Chapter 13 Kaia
Kaia
“I still can’t believe that all three of us are here,” Eric says. He glances at himself in the mirrored wall of one the New York Ballet’s rehearsal spaces, stretching his hamstrings out at the barre.
He’s not wrong. For this morning’s class, we have more than thirty people crammed into a relatively small dance studio. “I wonder how many people they let go and how many people they brought in,” I murmur, looking around.
Ella is in splits on the ground. She throws her hair back and purses her lips at him. “I can’t believe that Manon got called, too. It honestly makes me wonder what the instructors were thinking.”
Sitting down on the floor to do butterfly stretches, I giggle at that. “You’re terrible.”
Manon turns from where she is warming up at with a glare. She does a rude imitation of my giggle. “Hehehe!” Then her lips twist bitterly. “I hope you all get hit by busses on the way home.”
I give her a skeptical glance, shaking my head. Ella doesn’t miss a beat.
“Manon, how’s your mom’s pill addiction doing? I heard that she flunked out of rehab for the third time in a row.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Manon snaps.
Ella gives her a thumbs up, smiling sarcastically. “You’re still a bitch!”
I roll my eyes. “You two really get each other going.”
“Look,” Eric says, jerking his chin to the entrance of the rehearsal space.
The room quiets as Basil and Calum stalk in, already looking pissed. Basil wears dark spandex leggings and a dark tank top. Calum wears a pair of loose gray pants and a plain white t-shirt.
Prowling around the room already, Calum runs a hand through his dark hair. He’s magnetic without saying a word; I can’t take my eyes off of him.
“Is that one of our directors?” Ella whispers to me. “He’s so fucking hot. He must work out a lot.”
I nod, not looking away from Calum. I watch his gaze swing around, observing the room. He pauses when he sees me, a smirk appearing on his face for just a second. His sapphire eyes pin me in place and sear me through.
“All right!” he calls. “I need your attention, everyone…”
Basil claps his hands, the sound they produce thunderous. Everyone falls silent, directing their attention to the front of the room. I realize just then that my heartbeat is going a million miles an hour.
Just being in Calum’s presence makes my stomach flutter oddly and my cheeks feel hot.
“I’m Basil, or Bas. You all know me from your auditions. I’m the main choreographer here at NYB. Three facts about me: I’m married. I live in Florence three months out of the year. And I like seeing a lot of lift and extension in dance. Okay?”
He pauses. There are a couple of tentative yeses mumbled through our class.
Calum puts his hands behind his back, appearing pensive.
He walks by the row of students on the other side of the room, observing each one as he paces.
“I’m Calum. I’m your stage director for the spring season.
I’m going to cut to the chase.” He smiles coldly, his eyes taking in everyone in the room.
“As you can see, we’ve brought in thirty five of you to replace the departing cast. We only need twenty or twenty five of you.
So this first week will be a test of sorts.
I’m going to be separating the wheat from the chaff. Dead weight gets cut.”
My eyes widen. I glance at Ella. She looks at me briefly, her mouth tightening.
Calum pauses, looking at Basil. “Are you ready to get this class started?”
Basil cocks a brow. “I suppose so. Meesha, are you ready?”
He turns to the accompanist, a dark skinned young woman sitting behind the upright piano. Meesha nods. “Whatever you would like for me to play, Bas,” she replies in heavily accented English.
“Some Schubert,” he says, lifting his hands. She begins to play and Basil calls out to the class. “I hope you are all stretched out. Let us begin with simple plies.”
I clamber to my feet and position myself at the barre. Bas claps in time to the beat, explaining what to do.
“First position. And one, two, three, four. Now raise, two, three. Down, two, three, four. And lie, two, three, four… deeper, two, three, four.”
His words are meaningful of course, but they sort of fade into the background for me.
For almost my entire life I’ve had someone chanting those words or something nearly identical to me.
The teachers were old and young, black and white, male and female.
It really doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.
No, I’m not worried about him. It’s Calum that I catch myself looking at in the mirror. It’s Calum who soon completes his circuit around the room. “That’s the worst line I think I’ve ever seen.”
He points to a ballerina at one of the barres set up in the middle of the room. “Straighten your back, stick your ass out, find your fucking center of gravity.”
The ballerina turns red and plies again, prompting Calum to shake his head. “You’re going to have to do better to earn your place.”
An unsettling silence fills the room for a minute. He frowns and moves on, stopping a few places down at a young Latina dancer. “I’m not sure you’ve ever done this before. Work on your posture. Extend your arm…”
The ballerina smiles anxiously and tries to emulate what Calum says. He shakes his head. “No. No! Stop, everyone stop. Look at me.”
He shoos away the dancers standing next to the Latina, taking first position.
It’s the first time that I’ve ever considered whether or not Calum actually knew what he was talking about, if I’m honest. But he is pure grace and holds the perfect form when he plies, slowly going through the motions. His arm arches, his legs bend, his back is straight as a steel beam.
My jaw drops a little. I had no idea that Calum was so versatile; honestly, from the looks of him, you would think that he was an elegantly shaped football star, not a dancer.
What a way to prove me wrong. Calum finishes the pose and then steps away from the barre, eyeing everyone. “Just so there is no confusion, I can do pretty much anything I ask you to do. So when I say bend back further or hold the position longer, I know it is possible.”
Bas seems unimpressed. “Thank you, Calum. Now, if we may resume class? And one, two, three, four…”.
It’s hard to tear my eyes away from Calum. I’m focused on not fucking up something so simple as a plie in front of him, though.
He casts his gaze over me and frowns. “Straighten your back. Push out your tailbone.” Mortified, I immediately turn red and try to correct myself. Calum lifts a brow. “Are you kidding? Act like you’re been in a fucking dance studio before.”
Tears well up in my eyes. I look straight ahead, desperate not to cry in front of everyone. At the same time, the class keeps moving through the plies.
Everyone is perfectly at attention. Calum keeps his harsh gaze on me for a few seconds. “Not good, but better.”
Then he turns his head, scoping out another dancer, and moves on. The whole class moves on, through plies and arabesques and fouetté turns. The entire time, Calum struts around the room, unhappy with each and every silhouette that he sees.
I’m the only one that gets multiple nasty comments, though.
“Your feet are all wrong. You should move nimbly instead of looking like Frankenstein’s monster.”
“No, no, no. When I say execute a grand jeté, I mean really go for it. Don’t be fucking hesitant. The audience has no time for you to be timid.”
He stops me mid-class, staring at my feet. “Go get a new pair of shoes from the shoe room. This is the New York Ballet, not a dance recital put on by medieval peasants. I expect you to dress like you belong here.”
My eyes well up with tears. Nodding, I run out of the room, making it out of there before I burst into tears. I miss almost ten minutes of class because I have trouble finding a pair that are just the right size.
When I sneak back in, Calum shoots me a glare. I gulp and rejoin the rest of the class.
By the end of the afternoon, I’m barely keeping it together. To be fair, several dancers do start crying or get upset and leave in the middle of the class. But after my mini-breakdown, I stay resolute.
This is my shot at greatness. I’m not going to blow it for anyone, especially not Calum.
When class is finally over, Basil claps for the remaining dancers present.
“Very good! Tomorrow we start learning a new routine,” he announces. Sliding a look at Calum, he purses his lips. “And my colleague will probably go a little easier on you tomorrow. Right?”
Calum looks unimpressed, stalking away to where he set his water bottle down. I expel a long breath and look around for Ella.
She’s already shouldering her duffel bag. “I have to go. I have a doctor’s appointment that I’m almost definitely going to be late for.”
Nodding, I blot my eyes. “See you tomorrow.”
She flashes me a hard smile and hurries out the door.
I turn toward my bag and find Eric there, waiting patiently. “Hey.” I tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear.
My cheeks start glowing a hot pink when I think of Calum standing just on the other side of the studio, watching me.
Eric shoulders his bag, smiling at me tiredly. “I thought I would walk you out today.”
My blush spreads to my neck and my chest. I have a thing for Eric, but I also have made some promises to Calum. “Oh.” I glance back but Calum isn’t even in the room anymore. Letting out a sigh of relief, I nod. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
I snag my own bag and hurry out of the studio, licking my lips apprehensively. Sure enough, when I step out of the room, I see Calum. He’s leaning against the opposite wall, his arms crossed, his expression bordering on hateful.
And he’s glaring right at me. “Kaia? A word.”
My eyes widen. I glance helplessly at Eric, my heart beginning to pound. He shrugs.
“Want me to stay?” he asks quietly.
Do I want my crush to hear what my strip club patron has to say to me? Definitely not.
“No,” I say, forcing a smile. “Thanks anyway. I’ll catch you later.”
Calum stays put for a moment, watching Eric with a disapproving expression. The last stragglers from my class walk past me; soon we are alone in the echoing hallway.
Calum pushes himself off of the wall and strides over to me. I look up at him, losing my breath. He’s so much taller than I am and he still has well-defined arms and sculpted physique that one would expect of a dancer.
He stops when he’s a foot away. But I can practically feel the heat radiating off him like a torch.
He casts a glance down the hallway, where Eric went. “You can’t fuck him. You know that, right?”
My eyes widen at that. “Who said anything about that?”
His searingly blue eyes find my face and tighten on it. “I’m telling you right now. You won’t fuck him, not while you’re…” He pauses, looking around to be sure we are not overheard. “Under contract. I forbid it.”
I shake my head, rolling my eyes. “You can’t forbid me from anything.”
He clenches his water bottle so hard that it groans. “Don’t test my patience on this, beauty. You’ll see. I can do whatever I want, to whomever I want to do it to.”
I cross my arms and cock my hip. “Of that I have exactly zero doubts.”
He digs in his duffel bag and produces a note, wrapped around a hundred dollar bill. “Be at my home address tonight at seven. Don’t you dare be late.” His gaze drops down to my body, his lips twisting. “And wear something that turns me the fuck on.”
With only those instructions, Calum sends me a last little glare and starts walking down the hall.
“Tonight?” I call out after him.
But he doesn’t stop, doesn’t acknowledge that there was even a question asked.
I crumple the money and the note in my fist, infuriated.