Chapter 3
FELIX
“Sorry again about being late,” I said, lifting myself up onto the pale-yellow kitchenette counter to perch there while Amelia poured us both a cup of drip coffee from a pot that I thought might have been older than I was. “And for not bringing better coffee.”
Amelia smiled wryly as she poured. Where she was standing in front of the window, the light streaming through the lace curtains reflected off her dark skin, highlighting the sharp planes of her face.
She was nearly a decade older than me, but aside from one or two white hairs in her ruthlessly tamed bun, you would never have known it.
I’d told Avery she seemed soft, but now that I’d watched her teach, I didn’t think that was quite the right word.
She seemed relaxed, but her strength—career-ending injury aside—was all still there.
“I told you, quit apologizing,” she said, passing me a mug that said World’s Best Dance Teacher on it, complete with cartoon ballerina in a pink tutu. “I’m happy to have you here.”
I clasped the mug close to my chest, letting the warmth soothe my hands. “Well, thanks. I know you’re doing me a favor—”
“Actually,” Amelia interrupted, leaning against the counter with her own World’s Best Dance Teacher mug—this one covered in flowers with a gold rim. “I brought you here to do me a favor.”
I paused with my coffee halfway to my mouth. That was news to me.
I’d been surprised to get Amelia’s call after my injury, to be honest. We’d been close once—she’d taken me under her wing, in a way, when I’d joined the company.
Acted like the big sister I’d never had for reasons I still didn’t understand.
At first, I’d practically worshipped the ground she walked on.
She’d been a principle dancer for a handful of months, and my greatest aspiration had been to partner with her one day.
That had never happened on account of her injury, and I’d always regretted it.
Once she’d retired, we’d fallen out of contact—she’d fallen out of contact with everyone, and I hadn’t felt like I ought to chase her up.
Now that I was in the same position, injured beyond the point of return, I understood why she hadn’t wanted to talk to the rest of us.
I’d thought about her, though. Every single day.
So when I’d gotten her call, I hadn’t thought too hard about grabbing the opportunity to see her again with both hands—and hadn’t asked any questions about why she might be offering me sanctuary in her small-town dance studio.
It hadn’t occurred to me that she was doing anything other than offering me the same hand she had before. I couldn’t imagine her needing anything from me—to me, she was still the much more accomplished dancer, and I was the lost baby in need of shelter.
“Oh?” I asked warily, eyeing her over the rim of the mug.
Amelia’s lips twitched as she looked down into her coffee. “You saw the class this morning.”
“I did,” I agreed, though I still wasn’t sure what she was getting at.
“All four of ‘em.”
I went to agree again, then paused as I realized what she was getting at. “Normal class size?”
Amelia nodded. “We had five, but then Mrs. Kwon broke her hip.”
My thigh twinged in sympathy. I dug the heel of my hand into it, rubbing at the long, ugly scar I knew was under my tights. I wore much thicker tights these days, since it was raised enough to show through the thin company standard ones.
Not that I ever had to worry about company standards again.
“Right,” I said. “And your other classes…?”
“Let’s call them all equally under-attended.
” Amelia wet her lips. She took a sip of her coffee, sighing and closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, and then turned her dark, piercing eyes on me.
“I’m in trouble, Felix. If I can’t increase attendance…
I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll do.
I can’t give this up,” she said, looking into her coffee again.
“I could go and get a job doing… just about anything I guess, if I wanted. But I don’t know who I am without dance. ”
Right, yeah. Neither did I. That was the thing that scared me down to the marrow of my bones right now. Who was I, if not a dancer?
“So how do I come into this?”
Not that I wanted to refuse anyway—I more than owed Amelia.
Without her, I would’ve quit in my second week when Piotr made me cry so hard I threw up.
She’d come to me then and told me her director had done the same to her when she’d started her career, more than once, and made me promise that if I stuck out another two weeks, she’d give me a private lesson.
She was an amazing teacher, and I owed her private lessons—she’d offered me one for every month I stuck it out for the first year of my professional career—for my success, as far as I was concerned.
So whatever she needed, I’d do it.
“There’s this competition coming up. It’s for kids, which I know probably sounds silly to you—”
“Not at all,” I interrupted. I knew how important kids’ dance competitions could be, especially for young dancers. Anyone who didn’t start as a child was never going to make it professionally.
Amelia looked at me, brows rising in surprise. She nodded. “Okay, well, I want you to do the choreography for Rising Up’s entry.”
What?
What?
“I beg your pardon?” I asked aloud, staring at her.
Amelia grabbed the bag from the coffee shop, opening it up and holding it out toward me. The scent of spices, coffee, and sugar wafted from the two enormous blondies inside, making my mouth water.
“I’m—”
“I wouldn’t give one of these up for just anyone,” Amelia said, her eyes fixed on me.
The guy in the coffee shop had implied as much.
“You can have—”
“Your asshole boyfriend isn’t here to stop you.”
I glanced up, catching the glint in Amelia’s eyes, the hard line of her mouth. How did she…?
“You think I didn’t see how he treated you?” she asked, brow raised. “You think we all didn’t see how he treated you?”
“He dumped me,” I said, looking down at my knees. I couldn’t face looking her in the eye.
“I know.”
I looked up again, mouth falling open.
“I know because he’s the kind of asshole who would,” Amelia continued. “Because if he couldn’t hold being in control of your career over you, if he couldn’t get off on the power that gave him, he wouldn’t want you.”
I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “It wasn’t—”
“It was,” Amelia interrupted. “It was,” she repeated, voice softer and kinder.
“And I’m sorry no one told you. I’m sorry no one helped you.
But I’m not sorry you got out from under his thumb.
And I want you to eat the best blondie you’ll ever try about it when he can’t stop you anymore. Fuck Piotr.”
Fuck Piotr. Avery would have said the same. Avery was my best friend, and so legally required to hate my exes. Amelia wasn’t.
I reached into the bag and took out one of the blondies. Amelia lit up into a bright smile, her eyes glittering with warmth. I’d have to tell Avery she was still beautiful. She nodded to me, encouraging.
The smell of spices and coffee and so, so much refined sugar filled my nose as I raised the blondie to my mouth and took the world’s most tentative nibble on the corner, letting a tiny morsel crumble onto my tongue.
The sound that escaped me started out as a surprised squeak and turned into a moan like I hadn’t heard myself make in years. I stared up at Amelia, finding her smiling even wider than before.
“Holy shit,” I said, taking a bigger bite.
Amelia laughed. “Welcome to Otter Bay,” she said. “We do pleasure around here.”
“Mmhmm,” I agreed, chewing slowly to savor every note.
It would’ve been very, very easy to get addicted to these.
They weren’t as sugary sweet as I’d imagined they would be, the bitterness of the coffee balancing them out and making the spices sing.
It wasn’t as though I’d never enjoyed anything I’d eaten under Piotr’s…
concern for my health and fitness, but I’d hadn’t eaten things for enjoyment in so long I’d forgotten what that was like.
“So, choreography,” Amelia continued, taking the other blondie. She bit down on it, making a sound of pleasure just a little more restrained than the one I had.
I took another bite of mine, toes actually curling this time. Dear God, these were good. I hadn’t had sex this good in… maybe ever.
Which said a lot about my asshole ex, didn’t it?
“I’m not a choreographer,” I said with my mouth half full, licking crumbs from my lips. “You’re thinking of my asshole ex-boyfriend, before he was a director.”
“I know he saddled you with doing The Nutcracker a few years ago for the kids,” Amelia said. “And then took the credit. The whispers reached me even here.”
“I wouldn’t say saddled.”
I’d mentioned to him once that I wanted to do what he did one day.
He’d been a dancer first, then a choreographer when he aged out of his prime, and then a director.
It wasn’t an uncommon career progression, but a company needed a lot more dancers than choreographers, so it wasn’t exactly an easy job to get.
When he’d told me I could do The Nutcracker, I’d taken it as a favor.
The fact that I hadn’t been paid for it—and he had—didn’t bother me at the time. It was valuable experience.
The fact that I hadn’t gotten credit…
“Asshole,” Amelia repeated. My lips twitched. Piotr had a rule about swearing during training and rehearsals—he said ballet dancers were meant to be classier than that—so I’d never actually heard Amelia swear before.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah you do,” Amelia said. “I watched that Nutcracker. Took my nieces, in fact, and you know what they said to me after?”
I raised a brow, waiting.
“They said, I want to be a ballerina.”
Oh.
I licked crumbs off my lips, taking that in. They were Amelia’s nieces, so they’d probably had a thought like that before, but…
The idea of making someone want to do what I did? Because of how I’d shown someone else to do it?
That was going to take a little processing.
I shoved the last bite of blondie into my mouth to give myself a moment to think, savoring it as I licked the crumbs off my fingers and made happy noises I might have been embarrassed about if they’d been in front of anyone else. Anyone still in the company.
“Listen, I’m good at what I do. I’m a good teacher,” Amelia said. “I’m patient and I can guide people through bending their bodies to their will. I have 72-year-olds doing jetés and arabesques like they were born in a leotard. But I don’t have what you have.”
“Which is?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I had much of anything.
Amelia shrugged. “No idea, but you’ve got it.
Vision, I guess,” she said, holding her hands up.
“I know you’re interested in experimental stuff, and that’s the point of this competition—experimental, contemporary, fresh.
They’re calling it Next Gen, which isn’t the most inventive name, but the whole point is to do things that’re new.
You do new. It’s all very innovative, group competition instead of individual so it’s lower pressure for the kids.
You remember what the pressure was like. ”
I did. My first competition had been when I was eight years old—and I’d won, but at the cost of waking up screaming in the night for weeks before and after.
I’d spent the entire morning beforehand throwing up.
Not that I was any kind of expert on child development, but I didn’t think that could have been all that good for me.
“And, y’know, it’d help you out, too,” Amelia continued.
“I know you always wanted to go into choreography. It’s a small competition but that’s because it’s exclusive, I practically had to sell a kidney to some of my contacts to get in.
There are a lot of up-and-coming eyes on it, lots of interest from people about to really break out.
If we win, and you’re named as the studio’s choreographer and you can add that to your resume alongside a major company… ”
I nodded slowly. Yeah, it’d be…
Something.
And I wouldn’t have to figure out who I was without dance, if I could get a gig with a company that needed a choreographer. If my leg would hold up to that.
I dug the heel of my hand into the scar again, rubbing it hard as I thought.
Amelia glanced at it, worry in her eyes, but didn’t say anything.
Wouldn’t, I thought. She knew what life-changing injuries felt like.
My last memory of her before today was her lying flat on the floor trying to hold in screams of pain, unable to move.
Something had slipped or cracked or something in her lower back.
I didn’t know the details, but I remembered the sound of her falling.
I figured that was why the studio was called Rising Up. Because that was what she’d done.
Now, she was offering me a hand to do the same. It was better than anyone else had.
“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, okay. I’m in.”