28. Gilbert
28
GILBERT
I wake up in the middle of the night the room shrouded in darkness. For a moment, I’m disoriented, reaching out instinctively to the other side of the bed. The familiar warmth that should be on her side is noticeably absent, like she’s been gone for sometime. The faint red light of her phone is illuminated against the side table, letting me know it’s still plugged in and charging.
I sit up, running a hand through my hair. The room is silent, save for the faint sound of the wind rustling the trees outside. The clock says 2 A.M. There’s only one place she could be at this hour. The only place she’d venture to without her phone.
I retrieve last nights’ sweatpants off the floor — where she not-so-eloquently tossed them before attacking my cock with her hot little mouth — and pull them on. My t-shirt is nowhere to be found, but that’s okay. I make my way downstairs to the studio, my footsteps echoing softly against the wooden floors as the haunting strains of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” calls to me, the mournful melody growing louder with each step.
The door to the studio is slightly ajar. I step inside and gently closing it behind me, before lean against the door. I can’t take my eyes off her.
Once again, she moves with a grace that is both mesmerizing and heartbreaking, her body telling the tragic tale of Juliet.
I hate tragedies. I understand that it is an essential part of human existence, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
It’s the same routine she danced to on her eighteenth birthday, her movements then and now are infused with the same raw, aching intensity that speaks of her own longing and pain. That fateful night seems so long ago, it’s hard to remember that was only months ago. Interesting, how much can change in such a short amount of time.
But one thing remains unchanged — I can’t keep my eyes off her.
That night, Bonnie told me Ashlynn had a story to tell. And that’s why she was dancing on blistered feet — despite having being told not to by her teachers. Despite knowing what the consequences would be.
Then, it never occurred to me that the story she had to tell was about us . Looking back, I know it was that exact moment I fell in love with her. For the first time in my life. Go figure.
I meant what I said to her a week ago. I will follow her to the ends of the earth.
She notices me and stops, in the middle of the room, her chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. She claps twice, and the music stops. Technology is a beautiful thing.
Still, even from a distance, I can tell that she’s tense and stressed, her mind reeling a thousand miles a minute. She looks at me, her eyes slowly roaming over my body, lingering on my naked torso and the obvious tent in my pants, before moving back up.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” Her tone is apologetic but the tint of pink on her cheeks says otherwise.
Sometimes, in the last few months I’d come down here and watch her dance. Normally I’d stick to the sidelines, not wanting to come into her sacred space. Because that’s what ballet is to her — a sacred act. That she even allows me in here, I consider it to be a privilege, not a right.
But in this moment, there’s something in her eyes that calls out to me. Pushing off the doorframe, I step up to her and reach behind her, unclasping the hair tie and hair band holding up all that her hair of hers. The auburn locks fall around her shoulders, instantly softening her look.
Reaching up, I draw a hand down her cheek. “You did,” I say softly.
“My bad.” Her expression tells me she’s anything but.
I close the distance between us, resting my hands on her hips. Underneath her dark tights and form-fitting top, she’s not wearing anything underneath. That, as I’ve come to learn, is normal with dance clothes as they are made to accommodate that. But now that every delectable inch of her naked body has been permanently seared in my brain, I get a hard-on every time I see her in her skintight clothes.
She grins and rises to her tiptoes. “I had a lot on my mind,” she whispers, her lips brushing against mine, her body melting into mine.
“Bayard?” I ask, even though I know the answer to that.
She nods, her eyes flutter closed as she kisses me. I smile against her lips and thread my hand through her hair, pulling her closer roughly. She moans as she kisses me properly, her body moving against mine, betraying her desire. I push against her, forcing her take a step back, then several, until her back presses against the barre, my lips never leaving hers. She moans against my mouth, my tongue tangling with hers as I channel all of my pent-up need for her into her lips. Then, when she is least expecting it, I pull back and spin her body around so she’s facing the mirror, her torso pressed into the barre.
My body crowds hers, and I place my lips right below her ear, pressing a featherlight kiss to her skin. Her tongue slips out between her lips, and she wets them.
“I need you to watch.” One hand trails up from her waist to her breast. The other hand moves lower, disappearing into her tights, not surprised to find that they are already soaked through. “You’re so wet for me already,” I whisper in her ear, then trail my tongue over the outer shell. “So turned on, and I’ve barely even touched you.”
“It’s all your doing,” she rasps, the sound shoots straight to my cock.
It is. Her body is so responsive, I can’t get enough of her. My hand travels further down, and I stroke her slit with two fingers. “Keep your eyes open, Ash. I need you to see yourself as I do. See how mesmerizing I find you.”
A sound between a whimper and a groan spills from her mouth. I can’t tell if she’s groaning because of the request, or because I’ve just dipped my middle finger into her pussy up to my second knuckle. My thumb grazes over her clothed nipple, the nub pebbling instantly at my touch. I swirl my other thumb around her clit, and she gasps the moment I press down on the sensitive bub.
I can tell it’s taking everything out of her to resist closing her eyes. Her eyelids flutter, and I bite down on her earlobe. “Keep them open, baby.”
She does, her needy whimper is music to my ears. “Gil, please. I can’t...”
“You can, and you will.”
Then, because I can, I push a second finger up into her pussy. Her walls tighten around my fingers when I dig the heel of my palm into her clit. She shifts her hips and parts her thighs, desperate for more. And I live to serve her every pleasure.
Palming her pussy, I bring her lower half flush against my hard and clothed cock. The fucker twitches in protest, but I ignore him and thrust harder into her sopping pussy. The heel of my hand digs into her clit, as I hit the spots that drive her crazy with need. Between her nipples and her pussy, I know it’s an overload of sensation, but I don’t let up on her. Harder and harder, I fuck her with my fingers. Her body tenses, and I can tell she’s close.
“Come for me, Ash.” My hand lifts off her nipples to cup her chin, forcing her eyes off the mirror and to me. She moans my name as she tips over the edge, and I crush my lips against hers. I swallow up her screams, her pleasure with my own mouth as her pussy contracts around my fingers, hard and fast.
Her legs give out, and I’m right there to catch her. She’s trembling in my arms, and I’m kissing her still, my fingers relentlessly driving into her as I fuck her through her orgasm until her body finally begins to relax.
Her lips are puffy when I pull away, her eyes searching mine.
“Look, baby. See what I see.”
She turns, and our eyes meet in the mirror. The sight of her, wide-eyed and flushed, disheveled and panting, only makes me ache for her even more. She’s fucking gorgeous.
Slowly, I ease my fingers from her, then pull my hand out of her tights. With our gazes locked, I bring my hand to my mouth and take my time in licking all of her sweet juices from my fingers. The pink hue that coats her cheeks spreads like wildfire, covering every inch of skin — exposed and otherwise.
I’m in trouble. She tastes like honey and feels like heaven pressed against me, but her blush will be my undoing.
“ Vous êtes plus que suffisant, mon amour ,” the words spill out before I can filter them in. “ Tu es tout pour moi .”
She licks her bottom lip, then drags her teeth over it. “In English?”
“You are more than enough, my love. You are my everything.”
Her green eyes go wide, frantically searching mine for the truth of that statement. I let her find it. I’ve spent the last few months trying to keep this under wraps, and I’m done hiding.
“You are my home, Ash. That will never change. But ballet comes first, always. Your career comes first. You belong on stage. The bigger and gander, the better. It’s okay to be unapologetic and selfish about it. In fact, I need you to be selfish about it.”
Her throat shifts. “What about you? What about us?”
I cup her cheek. “Ash, I belong to you.” It sounds corny as fuck, but it’s the best I can come up with. “I spent the last two decades prioritizing my career over everything else. Now, you come before everything else. Where you go, I go. If the Antarctica Ballet Corps recruited you today, guess what? I’ll follow in a heartbeat.”
She blinks once. Then twice. And a few more times after that. “What about your practice?”
“Let me worry about that.”
She doesn’t seem convinced. “Gil?—”
“I want what’s best for you. And what’s best for you is to go to Bayard. But right now, you need sleep. We need sleep.” With that, I stand, help her up before scooping her into my arms. Her hands go around my neck, like an anchor.
“My legs work.”
“I know. Indulge me, please? And I’ll tell you a boring story in the meantime. It’ll put you right to sleep.”
Her eyes light up at that. “Nothing you say is ever boring.”
Shaking my head, I press my lips against her forehead, and then we’re moving, making our way back to her bedroom. “When we were eighteen, Rachel and I left North Dakota to chase our dreams. Well, depending on who you ask, we ran away from home in the dead of night. We didn’t have much — no money, no clear path — just the clothes on our backs and a fierce determination to build something better for ourselves.”
I take the stairs two at a time. “Rachel had some friends here in Chicago, so we settled down here. They took us in while we got our bearings. A month in, we got married because it was convenient. We moved into a tiny apartment and we both worked multiple jobs for a year, saving up as much as we could while applying to schools around the country. She got into Bayard and I got into Cornell. Both offered us scholarships to cover tuition, so we moved to New York. And because we were married, we were able to stay together, in subsidized student housing for married couples.
“Freshman year was rough, though. I suppose that’s what happens when you underestimate how much things cost to live in New York. At least our tuition was covered, since we could barely make ends meet outside of that. But we did what we needed to do in order to survive. In addition to school, I still worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, and Rachel took on every dance gig she could find, often with little or no pay. We managed it because we believed in each other. There were days when we were so exhausted we could barely stand. Nights when we had to choose between eating and paying rent. But we kept pushing forward because we knew it would be worth it.”
“Then how did you go from living together to living apart?”
“I got recruited by the CIA in our sophomore year, that’s how. The money was good, so we were able to drop all the other jobs and just focus on school. Plus we got a stipend for housing, so we were able to move to someplace slightly bigger. Having privacy was nice too. But the job came with travel. Not a lot at first, but it gradually increased. And by then, we were… codependent.”
“How come?” she asks, when we get to her room and climb into bed together.
“The classified assignments were going to start after graduation. It meant being off the grid for indeterminate lengths of time. The plan was to do that and med school concurrently. It would’ve taken longer, but money wasn’t a issue since it was all on the CIA’s dime. But then Rachel was recruited by Royal Danish Ballet around the same time, and she didn’t want to go. She was going to give up ballet and follow me around the world.”
She laughs as she nestles into me, placing a hand on my chest. “That doesn’t sound like the Rachel I knew.”
“That’s what I said! But she was scared, understandably so. I would be too, if our situations were reversed. She was my best friend. We supported each other through every hardship. I can only imagine the amount of stress I was putting her through — not knowing when I was leaving next, how long I would be gone for, or if I’d come back to her alive or in a body bag. So, I made a promise to her, that I would always come home. Alive. That she was my anchor, and home was wherever she was.
“That also meant we had to make some adjustments with our living arrangements. It wasn’t easy, but we made it work because we believed in each other’s dreams. We stayed married for legal reasons, and we prioritized our dreams because we knew they were worth fighting for. The money I was making while on assignment was a lot, and it bothered her at times, so we agreed that she could either invest it or give it away. She picked option one on whim and invested in one of Oscar Hyun’s many subsidiaries. Over the years she invested more, and when circumstance brought us back to Chicago, it had grown significantly.
“But Rachel took her duties as anchor very seriously, and at grave personal expense. The bulk of our arrangement fell on her, so too did the responsibilities. The career woman slash doting wife image meant that she couldn’t date freely. She tried at first, but this isn’t the sort of thing you blurt out on a first date, or even a tenth one. I always wondered if I’d made a mistake enlisting. I made a choice junior year, and it didn’t just affect me. The money was good, yes, but in a way it forced us into a corner. It forced me to choose, which in turn forced Rachel to choose.”
“You make it sound like she resented you for it, when the evidence suggests otherwise.”
I sigh, pressing my lips to her forehead. “I didn’t know that for sure, until she met Hannah. I was thrilled. They were good together. And, if I’m being honest, I was envious. Because I wanted what they had, but it takes a special type of partner to put up with that. And now… I never expected to outlive her. In losing her, I learned what’s truly important. Success, money, a big house — they’re all wonderful, but its all moot if you have no one to share it with. It’s the people we love, the dreams we support. They are the ones that make life meaningful.
“I learned that lesson the hard way too, when I ran away. I was to immersed in grief, that I thought I didn’t deserve this life that she had built here, for us. Because that was always the end goal. When either of us found someone we wanted to be with, long-term, we would divorce. I wanted her to be okay, and she wanted me to be okay too. Losing her made me realize just how precious time is. I won’t make the same mistake of putting work above everything else again. Ash, you are my dream. This time, I choose you.”
Her breathing stutters, as she drums her nimble fingers over my chest. “But you just got back. And you have regular patients now, patients who need you.”
“They do,” I place my hand over hers and give it a gentle squeeze. “I can find a way to manage that from New York, or travel back when necessary. But that’s for me to figure out. It’s up to you to decide if you want us to move in together, and we’ll go from there.”
She reaches up and cups my tear-stained cheeks. “We already live together.”
I can’t help it but laugh at that. “We do, but it’s different. I won’t ask you to choose, because I know it’s not fair to you. You deserve to be at Bayard, to dance on those stages. All I want is to be with you, to support you.”
“You do realize that you’re asking to do the same thing you talked Rachel out of doing?”
“I am, yes. The difference is, my practice is established. I can see patients virtually from anywhere in the world. Or I could use a break. A sabbatical, so to speak. Maybe I’ll finally write that book that Rachel had been bugging me to write. I only have one you. So think about it, okay? We still have plenty of time to figure things out.”
When we finally drift off to sleep, it’s with a sense of peace I haven’t felt in weeks. I hold her close, the steady rhythm of her breathing a comforting reminder that we’re in this together. That we’ll face whatever comes our way together.