Chapter 1Ingrid, Present #2
Then, a few years ago, Eden’s band fell apart. In a moment of desperation, she called Beck and asked him to play drums, hoping to keep her music career afloat.
Ingrid responded to her ex-boyfriend joining her best friend’s band the way any normal person would: by keeping her distance and pretending not to care.
Eden’s concerts? Only attended from obstructed seats, where Beck was a vague, human-shaped blur behind a drum set.
Mutual events? Dodged like she was training for espionage.
She’d dodged him for years, perfected the art of not-seeing.
But now Eden had blown it all up.
"Beck needed a place to stay during his teaching gig at Juilliard. My apartment’s empty," Eden explained, sounding way too chill about the whole thing. "It just makes sense."
"Makes sense for who?" Ingrid snorted, her laugh tight. "You’re basically handing me a VIP pass to my own personal disaster. Do you even hear yourself?"
She dropped her face into her palm, feeling the familiar ache of a wound she thought was finally healing.
"You’ve been dodging him for five years, Ingrid," Eden said gently. "Consider this the universe pushing you to face your fear. Close the chapter."
"I didn’t fear him, I feared me ," Ingrid groaned. "I fear what happens when I’m within a hundred yards of him and my body turns into a hot mess of irrational feelings and snack-driven panic. That’s what I fear."
"Oh, come on," Eden teased, unfazed. "You’re being dramatic. It’s just Beck. He’s not going to bite you." A beat. "Unless you ask him to."
Ingrid blinked. "What?"
"Nothing," Eden said quickly. "The point is you’re going to be fine. This is a fresh start. A new chapter. You’ll be all grown-up and mature about it. No more avoiding. You’ll just… have a conversation. Maybe even have tea."
"Tea?" Ingrid’s voice went dangerously high. "We’re not having tea , Eden. I don’t even like tea. And what makes you think I’m going to ‘have a conversation’ with the man who still makes me sweat like a hormonal teenager at a boy band concert?"
Eden’s voice softened. "Please tell me you’re not mad at me," she said, guilt creeping in just enough to sound adorable. "I honestly thought it’d be good for you. Like… actual closure, you know?"
"Is this because I haven’t properly dated anyone in five years," Ingrid muttered.
"Obviously," Eden said. "It’s been five years since Beck. You need to let go."
"It’s not my fault! My current options include French ensemble dancers who think monogamy is a suggestion and chain-smoking poets who misquote Kerouac. It’s been a buffet of nightmares."
"You need closure," Eden repeated.
Ingrid knew closure was a myth. Like the unicorn of emotional healing. If she wanted closure, she’d have to travel to the bottom of the emotional abyss and fight a giant feelings kraken. This wasn’t closure. It was reopening a wound that was barely scabbed over.
"Closure?" Ingrid repeated into the phone, practically choking on the word.
"I rerouted my entire subway commute to avoid Beck-infested zones. I have a mental map of emotional landmines—Upper East Side? Boom . All of Brooklyn? No-man’s-land.
" She paced, voice climbing. "I skip songs that so much as hint at him.
Uptown Girl? Billy Joel is dead to me. That song is cursed.
I hear those piano notes and my fight-or-flight kicks in. "
She paused, then added dryly, "I basically have a PhD in Emotional Avoidance. And you want to dismantle all of that with… tea?" She trailed off. Over the years, she’d become a black-belt-level expert at looking perfectly fine while actively spiraling. She was so good at it because she never talked to Eden about him. Because that would’ve been normal. And healthy.
But now he was about to be right in front of her, and all that carefully honed denial? Out the window. Spiraling was inevitable.
Eden hesitated, then muttered, "Okay… maybe I could’ve handled it better."
"You think?" Ingrid exhaled. "It’s like you woke up and thought, ‘You know what would be fun? Dropping a nuclear ex-boyfriend bomb directly into Ingrid’s life. She’s so ready for that.’"
Eden sighed, clearly backing off. "Okay, okay. I get it. You need time. But seriously, you’ve got this. I believe in you."
Ingrid blew out a slow breath, trying to find some scrap of composure. "This entire situation? A spectacular mess. And I hate messes."
Before Eden could respond, a sharp voice barked from behind her:
"Ingrid, off the phone! I need my Swan at the barre!"
With a quick goodbye to Eden, Ingrid slipped her phone back into her bag and moved toward the barre. Her feet carried her there out of habit but her mind refused to settle. Thoughts of Beck swirled relentlessly, pulling her focus to the past.
"Tendu!" Aimee’s sharp command, thick with her biting French accent, sliced through the haze of Ingrid’s thoughts. "First position!"
Ingrid felt a walking cane tap the back of her calf with a light swat, a gentle but firm reminder. In response, Ingrid's body immediately snapped into the first position, her heels together, and her toes turned outward, the movement ingrained in her muscle memory.
"Where is your mind?" Aimee asked gruffly, her red lips pursed in annoyance. "Too many carbs cloud your brain."
Ingrid internally rolled her eyes, like bread was the toxic one in this scenario. Bread didn’t wield a walking cane like a whip or treat warm-ups like Navy SEAL training.
Ingrid knew the stakes; she had been a ballerina for the large majority of her life.
She understood what it took to be perfect, and she had sacrificed everything: normal-looking feet, bread, relationships.
Her mind involuntarily jumped back to Beck, and her stomach turned at the thought of his name.
Five years had passed since she had been with him. Since that Swan Lake performance that changed everything. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She was now preparing to dance the very ballet that had nearly shattered her, and the man at the center of it all was now living dangerously close to her Wi-Fi.
There was no avoiding it now. She had to confront it all, the performance, him .
She gritted her teeth as she executed a graceful movement that was odds with her emotion, her leg floating gracefully over the wooden studio floor as irritation bubbled in her blood.
"Chin up, Prima!" Aimee’s voice commanded from the side, the sharp French accent cutting through the air. The words reverberated in Ingrid's mind. Chin up. It’s the only way to face your demons.
Ingrid scaled the six flights of stairs like a fugitive, sticking to the edges to keep her steps quiet. Her studio bag dug into her shoulder, and her warm-up pants swished with every movement, loud enough to announce her presence to the entire zip code.
Damn it. She’d grabbed the wrong pair. These were the obnoxious ski-pant kind, not the silent terry cloth ones. Rookie mistake.
But her brain had been elsewhere, preoccupied with the looming Swan Lake production. Even in moments of stillness, the dance consumed her thoughts. She couldn’t afford to make the same mistakes again. She wasn’t entirely sure she could live through it if she did.
Her mind conjured the grand finale, the moment of pure magic. The music swelling, the stage lights blazing like a second sun, every eye in the audience locked onto her. The final overhead lift, the one that was supposed to make audiences weep in awe and critics grovel at her feet.
It had to be perfect. It also had to not go the way it did last time. She shoved the memory aside and focused on her real mission: getting inside her apartment unnoticed.
Beck had moved in today. As in directly next to her. As in, one minor address mix-up and her mail would be arriving in his hands. Absolute nightmare fuel.
Her stomach twisted, nerves prickling under her skin. Something buzzed in her veins, a jittery energy she absolutely refused to classify as excitement. It was dread. Plain and simple.
Reaching her floor, she cracked the door open and peeked out. Empty hallway. Hell yes. Finally, a win.
On tiptoes, she padded toward her door, her boots landing in muffled thuds. She pointedly ignored the door next to hers, but her gaze still snagged on the sliver of light glowing from beneath it.
Her heart stopped. He was in there. Beck. Living. Five feet away.
She tightened her grip on her keys, the cool metal biting into her palm. In slow motion, she raised her key to the lock, careful not to let the others jingle. Then–
"MEEEEOW."
She froze. Oh no. Not now. Not now. She clenched her jaw, whispering murderously at the door. "Shhh!"
The unseen menace inside apparently took this as a personal challenge because–
"MEEEEOOOW."
Panic hit her bloodstream like an espresso shot. She rammed the key into the lock, twisting it aggressively.
The second the door cracked open, a sleek blur of black fur launched out, skidding to a stop in the hallway.
Freddie. Her loud, dramatic, utterly traitorous cat.
The same one she’d rescued from a dirty alley and nursed back to life with round-the-clock care and expensive organic kibble.
And out of the sheer goodness of her heart, she’d even named her after Frederick Ashton, one of the greatest ballet choreographers of all time.
A noble name for a not-so-noble creature who chose the worst possible moment to stab her in the back.
Freddie paused mid-strut, tail flicking, and turned her big green eyes toward the door next to theirs. Her pupils dilated. She chirped excitedly. No no no no no–
"Where are you going, Freddie?" Ingrid whisper-hissed, lunging for her, but the cat was already on a mission.
"To see her favorite person," a deep voice drawled behind her.
And just like that, Ingrid's soul tried to eject from her body. That voice . A shiver ran down her spine, the kind laced with memories she’d spent years trying to repress.
She swallowed hard, plastered on the most neutral expression she could manage, and turned to face the man who had once had the power to destroy her. The man who had, in fact, done a thoroughly excellent job of it.
He was standing there. Smug. Infuriatingly un-ruined. Looking like someone who had never once had an existential crisis over an ex and definitely never eaten an entire baguette out of stress.
"Hi, neighbor," Beck said, leaning against his doorframe with a slow, knowing smile. "Trying to avoid me?"