Chapter 21
Easton
Meet Me in the Hallway—Harry Styles
I’m finding it difficult to concentrate.
It’s Friday, my only short day at the New England School of Ballet.
I’m accompanying Rayne’s first class, followed by another one with the juniors.
After that, I’ll be done. It’s supposed to be my most chill day of the week.
But after getting less than three hours of sleep because I spent most of the night in an unheated van writing a song with a girl I really wanted to kiss, even though we’re “just” friends, it’s not.
We wrote the song.
Rayne and I. We haven’t talked about what we’re going to do with it, or even if we’re going to do anything with it.
But that’s exactly what I want. Damn, I want it so badly that it scares me to death.
The song is really, really good. Better than anything the guys and I have come up with lately.
But I didn’t write it alone, and I can’t help but wonder what that says about my abilities.
I couldn’t get a song like that down on paper on my own. I needed Rayne for it.
I’m probably overthinking it, but I can’t help it. It feels unfair, and I can’t do a thing about it. I hate how incompetent it makes me feel.
I’m still playing the grand piano I’m sitting at, even though Francesca’s last class ended half an hour ago.
I haven’t been able to bring myself to get up and go home.
Part of me is secretly hoping that Rayne will come back later during the break, just like she did almost a month ago now, so she can remind me that writing this song helped her.
I need to know that it made her feel better. That’s all that matters.
Another part of me isn’t sure I actually want to see her because of what happened last night—that one moment that changed everything and nothing at the same time. When her mouth was only inches away from mine. All it would have taken to kiss her was one little motion.
One second, frozen in time. Her hesitating. Backing away. Pretending nothing happened. But it did, and now everything is different and a thousand times more complicated because I can’t stop thinking about the way she looked at me. Gray eyes, dark gaze. Full lips.
Just friends, East. You’re just friends. That’s all she wants. Obviously.
My fingers are moving faster, and my stomach tenses up.
I can tell myself we’re just friends as many times as I want, but it doesn’t feel that way.
I wanted to kiss her last night. I’ve wanted to for weeks.
Or to be totally honest, for months. Back when she was still the girl I texted every day.
Before I met her in person. I wanted to kiss her when she was still Mockingbird and not Rayne Bellamy, but now I want it so badly it hurts. It really hurts.
It hurts because what I want is so obviously not what she wants. I don’t know where we stand anymore. We’re just friends, but somehow, we’re not.
And then there’s the song. We wrote the best song ever together.
I still feel incompetent, just like she does far too often, and I hate that I feel that way about myself.
How hypocritical is that? I asked her to help me write a song just a few weeks ago, and now I can’t handle the fact that she did.
I groan in frustration. I have to stop all these thoughts from spinning around in my head.
But above all, I have to get my feelings about the kiss that didn’t happen under control.
Because it doesn’t matter how much I want to feel her lips on mine.
We’re friends. Real friends, and I can’t be selfish enough to take that away from her just because I’m an idiot and forgot that you can be just friends with a girl.
Unfortunately, Rayne isn’t just any girl. She’s the girl.
And I have a fucking problem.
I close the piano lid harder than necessary and get up. Leaving the ballet studio, I’m about to head to the changing room where I always leave my jacket during class when I spot purple hair in one of the other rooms.
Rayne. I remember that she has contemporary dance class now.
I slow down and then stop. She’s not alone, of course.
There are about thirty dancers in the room.
I spot Skye, Zoe, and Jase. Jase turns around at that very moment and flashes a quick grin at me through the glass before turning back to Melanie, the guest instructor from New York Rayne told me about.
Melanie is standing in front of the mirrored wall and seems to be explaining something to them with sweeping gestures.
Then she claps her hands and everyone takes their positions.
That’s my cue to leave; I have no right to be here.
Mostly, I shouldn’t be standing in the hallway watching Rayne, who’s now throwing her long hair back over her shoulder.
Most of the girls still have their hair in the strict buns required for ballet class, but they’ve exchanged their tight leotards for looser shirts.
Rayne is wearing an oversized purple shirt. It falls over the top of her black leggings, which emphasize her long, slender legs. Looking at her, all at once I feel much too warm.
Look away.
I really should stop staring at her and leave, but I’m paralyzed. The music begins, so loud that I recognize the song even through the wall: “Dancing on My Own.” It’s one of the songs Rayne sent me last year.
I can’t move because she starts dancing at the same time as the others, and for the first time that I’ve seen her dancing, it seems to me that she’s totally herself.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched her every morning as she’s tried day after day to bend the rules of ballet, and I never got the impression she liked what she was doing.
Now it’s different. Her movements are more fluid, more relaxed.
Less controlled, less perfect. Just the way she is.
I watch her, and I think it’s possible that she was wrong back then.
When she said this wasn’t what she wanted, she didn’t mean dancing in general.
It was about ballet. The rules and the control, the perfection.
None of it suits her. She’s not controlled or perfect.
She’s creative and free. Beautiful. Alive.
I’m just afraid she doesn’t know that.