by Amy DeMeritt
When she finishes, she turns to look at me with a grin. She looks me up and down and laughs a little.
“You do realize it’s about ninety degrees outside, right? Aren’t you hot in that hoodie?” I shrug a shoulder and try to act comfortable, but the truth is, I’m burning up. She looks at me confused and walks over to me. She places her cool hands on my face and neck. “You’re burning up. Take that thing off. I don’t want you passing out from heat stroke while we’re rehearsing.”
I nervously rub the back of my neck and bite my lip for a moment. Her look of concern depends and she immediately grabs for the hem of my hoodie and rips it up over my head before I can react to stop her. Her eyes get big and she places a hand on my neck and shoulder, tracing the bad bite bruises Sam left on me yesterday. Jaime moves around me, adjusting my tank top to examine my body and gently traces each mark with her cool fingertips. As she walks back in front of me, she smiles and shakes her head.
“I really hope this heals before your choreography class next week. The kids cannot see this. I was going to ask you how your night off was, but I guess it was pretty amazing.” I laugh a little and rub the back of my neck. “Yeah. Hey, I’m really sorry about these. I should be healed up by then. If not, I can just wear a tee shirt or something.” She reaches out and examines the worst of the bites on my neck and shakes her head. “I don’t think this one will be healed by then and a tee shirt won’t cover it. It’s too high. We’ll just have to put a bandage on it or something.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it in the moment.” She laughs a little and playfully pats my cheek, before taking my hand and pulls me out to the center of the dancefloor. “You don’t have to apologize for having an amazing private life, Kayla. We’ll figure it out so it doesn’t cause you any issues with the parents. You’re already controversial enough as it is without them seeing sex marks on your body.” I laugh a little and she smirks. “Are you getting backlash from the parents for having me come here?”
“I wouldn’t call it backlash. Some of the parents are a little concerned of the type of role model you could be for their kids. There’s nothing they can do about the fact that the kids love you. Some of them are just worried about you flaunting your polygamous-type relationship in front of the kids and influencing them. A few very religious families will not allow their kids to participate at all.”
“I’m not going to flaunt anything and definitely wouldn’t try to influence anyone into anything. I mean…” She places two fingers to my lips and cuts me off. “I know. You don’t have to convince me or defend yourself to me. I don’t have a problem with you and how you’re living. I think it’s amazing and beautiful.”
She looks at her fingers resting on my lips and her fingers gently trace my lips for a moment, sending shivers down my spine. She suddenly pulls back and goes over to her stereo. She turns our music on and walks back over.
“Are you warmed up?”
“I walked here, so I’m good to go.”
“Maybe we should only do evening rehearsals so you’re not walking four miles a day. That’s going to wear you out quickly. Either that or I should start picking you up.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
She smiles really big and she takes my hand and places her other on my shoulder. We start dancing, but not even thirty seconds into the dance, she stops and grabs my face.
“You need to stare straight into my eyes the entire dance. You know the moves now, so you can stop watching my body. The judges will deduct a lot of points if you break eye contact to check the positon of my body. When we do turns, you must immediately look back in my eyes.”
“Ok, let’s try again.”
She restarts the music and we start from the beginning. I stare in her eyes the whole time, but I feel less in sync now. She shakes her head and stops. She looks at me with her hands on her hips and puckers her lips to the side in thought.
“You’re off today. I know you know this dance, so what’s going on with you? Are you too tired today?”
“No, I’m not tired. I slept like a damn rock. I’m great. Let’s try it again and I’ll try to figure out where I’m off.”
She restarts the music again and we start dancing. I close my eyes and try to just dance from memory. I feel a strong tug to go against the choreography and I open my eyes and stop.
“I know what the problem is. I’m not used to dancing strictly choreographed dances every day. I haven’t just danced in a couple weeks. All of my dancing has been for these three dance events and for the new videos to post to my channel online. I just need to dance off script.”
“What tempo?”
“This same tempo is fine and we can stick to this style of dance so we don’t completely lose focus.”
She smiles and turns back to her stereo to turn on a different song. I take her hands and wrap them behind my neck and take her hips. While I perfectly hold her eyes and look at nothing else, I guide her around the dancefloor in a slow passionate dance. I twist and turn her, hold her body close to mine, or spin her out to dance by my side. I spin her out away from me, and as she’s about to spin back to me, I get an idea.
“Hang on, I want to try something. When you come back, do a handstand and let your legs hook over my shoulders and then just follow my lead from there.”
She smiles and does a beautiful leap, spin, and lands in the handstand. As her legs start to hook down behind me, I bend down some, grab her hips and lift as I do a backbend. I lift her up over me enough that she can land on her feet behind me. I release her hips and land on the floor between her legs and lift my arms in front of her. With a big smile, she takes my hands and pulls me through her legs and up onto my feet.
I immediately pull her close and start dancing again. When the song is slowing down to end, I dip her low with both of my arms wrapped around her. She looks up at me with a serene smile and gently caresses my cheek. She looks at my lips for a moment and then back in my eyes. I swallow hard and pull her back up to a standing position.
She pulls back and turns the music off. She grabs her water and tosses me a bottle. While standing several feet away, she takes a few sips while watching me, but she doesn’t say anything. It makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong and it’s hard to watch her looking at me like that, so I sit down and lay back to look at the ceiling. It felt really good to dance without any rules and Jaime is an incredible dance partner. I hope I didn’t go too far and make things weird between us. A foot gently kicks mine and I look over to see Jaime sitting down across from me. I sit up and she smiles.
“That was a really good dance. I liked that little trick you came up with. I want to add it to our dance for the competition.”
“So, I guess it was a good thing my discipline was lacking today?” She smiles and laughs a little. “Yes. Is there anything else you would change about the choreography?”
“I had another idea, but I don’t know if it would work.” She takes my hand and pulls us up off the floor. She sets our waters aside and turns the music back on. “Ok, show me.”
“Spin towards me, and with your back to me and arms in the air, start to fall backwards into me.”
She nods and takes a few paces away. She does a really pretty spin and then starts to fall towards me with so much grace that it almost distracts me from what I want to do.
I place my hands on her ribs and guide her backwards as I kneel and then sit on the floor, fully supporting her above my head. It’s very difficult, and I almost drop her, but I lay backwards and slowly lower her onto my body. When she’s flat against me, I glide my hands up her sides and up her arms. I take her hands in mine and pull our arms out to our sides and start to sit up, but then fall back again and then wrap our arms around her and then fully sit up with her on my lap and in my arms.
I pull our arms out to the sides and then wrap her hands behind my head. I grab her hips and start to stand, offering her support to stand with me. When we’re standing, I wrap my arms aro
und her waist and sway side to side a few times, before taking her hands from behind my head and spin her to face me and we start to waltz.
Jaime looks really happy with a wide closed lip smile, glistening eyes, and pink tinged cheeks. We dance for another minute and then another idea comes to me. I lift her and pull her in so she’ll wrap her legs around my waist. I have her hold one of my hands and bend backwards in an arch while I spin us around for two full turns. Then I pull her back up and she wraps her arms around me and lays her head on my shoulder. I stop dancing and just hold her in my arms. She lifts her head smiling at me.
“You have no idea how hard it is to find a good dance partner that you have such good chemistry with. It’s even harder to find a female dance partner, let alone one that can do lifts. You are a freaking dream come true. I’ve never danced with another person so easily before. We need to completely revamp the competition choreography. I want to include these three big stunts in what we have already. That move where you pulled me down on top of yourself was beautiful.”
“I really like dancing with you too. You’re an amazing dancer and it makes me want to be better than I am when I’m dancing with you or watching you dance. I love hip-hop, but this is really my favorite style of dance. I love slow and romantic dances.” She smiles and caresses my cheek, before leaning in to kiss my forehead. “So, I guess I can count on future partnerships with you?” I smile and laugh a little. “Definitely. There’s so much more we can do together.”
She smirks and laughs a little and I blush beet red, realizing how that sounded and that I’m still holding her wrapped around me.
“I’m going to put you down now. Not because I just embarrassed myself, but because I just embarrassed myself a lot.” She laughs really hard and steps down off of my waist. “Are you too embarrassed to work anymore today or do you want to play with the choreography some?”
“Yeah, I want to play some.” She laughs really hard and I groan and put my face in my hands as I fall over on my back. “Oh, my god. I’m done speaking. You just tell me what we’re doing.”
Jaime laughs and comes over prying my hands off my face. She bites her lips, trying to hold in a laugh and pulls me up from the floor. She puts our song on, and we start to dance. It’s even harder to look in her eyes now because she’s still smiling and trying not to laugh. While we’re dancing, she tosses out an occasional comment of a possible location in the dance to add one of the new stunts, but we don’t work them in yet.
When the song ends, she turns the music off and sits down. I join her and she playfully nudges my foot.
“I didn’t think I could stay composed to do any of the stunts. Your face is still so red that it was hard not to laugh.” My head falls in embarrassment and she laughs and nudges my foot. “I’m not laughing at you, so you don’t need to be embarrassed. You’re funny. The way you blush so much is adorable, especially because of how strong and confident you are most of the time.”
“You have a thing for girls that blush easily?” She laughs and nods. “Yeah, it’s always been a weakness for me. The first girl I fell in love with was my science lab partner my senior year of high school. She blushed easily and I’ve been attracted to that reaction ever since.”
“I bet you used that to your advantage to reel her in.” Jaime smiles and looks down for a moment. “I did, but things didn’t work out. I messed it up. Well, I would have lost her anyway, even if I didn’t screw it up. She met the love of her life before we had a fair chance.”
“I’m sorry. That sounds like a painful story.”
“It was almost seven years ago, so I’m over it. I’ve had my heart broken a few more times since then by girls that I was crazier about.”
“I’ve only had my heart broken once, but she came back.” Jaime smiles and nudges my foot with hers. “I can’t imagine why she ever left. How did you end up with so many women?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have the time if you do. I don’t have any classes till three o’clock.”
I take a deep breath and start telling her about all of my girls and how I met all of them. She asks a couple questions here or there, but mostly just listens. When I finish with bringing my wife home, Jaime releases a small impressed laugh and shakes her head.
“Wow, that’s some story. I’m sorry that stuff with Darren came out in the news after you were in that competition. It’s ridiculous what reporters will do to get a story and try to make a name for themselves. I know how hard the school and police tried to keep your name out of the media reports when it happened. I followed that story closely because a few of my students go to your college, but even they didn’t know who was attacked. What happened with the two girls from your wild weekend?”
“We’re still friends. They started talking while I was in the hospital and started dating shortly after I was released. They’ve had a couple fights and broke up a couple times, but they’re together right now.”
My phone vibrates on the dancefloor several feet away next to my hoodie. I roll backwards a couple times to pick it up.
Madison: Hey, baby. Are you going to be home soon? We’re trying to decide if we should make lunch or if we need to wait for you.
I look at the time and curse. It’s after two o’clock and I got here around 10am.
Me: Hey, I’ll leave in couple minutes.
Madison: Ok, we’ll wait for you then.
I stand up with my hoodie and phone and Jaime also stands. We walk to the front of the studio and I start to put my hoodie back on, but she grabs my hands.
“What are you doing? It’s way too hot outside for you to have that on.”
“Well, I can’t go walking around town with sex marks all over me.” She smiles and shakes her head. “I’ll drive you home then. You’re not walking out that door in that hoodie in this heat.”
“Ok, that would be great. You made me really hungry, so driving will get me home to my babies faster.” She bites back a laugh and my face blushes again. “Oh, my god. I really need to not speak anymore today. I meant for lunch.”
She laughs a little and goes to her office and returns a moment later with her keys and a small purse and is still wearing an amused smile.
“Let’s go.”
Chapter Fourteen
I haven’t slept in this late in a long time. I’m the last one to roll out of bed and feel like I could sleep for a few more hours, but its already after 11am. I come out of the bedroom yawning and stretching and find all of my girls are in the spare bedroom huddled around the computer.
“Morning, babies.” All of them look up with big smiles. “Morning. The choreography event you did yesterday has gone viral already. It has over three million views and the email box is flooded with requests from all over the country for you to come do an event at their school. We haven’t been able to look at all of the emails yet, but you even have a few requests from Japan, Russia, and one from Brazil. These people are willing to pay you and pay for your travel expenses. The dance channel subscriptions have quadrupled since last night and just keeps going up.”
I laugh hard and wave them off. “Whatever. You guys are nuts. I’m going to get a drink.” They laugh and Madison jumps up and grabs me, pulling me over to look at the computer. “Baby, we’re serious. Look. A local and national TV station have already contacted you asking to be able to feature part of the video on the news and get an interview with you.”
“But, we didn’t even get the video up till really late last night. They’re all nuts. This is crazy. How are we going to get through all of these emails? I can’t go to all of these schools.”
“We called Sara while you were sleeping to talk to her about that. She said if you have enough schools interested that are close together, you can rent out a convention center and host a choreography camp. She has worked at a few and said she’d be happy to help you. She said you’d have everyone buy tickets in advance that are nonrefundable unless the event is cancelled. She also mentioned that
even though you’ll be out a lot of money upfront, you’ll easily make it all back with a ton of money to take home because of ticket and merchandise sales. She also said that companies will be lining up wanting to sponsor the event so they can sell their merchandise at the event and have their name and brand plastered everywhere. She recommended doing the first event in Philly because it’s such a central location that people would come from all of the surrounding states to be able to participate.”
“This is way bigger than anything we ever dreamed of. This is crazy. How are we going to pull something like that off with school? I need to sit down.” Shannon quickly stands up and offers me her chair. “Sweetie, you could always take some time off from school or cut back to part time, just till you figure all of this out and what you want to do. It would probably be a good idea to do a few more single school events to bring in some money and more experience before we do a convention center size event. Plus, doing more single school events will increase the excitement and desire for schools to have you come teach.” I don’t say anything because I’m in complete shock over the response to the event we did yesterday. Shannon caresses my cheek and smiles in a loving way. “Madison has something to show you – a surprise she’s been working on for you.”
I smile and look up at Madison, who is grinning and slightly hopping in excitement.
“What do you have for me, Maddi?” She rushes over to the closet and grabs a cardboard box. “Ok, I really hope you like it. I hired a graphics designer I found online to create it so we’d make sure the logo and images would be completely copyrighted in your name so no one can steal them.”
I look at her confused and take the box from her. She’s biting her bottom lip and looks so damn adorable. I open the box and gasp.
