Chapter 2
“How did it go?” Mom asks only once we’re in the car, heading away from the studio. She hates talking about dance or how my personal auditions went in front of anyone else, because she believes they would be held in a gym and not a private studio if they were meant to be public.
I’m still on a high from my audition and can’t help but grin. “It was flawless.”
She nods in approval, as if she expected nothing less.
I stare out the window, taking in the buildings of LA.
It’s not a city I love. I personally crave the salty air and ocean breeze that comes from living in a beach city, but today, Los Angeles is full of promise and the beginning of my future.
It is my friend today, even with the early rush hour traffic.
“Remember,” Mom says, and I catch myself groaning inwardly. A lecture already? I just finished the best audition of my life. Can’t we just enjoy that for a moment? “Even though the audition is over, we’re not done training. You’ll still need to be at the studio every day after school.”
“I know.” I sigh, even though I might have secretly been hoping for a tiny break, even just a few days.
I love ballet, but having Mom be a part of that world sometimes makes it a little too intense.
Up until this year, she’s been my coach.
This year, though, she’s paying an arm and a leg for Maria Lilleth to coach me privately so that I will be ready for Paris.
Mom still helps on the side, but Maria is the one I listen to most, even though Mom acts more like a coach than a mom most of the time.
I smile, thinking of Maria. She called me this morning to wish me luck and to remind me that to be the best, I had to act like I was the best. She is about to have a baby and is currently on bed rest— or on the couch in her studio.
“I’m going to text Maria and tell her how it went,” I say as I slide my phone out.
It was flawless.
I use the same words I used to tell my mother, because it was flawless. There’s no other word for it. She texts back moments later.
Maria Lilleth
Wonderful. We’ll talk tomorrow about our new training plan. Now that you’ve auditioned, we’ve got to get you ready to dance there.
These words, coming from Maria and not Mom, make me smile. I look at my phone again, opening the texts I didn’t read earlier.
The Four Musketeers Group Chat:
Grace
You’re going to do great, Rosie!
Nathan
Go rock it, Sis!
Also, tell Mom that we’re out of apples.
Tucker
What do apples have to do with the audition?
GOOD LUCK ROSIE!! YOU’RE GOING TO DO AMAZING.
Tucker (out of group chat)
Seriously, you’ll do great. I can’t wait to hear how it goes :)
I flush as I read the last text from Tucker.
We’ve been good friends since he moved to California three years ago, during our freshman year, to be a country singer.
He’s cute, but not the type of guy my mom wants me to date.
He’s Grace’s cousin and moved in with her family while his mom stayed in Tennessee for work.
He originally moved because he had a record deal lined up, which fell through three weeks later.
But he stayed, because even though country music is his thing, he feels like LA is the place for him to make it in the music world.
Plus, his dad isn’t here. I shake thoughts of his strained relationship with his father out of my head and instead remember the first time I met him.
We had an instant friendship after what Grace calls a ‘meet-cute.’ I think she’s been hoping we’d get together the whole time we’ve known each other.
I won’t lie; there is something between us, but for now, we’re just friends.
That’s all we can be while Mom has a say in my life, and she’s got the final say in everything.
I frown when I realize there’s no good luck text from Shawn, the guy my mom wants me to date.
A flash of guilt rushes through me because of the pleasure I felt when I read Tucker’s texts.
I shouldn’t be feeling that way about another guy, right?
Even if I don’t have a relationship with Shawn.
I’ve known him nearly all my life, and Mom thinks we’re destined to be together.
Our dads are good friends, and at the beginning of our senior year, our moms started conspiring to get us to date.
They talk on and on for hours and hours about how great he is and how he’ll be going to Yale in the fall to be a doctor, and I should date him because he’ll be dedicated to school and work while I have a dance career.
Plus, she brought up that I’d had a crush on him when we were younger.
She doesn’t care that I don’t like him like that. Not anymore.
When I mentioned that after the Christmas dance, she told me that I needed to start thinking about my future after dance because I won’t be able to dance forever. But that’s not something I ever want to think about.
I shake all the thoughts away and turn my phone over without texting anyone back.
I cannot afford to be distracted, especially not by my mom’s plans or by Tucker.
He’s the reason why I told my mom I’d try dating Shawn in the first place.
It was the perfect proposition. Shawn wanted to make his real crush, Libby, jealous, and I didn’t want to date Tucker. I can’t date him.
I sigh. I would actually love to date him, even though I have no intention of telling him that.
He’s the person who makes me laugh the most, and he understands (on some level) my dedication to dance and knows why today is so important to me.
He gets me on a level no one else does, and I get him the same way.
But, as much as I want to hold his hand every now and then, and even if I wonder if kissing him is as great as it was last summer when we’d had our first and only kiss, Tucker Bensen is not an option.
Mom had made that clear as soon as he’d moved in.
Which probably made me like him even more.
“No boys,” she had said one afternoon after class.
“What?” I asked, confused at what she was referring to, as I drank from my water bottle, still going through the routine in my mind.
“I know Erin’s nephew just moved in. She said that the two of you hit it off the other day at his welcoming party. But you know the rules.”
“Mom,” I’d groaned, “it’s not like that.
We’re just friends.” Because at that point, of course that’s all we were.
We were still practically strangers. Yes, I thought he was cute, but I was married to ballet already, even at fourteen.
I wouldn’t let anything or anyone stop me from getting into the Paris Ballet Academy.
Mom looked at me with that stern and serious look then—it was the look she gave dancers in the studio often. “No boys, no distractions,” she said firmly.
I nodded. “No boys, no distractions.”
When it became apparent to nearly everyone that Tucker and I connected on a level no one could have ever guessed, I tried to step back from the flirting and the long glances for the sake of all involved.
But even if I hadn’t had dance to focus on, I think I would have cut back anyway.
We became better friends, and eventually, I didn’t have to remind myself that we’re just friends every time we were together.
I didn’t want to mess up our friendship.
Until he kissed me on the Fourth of July last year during the firework show.
Immediately, I wanted him to do it again.
And just as immediately, I knew I had to make it stop.
Now, we’re back to being friends and pretending like it never happened.
I went to Paris for the last half of summer and came back to Mom’s plan for me to date Shawn.
But he and I aren’t interested in each other, even if we flirt occasionally to make our moms think otherwise.
I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me.
But Mom could tell I was starting to fall for Tucker, so she intervened. Just like she always does.
My phone vibrates in my hands, pulling me out of my thoughts.
Nathan
Are you coming to the bonfire with us tonight?
I flip my phone over, unsure of my answer.
Part of me really wants to say no. It’s a Monday night, and school starts tomorrow, so I’d much rather spend a few hours in the studio and go to bed before ten.
But it’s my senior year, and tomorrow, I start my last semester of high school, which means I can finally go to the senior bonfire with my friends .
“So,” I say, broaching the subject with my mom because her answer is always no unless it’s a movie night or a party at Grace’s house, “the senior bonfire is tonight, and Nathan and Grace are going, and I want to go with them.”
The words tumble out, and my stomach flips.
What if she says no? I hate that I feel small as I say these words, like she has so much power over me that I’ve made myself smaller so that it won’t hurt nearly as much when the crushing blow comes.
She doesn’t treat Nathan this way, only me.
Her little ‘prodigy’, even if that’s not what I ever wanted to become.
“Hmm?” Mom asks, glancing away from the stopped traffic to look at me. Why can’t she ever listen when I talk?
“The bonfire? Tonight. Can I go with them?”
“Will Tucker be there?” she asks, and I clench my teeth.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “But it doesn’t matter since everything with Shawn is going well.”
She frowns. “Will he be there?” she asks.
She’s not thrilled that he and I have only gone on two dates since the summer.
She wants me to try harder to make him my boyfriend, but there’s only one guy I’m interested in, and it’s the only one she doesn’t want me to date.
Although I used to have a crush on Shawn, that was before I got to know him better.
“No, he’s flying in tonight from Colorado. Skiing, remember?”
She nods, as if she only sort of remembers this.
I’m afraid she’ll tell me no; that since he won’t be at the bonfire, she won’t let me go.
“Fine,” she says, and my heart leaps—slightly.
Dare I hope I heard her correctly? “Really?”
“Really,” she answers. “But you both have to be home by ten at the latest. It is a school night.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, turning my phone over.
YES. And Mom said yes since I finally asked her.
Nathan
Good call on waiting till after your audition to ask her.
That was partly Tucker’s idea. He suggested I wait until she wasn’t focused on the audition to ask her. Is he coming?
Nathan
Good man. And yes, he’ll be there.
I swallow, glancing at Mom. She’ll get worried if she knows he’s coming, but I’m not about to tell her and give her a reason to change her mind.
She gets funny when Tucker is concerned.
She’s worried that he’s too much like my dad and that I’m going to fall head over heels for him and ruin my career by having kids too soon, which is what happened to her.
My parents’ love story is one that I loved hearing as a child.
Dad would sit us down and share how, during their senior year of high school, his parents moved from Laguna Beach down to San Clemente, a thirty-minute drive that he was convinced would ruin his life.
On his first day, he met Mom, and he knew that was it; he was head over heels for a girl he didn’t even know yet.
From the way they tell it, they fell in love fast, and he followed her to Paris, declaring he could paint anywhere, which was true.
He worked in the Louvre at the front desk as she danced the days away.
He proposed when they were nineteen and they were married three months later.
By twenty-two, she had twins on the way, and her professional dance career was over.
Not because she was now a mother, but because Nathan and I broke her pelvis during the first part of delivery before it turned into an emergency C-section.
Her life is the reason she has all these strict rules about boys, because she wants for me what she never got, even though I know she loves Dad and she loves us.
I think part of her regrets having kids when she did because she didn’t get to finish her dream.
It’s why she gets to choose who I date. Guys who have “real potential,” as she says.
Which tells me she doesn’t know Shawn very well because he has as much potential as a golden retriever.
He’s a nice guy, but I’m pretty sure he plans on surfing instead of going to college like his parents think.
But I could be with Tucker now. The thought enters my mind so quickly that I drop my phone, startled. The audition is over. Why not have some fun with him before school ends? It could be the end of senior year/summer romance you’ve always wanted.
The thought makes me smile, but then I shake my head. I don’t want to ruin our friendship; I have to protect that at all costs. If we get together, there’s a risk we will come out on the other end not as friends, and I don’t know if I can take that risk.