Chapter 47 Offer of a Lifetime
E ventually Gabe found me by my car, past the point of hysterics and closing in on a complete shut down.
I couldn’t tell him what happened when he got there no matter how much he pushed me. My mouth literally wouldn’t move to do its job. Gabe prodded and coddled me, trying every tactic to get me to tell him what had taken my voice away, but it was no use.
He got me into his car and drove us back to my apartment where I immediately crashed down on the couch, soaking the cushions with my tears until I fell asleep somewhere between a scream and a sob.
Gabe woke me up a few hours later with some tea and a shoulder to cry into. I told him what happened. Every nasty bit of it. Monica’s disgust and hatred for me. How I’d ran away from Ethan for the last time in our cataclysmic game of back and forth. The mortifying conclusion to my gutless fling.
A fling felt so frivolous a label for what Ethan and I had, but in the wake of its explosion, that’s exactly what it had been reduced to.
Gabe spent the rest of the day trying to distract me using crappy T.V. movies and failing each time I snuck off to the bathroom to call Monica’s cell.
She sent each call to voicemail.
Alternating between crying, watching bad T.V., and calling Monica to no avail was how I spent the next day too. Currently, I was balled up on the couch, feet tucked beneath me and growing more numb by the second as I listened to the other end of her voicemail for the 20th time that day.
“Maybe give it a rest for a few hours?” Gabe’s voice crept up from behind the couch, soft and careful.
I closed my eyes with a sigh. Resting was not how Monica got things done.
She was always active, pursuing, and determined to achieve her goal no matter what it may be.
A case, a class in high school, an argument about favorite musicians.
Monica was willing to die on any hill she felt strongly on and unlike any small sister spat we’d had growing up, this hill threatened more like a mountain.
I’d fight tooth and nail to reach that mountain’s top with her still by my side. I just had to talk to her and explain things from the beginning.
“I can’t. I have to talk to her.”
Mindlessly, my fingers clicked her name on my phone’s screen again.
The dial tone spread through my ears as I held my phone, taunting me with the rhythm that pulsed endlessly the same over and over again.
Yet another way for music to tease me with my feelings.
Music caught me in my indiscretions and shined an accusing light across them all, winking at me with every beat of the ringing as if to tell me I got what I deserved.
A torturous stream of monotonous nothingness that would inevitably lead to silence.
The silence was the real punishment.
“I really think she just needs some time, babe.”
The couch rocked beneath me as Gabe sat. “It’s a lot to digest and as much as it may suck for you, she needs space and you have to give it to her. She’ll call you back eventually.”
“Will she though?” I challenged. “I don’t think she will if she thinks Ethan and I are still together, which is why I need her to just pick up once or respond to one of my messages.”
“Have you talked to him since yesterday?”
“No.” Casting my stare down to pick apart the fibers of the couch, the hollow ache in my chest splintered deeper. “I actually blocked his number.”
“Woah, what? Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme?”
Shaking my head, I peered back up at Gabe.
“Not if you knew me and him.”
Ethan and I were a force that found energy in the smallest interactions with each other. A glance, a smile, a text message. All may seem trivial, but they were enough to light our spark. Falling in love with each other again and again wasn’t a choice for us. It was a demand outside our control.
I was weak for him and he was weak for me and we couldn’t be weak anymore.
“Are you sure you should do this to yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
Gabe shifted closer to me, draping his heavy hand over my knee. “I mean, it’s like you cut off both of your legs at once. Monica knows now, so why don’t you try to make things better with her with Ethan by your side supporting you?”
“Because Ethan choosing to be by my side is what broke me and Monica. The start to fixing our relationship is ending the thing that broke us.”
It seemed so obvious to me that I was a little offended Gabe thought otherwise. I couldn’t have both of them. I’d already tried that and here we were, three broken hearts and buckets of tears later.
An abrupt ringing burst through the apartment and my startled heart. Tearing my eyes down to my phone in my hand, I didn’t recognize the number calling but didn’t pause long enough to consider not answering.
“Hello?”
“Hi! Can I speak to Alice Monroe?”
The female voice on the other end was unfamiliar and disturbingly chipper.
“This is she.”
I shot Gabe a perplexed look, and he held his hands up in agreeing confusion.
“Perfect! My name is Amy and I’m calling on behalf of American Ballet Theatre. How’re you today?”
Any breath left in my lungs was zapped out of me. My jaw dropped just like they say happens in the movies.
“I’m good!” I forced a laugh through my astonishment. “How are you?”
Amy on the other end responded, and I used the moment to move the phone away from my mouth and whisper to Gabe. “It’s ABT. It’s ABT! What do I do?”
Gabe’s mouth formed an ‘o’ and his eyes creased with sorry.
“I totally forgot to tell you that I talked to them after the competition! She asked me for your number and told me to tell you she’d be calling.”
Oh my God.
Quickly, I pulled the phone back up to my mouth in time to offer a polite chuckle at her short story over the apparently terrible hotel she’d been put up in.
“That sounds pretty awful.”
“Oh, it’s the worst. But enough about my appalling hotel room and more about the reason I’m calling. I’ve already spoken to your dance partner Gabe about this in vague details, and he gave me your number so I could call and give you the same breakdown.”
Holy shit. American Ballet Theatre was a top-notch dance company in New York City that I grew up idolizing as a child.
It was where I always begged my parents to take me on my birthday so I could see at least one show in their season every year.
We’d only managed to go three times, but each time was like a religious experience to me as a child who dreamt of being up on that stage one day.
“I’m all ears!” I worked to sound not so overly enthusiastic or like I was three seconds away from screaming, but was pretty sure I was failing in every way.
“So basically, we loved you guys.” Amy laughed and I joined in, literally unable to stop my hands from shaking.
“We want you, plain and simple. We can offer you and Gabe a twelve month contract that would require you do a minimum of five shows in our season and at least one of our traveling tours. We provide housing for the first 12 months as well. If you’re offered another contract when that one is up, you’ll have to find your own housing from then on. ”
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
My heart was beating so fast and hard that it felt like my entire body was vibrating. I was up and off the couch, walking off the nerves as best I could as Amy continued.
“It’s a lot, and the contract isn’t easy, but the pay is good and we offer full benefits.”
In all truth, this contract would be less work than I used to do at my other studio considering that I did all six of their shows a year, plus the dance classes and workshops they made us teach.
“Does this sound like anything you’d be interested in, Alice?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” I replied obviously, my voice overwhelmed by the smile on my face.
“Great! The contract would start at the beginning of the year, so you’d have a little over a month to get everything situated in the city with the housing and the drug test and all of those fun things we make you do.”
A little over a month.
“Oh.” I let out another, much less robust laugh as my smile slowly sank. “I didn’t realize it would be so fast.”
In all the excitement, it never quite clicked that I’d have to leave Chicago. I was taking in all of the amazing information without really processing any of it. All the buzzing, ecstatic energy coursing through me died out as the timeline and reality of this offer set in my mind.
I’d have to leave my entire life here behind. The bar, the friends I made at AIM, my apartment.
Monica and Ethan.
“Yeah! So I can shoot the contract over to you through email and we can make this thing official if you’re ready?”
“Uh…” I hesitated, the faces of my sister and my lover glitching in my brain. “Can I have a day or two to think about it?”
Two seconds after the question was out of my mouth, Gabe appeared in front of me. “What are you doing?”
I waved him away, turning towards my bedroom to put space between me and his judging eyes.
“Oh, uh, sure.” Amy’s surprise was distinct and my gut clenched. “We can give you 72 hours before we have to offer the contract to someone else. Just call us when you know what you want, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you so much.”
We bid our goodbyes with a promise I’d call her back soon with an answer. Her parting words stuck in my head as I lowered myself down onto my bed.
‘Call us when you know what you want.’
What I want felt like such a superficial thing to what I needed.
What I wanted was love and happiness. What I needed was stability and forgiveness.
Yesterday, the conclusion that I would probably never get what I wanted hit as hard as I imagined it ever could.
My need for stability could be found here or in New York, so the card of forgiveness was really all that was left on the table for deliberation.
Would it be easier for Monica to forgive me if I left and gave her space like Gabe said or if I stayed here and fought for it?
And if I left…
I’d certainly never see Ethan again, not even accidentally.
There would be no opportunity for chance run-ins.
No bumping into him in a store or spotting his sparkling smile from across the street.
And even though there was no relationship to salvage between us, the idea of never being able to look at his handsome face again—even in a stolen glance—hurt more than it should have.
More ringing from my phone shifted me from my agonizing thoughts as I flipped my phone over to see who was calling.
A breath cut through my lungs as I saw her name. My heart leapt in unfiltered joy and I answered.
“Monica! Oh my God, thank you for—”
“I’m not calling to talk to you.” Her harsh, dry of any affection voice cut me right off. My stupid heart burrowed back down in my chest, hiding away from Monica’s disdain.
“Then why are you calling?”
“I’m at the hospital with Ethan. He’s been in an accident.”