled for the first time that night.

  We didn’t even try to practice. I knew it would be pointless, we were both so wound up. Instead of giving in to frustration-induced panic all night, I decided she needed more than anything to relax before the team comp. So we sat in my backyard in the warm bubbles and cool breeze of the jacuzzi. We were way past having uncomfortable silences, and she mostly just sat in my arms as I kissed her head and neck and massaged her shoulders.

  When it began to grow late, I prodded her to let me drive her home. Of course I wanted nothing more than for her to stay the night. But we both knew she needed to get a good night’s sleep, which meant we needed to sleep separately. We’d decided she’d drive down with the team for camaraderie. I’d give my private lessons at the studio, then drive down in the evening to join her and watch. It was nice to have everyone know about us. No hiding our love. I couldn’t believe I’d once even considered doing that.

  “Mmmmm, don’t wanna go home,” she murmured sleepily.

  “I know. Someday…we will…have to stop doing this… I mean, every night,” I said, again stopping when I realized what I was trying to say but shouldn’t. Yet. She should just move in with me so I didn’t have to keep driving her back. But was it time for that? Would we kill each other while training?

  She giggled, knowing exactly what I meant.

  Chapter Two

  I checked into my room at the hotel, and had a glass of cognac in the bar. It was much more quiet, more sane, than the last time we were here for the student pro/ams. Cheryl, Luna, Arabelle—it all seemed like a lifetime ago. I sank into a back corner booth and tried to relax. But I was filled head to toe with Rory’s anxious energy. We were sending each other vibes even when we weren’t in the same room. Calm down, I mentally told her. Don’t think about anything going wrong. Nothing will. Don’t worry about your knee, don’t worry about letting your team down—you’re hardly going to be the one to do that if anyone does. And for God’s sake don’t think anything the least bit negative about that beautiful body of yours.

  I’d noticed last night in the hot tub that she was still losing weight, despite my efforts to get her to eat more and drink my juices, and to make her feel better about herself naked. I wasn’t doing enough to convince her. I hadn’t wanted to pester her, with her Gunther problems and her injury. But that was going to have to change. She needed to listen to me better about that body image of hers.

  “So excited about this!” It was a voice I recognized but couldn’t quite place. I was sitting in a darkened corner, actually hoping no one would see me, just wanting to be alone with my thoughts for a while. Plus, this was Rory’s show. Not mine.

  “She’s going to rock it! Sh
e’s such an awesome dancer. Without that über bitch Cheryl around to spoil things, she’s going to kill the others!”

  I could now see them. It was Kendra and her girlfriend. The one who’d gotten into that absurdist costume tiff with Luna.

  “Totally!” This was Rory’s other good friend, Samantha.

  They’d all shown up to cheer her on. Sweet, good-souled Rory, making so many genuine friends in the studio. It was more than I could say for myself. I was too much of a perfectionist, slave-driving pain in the ass to win people’s hearts on that level. I mean, I knew they liked watching me perform and looked up to me as a dancer role model. But that was from afar—totally different from making connections with people who knew you as well as you knew yourself, capable of lasting a lifetime. Well, I had that with Greta. And Sadie. And now I had it with Rory. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad guy.

  Samantha eyed me. I gave her a little wave. She seemed to know I wanted to be alone. She smiled back, without pointing out my whereabouts to anyone else in the crowd.

  I sat by myself for a little while longer. About half an hour before the competition was to begin, I texted Rory.

  Merde, my love. Don’t worry about complete perfection. You can’t help but be spectacular and that’s far better. I love you.

  Merde was just a French curse word that, for some reason, ballet dancers used to wish each other good luck. It was a dancerly way of saying “break a leg.” Ballroom dancers didn’t use it but Rory liked it and I’d overheard her teaching it to her friends. She hadn’t taught it to me, probably because I’d been so pissy about her ballet background when I first met her. I was far over that now.

  I made my way to the ballroom and watched the team warm-ups. It was odd. The teams were dancing all different styles, and had different numbers of dancers. Some teams were composed of more pros than others. Rory’s had only one. Well, two: Pepe plus Rory. They were by far the team leaders. But then, Rory was all I could see.

  Mambo Caliente was the second team up. Good, I thought. She wouldn’t have time to watch the other teams and get nervous or lose her confidence. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, as it likely did hers, as she and her teammates took their places. Rory and Pepe were center stage, as well they should be. My woman looked absolutely divine. Of course. The bright red costume looked brilliant on her. But, yeah, it was loose-fitting. She really had lost weight.