Magnolia
Adeep inhale, hold for two, and then I bend at the waist, reaching down to press my palms flat to the floor. The stretch is felt in the back of my knees, pulling at my hamstrings in the way it should, in the way I need it to after the fitful sleep I had last night.
Letting my head hang down, I roll my shoulders side to side, desperate to work out the kink in my neck.
“Earth to Raymond,” I sing back.
His shoulder bag and leg warmers are tossed by my feet, sliding to hit the wall. He sits down, twisting his shoulders so his face is underneath mine, smiling up at me. “You’re ignoring me today.”
I scoff, standing to my full height, feeling the blood rush back down my body. I stretch my arms above my head, clasping my hands together and twisting my back side to side. “How can I be ignoring you when this is the first time I’m seeing you today?”
He tsks, rolling his eyes. “Ronaldo dropped me off today. He was waving at you from the car as I called out for you, but you kept your little nose held high, blowing right past us on the street.”
My mouth drops. “No, you weren’t!”
He raises a finger, circling it around my face. “I was. And you look tired. You look worn down.”
“Gee, thanks. Good morning to you, too.” I playfully stick out my tongue at him before sitting on the floor, pulling the leg warmers down my calves.
I fold them together, then roll them into a ball, and toss them in my bag.
“I wasn’t ignoring you guys, obviously. I’d never ignore Ronaldo, anyways.
” I send him a wink, and he feigns shock, holding his hand to his chest. “I didn’t sleep good last night.
The last few nights, really. So, it’s possible I’m a bit out of it. ”
“And why aren’t we sleeping?” he prods, just like my mother would.
“I don’t know.” Lies. Pure lies. I know exactly why I’m not sleeping, but it’s something I can’t quite form into sentences. Or something I’m not ready to admit out loud to myself.
But since Raymond is Raymond, he doesn’t buy it.
I can feel his gaze burning into the side of my face as I rip open the package to a fresh pair of flats.
He watches quietly while I crack the arches, and when I dig around in my bag for my tweezers to pull out the nails, he clears his throat, garnering my attention.
“I’m waiting.”
I work my mouth side to side as I rip the nail from the heel. “I know, but I don’t know at the same time, I think.”
“Well, that sure clears things up.”
I blow out a heavy breath, ripping the final nail out and carefully tossing it into my bag. “I know what’s bothering me, but I don’t want it to be something that bothers me. Does that make more sense?”
“What, like a hemorrhoid? Something that, like, you know it’s there, but you’re not really sure how it got there. Sometimes it bothers you, sometimes it doesn’t.”
That gets a real laugh out of me. “Yeah, sort of like a hemorrhoid, I guess.”
He seems to accept that answer and goes about his stretches. I move to the wall, beating my shoe against a corner to get the sound out. “Although I don’t think I’ve ever referred to Lukas as a hemorrhoid.”
Raymond’s entire body stills mid-stretch, shoulders drawn taught, and his head lifts to mine. “No.”
“He’s been calling me and leaving voice messages.”
“No,” he says again, this time a little louder.
“I haven’t answered, and I haven’t called him back, but…”
“But nothing. I know that you loved Lukas. Hell, I loved Lukas, too, but what he turned into, the way he treated you. The things he said—”
“I know, but…”
“But what? I was there that night, remember?”
Raymond remembers the night I broke up with Lukas as well as I do. He was the one that peeled my sobbing frame from the floor and held me when it felt like I had nothing left.
“That’s why I told you I don’t know.”
I toss my shoes to the side, pulling my knees to my chest and resting my cheek atop my knee. I close my eyes for a moment, and my lids are so desperate for good sleep, I feel like I could fall asleep right now, just like this, with a class of thirty mumbling among themselves in the background.
“Well, what kind of things does he say? Does he want you to call him back? Is he going to come visit? Does he want to get back together?”
I roll my head, so my chin rests on my knee.
“He’s sober, so that’s one thing. And I believe him, too.
He sounds just like the old Lukas.” The first time he called, I missed it.
I went to reach for my phone and saw a voicemail from Lukas, and I thought it had to be a fluke.
I thought maybe my phone had a malfunction and sent an old voicemail to me again.
I thought maybe I was dreaming. Then I started to think the worst—he’s drunk, angry, filtering through old memories and decided to drunk dial me for God knows what reason.
But when I hit play and heard his voice, I knew it wasn’t a mistake.
He sounds like he did when we were happy.
When he would call me in the early morning, or really late at night and his voice would be a bit raspy, a bit lower.
He’d just talk real quietly. “Sometimes, he talks about what’s changed in getting sober.
Apparently, he’s in therapy, which is something I would have never thought he’d do in this lifetime.
” Raymond’s body is still tense, and I know the next few words are going to send him off.
“I’m not exactly sure what happened, but, um … he was seeing someone for a while, a girl in town.” Raymond’s lips purse together, but he bites his tongue. “They’re having a baby.”
“What?” His shrill gasp is loud enough that a few of the conversations around us die, and heads swivel in our direction.
I offer a polite smile to some of the dancers that are watching us curiously, and when they finally turn away, I whisper the rest to Raymond. “They’re not together anymore. But yeah, Lukas is going to be a dad…”
“Oh, shit.” He grimaces. “I’ll bet that doesn’t feel so hot.”
“No, it definitely doesn’t.” I’m glad I was alone when I listened to that first voicemail.
I think I ran through every emotion in a matter of seconds, anger being the biggest one.
The last thing I ever wanted, or expected to hear in my entire life, was that Lukas was having a baby with someone else.
“He says he just wants to talk. He’s asking for a chance, yeah, but I don’t think I can give him one. ”
“Well…” He thinks, his fingertips tapping along the floor by his hip. “My instinct is to say hell no, because I don’t believe in second chances.”
I nod at that. I don’t usually believe in second chances, either.
When someone shows you who they are the first time, you should believe it.
But Lukas wasn’t ever just someone to me.
“What if it was Ronaldo? What if you guys had a falling out, and a year down the road he calls, wanting to talk? Think about how much you love him—how much it would suck to live life without him. If he called you begging, could you really tell him no?”
“First of all,” he says, pointing a finger in the air. “Obviously, he would be desperate to get me back.”
“Obviously,” I echo.
He pauses then, tilting his face to the side. “It’s hard to say, honestly. I can’t imagine that Ronaldo would ever hurt me to the point where we’d call it quits.”
“I never thought Lukas and I would have been in that place, either.”
“But I hate what he did. I hate how sad you were.” He scoots forward, pulling my hands from my lap and holding them. “I don’t ever want to see you that low again. I know you don’t want to ever be that low.”
I nod at that. “I don’t think I’d survive losing him a second time.”
His eyes water, just the slightest bit, and he looks out the window, letting the sun warm his skin.
“I think the craziest part was how easy it was for him to get under my skin. We haven’t talked in over a year, Raymond, an entire year.
A lot happens in a year, and for the most part, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.
” My career has been completely transformed over the last twelve months.
Without Lukas, ballet was the only thing I had left to focus on, and I threw myself into it, letting my busy schedule soothe the ache that he left.
The loneliness that tried to shake me to my core.
“I’m at the pinnacle of my career right now, and for the most part, I’m having the time of my life. ”
“Are you?” he challenges, and my fake smile starts to slip.
“It only took one phone call, Raymond. One second into one call, and hearing his voice pulled me right back in. It nearly undid everything. It’s not fair…
” I choke on the words, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from bursting into tears.
“I thought I could be over him, but am I really, though, if that’s all it took? ”
“Class!” Madame Moreau waltzes in, clapping her hands twice to gather our attention.
Raymond stands, reaching a hand down to pull me up with him. I clasp his hand, and he tugs, grunting as he pulls me up.
“I see why you don’t know,” he whispers from the corner of his mouth. “I guess, well, what was your gut instinct when he called? When you listened to his message, were you angry? Did you want to tell him off and toss your phone, or were you sad? Curious? Did you almost call back?”
“All of the above.” I fell to the ground in a puddle and cried.
Cried so hard I could barely catch my breath.
It reminded me of how it felt when I’d miss a call from him when he was deployed.
I would race to check my voicemail and close my eyes as I listened to him talk, pretending that he was here, that he was lying in bed next to me, his arms holding me tight. His lips pressed to my ear as he spoke.
“I felt a whole lot of things the first time he called, but now…” I turn to face him. “I’m still angry. I still want to scream at him and cry, and there’s a twisted part of me that wants him to be as upset as I am, to hurt him as much as he’s hurt me, but I’m curious, Raymond.”
“I don’t think that’s twisted,” he whispers from the corner of his mouth. “I think that makes you human. You’re not a spiteful person, Magnolia. You and I both know you could never intentionally hurt him, even after what he put you through.”
The tears are back again, threatening to burst before Madame Moreau even starts the warmup music. “But am I weak, then? Am I weak for still being curious to hear what he has to say? Wouldn’t a stronger woman be able to hold her ground?”
Raymond looks over at me, squeezing my hand once before he bends to pull his flats from his bag.
“No. I don’t think it means you’re weak.
I think that it just shows how much you loved him at one point.
I think the biggest question is, are you curious because you’re a good person and are thinking of the history you have and feel obligated to hear him out, blah, blah, blah.
” He taps his fingers together like a puppet.
“Or are you curious because even though you don’t want to admit it, maybe some of those feelings never left? ”
My gut reaction is immediate, and Raymond catches the expression on my face. “I think you have your answer then, girl.”