Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Dear Valentine
Opposites Attract Book Two
Romeo Alexander
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
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All Rights Reserved
Published by BUP LLC, 2018.
Copyright © 2018 by Romeo Alexander
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This book is a work of fiction. All resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Please don't read if you are under eighteen.
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Chapter One
“Un! Deux! Trois! Quatre!” Madame Roussou, the ballet instructor calls to the company. “Plie! Releve! Saute! Croise!”
I feel my legs work through the motions, as the rest of the company joins me in the cadence of her voice. Madame Roussou works her way down the line of dancers, pausing to correct the position of the feet, the arch of the back, or the sweep of the arms. She has a critique for every dancer, and when she pauses at me, I glance out of my peripheral, as she looks me up and down and commands, “Arch your back Colin. You need to lift from your core. You are shorter than a usual Danseur, but you need to present the image that you are just as tall!”
I work my core muscles, giving me an added half-inch of height as I plie again. It is well known through the company that the Adago will be continuous until Madame, as we call her, instructs us to stop. We let the movements flow from us in sweeping motions, as she continues down the line of dancers. I glance in the mirror to the left and straighten my shoulders and arch my back, giving the illusion of height. I couldn’t stand out more in the floor to ceiling mirrors that line the entire studio. My auburn hair contrasts with the dark waves or platinum blondes of the other company members. My lesser height is also a source of contention, not only for the many dance instructors I’ve had growing up, but also with other dancers I’ve worked with.
I continue the movements as Madame moves her way back up the line. Her eagle eyes are sharp and, in this round, she is not as forgiving as the last. If any of her dancers have slipped into their bad form habits, she gives them a sharp rap on the offending appendage with her hard cane.
As she passes by me the second time, I make sure that I lift from my center, imagining that my navel is the apex of strings that are attached to my limbs and the ceiling is where the marionette sits, lifting me to my fullest height. Her gray eyes pause for a moment, but I am spared the sharp sting of wrath from her corrections. The beads on Madame’s shawl jingle as she continues, and it is a sound that I have grown accustomed to over the last year. Somehow it is as natural as the cadence of the classical music that crackles from the record player. Madame is a stickler for tradition, having once trained in the finest Academies in France.
After her retirement from the Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris, The Paris Opera Ballet, she was given a tenure here at Julliard in New York. She impressed upon the alumni the importance of classical training. She remained a permanent fixture, teaching at the school for the last several decades.
As the morning class passes, I feel my legs really start to burn. Madame instructs us to dig down deep, find our passion, and finish out the session strong as she has an important announcement. I continue lifting with a ballerina, Katarina, who I had paired with before. I can feel my arm and leg muscles fatigue as she launches into another lift, and I execute the move flawlessly for the last time.
As I set Katarina down, she squeezes my arm in appreciation for a well-done class. I can see her cringing as she limps away worrying she might not be doing proper foot care in her pointe shoes. I sit against the back wall with the other danseurs, waiting for Madame to limp over. I rub at my sore calves and watch Katarina unlace her shoes and pull them off. The sheepskin padding she has put in to protect her feet is stained with blood and she winces as she peels off the layers. Open sores are visible on her feet from the pressure of the shoes.
“Katarina, how much have you been dancing this summer?” I ask quietly. Although there is a summer holiday, Madame has always encouraged us to continue dancing in between semesters so our feet don’t end up just like this.
“Oh, you know me. I thought I could handle taking a few weeks off. Now I’m paying for it.” She cringes as she applies antibiotics and then an ice pack to both feet. I nod, but make a mental note to speak with her further about proper foot care here at Julliard. Madame comes limping over, leaning heavily on her cane.
“Now, as most of you know, the Valentine’s Day Virtuoso is the winter event here at our school.”
Murmuring rumbles through the dancers, but quickly falls silent when Madame slams her cane on the wooden studio floor.
“There will be silence when I am speaking!” she shouts. “Ah, where was I? Oh, yes. The Valentine’s Day Virtuoso. Every year, Julliard hosts many talented organizations here at this prestigious school. And every year, the drama programs are the ones to take center stage.” She mutters something under her breath about the drama director, Mr. Schlewp. “The alumni have always been the attendees with their spouses at this event, and they have also been the ones deciding which acts are to be the highlighted event.”
I feel like she is going somewhere with her speech, because she twirls her scarf’s beads in her withered hands like she does whenever she is agitated. Much like the rest of the dancers, I’m beginning to wonder if she is about to announce that the drama program has taken over the show again as they have done in prior years. But what she says next has me and the rest of the company giving her our rapt attention.
“This year, some of the younger alumni came up with the brilliant idea to combine both the drama club and the ballet company.”
There was absolute silence, until Angela, a prima ballerina spoke up. “Madame, they want us to do drama?” She twirls her black hair tightly into a coil and secures it at the back of her head in a severe bun.
“Yes and no, Angela. From what they tell me, the idea is to perform a musi
cal with choreographed dancing that they wish to see coordinated with the drama students. Each organization will then perform their own respective acts, so we will of course perform one of the classics. The idea is to bring in more patrons to the event, as it raises money for the school. The venue will be large enough so that the alumni can have their night of romance, entertainment, and dining by candlelight while they watch the performances.”
“What will the performance be, Madame?” Eric Reynolds, the class Primo asks. Madame turns to him, her wrinkled face twisting her harlot-red lipstick up into a smile. Eric has been her favorite as he is an exceptional dancer, tall and lithe, with hair equally as black as Angela’s.
“I believe Mr. Schlewp has chosen a piece called Rent.”
A collective wave of excitement washes through the crowd. Madame is known for her classical training and preference to choose pieces accordingly—Romeo and Juliet and Swan Lake being her two favorites. It will be interesting to know how she will adjust to a modern romantic piece with the added input of the drama director. It’s also questionable if she understands that the piece caters to the LGBT audience, as the performance is based on the romance of a gay couple. I look at Katarina, wondering if she is as enthusiastic about this as I am.
The diversity of the piece could give me a shot at landing a primo role. Madame has always told me if it wasn’t for my pesky Irish roots, cursing me with unnatural red hair that glows under the spotlights, and if I had been an inch taller, I would be flawless as a Primo. My genetics is something I’ve had to battle with all through my dancing career. But I’ve trained for hours and hours, making sure the moves I execute are flawless. With this piece, the stereotypical danseur is not necessarily the best fit. The main characters in Rent are an eclectic and diversified group of people.
I perk up immediately, listening for all the details. I’ve already decided to audition for the role of Tom Collins, the professor. I wonder how difficult it will be auditioning next to drama students. Will they be just as intimidated by the dancing roles as we are by the acting ones? There is some crossover between the two groups, but this piece could make a dancer’s career shine.
“There will be a conjoined meeting of the two groups of students tomorrow to discuss tryouts and auditions. And then once the roles are cast, morning classes will be joint and afternoon classes will be to work on the piece in each area’s respective classrooms. Your evening classes will be the normal routine,” Madame finishes.
The class is dismissed for the lunch break. I walk with Katarina to the dining hall for lunch, my stomach growling. As we enter the dining room, I can see the uptick in excitement from the drama students as they buzz around one another, talking excitedly. They are an eclectic group of students. They stand out from the rest of the crowd. The musicians are always noticeable for having instruments with them while the dancers are almost always seen wearing tights, unitards, leotards, and leg warmers to keep their legs warm for the next round of dancing. However, a lot of the drama students, dress very differently. There are the bohemians, the gypsies, and the kids in jeans and t-shirts with a touch of something different.
One of the things I noticed first about the drama group is Gregor McCallum sitting in the middle of it. I duck my head and steal glances in his direction as Katarina and I chat and load up our trays. Gregor has always gone for a simple look of jeans and a t-shirt. He wears a tan fedora hat which he sometimes twirls in his hands and sometimes pulls low over his eyes making it hard to tell if he’s watching you or not. He always seems to be the center of attention. Maybe it has something to do with the smile he perpetually has on his face. Or the fact that he’s always laughing, whether it’s joking with his friends or something he finds funny about life. It echoes through the dining hall, a large rectangular room with high windows and plain gray and white tables and chairs. Gregor’s laugh cheers up the room whenever it booms out. Maybe that’s why I find my attention drawn to the drama students: Gregor’s presence.
I shake my head and bring my thoughts back to the present.
“I think you should try out for Mimi!” I tell Katarina.
“Yeah, why is that?” she asks. “Angela is going to get the part, anyway,” she says bitterly.
I look sideways at Katarina who is loading her plate with sweets, carbs, and sugars. I look at my own and load it with proteins and greens.
“Katarina, what’s wrong?” I watch the top of her dark head. She turns her face up to me and I consider her almond-shaped, brown eyes. They appear exotic to me, but maybe only because she is foreign.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Come on, pet. We’re best friends. You can tell me anything. It just seems like you’ve been down since we got back to school…like, your heart isn’t in this anymore.”
She glances around nervously and then glares at me, “don’t say that out loud! You want Madame all over my ass in classes?”
“Katarina, we all know she goes to her suite and takes a nap on lunch. She possibly even has a few nips from her bottle of port she carries in her tote bag that she thinks no one knows about. She’s old. She can’t hear anyway.”
“For an old lady she still has senses like a hawk, or possibly two people who shall remain unnamed reporting back to her.”
“Well I think if they report anything to her, it’s going to be the atrocity of foods on that plate,” I remark.
Katarina looks at her tray and shrugs. “I guess. It’s just…I don’t know. I’ve realized that dancing isn’t going to last forever, you know?”
I ponder this over as we continue down the line and she slaps a healthy dollop of macaroni and cheese on her tray, followed by one of those sticky buns with the gooey glaze. She is going to have such a sugar crash later this afternoon and feel completely awful. She isn’t wrong though. A dancer’s career typically doesn’t last long after they leave the school of performing arts. Ten years, maybe fifteen. It looks as though Katarina has already decided she would prefer to do something else with her life. The trouble is, her over zealous Russian parents are paying top dollar for her to attend this school.
I had to earn my way into the school by my Saint Patrick’s Day performance of Lord of the Dance. I had grown up in Boston in an Irish family from Southie, and I had auditioned for the role in Michael Flatley’s piece. At the time, in high school, I still hadn’t narrowed my focus to one style of dance or the other, and I had miraculously landed the role. My father had been away at the docks working as a longshoreman and my Mum had recognized that I am different, and had encouraged me to pursue my passion, dancing. Coming from a Catholic family, my other differences were never spoken about, but she had always known. As my mother, the love she had for me had her make peace with the fact that I am gay. She has never said a negative thing to me about it. When my brothers were old enough to work with Dad down at the docks, she insisted she needed a man at home to help her. So in secrecy, she had sent me to dance lessons. My sisters were my practice partners and never said a word to the rest of the family. They just encouraged me to continue practicing.
A recruiter for Julliard had attended the performance on opening night. He had been Madame Roussou’s escort, and the two had approached me after. It had been a grueling session of answering questions about my dancing career and Madame had circled me many times, clicking her tongue at my less than ideal height and red hair. But the recruiter, Mr. Ward, had been enamored and convinced Madame that I was just the refreshing difference the school needed to bring into the fold. Last year had been brutal as Madame had refined my ballet skills. My feet had bled, my back had ached, and it seemed at every turn, I was shown up by Eric who had been the best of the best. Eric had been dancing since he was three and he had out-shown me in the sheer fact that he had the ideal body type. It had irked me all year. I had been practicing all summer to make up for it though and now I was determined to make the audition a real competition for him. I can empathize with how Katarina feels about Angela though.
“It
won’t hurt for you to try,” I whisper. “If you decide that dance just isn’t for you, maybe you could talk to your parents. I could be there with you if you like.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet of you Colin. But are you completely insane?” she asks staring at me horror struck.
I blink at her, wondering what part of what I just said was offensive.
“I’ve already had this conversation with my parents. They are adamant that I remain in dance. Anything other than the best is not acceptable to them,” she states.
“Katarina, it is your life,” I insist. “How are you going to be the best if this isn’t what you want.”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t know what I want. I’ve always dreamed of being…”
“Being what?” I ask as we make our way to the back corner. Even in the performing arts schools, there seems to be cliques. Katarina and I aren’t really with the in crowd of dancers, but we aren’t outcasts either. The table we sit at gives us a perfect view of the dining hall. There are only a few chairs at this table which seems to be the oldest in the hall. There are scratches on the gray surface, and the best chairs had been stolen for other tables which were already overcrowded. I pick the wobbliest one, leaving the other gray chair for Katarina so that she won’t topple over, if the legs finally do give out.
“Being an actress,” she whispers like it’s blasphemous.
I place my hand over my heart. “Ah! What say you? How has thee forsaken me!?” I cry as I stand and pirouette, dipping down onto one knee and holding my hands up to her in a manner of pleading.
Dear Valentine: A Gay Romance Story (Opposites Attract Series Book 2) Page 1
