38. Rae
38
RAE
Now
“ T hose flowers Hunter brought you are gorgeous,” Dee says, smiling at me over the rim of her champagne glass.
The opening for En Pointe is over, and despite the emotional storm cloud that’s been hanging over my head since this afternoon, everything went incredibly well. It helps that Dee has been by my side for the entire week, helping me with whatever I needed to make things go smoothly and, now, reminding me to pause and celebrate an achievement that wouldn’t have been possible without her or the man I’ve been trying not to think about that she just brought up.
My mind goes to the red orchids sitting on my desk. Their deep red hue a perfect match for the color I decided at the last minute to intersperse throughout my branding and space. I don’t know how Hunter knew that my office was the only place in the building without a pop of red somewhere. And I don’t know how to feel about the fact that he fixed it with such a simple, romantic gesture.
“Yeah, they’re nice,” I say, finally responding to Dee. She rolls her eyes at my nonchalance.
“Did you read the card?”
“Yes, Deanna, I read the card.”
And when I was done crying over it, I put it in the back of a drawer in my desk so Aaron wouldn’t see it. So he wouldn’t tell me I should throw it away. So I wouldn’t have to explain to him why I can’t.
“It was sweet, right?”
I narrow my eyes at her and take a sip of my champagne. “What are you getting at?”
“I’m not getting at anything. I’m just trying to figure out why you’re acting so weird when it comes to Hunter. You barely look at the man and don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve stopped talking about him altogether. Just a few weeks ago, everything was Hunter this and Hunter that.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Dee pins me with a hard stare. “Yes, it was. I felt like I’d been transported back to our college days where you spent all of your time talking about how in love you were with him.” My lips part to deny her claim, but she silences me with one hand. “Don’t you dare lie and say you didn’t. I have the text messages and cryptic Facebook statuses to prove it.”
That makes me crack up, and Dee joins in on the laughter, giving me a reprieve from her inquisition. It doesn’t last long, though. Eventually, she turns serious again, eyeing me with concern and curiosity.
“Seriously, though, what changed between you guys? I thought y’all were doing good, and now you’re being all cold with him, and he’s looking all desperate and remorseful like he fucked up somehow.” She pauses, her eyes going wide. “He didn’t relapse again did he?”
“No!” I answer quickly, shaking my head for emphasis. “He didn’t relapse. He’s still clean.”
“Okay, good.” Dee places a relieved hand on her chest. “Then what’s going on with y’all?”
I bite my lip. “I did something stupid.”
We’re sitting in the middle of the floor of the main classroom, surrounded by mirrors and barres that make it feel like no time has passed at all since our days as ballet students at Ms. Alice’s. Except everything has changed. Instead of water bottles and granola bars, we’re sipping on champagne and eating a charcuterie board in the middle of the floor, celebrating my transition from student to teacher. And instead of confessing to something stupid like forgetting my toe pads, I’m about to tell her that I slept with my ex.
“What’d you do?” She asks, plucking a grape off of the wooden board between us and dropping it into her mouth.
“I slept with Hunter,” I whisper.
Dee is a notoriously loud eater, so I hear the moment she stops chewing. “You did what?!”
I bring my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, resting my chin on top so I can see the disgust that must be gathering on her face. Except, there’s not any disgust. There’s just intrigue.
Dee reaches over and pokes me in the forehead. “You sneaky little bitch. When did this happen?”
The fact that she’s not judging me in the slightest makes me feel better and worse at the same time. I deserve to be judged. I deserve to be admonished. I deserve to be anything other than celebrated.
“Remember when Ri and I stayed the weekend with him?”
“Rae! That was weeks ago!”
“I knowwww,” I groan, closing my eyes. “I just couldn’t bring myself to say anything because it was a stupid, one-time thing, and it won’t happen again.”
Outside of my dreams. It won’t happen again outside of my dreams.
“Who are you trying to convince? Me or you?”
“Both,” I say, releasing my hold on my legs and collapsing onto the hard floor beneath me. “It won’t happen again. It won’t ,” I recite the mantra I’ve had on repeat since I left Hunter’s to the ceiling, hoping they’ll find their way from my lips to God’s ears.
Dee crawls over and lays on the floor beside me, and if I wasn’t so distraught, I’d laugh at the fact that neither of us give a fuck about ruining our dress clothes. “You can say that as many times as you want, but until you figure out why it happened in the first place, you can’t tell yourself it won’t happen again.”
My stomach clenches. I know she’s right, but the last thing I want to do is dig any deeper into that night than I already have. Besides, I already know why it happened. It happened because I love Hunter, and he loves me. It happened because I’m weak, and we’re cursed. It happened because I wanted it to.
But I can’t say any of those things to Dee.
“I don’t know why it happened.”
“Bullshit. We both know you’ve already turned that moment over in your head a million and one times. You know exactly why it happened.”
I glare at her. “Why are you so mean?”
“I’m not mean, I’m honest, and you need some honesty right now.” She turns on her side, propping her head up on her hand. “Tell me what happened, and don’t skimp out on any details.”
Despite my better judgment, I give her a play by play of the entire weekend, starting with meeting Taurin and his friends on Friday and ending with me coming home and spilling my guts to Aaron.
“You told Aaron?!”
“Of course, I told him. What was I supposed to do?” She gives me a look that tells me I should have done anything but that, and I laugh. “You’re a therapist. Isn’t honesty and healthy communication supposed to be your thing?”
“I mean, yeah, and if I was your therapist, I would have absolutely encouraged you to be honest with your partner about what happened, but as your best friend? My advice is always to take that shit to your grave.”
Most of the time, when I think about what Hunter and I did, I move between feeling sick with guilt and incredibly, shamefully, turned on, but I’m never amused. I’ve never laughed about it before tonight, so it feels good to let the laugh inspired by Dee’s seriousness spill from my lips.
“You’re awful, you know that?”
She nods. “I do, and that’s why I’ve never been caught slipping. You can’t let a man know you’ve fucked up, Rae, especially one as insecure as Aaron. They never actually want to work through it and figure out how you ended up there. And they never truly forgive you even though they say they have. They’ll just keep finding new ways to make you pay for it, new ways to make you feel bad about it, new ways to use it to guilt you into putting up with their shitty behavior.”
Everything about her response resonates deep in my chest, burrowing underneath the guilt to start working at the small part of me that thinks she might be right. Just as I start to consider it though, the emotional, guilt driven part of my brain kicks on, reminding me that I’m not the wronged party here.
And Aaron has been trying.
He’s been more present with me, more patient and attentive with Riley. He’s told Marcy that she’ll need to move back into her house once the kitchen renovation is done at the beginning of June, which is just a few days away. We’ve figured out how to balance our relationship with co-parenting with Hunter and me running the school.
Over the last two weeks, we’ve been better than we’ve ever been before, and I know things will continue to improve as long as I stay the course. And I will stay the course because that’s what’s best for Riley and me. She needs stability on both sides, not the collision of chaos that would be me and Hunter.
“I don’t think that’s what Aaron is doing, Dee.”
She doesn’t look convinced. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am,” I say, infusing my voice with conviction I don’t completely feel.
We sit in the heavy aftermath of the conversation for a few short minutes before Dee cuts an eye at me. I already know what she’s going to ask; I can tell by the sneaky little smirk curving her lips, but I still blush when she speaks the question out loud.
“Was the sex good?”
I roll over on my side, tucking my arm under my head so I can hide my smile in the crux of my elbow. “It was incredible.”