23. Rae
23
RAE
Now
I wake with a start, slick between the legs, with a moan parting my lips and Aaron’s confused eyes on me. He’s hovering over me, both brows knitted in confusion as I leave the warmth and safety of my dream—that involved a naked Hunter, a slew of mirrors and the main room of the empty building he purchased for me— for the stark reality of our bedroom. It’s early, right around the time I should be getting up to prepare Riley for her school day, and Aaron is already dressed for work. The tie I got him for his birthday dangles in front of my face, and I’m distantly aware of the weight of his hand on my shoulder. The placement and grip he has on me suggests he was in the process of waking me up.
“You were moaning in your sleep,” he says, removing his hand and stepping back to give me some space. There’s tension in the lines of his forehead as he examines me with a sweeping gaze I can’t read. “Are you okay?”
Another image from my dream washes over me when I sit up, and my hand goes to my throat, a pale imitation of Hunter’s wide, heavy palm and thick fingers. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, Aaron,” I snap, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and grabbing the glass of water I keep on my nightstand. He watches me drink it, waiting for me to finish before he continues with his unnecessary inquisition.
“You didn’t sound okay. Were you having a nightmare?”
I push to my feet, brushing past him on my way to the bathroom. There’s a cruel, shameful laugh building in my throat. “No, it wasn’t a nightmare,” I say, closing the door before he can follow me inside. “Far from it.”
“What was that?” Aaron asks through the door.
“Nothing!” I shout. “Would you mind waking Riley up for me?”
Normally, I wouldn’t ask him, especially since he’s on his way out the door, but I just need a moment to breathe, a moment to process that dream without him hovering. Things have been weird with us since the science fair, not bad—since Aaron agreed that he deserved the reaming out I gave him after dinner—but not as good as they could be, and me having sex dreams about Hunter is only bound to make it worse.
“She’s already up,” he says. “Mom is downstairs with her, making breakfast. She said she’s going to take her to school today.”
I should feel relieved to hear that Marcy is helping with Riley, but I’m not because I know she only does that when Aaron asks her to, and Aaron only does that when he wants to talk to me about something that will likely lead to us arguing.
“Oh, that’s nice of her.” I try, and fail, to keep the suspicion out of my voice. “Could you thank her for me on your way out the door?”
“Actually, I’m going in late. I wanted to have a chance to talk to you.”
My heart sinks. I don’t know what he wants to discuss, but I do know that his opening the door for honest communication means I have to walk through it, and that means telling him about the building Hunter bought for me even though I still haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. Since I’m in no rush to come clean, I take my time going through my morning routine, hoping that if I drag my feet enough, Aaron will run out of time or patience and leave for work.
No such luck.
When I emerge from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel with freshly washed hair and shaved legs, Aaron is sitting on the bench at the foot of our bed with his phone in his hand. He sets it down the moment I enter the room, a conscious display of his endeavor to be more present, and smiles. The sun is completely out now, and the clock on his nightstand says that it’s a quarter till eight, which means Riley and Marcy have already left, and there will be no interruptions or distractions from this conversation.
Aaron watches as I cross the room to my side of the bed, where I keep all of my moisturizing products, remaining quiet until I take a seat.
“I found you a job.”
I pause, my hand suspended in mid-air with a palm full of my favorite body oil dripping onto my thigh. “You did what?”
“I found you a job,” he repeats, grinning like he’s done some amazing thing, completely unconcerned with the frown on my face. “The Ballet Academy is hiring. They only need a receptionist right now, but it’s an established school that’s growing everyday, and I’m sure they’ll have to take another teacher on eventually.”
“Eventually?” Needing something to do with my hands so I don’t launch myself across the bed and strangle this man, I begin rubbing the oil into my skin, hoping the scent of coconut and honey will calm my nerves.
“Yeah.” Aaron stands, coming around the bed to sit close to me. “I’m sure once they need someone, they’ll be looking to hire internally, and you’ll be right there!”
“Mhmm.” I hum, nodding like I understand his foolish logic.
“Exciting, right?” His eyes are so bright, filled with hope and selfish intentions. “I even asked the lead instructor, Lena, nice lady, by the way, if you could use the space to dance sometimes, you know, just to make sure you stay sharp, and she said that’s something you two could discuss when you call her today.”
“I’m not calling her, Aaron.”
He rears back, responding to the sharpness of my tone the same way he would a smack to the face. “What? Why? It’s a great opportunity for you.”
“But it’s not the opportunity that I want.”
“Rachel,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose and gazing heavenward like he’s praying for patience. “I thought we were past this whole school thing.”
“No, we tabled the discussion after you made it financially impossible for us to take on the lease, but we never got past it. I never got past it.”
“Well, maybe you should,” he snaps, and now I’m the one rearing back like I’ve been hit. Except the difference between me and Aaron is that when I get hit, literally or figuratively, I don’t just sit there and take it, I hit back.
“Hunter bought the building,” I say slowly, clearly, so there’s no mistaking the words that have just come out of my mouth. A shock of satisfaction rolls through me when Aaron’s mouth drops, and I continue. “He gave me keys to it yesterday so I could start my school, and there was a part of me that didn’t want to accept such a huge gift from him. There was a part of me that thought it wasn’t right, that was worried about how upsetting it might be for you, but now that I know you’re such a huge fan of resolving things with little to no discussion, I realize I shouldn’t have been so worried. I mean you’ve only known about it for—” I glance at my wrist, checking an imaginary watch “—about a half a minute, and I bet you’re already past it.”
Using Aaron’s shock to my advantage, I push to my feet and move over to my closet to pull down the beat-up black duffel I haven’t opened since we left New York. It hits the ground with a loud thump, and then I step over it, reaching for the shelf that holds all the leotards, tights, and dance skirts I’ve accumulated over the years and slipping on the first ones I put my hands on.
Aaron appears in the doorway just as I’m securing the skirt around my waist, finally in possession of his voice but not his common sense. “You can’t keep the building.”
“I don’t recall asking you for your permission, Aaron.”
“You can’t keep it,” he says again and, judging by the petulance in his tone, barely containing the urge to stomp his foot.
I bend down and grab my bag, tossing it over my shoulder and using it to body-check him on my way out of the closet. “Watch me.”
“Those shoes are dead,” Dee tells me, eyeing the box of the pointe shoes I’m holding in my hand through the camera.
She’s probably right, but I still put them on just to be certain. Sure enough, the moment I go en pointe I feel the lack of resistance that can only mean one thing: a soft box. Sighing, I drop back down, lowering myself to the floor and unraveling the ribbon connecting the useless shoes to my ankles. Once I have them off, I toss them across the room.
“Someone’s in a pissy mood today,” Dee observes.
Reaching into my bag, I pull out a pair of brand-new shoes, along with the tools I need to break them in. “I just didn’t have the best start to my day.”
Dee watches as I take out my frustrations on the pointe shoes, rolling back the satin of the heel to expose the shank first then using the scissors I keep in my bag to cut down the hardened material that runs from one end of the shoe to the other.
“I know that, Rae,” she says patiently, reminding me that I filled her in on my entire conversation with Aaron on the drive over. “I’m just wondering if you plan on letting Aaron ruin your first full day in your space.”
“No, I just—” I blow out a breath, shifting to my knees and putting the shoe on the ground so I can use my weight to soften the box a bit. “I don’t need his permission, you know? I can keep the building; I can use the money from my savings to pay for everything I need to get things off the ground. I don’t need his permission,” I repeat, sinking back to the floor.
“But you want his support,” Dee says, nodding. I remember a time when I was upset with her for abandoning our shared dream of being professional dancers to pursue psychology, but now I’m more grateful than ever that she did. Her degrees have saved me thousands in therapy bills.
“Yes! I just don’t understand why it’s so hard for him to give it to me.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No, because I’m tired of talking to him. I’m tired of fighting about every little thing.”
“Every little thing or just one big thing?” she asks, lips pursed because she already knows the answer. I let the question live in the air while I repeat the breaking process on my other shoe. Dee is fine with the silence, opting to fill the time typing away on her computer while I avoid giving her an answer.
“You got a busy day today?” I ask.
“A few appointments, but nothing too crazy.” She sighs and leans back in her seat. “I think I’m getting tired of Michigan,” she confesses. “It’s lonely out here.”
“Where are you planning on going now?” I ask, a smile curving my lips. Dee is the most adventurous person I know. She doesn’t mind packing up all of her shit and leaving where ever she is to start anew. It’s the thing I love most about her.
“I haven’t decided yet. What would you think about me coming back to New Haven?”
My heart squeezes with excitement at the thought of having my friend back within arms reach. “I think that would be amazing if it’s something you want to do. Riley and I would love to have you here, and I know Jayla and Sonia would, too.”
The mention of her goddaughter and niece makes her smile and then frown. “I just feel like I’m missing out on so much being out here when y’all are all over there. It was different when you were in New York because we were all spread out, but seeing you and Jayla together when we’re on FaceTime has me feeling like I’m always missing out.”
“Aww, babe, well, it sounds like you already have your answer.”
“Maybe.”
“Ain’t no, maybe, Deanna; you just said you’re sad and lonely. That means it’s time to come on home.”
“I didn’t say I was sad, bitch.”
I snort out a laugh. “Damn, why I gotta be all of that?”
“Because you’re getting on my nerves. Now, pick up the phone and show me around this building your baby daddy bought you before Aaron burns it to the ground.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” I tell her, wishing I had as much confidence in my relationship with Aaron as I do in his aversion to arson. Dee twists her lips to the side, letting me know she’s not as certain as I am, but she doesn’t say anything else on the topic, which allows me the chance to give her a full tour of the building before she has to hang up to tend to the clients that actually pay her.
Once our call ends, I pull up my favorite playlist and turn the volume up as high as it will go before putting on my freshly broken-in shoes and letting the music take me where it wants to go. Ballet is one of the most structured forms of dance, so there’s not usually room for free-styling, but that’s all I’m doing at this moment. There’s no rhyme or reason or finesse to my movements, and because I’m out of practice, there are several moments when my shoulders and hips are not on the same line, but still, it feels good to move. To dance. To get back in touch with the part of me that loves the burn in my muscles when I stretch them to their limits and, as crazy as it sounds, the slight ache in my toes from the pressure of balancing the weight of my entire body on them when I’m en pointe.
There’s madness to this art form, yes, but there’s beauty too, and that’s what I want to teach the kids that pass through the doors of my school. I want them to learn to appreciate the fundamentals like first position and then push themselves to perfect the harder skills like going en pointe, and I want them to leave here knowing that even if this world doesn’t want them, they can still want it. They can still have it.
By the time I’m done, my ankles hurt, and my lungs are burning, but I’m happy, happier than I’ve been in a long time, about something that doesn’t have to do with Riley. I collapse on the floor, wishing for a water bottle and maybe a snack, when my playlist stops, and my phone starts to ring, playing the ringtone I designated for Hunter. I lay there, staring up at the ceiling and contemplating letting him go to voicemail, but then I reconsider because he hasn’t done anything to deserve that from me.
I pull myself up off the floor, hurrying over to the window sill where I sat the phone and scooping it up.
“Hello?” I’m breathless, a byproduct of pushing myself to physical exhaustion after months of doing nothing, and Hunter notices.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asks, and I can practically see his eyebrows reaching for his non-existent hairline as he jumps to an inappropriate conclusion.
“No, this is a perfect time.” I rub a hand down my face and over my neck, clutching at my dry throat. “I’m just down at the building…cleaning up.” I close my eyes and groan silently at the poorly executed lie. I could have just told him I was dancing.
“Oh. Okay.” There’s a smile in his voice that teases me, calling me a liar.
“Did you need something?”
He never calls me. The one time we’ve talked on the phone since exchanging numbers, I initiated the phone call, and he’s never returned the favor, until now.
“I wanted to know if Riley has a savings account.”
God, why is that such an attractive combination of words?
I bite my lip, wondering if I’ll dream about him again tonight, only this time, he won’t be eating my pussy in the middle of a room full of mirrors; he’ll be seducing me with finance terms like APY and compounding interest.
“Yeah, I, uh, I started her one when she was a baby with the money I got from Will’s life insurance.”
“Oh.” His end of the line goes quiet, and I realize that it’s the first time one of us has mentioned Will since we’ve been back in each other’s lives. “That was smart.”
“Thank you?”
“What’s with the tone?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out your tone.”
“I don’t have a tone,” he insists, and I purse my lips even though he can’t see me because we both know he’s lying. “Okay, maybe there was a bit of a tone,” he admits, which makes me smile.
“Do you want to tell me why there was a tone?”
Hunter blows out a breath. “You’re just so good at this whole parenting thing.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
His answer comes immediately. “No. I couldn’t be prouder or more impressed with the mother that you are. I just—” he pauses, and I try to picture him now in this rare moment of self-doubt “—I’m just trying to catch up, to make up for fucking up so thoroughly that I ended up missing everything. I don’t want to miss any more, Rae.”
“You won’t,” I assure him because I can’t picture going back to a reality where he’s not a part of Riley’s life, where he’s not a part of mine. “I won’t let you.”
“Can you do something for me?” His voice is low and throaty, full of vulnerabilities he’s not used to exposing, so I’m inclined to listen even though I know there’s a high likelihood he might be preparing to ask me for something I’m not ready to give him just yet.
“What is it?”
“Can you consider letting me be around more consistently? Giving me a day to pick her up from school, help her with her homework, cook her dinner…”
“You know how to cook now?” I ask, trying to imagine him in somebody’s kitchen.
“You’ve had my food before, Sunshine; you know I can cook.”
There he goes with that damn nickname again, making me melt.
“Grilling is not the same as cooking, Hunter. You know your daughter barely eats meat, right?”
“I’m aware. Just like I’m aware that you’re intentionally steering this conversation in another direction to avoid answering my question.”
I kick at the window sill with the toe of my shoe. “Well, I don’t know that I know exactly what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking to see her in person more than once a week for thirty minutes at a time. I know you wanted to take things slow, to try to ease all of us into this, but I think Riley is ready for more time with me, and I am more than ready for more time with her.”