Zoë
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I SIT BOLT upright in bed, the adrenaline that’s just been dumped into my bloodstream ensuring that I am wide awake, and immediately break into a sweat.
The mask.
I’d finally started drifting off to sleep after a fraught and exhausting day, and the promise of sleep was such sweet relief. A reprise at last from my racing thoughts. But as my mind wandered through the events of last night for the millionth time, it finally traced my steps through David’s office: laying out the mask on the bathroom counter, walking past the desk, hearing David’s voice and hiding, scurrying down the corridor and leaving as quickly as I could. There was just one thing I forgot—going back to the bathroom that only David and I have access to and reacquiring the mask.
Goddammit.
It’s weird enough for me to know about the intimacy that David and I have shared, but he —the overprotective man who acts like he’s my father—will not be able to handle it. He’ll hit the roof. I’ve never had any problem with the idea of intimacy between us, but it’s always been a hard line for him.
I pick up my phone and check the time. Four o’clock in the morning.
Fuck!
If David finds the mask, he’ll piece the whole thing together—that I snuck into the club against his wishes, that he had sex with me, that I had sex with Nick. He’ll be able to tell Nick what happened, too. All of the anonymity I felt on Saturday night has evaporated, and the weight of consequences hangs like the sword of Damocles over my head. I bury my face in my hands and fall back down on the pillow, feeling humiliated and exposed.
I try to relax back into sleep by talking myself through it. It’s four o’clock on Monday morning. The club is closed and there’s nothing I can do about it now anyway—nor later, since the club is closed on Mondays. What are the chances he’s even been into the office washroom? If I show up the minute the cleaning crew arrives on Tuesday, maybe I’ll be able to get it before he even sees it. Finally, as the sky begins to lighten and the first birds of the morning start chirping, I fall back into a restless sleep.
* * *
Monday passes like Sunday, with no sign of David at home, but when Tuesday rolls around with still no sign, I get a little premonitory twinge of angst.
It’s not unusual for David to be gone for a couple of days at a time, especially when he’s starting a new romance, which is pretty often, but his absence seems loaded in the aftermath of our secret threesome.
As planned, I arrive at the club promptly at noon and enter through the back door with the afternoon cleaning staff, who have seen me rehearsing numbers so many times that I’m sure they know all the songs by heart. I say hi to them and then walk down the corridor to David’s office at what I hope is a relaxed and normal pace, but once I get inside, I drop my bag and sprint across the room to the bathroom.
The counter… is empty. The mask, which I clearly remember spreading on its surface, is gone.
My heart slams against my ribs as I move to David’s desk, lifting piles of paper and books to peer underneath them and then opening the top drawer as if I intend to ransack the place. I don’t have to look any further, though, there it is—my vinyl hood, folded up and stashed on top of a mess of pens, chewing gum, and condoms.
Only David could have put it there.
He knows.
For six months I’ve been dreaming about getting a text message from Nick. Something confessional, something heartfelt, a prayer that we can be together, an apology for leaving me—just some sign that he’s been thinking of me somewhere out there. That he misses me. That he loves me.
At first, it was a certainty. Every time I picked up my phone, I was sure I would finally see the waited-for message, to have that confirmation at last that he felt as I did, that what happened between us was real. Eventually, certainty diminished to hope, and finally, hope became despair. I was beginning to accept that I would never hear from him, that there was no resolution for us.
I never expected that instead of a text message, we would end up sleeping together as two masked strangers.
And as a result, that obsessiveness has started up again. By Wednesday, I can’t even bear not having my phone in my hand, certain that the long-awaited message will finally arrive. He must know by now, and once he does, surely he’s not so heartless that he will continue to ignore me?
Tate’s up and left, I know from his Instagram, posting about a new life in Oregon with a girl who wears too much highlighter and uses a filter in every photo. And Nick’s here. We’ve been together. There’s no way David wouldn’t have told him—I know David. He can’t ignore that… can he?
* * *
I’m back at the club the next night at nine o’clock to prepare for the night’s show. I still haven’t seen David, although there were signs that he’d been home this morning, and I don’t feel ready to have the confrontation yet. I stash my bag backstage and get changed there instead of going into his office as I usually do, then I climb upstairs to the tech booth to give a USB key to the sound and lighting technician.
Movement is my first language, and it will always be how I express myself best. When Nick first left, all those months ago, in that strange time when I was living alone in his house, I had choreographed a dance to express my sorrow and grief. Mostly a modern dance, it had no place on stage at the Paradise Lounge or in the ballet studio, but I danced it over and over again in the house, working through my loss and loneliness in the only way I knew how. Later, when I shared it with Andre, we workshopped it for the stage at the Ball & Chain, but we’ve never quite fit it into the show. It’s raw and emotional, slow and sad compared to our other high-energy, upbeat numbers. But tonight, I don’t think I can do high-energy and upbeat. Tonight I can’t escape how I feel and pretend to be fine.
From the high of what happened on Saturday night, I’ve reached an utter low, like I was marched up to a cliff and thrown off.
I’ve always felt a little kinky, a little different, a little too into sex, a little too into exhibitionism. Being with someone like Tate made me feel ashamed of who I was. But on Saturday night, I felt a complete, wild freedom, using my body in a kind of dance I’d never done before, on a kind of stage I’d never been on before. There was the thrill of being seen and exposed, the ultra-heightened sensation of being with two men at once, and a third, surprising feeling: one of warmth and safety, the satisfaction of being so desired by two men, the sheer affection of being held by them both. It was one of the all-time highs of my life.
Finding out that Nick was the bull was shocking, strangely humiliating, and deeply heart-warming all at the same time. He felt so absolutely right, so exactly perfect, and there’s a validation to knowing that we would seek each other out, even unknowingly.
But the fallout over the past couple of days has devastated me. Hearing nothing from either of them, even David, has given me a profound sense of rejection. As if, now that they know it was me, they are both ashamed. Too ashamed to even reach out and see how I feel.
Every time I pick up the phone and see that there is nothing there, my heart breaks a little bit more—just like when Nick left, texting only to say goodbye and never again.
I had told him that I loved him, and as humiliating as it is that he never reciprocated, I know that it’s still true. I would choose him over and over again in the unlikeliest and most inappropriate of circumstances: as a masked stranger in a room full of hundreds of willing men, as the father of my boyfriend. I couldn’t not choose him, and for all the hurt it’s caused, I would do it all over again every time, given the chance.
* * *
I bow out of the group numbers for the first time since we launched the show, leaving Rachel, Andre, and Tomas to dance the four-person choreography on their own.
“I can’t,” I tell them, and the despair must be so obvious in my tone that none of them hesitate.
“Of course, sweetheart,” says Rachel.
“We love you,” says Andre, kissing me on the forehead.
I stay backstage, stretch, and do a few simple walkthroughs of my number while simultaneously visualizing every step of the numbers on stage as the familiar music pulses throughout the club.
My life has had so many ups and downs in the past year, but this show is my triumph. When I found out that I had not passed my audition for the Regency Ballet Company, the news was a destabilizing punch to the gut. Training for that audition had been my life for months. No matter how late I worked at the Paradise Lounge, I still woke up at the crack of dawn every day to get to my early morning ballet classes and to do my strength training exercises in the gym. I counted every calorie, repeatedly broke toes, and spent my free time in the physiotherapist’s office rehabilitating three different injuries.
However, when David accepted my proposal to trial our show, he gave me license to explore my own unique brand of dance, and the results show that my instincts were spot-on. Our show gets acclaimed reviews and draws crowds of all kinds of people out—to a sex club, of all places. I was right about how to put on a good show, and now I hope that I am right about my new number, too. That people are ready to see something slower, heavier, and even a little sad.
When Rachel, Andre, and Tomas crowd backstage to the sound of applause on the other side of the curtain, I position myself in the wings, take a deep breath, and then step forward onto the stage en pointe with the first strains of the music.
Dancing at the Paradise Lounge, or here in our show, is usually a specific style for me—contemporary, modern, a little bit rock, a lot of strip tease. I’ve never brought my ballet experience to the stage like this, but as I stretch up onto my toes and tip forward into a deep arabesque the expression feels pure—taut like a strung bow, but elegant, a perfect representation of how I’ve felt stepping into love. The audience is silent, and the bright light blinds me to the darkness around the stage. I could be utterly alone as I melt into the adagio sequence of my movements with raw and vivid honesty, yet I know a sea of eyes surrounds me. I am seen and held, and in this moment, I speak for all of us who have loved and mourned its loss.
Stripping and, as I recently learned, exhibitionism is more than aphrodisiac for me. It’s a cleansing, a vulnerability that verges on ritual and leaves me feeling open, breathless, and hopeful, like a fire has burned off all of life’s rough, ugly edges—self-doubt and recrimination, guilt and shame. But dancing does the same thing. A deeply expressive movement leaves me feeling like I’ve bared it all, and when I slide down onto the stage at the end of my song, that’s exactly the feeling I have. Like my wounds have breathed, like I am lighter.
I’m breathless as I look out to the crowd, suddenly visible to me at this angle as the spotlight dims—a sea of transported faces, suspended looks of awe that tell me they felt what I wanted them to feel, and then right in front of me a sight so shocking I almost faint on the spot.
It’s Nick, sitting front and center, clapping and looking right at me. Even though we were unknowingly intimate just a few days ago, seeing his face and knowing it’s him feels like a reunion after all these months. The tension, the hope, the despair I’ve felt every day as I check my phone, wondering if he would reach out, evaporates into relief. He’s here. He came for me.
I’m supposed to stand up, run off stage, and let Rachel come out for her solo piece, but I can’t. I can’t let Nick out of my sight. My need for him feels so great I’d just as soon grab onto him and refuse to let go, even if he pushed me away. Even if he told me he hated me.
But he looks at me the same way. A desperate kind of relief in his eyes. When I jump off the stage and throw my arms around his neck, he pulls me in and wraps me up with all his strength, and I breathe in his incredible smell. How could I not have noticed this smell the other night? On some level, I must have. It’s so distinctive and delicious, and my knees get weak from just smelling it.
“Hi, Bean,” he murmurs in my ear. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”
I will go anywhere with him, just as long as I don’t have to let go. I don’t care that all my belongings are backstage. I don’t care that I’m in pointe shoes.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Can we go home?”
And as if he doesn’t want to let me go either, he takes my hand, leads me a few steps forward until he sees that I am skipping in my inflexible slippers, and then he swoops a hand under my knees and lifts me up, carrying me all the way through the foyer and out the door.