The Unraveling

Chapter One

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

Ipinch the skin on my inner thigh between freshly manicured fingers. Blood rushes through my legs as I watch the dancers onstage. It’s nearly killing me to be in the audience, trapped in the middle of my row. I can’t tell if I’m claustrophobic or if I’m afraid I might lose my mind and climb onstage. Am I jealous I’m not up there, or am I just not ready to be a spectator?

As if he can read my tense mind, Jordan puts a hand on my knee and gives it a gentle squeeze. He asked if I was sure I wanted to come to The Nutcracker tonight and I acted like he was ridiculous for asking. But, as usual, it looks like he was right. It’s the snow scene and I notice a young woman in the back line of the corps de ballet. Her ribbon has come slightly untied. I can’t take my eyes off her. I’m worried for her. She dances as if she doesn’t notice, but I know she does, and I just know she’s freaking out about how much trouble she will get in. She’s wondering if it will hold until the end of the scene or if it will completely untie. She’ll be in trouble either way. They will take money out of her paycheck.

I feel bad for her but also annoyed. If I was up there, that would never happen to me.

I close my eyes to block out the beautiful shapes onstage.

The act ends and the curtains come down. I burst out of my seat like a rocket and say to our friends, “Let’s go get some drinks.”

“Thank god ,” says Artie, not bothering to lower his voice, leading the way out of the aisle. “I love being a person who goes to the ballet, but I hate being at the ballet.”

“I don’t know how those girls do it, it looks like such hard work. I can barely do my mile a day.” Jane pulls a cigarette out of an old-school case and lights it with a match.

We burst out onto the street, fresh, icy air and dusty smog draping around us. It’s not until we’re out there that I realize how claustrophobic I felt inside. Out here there’s a chaotic din I can get lost in. It’s New Year’s Day, and since Christmas was only a week ago, the streets are still strung with twinkling lights and everyone in London is in that postholiday haze where mulled wine seems like a perfectly fine way to welcome the early afternoon.

I’ve never had the classic Christmas holiday, since I was raised by a woman who didn’t seem to understand the concept of childhood, much less indulge the idea of magic that’s necessary to keep an eight-year-old girl excited with visions of sugarplums. This year was the most festive I’ve ever been. On Christmas Eve, Jordan and I went to Jane’s house, where she and her partner, Emily, made an elaborate—and very English—meal of beef Wellington, roasted root vegetables, buttery potatoes, and trifle for dessert. Artie was there with his brand-new girlfriend, Julia, whom he has already dumped for being too intellectually plebian .

We went through about a case of wine and spent the night taking turns switching out the records on her vintage Victrola. It was a cozy scene of cashmere and pinot noir, and actually roasting chestnuts on a roaring fire. Something I’ve only heard in the song. I felt like I was in a Christmas movie for a few minutes.

Jordan and I woke up miraculously bright-eyed the next morning, if tired. He made pancakes and coffee, I made mimosas, and we curled up to watch The Shop Around the Corner . Later in the afternoon we went to a pub where a live Irish band was playing festive music and drinking as much as the rest of us. We drank pints of Guinness and ate fried food and—well, let’s just say I’m not surprised no one knows I’m a ballerina. I have packed on a healthy ten pounds. I look a little prettier, actually, the unfamiliar weight adding a softness to my features I’ve never seen. I’ve been about fifteen pounds underweight my entire life. For the holiday season, it feels nice to indulge and even to see myself this way, but I have a feeling that once the lights are taken down and Jordan starts talking about weekends in Mallorca, I’m going to feel differently about the new ratio between my waist and my hips.

“Can you imagine being a ballerina?” asks Artie. “I feel like your whole life just winds up being about sacrifice. I mean, life is for buttered bread and perfect crème br?lée! And wine as—as luscious as velvet. Life is not for anorexia and discipline. Maybe a little recreational anorexia, but ugh, discipline.”

“You poets drive me mental,” says Jane. “?‘Wine as luscious as velvet.’ Jesus Christ.” She drags on her cigarette. “Not that I don’t agree, but what a pretentious fuck you are.”

I glance at her cigarette case and think she’s also a bit of a pretentious fuck. Not that I don’t like her. I do. But it’s sort of the Le Creuset pot calling the Alessi kettle hot .

Artie bumps her with his shoulder indulgently and takes a cigarette from her case.

I look at Jordan. His expression means You still haven’t told them about your old life?

I smile and give a slight shake of the head. He smiles back.

It’s true, I haven’t. I’ve artfully dodged any questions about my past, managing not to admit my seedy Louisiana upbringing, my gold-digging mother, or my lifetime in ballet slippers.

My phone buzzes in my clutch and I take it out to see a text from Sylvie and a missed call from an unsaved and unfamiliar number. I ignore the random call and focus on the text from Sylvie, my closest friend and the person with whom I’ve shared the most secrets and the most contention. If it weren’t for the fact that we’ve hooked up, I’d say she’s like a sister.

I open the message.

Happy New Year’s! Only a few more shows of Nutcracker! I wish you were here—the new principal they hired to replace you is insane. She’s such a diva. I swear she won’t last the year.

I laugh reading it and then put it away, saying to Jane and Artie, “You know, I used to be a ballerina.”

A gust of cold air.

“Shut up. When you were a kid?” asks Artie.

“Oh my god, of course you were, look at you with that absurd waifish body of yours.”

She should have seen me in New York.

“No, not only as a kid. I only left the ballet about five months ago.”

“Seven months,” corrects Jordan kindly.

“Seven?” I ask. “Huh.”

I take a drag of Jane’s cigarette.

She takes it back and says, “How do we not know this? We’ve all been attached at the hip ever since you two moved to London, and yet this didn’t come out? I feel betrayed.”

Artie is gaping at me. “I feel betrayed. And guilty for saying how much I hate the ballet.”

I laugh. “It’s fine.”

“Why did you quit?”

I feel Jordan’s protective energy waft over me. “She’s just on a break. I think she’ll go back when she’s ready.”

Artie and Jane have a hundred more questions as we walk down a cobblestone street lit by gas lamps, meandering in the lawless way we often do until we stumble upon some great little cocktail club or speakeasy.

Jane and I clutch each other and giggle as we try to stay upright in our stilettos. Since leaving the stage and joining the audience, I have learned that they always overpour—and overcharge for—wine at the theater. And then I drink way too much.

Tonight, it’s a cabaret that we find.

“Oh, I’ve heard of this place! Let’s go in here,” I say. “I’ve been dying to go.”

It’s true, but I’m also feeling the heat rise in my cheeks as their questions threaten truths and feelings to rise up and take me over, and a cabaret is exactly the sort of distraction that can save me.

I’m absolutely right. As soon as we step through the doors of Josephine’s, we are taken away to the rich, decadent world of America’s Jazz Age. My vintage fur coat and beaded Oscar de la Renta dress are perfectly in theme, and I wish—for not the first time lately—that I really could travel in time.

My mind starts to wander and I desperately regain control of it. We need drinks. Stat. I still have a headache from last night’s cocktails, but I don’t care. I just need to feel less.

Jordan leans toward me. “You okay? We can always go back to our place.”

“I’m fine,” I say, with the biting tone I can’t seem to leave out of my voice lately. I smile to lessen the impact, but I don’t feel like it works. He gives me an affectionate squeeze anyway.

“What would you like?” asks Jordan, impervious.

“Something strong. Sazerac.”

He hesitates, but he never tells me what to do, so he orders one for me. I notice he gets it made with the highest-quality whiskey they sell, trying to save me from tomorrow’s hangover.

And then I hear my name. “Jocelyn?”

I turn to see the source, suddenly remembering with blistering clarity how I had heard of this club.

“David,” I say, with an impossibly warm smile, masking the fact that I could not be less excited to see him.

“Oh my god, you look absolutely gorgeous,” he says, coming to me and putting an arm around me. “I love how you look so good with some weight on you. I can never pull off having extra pounds on me.”

Christ.

I have to admit that David, though a total bitch, is a strikingly beautiful dancer. I know him from my old company in New York, North American Ballet. He and I have never been particularly close. He’s a gossip who loves good drama and gravitates toward it, bailing on anyone the second they might need him. I don’t need friends like that.

I shouldn’t be surprised to see David here in London. I did see when we were looking up which Nutcracker show to watch that he was guesting for the season. He’s English, and they love having him back here. I purposely avoided his Nutcracker show, but I have terrible fucking luck.

“I took some time off,” I say, accepting my drink from Jordan and letting the plume of absinthe in the glass rise and sting my nostrils as I sip.

“Well, girl, you definitely look better with tits.”

I want to be clever, but instead, I am struck silent and uncreative as I wince a nasty smile at him and roll my eyes. He’s unfazed and turns to Jordan.

“Is this Jordan?” he gushes, holding out his hand. “I think we may have crossed paths once or twice. You’re the artist Jocelyn left her hard-won career for?”

There’s something about the way he asks this question like he and I were ever close. Jordan is an artist, an extraordinary painter, who has managed to catch global attention lately. As Artie said in his most recent write-up on him for the Guardian , “Despite the maddening crowd’s constant insistence that things like paintings are dying at the altar of modernity, Jordan Morales manages to keep our attention.”

But there’s also something about the way David says artist that makes it sound like he’s saying, You’re the guy with the fingerpaints, right?

“Nice to meet you, David.” Jordan never takes the bait. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

They hold each other’s gaze for a moment, David seeming to glean that whatever Jordan’s heard, it’s not all good.

“Yes, yes.” David snaps his fingers at the bartender, who reluctantly comes over and takes his order. “Bottle of Krug.”

No please , no thank you , no sorry for snapping my fingers at you like a dogcatcher in an old movie . I forgot how obnoxious David can be.

The bartender nods. I look apologetically at her, but she looks at me like I’m part of the problem. And I am. Just by my proximity to him, I’m guilty.

Jordan looks irritated, and I know it’s on my behalf. He knows that running into another dancer from New York is the last thing I want right now. And it really is.

I just know David is going to text everyone in NAB about how I’ve gained a bunch of weight and how I’m just hanging around London with some guy, throwing my life away.

“I’m here with some friends you should meet,” says David to me now, fully bounced back from the moment of discomfort. “Come over and join our table.”

The club is clearly on an intermission between acts, and there’s a deeply thrumming exotica beat coming out of every hidden speaker in the place.

I look across the dark room and see the group he points out. To my surprise, I recognize one of the women.

But I turn away, not wanting her to spot me. I accept a glass of champagne from David. I have two drinks now, and somehow it still doesn’t seem like enough.

My phone buzzes and I assume it’s Sylvie again. I pull it out and see it’s an unknown number. I ignore it and put it away.

The girl does see me and as soon as she does, she heads over to us.

“Arabella,” bursts David. “Meet Jocelyn Banks.”

“Jocelyn.” She leans in, and we do the obligatory double air kiss. She smells of booze but also like she just bathed in rose petals. “Yes, yes. I already know this gorgeous creature, David. This is who I was telling you about tonight! I was telling David, I said there’s a girl from New York that I’ve been watching at open classes for a few months who is just fantastic .” Her words are drenched in a strong, sexy Spanish accent. She smiles big. With her magazine-worthy, messy black hair, petite stature, and buttery olive skin, she’s like a green-eyed Penélope Cruz, especially in her role as Maria Elena in Vicky Cristina Barcelona .

“Oh my god! I should have put two and two together. I knew Jocelyn was in town somewhere. I guess I just didn’t think she’d be out impressing people with her prowess. Silly me!” David practically shouts. “Well, you two need to exchange numbers.” He turns to me. “Jocelyn, Arabella is a principal at the Royal National Ballet here. She danced in The Nutcracker tonight.”

“I was just there,” I say. “It was great.” I try to place her in the show. “Oh, you were the Snow Queen, weren’t you?”

She looks so different offstage with her voluminous hair.

“Yes, I was.”

“You were wonderful,” I say, feeling a stab of jealousy. I’m usually the one wrapping up a show and grabbing drinks nearby, feeling like a star among the normal people when I do.

“And you got out of the theater quick, too,” I notice. The Snow Queen is a gorgeous pas de deux before the snow scene where the girl’s ribbon came undone.

“Of course! I’m actually lucky I wasn’t the Sugarplum tonight so I didn’t have to stay until the end and I could get out quicker to hang with this guapo creature before he goes back to New York.” She smiles and kisses David.

“I swear, Arabella will be your best friend. She’s absolutely crazy, though!” David gives her a pinch.

I smile at Arabella. I’m taken aback a bit that she’s been talking about me, as we’ve never actually spoken. We’ve really only smiled politely at each other in the open ballet class that I’ve been taking twice a week over the past couple of months. I do it to stay in semi-shape, just in case the urge to dance again overtakes me.

Arabella is good. Very good. It’s not surprising she’s a principal. But she’s been watching me for months? Is that weird? It feels like she would have said something. I mean, it’s not like she seems to be very shy or anything.

I shake it off. I’m the one being weird. It’s a ballet class. We all watch each other.

I’ve been out of my world too long, and now the oddness of it is starting to sneak up on me.

“So great to meet you, Arabella. Yeah, let’s definitely go for drinks or something one day after class.”

“Of course, darling! Ah, one moment…” She then gives us all an apologetic look and holds up her phone, which is ringing. “Now, excuse me, I have to take this. My donor.”

David leans into me and whispers, “The donor shit is crazy here, by the way. If you do start dancing again, just be prepared for that.” He pulls back and then says, at a normal volume, “Not that it looks like you’ll be returning to the stage anytime soon. You look perfectly happy in this new role of yours.”

I squint at him. “New role?”

He shrugs. “Trophy girlfriend. He’s the talent, you’re the pretty little thing. I like it, no judgment. I think it suits you.”

He winks, and I do believe he means it, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less obnoxious.

I watch Arabella on the phone. She’s interesting. One of those people who just draws you in the second you meet. For better or worse. She seems to have a fire burning just beneath the surface.

I have a feeling Arabella could get me into all kinds of trouble.

My phone buzzes again. The same unknown number. They also left a voicemail. I ignore it again.

There’s a screech of feedback and a large, buxom woman in glimmering sequins takes the stage with a bedazzled microphone. She looks like a curvier version of Velma Kelly from Chicago . The bobbed black hair, the eternal smirk.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the bewitching, beguiling, and be sexing Josephine’s!”

There’s a sudden wave of applause and catcalls.

“Now, I know you could all look at my beautiful tits—I mean face —all night long, but of course, I’m a generous soul, so I’ll be sharing the stage this evening with some absolute babes tonight. And every once in a while”—she directs her eye contact over toward our group—“I’m able to convince my friends to come up and strut what their mamas wish they’d never given them. David, any interest tonight?”

She puts on a pouty face as a spotlight soars over to David.

He smiles. He loves the attention, I know he does, but he acts demure.

“I’m with my friends,” he says, elbow on the bar, giving her that kind of self-impressed smile that means he simply needs to be begged.

“Oh, he’s with his friends,” she says, pouting even more, and even stomping her foot as she bats her eyelashes on the crowd. “What do we think, is that a good excuse?”

Everyone starts to boo, and the emcee grins at David.

“You’re so bad,” he says to her.

“Come on, Davey, one little dance.”

He looks at me. “I’ll do it if she does it with me.”

The emcee’s heavily blackened eyelashes flit to me. “Do we have another dancer in the house this evening?”

Heat rises fast in my cheeks as the spotlight moves onto me, too.

I almost spit out my cocktail. “What?”

“Come on, babe, let’s show them what real dancers do,” says David.

“ What real dancers do ? What is this, Step Up ?”

“Come on!” He starts to pull at me.

“Dav—” I look at the stage area. “No. No way. Ballet is not cabaret.”

“Oh my god, do it!” says Jane.

“You have to,” says Artie. “Do it for the experience.”

Artie’s a writer, so he writes everything off as being for the experience , no matter how negative it is.

“Hey there, handsome,” says David.

I roll my eyes. Artie, who is also open to any kind of experience , gives a flirtatious flick of his perfectly groomed hair to David.

“You can dangle your beautiful friend in front of me all you want,” says David, winking at Artie over my shoulder, “but you can’t distract me. We’re dancing .”

I let out an exasperated sigh and say, “This is ridiculous.”

David takes this as a relent, and says, “We’ll do it!”

The room cheers, dumbly, though they have no idea—just like I don’t have any idea—what is about to happen.

David goes off to whisper something to the hostess. She grins and nods, turning the Rolex on his wrist toward her. I turn completely from the whole scene.

Jordan turns to me. “You don’t have to do it,” he says.

I swig from my Sazerac and look up to the ceiling.

“All right, ladies and sluts, in the boudoir tonight we have a few special guests. David Thornton, a dancer with the North American Ballet in New York City.” She pauses and claps long manicured fingers along with all the catcalls and whooping from the audience. “Don’t worry, he’s a proper Englishman. Well, sort of—he’s from South London.”

Laughter fills the room. She drifts over in my direction and my heart starts to pound. I never get stage fright when I dance, but the second someone puts a microphone in front of my face, I tend to start bumbling.

“But we also have an elegant, gorgeous, absolute swan of a ballerina as well. Jocelyn Banks!”

More applause, but less, because unlike David, I am not standing and hamming it up with a little bow and curtsy.

“And I don’t know where you’re from, love, from where do you hail?”

The diamond-encrusted microphone lands in front of my lips.

I hate admitting where I’m from.

“Louisiana.”

“Ooh, New Orleans? I absolutely love New Orleans.”

There are a few cheers. I am not from New Orleans, but in order to avoid having to explain how many bad neighborhoods you’d have to drive through to get to the one I’m from, I say, “I bet New Orleans loves you, too.”

This does the trick. Not-Velma-Kelly does a flattered little frown and places a hand over her cleavage-covered heart. “Aw, what a sweetheart .” She looks at me. “Even if you are American. Ha!”

She cackles loudly and drifts back to her spot on the stage.

“We’re going to bring these two lovely specimens up onstage tonight to perform a sexy little dance for you all—would you like that?”

I’m torn. Part of me is mortified at the idea of stepping up in front of all these people and dancing something unrehearsed.

But another part of me is itching to be in front of an audience. To stretch my limbs and do what I’m great at. Watching the dancers in The Nutcracker tonight made me go almost out of my skin.

The crowd urges us on.

Jordan puts a hand on my waist. It’s meant as a reminder that I can do whatever I want. I slip out of his light grasp, the limelight-addicted half of me winning out.

I slam the last of my champagne and slink up to the stage and take David’s outstretched hand.

He whispers into my ear. “We got this, babe. Just let loose a little.”

I nod, feeling high on the spontaneity and frozen with the uncertainty. It’s not like we’re jazz dancers and can whip out a routine. I remember David doing something like this at a major donor’s Christmas party. He threw another ballerina in the air, caught her gracefully, and then spun her around. Everyone went wild. But that was five seconds.

I take a deep breath. It would be more embarrassing to walk away now.

I kick off my high heels, left only with stockinged feet. There’s more cheering. That one was for the foot crowd, I guess.

The room darkens and the spotlight tightens in on the two of us as we take up position. “Little Red Rooster” by Howlin’ Wolf starts up. I feel the muscles twitch in my cheeks as I almost want to smile at the sound of the first few beats of music I recognize. David turns to face me, winking. Erik Note, an award-winning choreographer, did a piece to this for a gala a couple of years ago. David and I were first cast.

Nerves and energy race around my bones like ribbons, my blood rushing hot, my muscles strong and well trained. I can tell they have not forgotten.

It’s like riding a bike. Except I’m pretty sure I have forgotten how to ride a bike.

Ballet I could never forget.

I slowly start to raise my leg to the side, going higher and higher to the beat of the music, glad I’m wearing a nice thong beneath my dress, as it is definitely showing through my sheer stockings.

Once my toe is above my head, David takes hold of my pointed foot and I pivot my body to face him. He lowers with control down to one knee so I can slide my leg across his shoulder. I bend my knee to secure my balance and he slowly stands, me straddled across his shoulder. His hips move to the beat and my arms sensually move through the lyrics as if moving through muddy water.

And from there we’re off.

I stretch and bend like a willow in the wind; his movements are tight and sure. When I step into his hand’s grasp, it is as stable as a marble stair, and when I drape over his outstretched arm, I am as fluid as velvet in a Renaissance painting.

My body is out of practice, but the basics are there. I’ve been dancing since I was a child, my bones and my muscles formed around dance. My hamstrings are tighter than usual and I’m sure David is working a little harder than usual to lift me, but it doesn’t show. I know it doesn’t.

We slip a little at the final moment as my bare feet don’t allow me to spin quite like a ballet slipper, but no one minds and neither do we. Everyone is high on the drug of watching real professionals do what they do well.

I’m uncertain about a lot in my life. I second-guess myself. I say stupid things to baristas and I can never quite decide whether or not I can really pull off hats the way some people can, but dance? Dance I am sure of. Ballet I am good at. There is no question, and I never doubt that. I’ve never been able to afford that kind of doubt.

I laugh at the sound of the last note and fall into David’s arms, both of us shedding the personality of the characters we have just briefly inhabited. I was a coquette. He was a stallion.

Now we’re back to being what we really are. Me, a traumatized ex-ballerina with a fear of inferiority, and him, a slightly femme, extremely horned-up playboy queen.

The whole room has erupted into applause and whistling and cheering. My cheeks are flushed from the exertion and the attention and the stage lights. I forgot how warm they can be.

I return to Jane and Artie and Jordan. Arabella is nearby, too, but still on the phone.

Jane and Artie start gushing. Jane is smoking another cigarette, her black curtain bangs resting on her slightly dimming eyelashes. “You’re amazing, incredible, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Artie seems almost offended. “I find it shocking that you didn’t tell us you could do this. My god, woman, we were at The Nutcracker tonight and it only barely came up! What other secrets are you hiding from us?”