by Tonya Plank
Chapter 14
Arabelle
When I walked into the room where the first team class was being held, everyone stood and clapped loudly. Oh geez. This was followed by several very loud whoops that the diners two floors down in the Ethiopian restaurant likely heard. I rolled my eyes and shook my head, trying hard not to blush. Jett smiled and lifted his hands, clapping high above his head.
I waved them down. “Okay, okay. Thank you, you all. I, uh, really appreciate it.” Now I was blushing.
“Are you kidding? You are the queen of showdance!” Kendra boomed, which brought about another round of hoots.
“Well, thank you for that. I used to be, anyway,” I said, now looking away, out the far window.
“A queen never retires,” Kendra insisted.
I laughed. No, but she does abdicate her thrown sometimes. If she needs to.
“So, looks like the team is comprised mainly of the more serious students in my group class,” Jett said, looking around. “Give or take a few new members.”
“Damn right we’re the most serious!” Kendra pumped her fist in the air.
Jett laughed. “So, let me show you what we’ve done so far in group class that we can use for the team.” His face was one huge dimpled grin. He motioned Judy over. “So, we start out in closed position, then swing the lady out, then pull her in with two spins—you can do three, Arabelle—and then into a low, down and dirty rag doll.”
Everyone cheered. Judy was very good. He was definitely right about this group being hard working and enthusiastic.
“So, yeah, come on everyone, let’s do it all together!”
Everyone lined up in three rows, with two couples each row, leaving Jett and me in the center. I don’t think I’d seen students organize themselves so quickly, and so perfectly.
“Okay, ready,” he said, holding his arms out to me, inviting me into closed position. As he did this, he raised his eyebrows in a way that sent a bolt of electricity down my spine. Not that again. It had to stop. He could tell what I’d felt, I knew he could. Because now a twisted smile began brewing on his face. No sir, I said to myself.
“Ready, sir!” Kendra sang.
I stepped into Jett’s extended arms. His biceps were solid muscle, his embrace all-enveloping in a way that momentarily made me feel protected and cocooned, his hold both firm and gentle. With his left hand he held my right; his long fingers gently laced though mine. He placed his right hand on my back, fingers gently but firmly cupping my back shoulder blade, exactly where they needed to be for proper lead. He pulled me in a bit. He was right to do so, as much as I didn’t want to admit it; I was too far from him for a proper ballroom hold. He smelled like musk, like night—like a starry, moonlit night. Like in the Paris in Vegas.
Suddenly, it was too much. I backed out of his embrace. I gasped and caught my breath. He wasn’t like Drew at all. Or Sasha. Sasha was way too intense to ever develop any kind of attraction to. For me at least. No, something about Jett was very…very Willem-esque. It unnerved me. I swallowed hard and took another breath.
The whole class looked at me with wide eyes.
“You okay?” Jett asked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t…I…I’m just sorry.” I forced myself to laugh, and returned quickly to Jett’s arms. I placed myself in his hold this time, looking not into his eyes but off and to the left, right behind his left ear. I could still smell him, still feel him, but I forced myself to block it all out. He was just another man. He wasn’t anyone or anything special. Just a dance partner, nothing more, nothing less.
“Okay now?” Jett whispered, sending more chills down my back, which I tried hard to ignore.
I nodded.
“Yep, yep,” Kendra chirped.
“Okay, here we go.” He began counting out the beats, and the steps. One, two, three, four were a basic social rumba in closed hold. Then on five, he whisked me out away from him. It felt good to not be in such close hold with him. And it felt like we were now doing a run of the mill dance routine. He raised his arm. “Okay, three underarm turns back toward the man. One, two, three, four.” He pulled me in, and I rose to the balls of my feet and turned three times. He held his hand lightly above mine, his grip so light but still there, to give me maximum freedom in making my own turns, my own flourishes, my own speed—and my own number of spins, I realized, as everyone around me started giggling. I stopped when I got back into Jett’s arms.
“Whoa, dizzy!” Judy squealed.
“Oh shit. I mean, crap. Sorry. Sorry,” Jett said. “I didn’t mean for everyone to turn as many times as Arabelle.”
“You should definitely apologize about the cursing. No one ever does that around here,” Kendra said, gruffly. Everyone laughed. I’d heard more than a few potty words coming out of her mouth in my time here.
Jett laughed too. “Okay, well shit then. But I meant to say two turns. I was talking to Belle, ah, Arabelle when I said three. So, you know what? Do however many you’re comfortable with for now. We’ll decide whether to officially change it or not later.”
“Coolness,” Kendra said. “Now, let’s do the lowdown, dirty ragdoll!”
Everyone laughed again. This was a fun group. Jett pulled me into him again, this time quite close, and I got a very good feel of those pecs and abs. The man had muscle. He aligned my body with his, my pelvis at his hip, his crotch right on my hip. I breathed deeply. I was a professional dancer. And all I could feel was big solid man.
He brought my waist toward him, propelling me to stand high on the balls of my feet again so he could lift me ever so slightly, pulling my pelvis right into his. My lower abdominal area filled with liquid heat. I willed it to stop. We were torso to torso, our nipples touching.
“Feel free to let go of my shoulders when I dip you and arch your back to your fullest extent. I got you,” he added with a wink that nearly melted me. Right. The rag doll. I was supposed to let go of him and arch back.
“Yes, of course.” My full extent was quite full. I let go of him and let myself fall straight back, trusting him not to let me fall. I arched back as far as I could, really stretching myself out, really feeling it, letting my hands fly behind me like a bird, grazing the floor when I bent all the way. I lifted my left leg up ever so slightly so that I’d have more leeway, and pointed my toe. It felt so good. Like nothing had since I last showdanced.
Jett swung me around in a semi-circle, holding me up just as he said he would, just has I knew he would. It’s funny how ridiculously risky I’d thought he was when I first saw him perform, and again when I witnessed him with his students—but how I was totally trusting him anyway. Not that it would be a horrible fall that I couldn’t right in time before my head hit the floor, but still. I knew now I could lose myself and he’d be there completely.
And of course the nanosecond that thought passed through my brain, that I was trusting someone besides Willem, and especially this crazy-ass bravado trapeze artist, it came back. The tremor. It started slowly, in my fingertips, then made its evil way up my arm, to the elbow. Jett seemed to sense it because next thing I knew he was bringing me up, and quite quickly.
After he’d whisked me up and pulled me into him again, closed position, crotch to crotch, abs to abs, small breast with rock hard nipple to big solid pec, everyone hooted and clapped like they’d never seen anything like it before. What?
“Man was that a badass arch. W-T-F, Arabelle!” Kendra shouted, actually using the letters of the acronym. Now I really blushed. I felt my whole face turn flaming red, completely matching how my heated insides felt. I didn’t know whether to be more thankful that people obviously hadn’t noticed the tremor, or that Jett had momentarily made me feel a tremor of a completely different kind. What was wrong with me? This man was so not for me. I should not have enjoyed any part of dancing with him. This was purely monetary, I reminded myself. Nothing more.
Jett seemed to know I needed my space right now. He had the students go on and do the
routine again thus far, this time without modeling the moves on me. He walked around, helping to improve their connections, their styling, and their technique. I followed his lead and did the same, re-centering people, helping to make their connections more solid.
“That’s a gloriously deep dip,” he told one couple. But just then the man leaned toward his partner, probably to dip her even further.
“Eeek,” she screeched, nearly falling backward.
“No, no, see? He needs to be centered,” I said to Jett. Then, realizing how much I hated it when people talked about me when I was right there, I turned to the man and explained the same to him. “You have to be centered in order to hold her up. So you have to weight yourself backwards, onto your heels. I know it seems like you should lean forward to allow her to dip more, but it’s actually the opposite.”
He seemed embarrassed and his raced reddened substantially.
“It’s okay, your partner is okay,” I said.
“I am!” She laughed. But her laughter was of the nervous sort.
“I’d taught them that in the group class, but this is one of the new couples. So they weren’t there for my instruction,” Jett said.
I nodded. “It’s all okay. Just something to remember for next time. Which I’m sure you will.”
“Yeah, I’m not into dropping my partner!” the man said.
After class, Jett took me aside. I wondered if he was annoyed with my instruction to his student.
“You okay?” he asked, a serious look in his eye.
His question took me aback. I looked at my arm. I wasn’t shaking. I hadn’t shaken since the initial rag doll at the very beginning of class. Did he think that was my normal state of being?
“I’m fine,” I snapped, more than I’d meant to, out of confusion.
He held his hands up. “Okay, okay.”
“I do think we have different teaching styles though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I would have made clear from the beginning of class to all of the new couples that the man needed to lean back on the rag doll or the woman may fall.”
He sighed. “I told you, I taught them that in class.”
“But you’d forgotten there were new students.”
“I had. But there were only a few, Arabelle.”
“And they don’t matter?”
He sighed more deeply. “Of course they do. I just forgot.”
“I would have taken that opportunity to remind everyone again. I mean, people could get hurt.”
He sighed again, then chuckled. “Okay, Arabelle. In the future, I will remind the students repeatedly of every potential problem they may encounter.”
Now he was being sarcastic, and deeply annoying. As I’d known, this man was all about the flash. I couldn’t believe he was being so reckless. Women could get hurt. Men could hurt their backs as well. “You could open the studio up to liability.”
“Oh good lord, it wasn’t that big of a deal. No one was really going to get hurt.”
“They could have. And what about the harder moves, Jett?” I didn’t turn to look at him. I could hear his deep breaths of annoyance.
“Like I said, I’ll remind everyone all the time of potential issues,” he said, and walked off.
“These are students, not professionals, Jett,” I called out. “They don’t know what they’re doing. It’s our job to teach it to them.”
He turned around, widening his eyes. “I think you worry too much.”
Worry too much. Words I couldn’t hate more. I worried the second Willem got that motorcycle, how he sped on that thing. Maybe other people needed to worry more.
Chapter 15
Jett
I hadn’t realized how much of a worry-wart Arabelle was. That was probably where her anxiety disorder had come from. I mean, it was just a dip. The woman could right herself easily if she felt herself falling backwards. Certainly no one was going to break a neck. I mean, it would be possible, I guess, but one of those crazy, unforeseeable things. Like her slip at Blackpool. It made me wonder how hard it was going to be to work with her when we started doing more difficult stunts. I did want to put a few lifts in there. Would she fight me all the way?
That night when I performed with Beauty in Motion, I let myself soar more than ever. I took every risk in the book. I did a one-handed fly on the way to Belinda, instead of two-handed. I did three somersaults in the air at one point instead of two, and I overextended my splits, which I could tell thrilled the crowd more than anything else I’d done. I almost did a one-footed hang-down from the trapeze, but decided against it. I hadn’t practiced it with the trampoline underneath. I didn’t want to do something that risky that I hadn’t even practiced. Okay, even I had my limits. But I made a mental note to practice it. I couldn’t let Arabelle’s freaky weirdness kill too much of my mojo.
Mind you, I didn’t take any chances with my partner. Only myself. So, I guess Arabelle had rubbed off on me a little. Funny how I couldn’t get her out of my head the entire time I performed.
* * *
“Okay,” I began at our next team meet. “Before we learn any more moves, I think we should think about the performance and what type of basic ballroom dance we want to do. Because that will determine what kind of showdance tricks we want to focus on.”
Arabelle inhaled deeply and folded her arms across her chest.
What? I thought this would make her more at ease and give her an artistic focus so that the students—like Kendra—wouldn’t have as much license to ask to learn any crazy hard thing they wanted. She opened her mouth but no words came out. She simply shook her head.
“Do you have a suggestion?” I asked her.
“No, no, just go on,” she answered with a flick of her hand. There was no tremor.
“Okay, well, does anyone have any thoughts? I’ve researched the different styles of dance the performance teams have done at the competitions in California and Las Vegas and Atlanta—all the places where they have prestigious team comps—and they’re mainly focused on popular social dance styles like salsa and west coast swing and even disco.” In my periphery I saw Arabelle frown.
“But we can always add a slower, rumba section in the middle and do some pretty lyrical stuff,” I added. Her eyes grew big. And she shook her head. This woman. What did she want? She didn’t want fast, but she didn’t want slow.
“I like the idea of fast and fun, and then ooooh-so-slow-and-sultry woven in between, Mr. R,” Kendra said lifting her eyebrows flirtatiously. I chuckled. I was Mr. R again now.
“We’ve already done salsa on the mambo team,” Judy noted. “I mean, salsa is a form of mambo. It is a fun dance obviously. But so is disco.”
“But disco is so seventies,” Josie said.
“Not necessarily,” said a woman new to the group named Samantha. “I mean, we can make it more modern with samba steps, since it’s the same beat. And we can add some salsa, too. You can do a lot with disco music.”
Kendra shrugged. “Well, I guess it depends on the music.”
“Yeah, I mean, we’re if we’re going with retro like Abba or the Beegees, we’ll have to make the whole thing retro, and have it be like a fun period piece,” Judy said.
I loved how the women were totally making all the decisions. Other than Arabelle. She looked like she was thinking hard though.
“But for something contemporary, there’s always Donna Summer. We could do a little tribute since she passed away not long ago,” Samantha said.
“Or Gloria Estefan, if we wanted to add Latin dances,” Judy said.
“Whatev, but I think something mainly fast but with a slow lyrical section would be most awesome,” Kendra said.
“What about “Last Dance?” It starts out slow. Or “Proud Mary” by Tina Turner?” This was suggested by a woman named Charlene, also new to the team.
I couldn’t read the thoughts behind Arabelle’s eyes. Her gaze was now focused on the window. It didn’t look li
ke she was looking at anything in particular, just thinking.
Then I got an idea. “You know, there’s a Donna Summer song that’s really cool. Fast and fun for the most part, but with lots of slower sections and very emotional. And a lot of people don’t even know it’s Donna Summer. It’s called “Con Te Partiro” and it’s her upbeat remake of the Andrea Botticelli song.” I’d seen some ballroom dancers perform to in Las Vegas once and I’d thought the song was perfect for fast fun moves combined with beautiful, slower lyrical sections. I took out my iPod and flipped through till I found the song. “Here, listen.”
It started out slow and then built up. Everyone’s eyes lit up.
“I love all the different instruments. And how it builds to a crescendo. And the words! So much passion! I can’t even believe it’s Donna Summer!” Kendra chirped.
Nods spread around the room. Everyone seemed to agree.
“Arabelle?” I called out, hoping she’d heard at least some of it. She was still looking out the window, seemingly lost in thought.
“Yes,” she said, her focus still off on something in the distance. “The music has a nice melody with different contrasts. And the beat of the song is fun while the words are passionate. She’s telling her lover, she’ll go with him to the ends of the earth. To be together forever and ev…” Her voice began to falter, but then returned clearly. “But it’s still high charged musically, so the words…they don’t really necessarily dominate.”
She seemed to like the song, albeit for reasons I didn’t fully understand, but she was clearly approving. Yes, our first meeting of the minds!
“Awesome. We’ll start choreographing to this then.”
I played the song a couple more times and thought about different moves we could do. We could still fit what we’d done so far in the beginning. We’d just need to take a little more time with it, and we could easily do so by having the guys—or leaders, in the case of Kendra—start out already onstage, and have the followers walk out to them, each to her partner. That would make the rag doll happen right before the first swell of music.
