Chapter 6 #4
Ivy glanced over her shoulder towards her bedroom, where a large print of Matisse’s “The Dance” hung on the wall above her bed, five naked women holding hands and dancing on a hillside under a brilliant blue sky.
The original hung in the Museum of Modern Art, where she was pretty sure it took up a whole wall.
If she went to New York, she could go see it in the flesh.
All the things she’d planned on doing before she had to cancel her only partially refundable ticket last week.
When she turned back to face Justin, he was watching her closely, anxiously. It looked like he was holding his breath.
Ivy sighed. “If I do this—and that’s a big if—I have conditions.”
“Okay,” Justin exhaled and leaned forward, his eyes full of cautious hope. “What are they?”
“I’m not going to follow you around everywhere.”
“I know, you’ve said, you’re not my nanny.”
“That’s right. I’ll go wherever you need to go—rehearsal, performances, any other mandatory events, obviously.”
“Okay…”
“But besides that, I’m not following you. You can follow me. I’m not going to be by your side every second of the frigging day. You can be by my side, while I go do the things I actually want to do.”
“Like what?”
Ivy shrugged. “All of it! New York! Museums and jazz clubs and bagels and musicals and—”
“Musicals?” he interjected, darting his eyes at the speaker, probably because Lilli Vanessi had just started singing about how she hated men.
“Musicals. You don’t like musicals?” No wonder he didn’t know who Kurt von Trapp was.
“God, no.” Justin screwed up his nose. Ivy raised her eyebrows. “But if you want to go to a musical, then I’ll come with you,” he added hastily.
“What if I want to go to a musical every night?”
He grimaced but didn’t miss a beat. “Then I’ll come with—” he started, but then he cut himself off. “You can’t, because I’ll be performing some of those nights.”
Crap. That was true, and she’d have to be there. Still, he wasn’t going to be on stage every night. And Broadway did matinees, right? She could still go to a musical or two. And so could Justin Winters, if he was going to hold up his end of this deal.
“If I do this, I am going to see New York, including at least one musical,” she said firmly. “Those are my conditions. Take them or leave them.”
He nodded eagerly. “I’ll take them.”
Ivy eyed him warily. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I’ve heard that before,” she said skeptically, a strange mix of disappointment and excitement churning somewhere under her sternum. Had she been expecting him to refuse? Hoping he’d object and leave her no choice but to stay here in Sydney and admit defeat?
“I know, but I mean it this time, I swear. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Her mouth went oddly dry at his words, and she swallowed against the unwelcome sensation. Whatever you want.
What did she want? She wanted to go to New York. She didn’t want to admit defeat. She wanted another chance to succeed at this job, to prove that it hadn’t been a colossal mistake to leave journalism behind for something she didn’t enjoy and couldn’t do well.
“I—” she said, casting around for a reason to refuse, and finding nothing.
“You…?” he said, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his thighs and knitting his fingers together in hopeful anticipation. The motion made his biceps flex and she tried to ignore it. She kept her eyes on his face.
“Fine,” she said quietly.
He leaned forward further, eyebrows raised. “Fine, like, yes?”
“Fine like yes,” she exhaled.
“Thank you,” he half sighed, half laughed, and then he coughed like he’d choked on air.
She watched as he spluttered a few times into the crook of his elbow, his face awash in surprise and embarrassment and relief and anticipation and oh god, the man was nice to look at even when he was hacking up a lung.
That was nothing, though, compared to what he looked like a moment later when he recovered himself, lowered his arm from his face, and smiled at her.
That smile was lethal up close. She’d seen it from her press seat in the orchestra section of the Opera House, of course, and she’d seen flashes of it directed at his friends at the end of class, when they were all messing around to see who could land the most complicated jumps.
But now he was beaming it right at her from the other side of her suddenly small and airless living room and Ivy could have sworn that wine had been whisky.
The sight of that smile made her insides swim with the kind of warm looseness she associated with a strong cocktail, and she felt her own face lift into a wide, goofy smile.
“So we’re going to New York,” she said, hearing the giddy excitement in her own voice.
“We’re going to New York,” he repeated, “and fuck the haters.”
“Right, fuck the haters!” she agreed, but then she paused. She didn’t have haters, unless you counted the man in front of her. Did Justin have haters? Whatever. They were going to New York.
For a long moment they sat there grinning at each other as “I Hate Men” reached its trilling conclusion.
Then the song ended and Justin seemed to shake himself loose of the odd tension that had wound itself around them.
He glanced over at her computer. “Um, obviously you’re in charge and we’ll do whatever you want to do, so this is just a request, but…
whatever musical that was, could we see something else? ”
Ivy blinked, then widened her eyes. “I don’t have time to explain the brilliance of Kiss Me, Kate to you right now but believe me, if it’s showing in New York, we will be seeing it.”
Justin shook his head. “We’ll see whatever you want to see.”
“I actually think you’d enjoy it,” Ivy said quickly.
“I’ll enjoy whatever you want me to enjoy,” he agreed dryly.
Ivy opened her mouth, waiting for a rejoinder to present itself, but no words came.
So she sat there, looking up at Justin Winters, who was sitting pink-cheeked in her living room, still in his dance clothes, having just promised to do whatever she wanted him to.
Heat flooded her face again, and she felt her pulse kick in her throat.
“Well, um,” she managed eloquently after a few endless seconds. “I should get to bed—sleep. I should get to sleep. But I’ll tell Peter first thing tomorrow that we’ve come to an agreement. He can inform the board, and the backer, and hopefully that will be that.”
“Right,” he nodded. “I’ll get going, then.” He stood winced a little, then dug a thumb into the crease of his hip.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” he breathed, looking down at the offending tendon. When he met her eyes again, there was a shrug in his voice. “You heard Shaz. It’s always something with us older dancers.”
“Got a foam roller at home?”
“Oh, me and my foam roller, we’ve never spent a night apart,” he said, with a rueful smile. “She’s my longest-running relationship.”
He walked towards the front door, and after a second of hesitation, she stood and followed him, then opened it for him.
It wasn’t like they’d been standing on ceremony for the last half hour—she’d spent half of it sprawled on the couch in a fit of hangry pique—but still, it felt impolite to let him simply walk out her door without so much as a goodbye.
Only now that she’d opened the door for him, they were standing here in the entryway with barely a foot of air between them, and she had to remind herself how to perform the rituals of seeing someone out of her home.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, a little stiffly.
“Yeah,” he replied, his voice low. “And listen, thank you. I really appreciate it.”
“You say that now, but wait until I’ve made you sit through half a dozen Broadway shows.”
“If anyone can convince me to enjoy that, it’s you,” he said, with a grimace. “You’re like a pitbull in heels.”
“I’m going to pretend that was a compliment,” she said, putting her hand on the doorknob and closing the door a few centimeters. “Say hi to your foam roller for me.”
“I will. Say bye to the scary man-hating musical lady for me.”
Ivy let out an amused little hmph, and he sidled out the door. She closed it behind him and realized that for the first time ever, she was leaving an encounter with Justin Winters with a smile on her face.