Chapter 10
That evening found Carly pacing the length of the bedroom, swiping back and forth between the photos Nick had agreed to let her post. She’d hoped the windy morning would result in more than just three usable shots, but he’d been so precious about making sure she only posted photos that he’d decided were perfect. Amazing that even three of them had lived up to his impossible standards. Clearly the man never did anything or bothered with anyone who wasn’t perfect, which raised the question of why he’d agreed to spend any time with her.
She squinted down at the middle photo and noticed again how precisely he’d manage to position her between the distant spiky skyline and the yawning bright blue sky over the ocean. She was in the center of the frame, arching into an attitude and fixing the camera with a determined kind of look, but she appeared to be dancing on the edge of the world. She’d meant what she’d said in the car, however grudgingly she’d admitted it, and however surprised he’d seemed to hear it. He was good at this.
Her thumb hovered over the phone screen. Just pick one, she thought. Pick one, hashtag it, and post it. What’s the worst that could happen?
“Ha,” she said to the empty room. This plan could fail, and I’ll have begged Nick Jacobs for help for nothing, and I’ll retire in obscurity at thirty-two with no marketable skills. And I’ll have no choice but to take money from my parents.
Anxiety prickled at the back of her neck, and she took a deep breath through her nose, trying to keep it from spreading through her whole body the way she knew it could. Exhaling slowly, she walked over to the little window and peered out at the ocean. She could do this. And if she couldn’t, she would figure something else out. She was good at figuring things out. She’d figured out how to support herself without her parents’ help, and how to get Heather out of the country after her asshole ex-fiancé, Jack, had destroyed her best friend’s sense of self, and how to get her job back when Jack had gotten her fired. She could do this. She took one more deep breath, then tapped on the middle photo and pulled up Instagram.
@carlymontgomery: Soaking up the Sydney sunshine at North Head National Park! Photo by the talented and in-demand @NickJClicks #ballerinasinthewild #sydneytourism #attitude
She scanned the caption for typos—God forbid she posted Nick Jacobs’s photo above a misspelled word—and was about to hit POST when her phone buzzed and a text popped up. It was from the number she’d saved under the name “Nickhead.”
Nickhead: Sunrise is at 6:30 tomorrow. Do you want to get some early shots on the beach?
She stared at the message. Was he insane? She was on vacation, and supposedly so was he. Who got up at 6:30 AM on vacation, and who looked good enough to be photographed if they did? She was about to tap back a snarky message to that effect when she paused. She was still jetlagged, so a 6:30 AM call time wouldn’t be so hard. Nick Jacobs was offering to help her—volunteering, even, after she’d had to wheedle help out of him this morning. And she wasn’t in a position to turn him down.
She glanced over her shoulder out the window. The beach would look spectacular in the golden hour right after the sun came up. She sighed.
Carly: Sure. I’ll meet you in the lobby. Coffee’s on me.
The first round, at least, she thought, turning back to the photo. She took one last look at it, exhaled a shaky breath, and then hit POST.
Carly: I just put the first photo up. Please share it with your tens of followers.
Nickhead: Dozens. I have *dozens* of followers.
Carly: Pedant.
Nickhead: I wouldn’t say I’m pedantic, per se, I’m just precise.
“Oh my God,” Carly muttered, wondering if she was going to pull a muscle from rolling her eyes at this man.
Nichead: OK, that was pedantic.
Carly laughed and restrained herself from texting back in amused agreement, but only just. She changed into her pj’s and brushed her teeth. Then she slipped one of her dilators and a little bottle of lube out of their clear plastic bag and got comfortable under the covers.
Angela had told her to start with some breathing exercises, a few deep inhales and slow releases to get her muscles to relax—the exact opposite of the kind of short, shallow breathing she’d expect to be doing right before trying to have sex. Once that was done, she lubed up the sterile white dilator and slipped it under the blanket. Shifting against the pillows so she could reach, she slipped the dilator slowly and steadily inside her, reminding herself to breathe deeply as she did. Picture a flower opening, Angela had told her. Imagine your muscles letting go instead of clamping down.
Once the dilator was all the way in, she released her head back onto the pillow and took a few more deep breaths. It didn’t hurt tonight, but she could feel a tight, stretching sensation as she laid there and let her muscles adjust to it. Still, this counted as a Good Vagina Day. She was having more and more of those lately, sometimes two or three of them in a row, but she’d learned not to get her hopes up that she was magically cured now. Sometimes Bad Vagina Days just came out of nowhere. So did Very Bad Vagina Days and Fucking Awful Vagina Days. That was the most infuriating, exhausting thing about chronic pain: there was no consistency, no control, no way to know when a string of good days would end or a string of bad days would start.
But today was a Good Vagina Day, she thought, letting her eyes drift closed. A good day all around, even if she’d spent it with Nick Jacobs instead of with Heather. He’d agreed to help her, and they’d gotten at least three usable photos out of the morning, and there would be more tomorrow. A good day.
Unbidden, the image of Nick’s long, agile fingers swam to the top of her mind, the way they’d fiddled with the camera before he’d reluctantly handed it over in the car this morning. And his intense blue gaze, fixed on her as she posed on the cliffside, his eyes watching her closely but seeing everything else, too. And the deep, muscular channel that ran down his back to his round, unforgivably muscular ass. Her muscles gave a needy throb around the dilator, and her eyes popped open.
She froze on her back, staring up at the ceiling in horror. She’d never once had a sexy thought while doing her dilator exercises, because the whole thing was so profoundly unsexy. Sure, the end goal of all this was pain-free sex, but the exercises themselves were about as sexless as the planks she did to warm up her core before morning class. She reached down to pull the dilator out as quickly as she dared, and her muscles throbbed again.
She propped herself up on one elbow and threw the blanket off her body. “Absolutely not,” she declared, glaring down her body at her vulva. “Not a chance in hell. Don’t even think about it.”
Carly slept fitfully, and far too soon, her phone was vibrating rudely against the nightstand, blaring “God Is a Woman” at top volume. She groped across the bed to silence it, growling in exhausted irritation. “Sorry, Ariana,” she muttered and laid back down, wondering how long she could snooze the alarm without making herself late. God forbid she keep Nick Jacobs waiting. But before she could reset the alarm, something on the screen caught her eye. A notification from Instagram.
“Shit,” she breathed, staring even though the bright screen made her want to squint. “God is a woman, and she works fast.”
Ten minutes later, she’d pulled on her faded old NYB sweatshirt and a pair of bike shorts, rubbed some brightening moisturizer on her face, swiped on two coats of mascara, and twisted her hair up into a rushed bun that she hoped looked messy-chic and not just messy. She dropped her phone and wallet into her shoulder bag and hurried out the front door in the direction of the Freshwater Hotel.
She found Nick waiting in the lobby, his camera bag slung over his shoulder. He was wearing jeans and a slate gray polo shirt, and he looked both sleepy and impatient. His eyes were a little puffy, but his posture was impeccable as always.
“Did you see?” she said, without preamble.
“Good morning to you, too, Carly,” he said, and she ignored him, pulling her phone out of her bag.
“It is a good morning!”
“Speak for yourself,” he grumbled.
“I always do. Nick, it’s working,” she said. She pulled up her Instagram account and held her phone up for him to see. “About two hundred new followers since I went to sleep. Which wasn’t that long ago, seeing as someone wanted to get up at the ass crack of dawn to take more photos.”
“Weird way to say thank you, but okay,” he interjected, and she stuck her tongue out at him. He stared at her mouth for a split second, as though a grown woman sticking her tongue out at him was an affront to his most delicate sensibilities, then rubbed a hand over his hair and redirected his gaze to the lobby door. “Let’s get started.”
Nick walked down the dunes in groggy silence, and he let her get a few paces in front of him so he could get a few shots of her walking down the slope, the back of her long, freckled neck exposed by her high bun. A few wisps of curly red hair had already escaped it and were floating behind her on the morning breeze. He had a sudden urge to reach out and brush them away. Tuck them back into the bun. Let his fingertips slide over the smooth, downy skin and tangle in the rebellious orange-red chaos that was her hair.
That’s insane,he told himself. You’re only thinking that because you’ve seen her tongue this morning. And not in a sexy way, in a juvenile go-to-hell kind of way.
He cleared his throat, and she turned to look at him, eyebrows raised.
“Is something wrong already? Is this perfect morning not perfect enough for you?” She swept one arm out to gesture over the almost deserted beach. The sky above the horizon was a promising golden pink, and there were already a dozen surfers out on their boards.
“No, it’s great,” he said tersely. “Why don’t you go stand between the flags, and I’ll stay up here?”
He’d get close-ups later. Right now, he needed to put some physical distance between them, and wide shots seemed like an obvious way to do it.
He cleared his throat again as she dropped her tote bag and shoes on the sand next to him and walked away, casting him a curious look as she went. He fiddled with his camera, keeping his eyes averted so that he wouldn’t have to watch her calf muscles flex under her skin as she walked down the beach. After spending an hour poring over the photos he’d taken yesterday—an hour was all she’d give him for editing, queen of patience that she was—he felt like he had her legs memorized. Which meant he knew that, yes, she had stretch marks on the insides of her thighs. And a constellation of freckles on her right shin that formed a small isosceles triangle. And he had noticed all these things not because he wanted to see them or know them but because he was a photographer, and because he’d promised to try to help her. To help both of them, really. He hadn’t woken up to as many new followers as she had this morning, but he’d picked up a few dozen. This professional marriage of convenience might actually pay off.
“What are you waiting for?” her impatient voice drifted up the beach, and he started.
“Sorry, your highness,” he called back, and he sensed rather than saw her epic eye roll.
He raised the camera and found her, positioned precisely between the red and yellow surf lifesavers’ flags, which were rippling gently in the placid morning breeze.
As he watched, she knelt in the sand and extended one long leg behind her body, arching her spine back until she was looking straight up at the sky.
“Nice,” he murmured to himself, snapping half a dozen shots of her there. “Do that again, but slower,” he called down, and when she righted herself and then leaned back again, he caught the whole, languorous movement frame by frame. The motion had lifted her sweatshirt at the front, and he could see a wide strip of exposed skin above the waistband of her shorts.
“That’ll do,” he called, and as she straightened again, the skin disappeared. Scooping up her things, he headed down the beach to join her. Above the churning waves, the sky was brightening to a rich, glowing peach, fading into a cool inky blue. They probably had a few more minutes until the sun came up and the light changed all over again. Perhaps they should try a few shots over by the ocean pool before then.
“Heather said there’s a pool down there,” Carly said, squinting towards the north end of the beach. “Could be an interesting backdrop.”
He nodded, resisting the urge to tell her it had been his idea first. They made their way to the end of the beach and towards the little concrete track that led around to the pool. Lots of Sydney beaches had lap pools built into the cliffs like this so you could swim laps in calm saltwater that was continually refreshed by the waves. It had been years since he’d been in one, but he still remembered the eerie feeling of being so close to the roiling crashing waves and spraying foam but being entirely safe and protected in the water.
Again he let her walk in front of him, and again he couldn’t keep his eyes from the stray strands of hair that danced around her neck as she moved. He clenched his jaw, pressed his fingers against the hard plastic of the camera, and dragged his eyes away to look out over the water.
When they arrived at the pool, they found it empty except for a lone swimmer, a woman in a one-piece swimming costume swimming slow, lazy laps of backstroke. Carly watched her for a few seconds, then took in the entire view: the pool built into the cliffside, the waves moving steadily towards the beach, the blue sky shot through with wide streaks of pearly pink and glowing orange.
“Hell of a way to work out,” she said, shaking her head in awe. “No wonder Heather fell in love with it, all of it.”
“Mmm,” he said noncommittally.
She turned over her shoulder and looked at him appraisingly, her cheeks and forehead bathed in the warm morning light. “Why did you ever leave again?”
“Not a lot of dance jobs going in Australia,” he said grimly. He’d had no choice but to leave—first his hometown and then the whole country. He’d been thrilled to do it, too, eager to go off in search of the kinds of adventure he was sure he could never have if he stayed home. But now he was back, and not the same person he was when he went away. And this place wasn’t the same place he had left, either.
“Interesting,” she said skeptically. “I just assumed they kicked you out.”
“We aren’t all lucky enough to have multiple world-class ballet companies in our hometowns,” he said. “Australia’s small, and sports obsessed. Lots of artists leave and never come back. Marcus is a rare exception.”
She opened her mouth to reply, no doubt with some kind of quip, but he cut her off.
“We’ll lose this light soon. Let’s get back to work.” She straightened up and gave him a mock salute, then dropped her bag at his feet and walked around to the other side of the pool. Honestly, the cheek on this woman, who just yesterday had begged him for his help. Wasn’t he the one who’d volunteered to wake up at some ungodly hour to do this for her? He switched the camera back on and followed her around the pool, stopping about five feet away from where she stood with one hand on the railing that separated the even concrete pool deck and the jagged rock formations.
“Nice place to do barre,” she said, arranging her feet in a tight fifth position and lifting her chin. In her bike shorts and faded old NYB jumper, she did look ready to start a morning ballet class, and when he lifted the camera up to his face, she pulled her shoulders down and looked into the lens with such intensity that he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d made piano music materialize on the beach out of sheer will.
“Go on then,” he said from behind the camera, unable to stop his mouth from curving into a smile. She grinned, flashing straight white teeth, then lowered herself into a demi-plié, letting her free arm drift languidly out beside her. It was the simplest movement, something the both of them had done every day since they were children, but there it was again: the same energy he’d seen in the photos he’d taken yesterday. She had probably done thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of pliés in her life, but she looked delighted to be doing this one. Whatever else Carly Montgomery loved or hated in this world, one thing was clear from watching her complete a single demi-plié: the woman loved to dance.
She carried on with a modified barre, brushing her bare feet gently over the concrete in tendus as he snapped away. Behind her, the sky was shifting into a steady cornflower blue, promising another bright and punishingly hot day.
After a few more minutes, she stopped moving and shook her legs out. “This is where there’d be grand battements, but I’m not warm enough for that,” she said, and he nodded.
“Lean your back against the railing for me?” he said, and she obliged, crossing her feet at the ankles and resting her elbows on the railing. He eyed the lens as he came closer to her, picking his way around the edge of the pool. He zoomed in and saw that her cheeks were slightly flushed, either from the wind or the exertion, and the freckles across her nose seemed more pronounced today than they were even yesterday.
He was so focused on her face that he barely felt the ground disappear from under one of his feet, but he saw through the lens as her eyes widened in alarm, and what came next happened so fast that he had no chance of preventing it: he wobbled perilously on the foot that was still on the concrete, she lunged for him with grasping, open hands, he tumbled backwards and felt the strap yank sharply at his neck, and then his back hit the water with a huge, ungainly splash.
A second later, he scrambled to his feet and his head broke the surface. His nose was full of saltwater and his back stung, but he ignored all of that and spun around, looking desperately for his camera. He grabbed a deep gulp of air as he searched for a telltale blob of black, perhaps floating next to him or already sunk to the bottom of the pool. In the back of his mind, he knew it was hopeless, knew that being submerged in seawater would have ruined it beyond repair—fuck, how could he have been so careless, again?—but he cast around for it anyway. Maybe he could salvage the SD card, he thought desperately, his clothes swirling and dragging around him. Or maybe he was just a giant failure who had walked away from the only career he’d ever known and was floundering in his new one as spectacularly as he was floundering in this pool.
“Where is it?” he growled, exasperated. Furious at himself and at this entire miserable situation. “Where did it—”
“I’ve got it.”
Nick froze and looked up. Carly was standing a foot from the edge, clutching his camera to her chest like a child with a stuffed animal.
He sloshed to the side of the pool, hauled himself out of water, and stumbled towards her, reaching for the camera, desperate to check that it hadn’t been damaged. Carly took a step back and turned her body away, shielding the camera from him.
“Let me see it!” he said breathlessly.
“No, you’re all wet!” she objected.
“Carly, I swear to God—”
“I just rescued this damn thing from going down like the Titanic; I am not going to let you get water all over it!” she said, outraged.
Nick stopped and took a deep breath. He breathed out, feeling saltwater rattle unpleasantly in his nose.
“Please, just hold it up so I can look at it.”
Carly eyed him warily, then turned her body back towards him. He examined it from a foot away, careful not to drip on it. It looked fine. He couldn’t see so much as a drop of water on the lens or anywhere else. But if he could just dry off and get his hands on it to check, he could—
“It’s fine, Nick. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to it.” She sounded annoyed.
“Sorry, I just—”
“I know, you care about your cameras more than life itself. Why do you think I saved the camera and let you fall into the pool? You weren’t very graceful, by the way.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t trying to be graceful.”
“Clearly.”
“I just want to dry off and check that it still—
Click.Carly lifted the camera to her face and snapped a photo of him. “Say cheese.” She didn’t wait for him to smile, which was a good thing, because she’d be waiting a while.
“Can you please stop taking photos of this?”
“In a second.” Click, click, click. Carly snapped away, no doubt delighted to capture this mortifying moment. Nick looked down at himself, at his grey T-shirt plastered against his chest and his shorts clinging to his thighs. He lifted one foot and felt his sneaker squelch against concrete. He must have looked like an absolute disaster. But the camera was apparently working just fine. Now that the adrenaline of the last few minutes was wearing off, he could think back and replay the seconds right before the fall. He’d watched Carly’s face transform into a mask of horror as she realized what was happening, and then, right at the last second, she’d lunged for him. No, not for him. For his camera.
“Carly, stop.”
“No, I’m making art here. Soggy, drowned-rat art.”
“Carly!”
“What?” she finally pulled the camera away from her face. She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow, the posture Nick was coming to think of as trademark Carly, all challenge and sarcasm, and a thin layer of humour draped over spikes of anger. She had a few droplets of water on her jumper and on her face, and they sparkled in the rising sun, decorating her flushed, freckled cheeks. In the warm golden light, her eyes were a deep, luxurious brown, and even though they were currently regarding him with skepticism and impatience, Nick couldn’t unsee the alarm he’d seen there as he’d teetered on the edge of the pool and she’d reached frantically for his Nikon. Saved it for him.
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” she shrugged, raising the camera again, but he stepped towards her, unwilling to touch the camera but trying to get her to stop so he could do this properly.
“It’s not nothing. It’d be ruined if you hadn’t done that,” he gestured down at the camera, which she was still clutching tightly, her fingertips white around it, “and I’d be in big trouble.”
Carly swallowed hard, then looked him up and down. “I don’t know, you look like you’re in pretty big trouble now.”
He looked down at himself again, then held his hands up in surrender. He really did look like a drowned rat. “Fine. Don’t let me stop you from capturing this glorious moment.”
She flashed him a quick grin as she raised the camera, and his stomach gave a strange jolt. Leftover adrenaline from the near-miss, he told himself, as she started snapping again.