1 Year Ago
She thinks nothing of him at first. They don’t say hello; they only make brief eye contact from across the room, because her attention is on surviving this event for the next hour so she can flee back home to her son.
It’s one of the few times she has left him with a sitter, though it’s only the fourteen-year-old girl who lives over the fence and is primed to let Jude sit in her living room watching TV with her own younger siblings.
Nothing bad will happen so long as Elodie is only away for a few hours and he remains engrossed in a film and fed crackers when he starts whining.
Elodie put him in a Pull-Up, made sure he had his stuffed rabbit, and told the teenager she’d get forty dollars, just please, please, don’t take your eyes off him.
He is five now. He is inquisitive and quick and unmanageable. He is a comet exploding between her cupped palms.
The one suffering most from their severing is Elodie.
All evening, she keeps a hand fluttering at her throat, feeling spores of terror taking root deep in the nubs of her lung tissue, blossoming gangrenous and foul the longer she is away from him.
She feels like this every time she leaves him at preschool, every minute she’s working at the dance studio, every second she can’t look up and catch sight of his busy little self, pottering around with his toys, ignoring her in favor of his own world.
If he’s not within arm’s reach, she panics.
One hour. She promised Verity she’d stay this long.
The dance studio is celebrating twenty years, and Verity booked tables at the local yacht club for a party, inviting the staff and their families to celebrate.
The idea of bringing Jude made Elodie feel physically ill, so she came alone, wearing a little black dress she bought for the occasion.
She has retreated awkwardly to the corner of the balcony overlooking the ocean, her fingers sweaty around the flute of champagne, watching everyone else mill around with bright conversations and laughter.
She is reminded, as she looks at the other teachers in their silk dresses, their husbands in dark suits with expensive watches, their children docile and well behaved, that she only has a job out of charity.
She, the high school dropout, the one who never went on to study dance at a professional level, who watched her future slip away somewhere between teaching toddlers ballet and desperately coaching Jude to speak, to stop eating dirt, to take a nap, to stop screaming at her because something was hurting him and she didn’t understand what it was.
The worst part is that Verity is on the cusp of retiring—the Parkinson’s tremor in her hand is noticeable to all now—and as kind and generous as she is, there is no way Elodie will keep her job when Jeanine takes over.
Dealing with the petty interactions feels like being in high school again, Jeanine looking for any excuse to bring up Elodie’s lack of qualifications or express fake concern about how often she brings her child to work.
Right now, Jeanine is in a tight-fitting chartreuse dress that shows off her tiny waist, and she fawns and gushes over the guests as if she is already the host. When it came to greeting Elodie, she brushed past her and blithely greeted someone else.
The snub was so noticeable people stared. It was embarrassing.
The heat in her cheeks hasn’t quite cooled, and she swallows her entire glass of champagne.
At least it’s beautiful on the balcony, the ocean a moody blue under the twilight sky, the marina below full of bright white yachts and catamarans and twinkling lights.
It’s a reminder that there’s a whole world out there she will never see.
She has this: her garage, her dead-end suburb, her sagging mattress where she curls into a question mark in the dark and cries, her child who she is scared does not love her.
“I feel like you want another one of those.”
Elodie smooths her face into a reserved, polite smile, because she knows how to present herself to strangers.
He’s pretty; she notices this immediately.
His eyes are the striking blue of overpolished jewels, his hair spun of mussy gold, and he’s just disheveled enough to be endearing—the rumpled button-down, the woven leather circling his wrist, the jeans that should have been dress pants in a glamorous place like this.
He holds out another flute of champagne with a bashful smile, and their fingertips touch as she takes it.
“That’s a nice accent,” she says. “Are you lost?”
“I stole it.” He leans against the balcony rail, his smile affable, yet there is a hopeful, shivering energy to him.
Oh, but he wants to impress her.
The flattery of it calms some of her poisonous agitation.
“I just thought,” he says, “of all the accents in the world, which is the coolest?”
“And you settled on American?” Elodie says with curated flatness. “Inspired.”
“Mistakes were clearly made. Should’ve stolen a sexy accent.” He takes a sip of his champagne and tries to look away casually, but his Adam’s apple bobs and he fumbles his glass.
He’s so nervous. She is delighted.
She knows how she looks in this little black dress, her height rendering it incredibly short, her legs long and toned from dance, her curls a dark waterfall down her back, glossy and thick and consuming.
People have always whispered that there’s an addictive beauty to her, a hint of something otherworldly, and she’s pleased it’s still there.
“You teach at the studio?” he says.
“And you don’t,” Elodie says.
He rubs at the back of his neck, sheepish. “I’m, um, here with family. Just in Australia for a visit. I’m out of place, aren’t I?”
“You and me both.” Elodie wishes she hadn’t offered him that sliver of herself, because he looks curious.
She drifts across the balcony, knowing she is falling into the same patterns she used on the boys at school—be beautiful, unreachable, unattainable, because then they will beg—but she’s unable to stop herself.
He follows. “I don’t think I got your name.”
“I didn’t give it,” she says.
“Well, I’m Brendan January.”
“Nice to meet you, Brendan.”
“Still no name.” He’s fighting a smile because they’ve reached the end of the balcony and there’s nowhere else for her to go unless she returns to mingle inside.
She raises an eyebrow, her glass held up to hide the real smile dancing on her lips.
He tries to look indifferent. “I’m a huge fan of all the ballet stuff, by the way.”
“Really?” she says. “Name three ballerinas.”
His mortification is instant and so adorable that she laughs.
“Erm, well, you…” he starts.
“Except, you don’t know my name.”
“Shit.” But now he’s laughing too. “I came out here to be slaughtered. Literally stood no chance. Do I slink away before I keep embarrassing myself?”
She twirls her glass, flicking an idle glance at him. “The blush is cute.”
“It is one of my only skills.”
She tilts her head sideways, watching him, mapping the curve of his shoulders, the line of his jaw, how he’s skittish and sweet. Something about that appeals.
“Tell me about yourself, Mr. January,” she says. “What is it you love to do?”
“Okay, don’t let me ramble.” He’s still blushing. “But I’m renovating this house…”
Listening to him fills a hollow inside her, and it scares her how easy the minutes slip away, how comfortable it is to talk to him.
She wants to put his honeyed drawl straight into her mouth.
An odd tightness flits her belly, and she isn’t sure why until she realizes she’s having butterflies over a boy.
An American boy. This is absurd and unsustainable and entirely ill-advised.
But his jokes are self-deprecating, his flirting respectful, and when he talks about this old house he’s renovating, his entire face lights up with boyish happiness.
He’s in love, she realizes, with this house. The way he talks about it reminds her of when Jude dashes up to her with a crayon scribble drawing and bounces until she looks.
But for once, her thoughts aren’t consumed with only Jude.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” Brendan is saying. “Is that weird? I kind of want to look at all those boats.”
“Lead the way.”
They wander the marina boardwalk together, making quips about the luxurious boats and pretending they don’t notice when their hands brush. Water laps slow and calm at the stony shore, and everything smells of salt and brine, the chatter and music from the club a muted backdrop behind them.
“An accountant, hmm?” she says.
“Your opinion of me just took a dive,” he says. “I can feel it. What do you do when you’re not dancing?”
“I’m always dancing, nothing else. Nonstop pirouettes for me.”
“So I’m lucky to catch you in a rare moment you’re still?”
“You are,” she says quietly, “lucky.”
By the time they return to the club, they have lost over an hour together, and even now they’re still stealing glances at each other and pretending they didn’t.
She feels warmed despite the June chill, and all she can think is how impossible it is that he made her laugh and how she will never see him again.
An aching sort of want twists around her wrists, her throat, and it takes a careful minute to pack it back down.
Sentimental speeches about the studio’s anniversary have already been made, the cake cut, and people are starting to leave. Brendan leans in to whisper something in Elodie’s ear, but Jeanine chooses that moment to appear.
“Wherever did you go, Elodie?” She has an irritatingly high voice and a smile that drips condescension. “We missed you. Next time you must bring your man. He shouldn’t skip all the fun.”
The knife slides in perfect and true; clever, really, because there is no way to turn to Brendan and explain there is no man. There is just a child.
Somehow that’s worse.
Jeanine is still chattering way, her smile insufferably smug, because she knows what she did.
It takes less than a minute for Brendan to excuse himself, the glow of his earnest smile dimmed.
As he drifts away, she tries to catch his eye, but he won’t meet her gaze, ashamed, perhaps, to have looked with such lust at another man’s girl.
Jeanine’s voice lowers, the saccharine curdling. “Don’t embarrass us. Be a slut when you’re not representing the studio.”
“Oh, but, Jeanine,” Elodie says coolly, “I can multitask.”
She breezes past Jeanine, but the blood pounding in her head is a drowning force.
She is awash, she is untethered, she is going to do something she regrets.
Heat blazes up her throat with such wild, wretched abandon she feels as if she could tear up the floor with crimson flames as she goes after him.
Outside the club, he’s already on the footpath and waiting for a car, and when he sees her coming, his mouth droops. She wants to dig her fingernails into his jaw and force him to stare into her eyes. Look at her. Truly look.
“Bren,” she says.
He blinks in surprise. “No one calls me that.”
“Well, I do.” Elodie has her phone in her hand.
“Hey, I’m sorry about before.” He scrubs at his hair. “I didn’t mean to overstep—”
“Do you want to see a picture of my man?”
He doesn’t, she can tell by the way he winces and mumbles something about being late, but she pushes her phone at him anyway. He glances at it on reflex.
There is a pause as his brow furrows and he looks from the phone back to her.
Then he begins to smile, slow and delighted. It is like daybreak and open seas and the spill of brown sugar across her tongue.
“Well, shit.” He’s grinning like a fool now. “I can’t compete with this. Look at this little guy. I don’t stand a chance.”
Amusement plays a wry game in her eyes; she keeps the smile tucked in the corner of her mouth. The idea of a single mother doesn’t revolt him.
“He’s five,” she says. “He’s the only person in my life.”
why are you still talking to him this is pointless he’s still American and will leave and you’re throwing yourself at some boy you just met with feelings that aren’t real—
“Would he let me take you for a drink sometime?” Bren says.
“Bren,” she says. “Don’t be a coward.”
Eagerness flashes in his eyes and the way he leans into her is shaped with untamed yearning. “Can I take you out right now?”
“You don’t even know my name.”
“Give it to me?”
Her lungs are full of hummingbird wings and she wants this; she wants something good. She lets the pause stretch, the tease making her eyes bright.
“Elodie.”