Last Dance

by Renee Fowler

  I had no intention of fooling around with her in here. I’m trying to be mindful that she needs rest and time to heal, but Anna’s having as hard of a time keeping her hands to herself as I am.

  I love all those sighs, gasps, and whimpers she makes. I love how all of her shyness around me falls away when we touch.

  Well, maybe not all of it. She’s not looking at me, but I can hear the bashfulness in her voice when she says, “I like when you called me that before.”

  “What?”

  “Honey,” she says shyly.

  Claire despised any terms of endearment. She found them condescending, and demeaning, but that word slipped out unbidden with Anna, maybe because her eyes are that beautiful shade of brown, like honey, or jeweled amber.

  I turn her around so I can look into her eyes now.

  “No one’s ever called me anything like that before,” she adds.

  It hardly seems possible that someone this gorgeous didn’t have men fawning all over her, but then I remember what she said about ballet being her boyfriend. She never let anyone close enough to sweet talk her I guess, so I say every sweet thing I can think of close to her ear, while I touch her, and she clings to me. Honey. Baby. Darling. Love? I leave that one out. I’m still not sure… How can I love Anna if I still love Claire?

  “Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart.”

  Anna hangs onto me with arms and legs as I thrust into her. I’m so fucking careful, mindful that she is delicate right now, but before long she’s the one reminding me that she’s not so fragile after all. Her thighs grip around my hips, and she’s riding me hard while I keep us upright in the enclosed shower stall.

  Maybe she likes sweet, whispered words in her ear to get her going, but she talks dirty the closer she gets. There is something undeniably hot about the prim, little ballerina uttering obscenities in an endless stream, begging me to fuck her harder in that voice of hers I so seldom hear. Her nails dig in behind my neck, and her pussy grips me tight. “Holy fuck, Jack. Fuck.”

  I love hearing her come, seeing her mouth go slack as her face flushes. I find my own release with no real words, just a hard, guttural groan against her mouth.

  That perfect moment doesn’t last long. As soon as I release Anna to her feet, she wobbles precariously, and I have to hold her upright while she finds her balance. “We shouldn’t be doing this right now. You should be resting. I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking.”

  She gives me a sheepish grin. “It’s not like you had to talk me into it. It was just a little dizzy spell. I’m fine now.”

  That may be, but I’m not more than two inches away as we dry off and make our way back into my bedroom. I watch her carefully as I dress, and she picks through her bag, looking for an outfit to wear. I take one last appreciative glance at her legs before she tugs on a pair of patterned leggings.

  I try to talk her into laying back down, but she’s probably right. We’ll never be able to sleep tonight if we nap the day away. Downstairs we settle in on the couch, and try to find a movie we can both agree on. With all this ballet stuff, I’m a little surprised when she asserts she doesn’t like anything sad, or too romantic. “There’s already enough depressing things going on in the world, and that sappy crap is fake. Real life isn’t like that.”

  We end up settling on a lighthearted comedy, but Anna spends as much attention on the cats as she does watching the TV screen. “You’re still a baby, aren’t you?” she says to Fluffy, as the small kitten prances around her lap. “I miss when Princess was like this. He’s so playful.”

  That’s when it really hits me, everything she had ripped away thanks to that piece of shit who hit her and drove off. Anna lost the career she’d been working towards since she was a girl, and any chance of having a baby herself. Maybe it’s not a risk I’d ever want to take again, but it’s still not fair to her.

  She’s right. The real world is depressing enough without throwing sad movies into the mix.

  Chapter 19

  Jack

  Neither one of us ended up finding out how that movie ended. We both dozed off on the couch. I wake up with a crick in my neck from sleeping in such a weird position. Anna is nestled against my chest, with one of her legs thrown over one of mine.

  “Hi, Miss Anna,” Sarah says brightly from directly in front of us.

  Anna sits up slowly, and smiles warmly as she moves apart from me a bit. “Hi, Sarah.”

  “Are you really my daddy’s girlfriend?”

  “Uh…” Blinking, Anna looks to me for help. Her mouth forms a shy grin.

  At first I assume Sarah put two and two together after seeing us curled up together on the couch, then Jamie silently mouths sorry from near the front door. I guess she slipped and said something in front of Sarah, which hardly surprises me. Jamie doesn’t have much of a filter, and she seems to think a lot of things sail right over Sarah’s head, but I know better. My daughter picks up on plenty.

  God, I wish I could talk about this with Anna first. She seemed sort of reluctant earlier when I brought it up, but when I confirm Sarah’s suspicion, Anna smiles wider. She winces when Sarah lets out a loud, joyful squeal.

  “Is your head hurting?” I ask.

  “A bit,” she admits.

  It’s about time for more Tylenol, which I offer to go get after I remind Sarah to keep it down.

  “I forgot. Grandma said I should be quiet, because you got a bump on your head,” Sarah says, as I walk away. She quickly scrambles up on the couch to take my spot beside Anna. “Are you going to live here now that you’re Daddy’s girlfriend?”

  “No, I’m just staying for a bit until I feel better.”

  “But if you get married, you’ll live here right?”

  “Uhm, that’s usually how it’s done,” Anna answers carefully. She takes the medicine and bottle of water from my outstretched hand with a gracious smile. After swallowing the pills, she turns her attention back to Sarah. “Did you have a fun afternoon?”

  Anna listens with supposed rapt attention while Sarah prattles on about her day. She reminds Sarah that she can just call her Anna outside of class, and asks her to elaborate on what she did at church, what she ate for lunch, which stores she visited with her aunt and grandma.

  Jamie watches all this with a big, goofy grin on her face.

  “You girls okay in here if I go get dinner started?” I ask.

  Anna nods, and Sarah goes on like I haven’t said a word. Jamie follows me into the kitchen. “I can’t believe I made that happen,” she says with a goofy smile. “That’ll be a story to tell at your wedding reception.”

  I give her an icy stare. Maybe Sarah made a similar comment, but she’s six.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” I poke through the freezer, and start pulling things out.

  “Alright grumpy pants. You three okay on your own if I head out? I have plans tonight.”

  “With who?” I ask suspiciously.

  “Not Cole.”

  The fact that she won’t give me specifics says everything. “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Then why are you being all secretive?” I ask. “It’s fucking weird.”

  “I don’t think you’ll like him.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Maybe,” she says reluctantly. “We went to school together. He was in your grade, but I don’t think you were friends. You probably don’t even remember him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Wayne Pratt.”

  “Are you fucking serious? The guy who always wore the Bob Marley tshirts and slept through half of his classes?”

  “That was in high school. He’s not like that anymore.”

  “He’s also the guy I arrested for drunk and disorderly, a few times when I worked nights.”

  “And that was years ago too. You’ve been on days for a long time now. He’s not like that anymore either.”

  “Where did you two
bump into each other?”

  “A bar in town,” she admits reluctantly.

  I slam the baking sheet up on the counter. “Is it possible for you to be in a relationship with someone who’s not a drunk or a drug addict?”

  “Just because someone goes to a bar, it doesn’t make them a drunk.”

  No, not necessarily, but Jamie has a type. I’m beginning to think the way our dad carried on completely screwed with her head. It’s like she searches out men just as broken, damaged, and cruel to try and fix. “Isn’t that how you met Cole, and all the ones before him? Maybe it’s time to look elsewhere, you know?”

  “I just got divorced. It’s not serious. I’m not looking for anything serious, so stop freaking out.” Jamie moved aside so I could preheat the oven, then she eyed the food I was beginning to prepare. “What’s Sarah going to eat?”

  “Hopefully this.”

  She shrugs. “Well, good luck with that.”

  I’ve given into Sarah’s whims for so long, I’m not sure if even her eagerness to please Anna will be enough to overcome her aversion to unbreaded chicken and vegetables, but I figure it can’t hurt to try.

  “Just be careful,” I say to Jamie as she starts away, although it feels like wasted breath.

  I almost feel like I should say it to Anna as well. Just be careful. Because after those comments from Sarah and Jamie about marriage, I’m feeling strange about things, but I try my best to shove it aside.

  Over dinner Anna actually persuades Sarah to eat some broccoli, and a decent amount of the chicken. Anna eats a decent amount too, to my relief.

  “Since your Daddy cooked, I say we clean up,” Anna suggests.

  She rinses off dishes at the sink, and hands them to Sarah to put in the dishwasher. I’m a little in awe. Okay, a lot in awe. I can’t even get Sarah to put her dirty clothes in the hamper, although I’ve never tried very hard.

  From day one I’ve spoiled and pampered my daughter, trying to make up for the one thing I could never give her. Logically I know I’m not doing her any real favors in the long run, and some of it is for purely selfish reasons. Seeing Sarah smile makes me smile. Until recently she was the only real joy I had in my life.

  Sarah is smiling wide as she drops the rinsed off fork into the plastic basket. I find myself smiling too until an old memory superimposes itself on the sight of Anna standing in front of the sink.

  Claire is standing in that same spot, wearing one of my shirts. It must be the morning, because her hair fans wildly around her head, unbrushed. She’s singing off key to a song on the radio. She always had to have something on, music, or the TV. Sitting in silence grated on her nerves.

  Anna turns off the sink, and dries off her hands with a dishtowel. The vivid memory of Claire disintegrates and fades like smoke blown by a breeze. Part of me wants to clutch onto it, keep it forever. Part of me wants to wave my hand, fan it away to spare myself the torment.

  All of me feels guilty.

  Anna deserves better than this, doesn’t she? I’m sitting here daydreaming about another woman, and in some odd, fucked up way, Anna feels like the other woman. She’s standing in our kitchen, mine and Claire’s. She just turned the handle of a faucet that Claire picked out. Her hip is pressed against the countertop that we installed together.

  Why did I ever keep this house? I should’ve sold it, but by the time I could do more than put one foot in front of the other, Sarah was two or three years old, and it didn’t feel right to uproot her from the only home she’s ever known, her only bit of stability.

  I’m her father. I should be the stable force in her life, but I’m not. I never have been. My moods shift on a fucking dime, but all I can do with my current foul mood is tamp it down, put on a brave face.

  It’ll pass. It always passes.

  “Can we dance?” Sarah asks Anna.

  “I’m not supposed to dance right now because of the bump on my head, but you can dance if you want.” When that doesn’t please Sarah, she goes on to say, “I really need to stretch. I haven’t done that yet today. We could do that together if you want.”

  I sit off to the side on the loveseat, out of their way. The TV is on at low volume, but I’m not watching it. My eyes are loosely fixed on Sarah following along to Anna’s gentle cues.

  “Will you be able to dance tomorrow?” Sarah asks.

  “I’m afraid not.” Anna bends forward at the waist, and interlocks her fingers beneath the arches of her socked feet. “I’m supposed to take it easy for two whole days.”

  Maybe longer, according to what that doctor said, but knowing Anna she’ll be right back at it tuesday unless she takes a bad turn for the worse.

  “Then who’s going to teach me?”

  “Miss Laura. Do you remember her?”

  “I want you to teach me. I like you better.”

  “You should give her a chance,” Anna says. “You don’t really know her yet, and you can learn different things from different teachers. I learned from lots of ballet instructors, and I was a better dancer for it.” She rolls over onto her stomach, brings her heels together and bends her knees in a posture reminiscent of a frog. Sarah thinks it’s funny, until she can’t accomplish the feat without her hips floating in the air. “Flexibility takes patience. If you do it every day, you’ll get a tiny bit better until one day it’s easy,” Anna says.

  Sarah isn’t generally a patient child, but this explanation seems to pacify her. “Daddy, you should try.”

  “Sorry, Princess. I already know my legs don’t bend like that.”

  “It’s because you have to do it every day. That’s how you get better.”

  “Are you okay?” Anna tilts her head in my direction.

  I nod.

  “Do you need to go run on your hamster wheel, Daddy?”

  I laugh gruffly towards the ceiling, and shake my head. Maybe Anna can’t read my mood quite yet, but Sarah sure can. When I’m sad, pissed off, or somewhere in between, I often take her downstairs and she watches cartoons while I run off some steam. We’ve been doing it for years. She used to giggle at me from her bouncy chair as an infant while I tried to out run my troubles.

  Before Anna can question her, I stand up, crack my knuckles and rub my hands together. “I can’t let you two ladies have all the fun.”

  Sarah gets a big kick out of how incredibly unflexible I am. I don’t do much better with the standing stretches, but I’m glad to be nearby, because out of nowhere Anna wobbles drunkenly and starts to go down. I catch her right before she hits the floor. “Alright. Enough of that. You’re supposed to be resting.”

  I scoop her up in my arms, and carry her over to the couch. Sarah follows at my heels. Her bottom lip tremors.

  “I’m okay, Sarah,” Anna assures her. “Your Daddy is right. I shouldn’t be bending up and down like that right now.”

  “Can you go get Anna a bottle of water? I think that’ll make her feel a lot better.”

  Sarah scurries off to the kitchen.

  “Are you really okay?” I ask, foolishly feeling her head like she may have a fever for some reason.

  “I’m fine. The doctor said I might be a little unbalanced, remember?” Anna laughs. “What you’re lacking in flexibility, you make up for in reflexes. That was a pretty good save, Jack.”

  “You’re not getting up off this couch until it’s time for bed. I hope you know that.”

  “You really are bossy.”

  “Only when I have to be.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Sarah watching us, holding the bottle of water that I asked her to get. We’re flirting a bit. It’s certainly nothing lewd or inappropriate, but she’s never seen me with another woman in any capacity before. Is this weird for her? She doesn’t seem bothered at all.

  How bothered is she going to be in a few weeks or months when Anna realizes I’m no good for her, and disappears from both of our lives completely?

  I try to put it out of my mind, but when I’m supervising Sarah
in the bath, I get slapped in the face with it all over again.

  Sarah skims her arms along the surface of the bathwater, collecting all the bubbles into a fluffy mound. “I really like Anna is staying here.”

  “Me too.”

  “Can she stay tomorrow night?”

  “I think she’ll probably be going home, but we’ll wait and see how she feels.”

  “If you clean out Mommy’s old room, she can live there.”

  My fingers grip the edge of the porcelain sink until my knuckles ache. “Wash your hair, Princess. You’re big enough to do it yourself.”

  “But I get soap in my eyes, and it hurts,” she whines.

  So I wash her hair, and help dry her off. I wrap her up in a towel, and carry her to her room. She digs through her drawer for a specific nightgown. I don’t fuss at her about leaving the discarded options dangling out of the drawer and strewn on the floor. She starts to throw a fit about brushing her hair before bed.

  I go to grab the detangler from the bathroom, and nearly collide with Anna outside in the hall. “I thought I told you to stay on the couch,” I snap.

  She blinks at me a few times. “I-I heard Sarah, and thought you might need a hand.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Anna, can you read to me tonight?” Sarah asks from her bedroom door.

  “Sure. I don’t mind.”

  I mind. I don’t need Sarah getting used to this. What was I thinking when I brought Anna here? To the house that Claire and I picked out together, that we fixed up together? Now she’s reading our daughter a story. No one does that except me, occasionally Jamie or one of her grandmother’s, but they’re family. Anna is a woman I’ve known for less than two months, one who is likely going to tuck tail and run as soon as she sees that room. Why wouldn’t she?

  Who the hell would she sign up for this nonsense?

  Anna plucks the bottle of detangler out of my hand and smiles at me. Why does she have to be so pretty, and sweet, and perfect? Why couldn’t I have met her when I was really ready, because I’m starting to see I’m not.

  I’m so not fucking ready.

  Anna sits on the edge of Sarah’s bed, and spritz her damp hair before carefully running a wide toothed comb, first through the tips, then working her way up Sarah’s blonde curls in small sections to avoid pulling her hair.