Chapter 29 Dance Away the Pain
A s the days marched towards Thanksgiving week, every single one of them started to blend together.
Time felt like one big, long road going nowhere and I was a lonesome driver heading down the endless, winding pavement.
I’d been isolating myself as much as possible lately and found it a rather easy thing to do now that I had cut things off with Peter.
After my kiss with Ethan, I couldn’t pretend with Peter anymore. It wasn’t right to do that to him or Ethan or even myself. Monica was right after all. You can’t force a spark with two wet matches, and that’s what Peter and I were when it all boiled down.
Two pieces of a system that would never create anything but disappointment.
I broke up with Peter the night I got home from wedding dress shopping with Monica, and since then, I’d done nothing but work, dance, and try to smile through it all. That’s how I began today, too. Smiling, faking it, and doing so quite successfully.
Until a call from Gabe turned my heart inside out.
Right before I pulled the front door open on to the bar, I answered my vibrating phone with an almost real smile.
“To what do I owe this early morning honor?”
“Hey, babe,” came Gabe’s voice, low and gentle. “Where are you?”
Confused, my reach for the front doors of the bar fell limp and I turned out to face the street. “I’m about to go into work, why?”
“Oh, nevermind then. Just… call me afterwards, okay?”
His tone, his hesitance, his oddly timed call all concocted a lethal dose of anxiety to shoot through my body.
“What? Is something wrong?”
A lengthy beat stretched out between us before Gabe spoke. “I don’t want to lie to you, but I also don’t want to tell you right before you go into work.”
“Well, you kind of don’t have a choice now considering that you’ve already built it up.”
A loud exhale came through Gabe’s end of the call, the sound moving my heartbeat faster and harder.
“Just… don’t go on any social media today, okay?”
His cryptic answer only twisted the knife of worry in deeper. “Why?”
“Just don’t, okay?” Gabe pressed. “Promise?”
“No, I don’t promise so either tell me now or the second we hang up, I’ll go check Facebook.” My threat fresh in the air, I listened to the silence coming from the other end of the phone with anxious breaths pulling in and out of my lungs.
“Please?”
Begging, threatening, and demanding were not in my normal actionable vocab. Gabe knew this. He knew me. He should know that if I’m using uncharacteristic language that I’m already dangling off the edge of my own sanity and that he should act fast to keep me from slipping.
“Okay, but before I tell you, know that I love you, I’m here for you, and literally everyone here is shocked that it happened.”
“ What happened?”
Gabe stalled for a few moments longer before speaking two words that by themselves held enough ammo to make me stumble, but combined, they knocked me completely off my feet.
“Jonah’s engaged.”
In that exact second, I could feel each of my fingers that held on tightly losing their grip one by one, slipping loose from the cliff holding me dangling above rushing waters and razor sharp rocks.
Each finger lost its hold until the foundation of the cliff itself crumbled and I went spiraling down, down, down with the dirt and the silent screams that followed me all the way to the certain death of my stability below.
“Alice?”
Gabe’s voice came through panicked and jabbed through my mess of thoughts.
“What?”
“You haven’t said anything for a while, babe.”
“Oh. Sorry, I just kinda can’t believe it, I guess.”
“I know. What kind of person proposes after dating someone for what, five or six months?”
Well, when you add the three or more months they were seeing each other behind my back, I guess it doesn’t seem so crazy.
“Yeah, well—” A breath of air that somewhat resembled a laugh pushed between my lips. “They deserve each other, right?”
“That’s for goddamn sure,” Gabe grumbled. “They waltzed into the studio this morning and announced it like they’re the only people in the entire world who have ever gotten engaged before. Jonah was so smug and Hannah was so… punchable.”
“Yeah, she always had that quality about her.”
“Are you okay?”
“Me?” Not even a little bit . “Yeah! I find this hilarious actually.”
“Really?”
“Totally. I mean, it’s bound to blow up in their faces.”
“On that day, you and I will get drunk on cheap wine and celebrate until the sun comes up, deal?”
“Deal.”
“All right, I’ve gotta get back to class in a sec. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Straightening back my shoulders, I replied, “Absolutely. I’ve got to get to opening the bar anyway.”
Gabe and I said our goodbyes and nearly the same second that we ended our call, I had Facebook open on my phone and Jonah’s name in my search bar.
Numbness trickled in like raindrops through my fingertips as they swiped across Jonah’s smiling face.
Raindrops cascaded into a showering of tingles spreading throughout my body as I took in the elated twinkle in his eyes as he bowed on one knee in front of the woman who was supposed to be me.
Over our years together, I imagined Jonah proposing hundreds of times, but not once in any of those fantasies did I imagine him on his knee in front of anyone else but me.
Yet, here he was, arm stretched out with a ring in hand towards Hannah, whose hand over her mouth covered her stolen expression.
For five years I waited for the day I’d hold her same shocked look, and now that day was here, and I was nowhere around.
I went into work and made it through three, awful hours of cleaning, mixing drinks, and putting up with unwanted comments before Patrick took mercy on me and sent me home for the day.
“You look like hell and like you’re about two minutes away from breaking something.” The glass of beer in my hand disappeared over my shoulder as Patrick passed behind me, taking the beer in one hand and squeezing his other around my arm.
“Go home. Get some rest. I can hold down the fort until Carly gets here.”
I thought about fighting him on it, but just the thought of trying to put up a fight to stay exhausted me and I sent Patrick a grateful smile before cashing out.
In my car, images of my lonely apartment covered my mind and the idea of being alone in that apartment that held toxic memories in the walls made a blur of unshed tears form in my eyes. I couldn’t go home, but I knew exactly where I could go instead.
* * *
The dance studio felt like a warm embrace as I slipped inside with no one noticing. In the back sat the empty ballet studio I usually found a home in. The door shut with a click behind me, followed by a fluttering of lights all around.
My bag touched the ground with a heavy thud just after I fished my phone out from the bottom. Brightness lit up the screen and I spotted two messages from Monica, one from my mother, and one missed call—
From Ethan.
I guess everyone knows the happy couples news.
That’s fine. They could all pity me as much as made them feel better. I didn’t want to talk to any of them right now anyway. All I wanted—all I needed —was to dance.
Music went from my phone into the speakers all around the room, and the notes started off soft and pretty, dripping with a slow forming sadness that felt all too similar.
With the beginning notes came a peeved but unsurprised exhale from my lips.
The music was doing it again, telling my secrets through the well-placed beats in the song and pulling more out of me as the cords propelled on.
Each cord plucked at my heartstrings like they were made to be toyed with, crafted to be abused by my own choice of assailant. As much as music knew me and comforted me, it also bled me dry in my darkest times of all the thoughts and feelings I was too weak to confront without its help.
Secrets I’d yet to admit to myself ripped through my soul, splashing out across the hardwood floor as my feet danced across it.
The music was inside of me, reaching out into my every limb and pushing my body harder and harder.
Each song that played on, that music inside me developed more and more into something angry—something breakable.
The music played me like a puppet, dragging me across the floor and mirroring my emotions to the changes in the songs. Each time the music swelled, so did my sorrow and anguish. Every drop in the melody of the music plummeted my heart right down with it.
Inside me was a roller coaster riding musical tracks to the top of a mountain at a dangerous speed.
The faster it charged, the harder my foot stomped on the break over and over again even though I knew it was useless.
My brakes had been cut loose and here I was, counting down the seconds to my imminent, inescapable implosion.
The first cry flew out of my mouth like I’d been slapped.
The second and third cries came at the hands of the lyrics as they gut punched me, folding my body in half from the pain.
From that point on, the rhythm, the crescendoes, and the melodies all took their own shots, beating my heart black and blue.
Every aspect of the music attacked and kept on attacking until my ankles buckled beneath me and my hands slapped the floor as I crashed down, surrendering to their abuse in a tiny ball on the floor.
Sobs wracked my weakened body, too fragile to even hold my head up anymore as I released cry after miserable cry into the bend of my knee my head rested on.
In every sob, I heard my heart break again and again, shattering each time my mind reminded me of what the news today solidified once and for all.
In the middle of one of those heart-shattering cries, the sound of a door broke through my breakdown.