Finding Center (16 page)

Zed

I stretch down into my steps and step away from her, pointing my right toes and rocking onto the bare new foot of my prosthetic leg. The music rolls through me, mending old fractured bones. When I lift my arms above my head, my fingers flicking toward the ceiling, my bones mend down my left leg. Muscle rebuilds with tendon and blood vessels. I am strong. I am invincible.

When I run out of steps that I know, I stop, my arms falling to my side. My heartbeat and lungs roar in my ear, drowning out the music. Aly stands in the middle of the room, her blue eyes wide and her hands limp at her sides. She steps forward once, her legs shaking. She takes another cautious step and all I see is her, the ribbons of her pointe shoes, the awe in her eyes.

She rises on pointe, her hands around the back of my neck, and touches her forehead to mine. When she breathes out, I breathe in. She whispers, “How do you feel?”

Like I want to kiss you senseless.
Keep us away from the barre.
I’m alive.
Awake.
On fire.
A
shooting star.
I
thought I’d have ballet
,
but never you and ballet back in the same room.
I take a deep breath, breathing her in, and whisper back, “I’ve missed this.”

She smiles. “I know.”

When she spins away from me, her fingertips across my cheek ignite me. I follow after her, matching her spins with mine. She’s above me, but hasn’t she always been above me? Haven’t I always been a half step behind her? Isn’t this exactly where I want to be?

I know I’m off balance and I know my lines aren’t what they should be. I know I could be better but I don’t care if I’m doing everything perfectly right now. When she spins back to me, her chin raised, her hand outstretched toward me like she just trusts me that instinctively, I step toward her, and catch her hand. I lift her off the ground in a small circle and set her back on her feet. Against my body, she rises and falls.

“It’s good to know that your chemistry never stops no matter what kind of stage you’re on,” Jonathan says behind us. His voice is strong and curious, and I know he wants to know exactly what we’re doing here, how far we think this is going to go.

We turn to face him together, Aly pressing against my hip and my arm around her shoulders. She knocks her knee against my artificial one. “It’d be a shock, you know. He’s not as technical as they’re expecting. It could ruin reviews.”

Okay, so it hurts a little to hear her speaking bluntly about my shortcomings. Even after all these years. Jonathan walks toward us, his arms crossed. Behind him, Yevgeny and Madison and others in the company stand at the window, watching silently.

“It’s not like you’re at your technical best,” Jonathan says and I flinch, looking to Aly for her reaction but she just nods and shrugs. She’s gotten better at hearing that than I thought she’d be.

“I can do it,” I hear myself saying. “But you’re the boss.”

“I am,” he agrees with a small smile. He looks at Aly. “I’ll think about it. But in the meantime, you should teach him the choreography. At the least, it’ll be good for him. And Zed, where have you been taking classes?”

“At the Georgetown Ballet Academy,” I say.

He smiles. “All to keep a secret from the one person who would never have judged you for it. You’re welcome back here anytime, you know, now that the secret’s out.”

Aly turns to me and pulls me down for an eager kiss. Then she opens her eyes and whispers, “That’s to tide you over. Ready to get some work done?”

She saunters back across the room to her starting place. I watch her hips sway side to side and I’m dizzy. “I forgot what a drill sergeant you could be.”

“You’re starting in fifth.”

My fifth position isn’t perfect. Aly tries to fix my feet, then gives up. She corrects my stomach, my shoulders and my arms. She looks up at me and says, “
Those
things aren’t affected by your leg so you have to be extra technical where you can be.”

“Push me,” I tell her.

She tosses me a wicked smile. “Don’t worry. I will.”

We dance for another hour, marking the whole performance, and then working on my technique for the rest of it. I can memorize choreography, but there are parts of dance I’ve forgotten. I pull ballet back into my bones and revel every time our hands catch each other’s on the right beats. It’s magic between us and it sinks into all the cracks of the past few months, healing us.

Ballet brought us together. Ballet tore us apart. Ballet brought us back together. And now ballet will keep us together. I’d like to say it was sheer willpower, or all the love we have for each other, and maybe it’s a little bit of that too. But I don’t know if either of us is ever whole without ballet in our lives. And if we can’t be whole for ourselves, then we aren’t there for each other.

“Zed, Alyona,” says a voice that jolts me from the corner. I pause, looking up. Yevgeny nods to us, but his eyes are on Aly. “We’re locking up. Do you have your keys?”

Aly blushes but doesn’t look at me. I grin, my eyes already flickering to the barre behind her. “Yes, I have my keys. Take it easy tomorrow, Yevgeny.”

“You too. Do not get injured,” he says. “And Zed. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I say, raising my hand in acknowledgement again. “I’ll let you know when I regret this.”

He laughs and then Sofia slips under his arm, darting across the floor, and grabs Aly in a tight hug. The two women grip on to each other, rocking back and forth for a long moment, and then Sofia drops her arms. She’s been Aly’s best female friend for two years now and she looks now like she’s in on some secret. Aly’s tapping the toes of her pointe shoes on the floor and swaying a little bit. Her legs are hurting her. Yevgeny’s right. We should stop.

After they leave, Aly says, “I need to ice my legs tonight.”

“Buckets of ice and a Netflix marathon,” I say, hobbling to the corner. “And I swear to God if you try to play YouTube clips of
Rubies
instead...”

When I turn around, she’s kissing me again, pressing me back against the barre. One of my hands falls to the edge of her skirt, her hip, her ass and the other holds on to the barre for balance. She’s crying, tears running down her cheeks and when she pulls away, she swipes at them quickly. I catch her by her wrist, her pulse pounding against my fingers, and pull her back to me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, apologizing for what I know is coming. “I didn’t think I’d be performing again. Aly, this is just a onetime thing. I don’t want to do this like you do it. I can’t, not anymore. But I want to keep dancing.”

I kiss the tear tracks on her cheeks. She curls her fingers against my chest and I know she can feel my heart slamming into her palm. She whispers, “When were you going to tell me?”

“When I figured out why I came back,” I murmur, kissing her again.

“Did you figure it out?”

I hadn’t, and I had, an answer with too much gray in it for Aly. So I just shook my head and she cried. There were all these things that shouldn’t have happened. We shouldn’t have run into each other in a café far from where we met. We shouldn’t have gotten back together after four years apart, after a car accident wrecked all our chances at happiness. We shouldn’t have fallen in love all those years ago to begin with. And we shouldn’t both be dancing again.

Shouldn’ts take so much energy. It’s much easier to accept what’s happened as miraculous and dance further and further into love.

Aly

A few days later, I get home from therapy to find Zed trying to teach Carmen how to play the piano. It’s that slow in the café. He’s using Disney cover songs, ones he knows by heart and has zero shame playing in public. I wait for jealousy to surge as I sit down quietly at a table behind them but my heart’s steady and sure. He’s mine. He’s always been mine, the way I’ve always been his.

“Nope, that’s an A. Right here,” he says, pointing at a note on the sheets in front of him. “There you go.”

Carmen plays the way I did before Zed taught me years ago during breaks at the Lyon Academy. Poorly. Zed’s talent can’t be taught.

Zed doesn’t turn around, but he says, like he always does, “Hi, Kitten.”

Carmen jumps on the bench and then turns around, staring at me. Her face is lit up with freckles, and when she grins, her cheeks round out the sides of her face. “Hey, Alyona! God, Zed, that’s freaky. How’d you know she was there?”

Zed’s voice turns impish. “She walks like an elephant now.”

I wait for the flinch to come, the pain at Zed’s teasing implication of my weight and my size, but it doesn’t come. I kick out at him, my toes colliding with his butt. He bounces forward on the piano seat and twists, grinning at me.

“Jerk,” I tell him, not even bothering to hide a smile. “I’ve always wondered about that song. Does that mean that there are girls not worth fighting for?”

He catches my foot at the next kick and swings his legs around the piano bench. His dark eyes sparkle with mischief and I’m relieved to see the anxiety and tension I heard when he first called me has ebbed away. “I wouldn’t know, would I? I’ve got the girl I want.”

I lean forward and kiss him far deeper than I intended.

“Gross,” Carmen teases us. “This is a public place. I’m going to have to ask you two to take your PDA elsewhere.”

“Happily.” Zed stands up, offering me a hand. I slip my hand into his and his thumb skims the back of my hand. I shiver and the grin he throws me is all too knowing and wicked. I’ve missed him. A day, and I’ve missed him.

Inside the apartment, I say, “I should shower.” It’s not quite an invitation.

“And then eat,” he adds, snaking an arm around my waist. He pulls me back to him briefly, his fingers on my chin when he kisses me softly. I melt against him, willing my muscles to unwind with him instead of in a hot bath. He pulls away and says into the corner of my mouth, “You look like you could eat, Aly.”

He doesn’t normally play food police, so I know if he’s saying it, I look like shit. I almost shrug, and decide against it at the last minute. “I could. Thank you.”

I turn my phone on Silent and try to push Madison and the company out of my head. My shower’s quick and clean, and I step out feeling significantly better. Putting on pajamas at 7:00 p.m. doesn’t hurt either. I wander back out into the kitchen and fold my arms around Zed as he’s adjusting the temperature of the oven. He’s warm and smells like summer even though the weather’s faded into fall. His entire body sags with relief and he turns around, pulling me against him. I slide my hands up his back firmly, letting my fingers skate around the muscles building up again. In the past few weeks, it’s been a little like finding a new person in bed with me every day. His body’s changing as swiftly as mine is.

He spins around and pulls me against him hard. This time when he kisses me, it’s not sweet at all. It’s hunger and fire and a little bit pain and a lot of sadness. I’m breathless with the weight of it, sinking against his hand on my elbows. I rise up and kiss him again, this time nipping at his bottom lip.

He touches my forehead with his mouth, his breath coming short too. “That was some kiss, Kitten.”

I drape my arms over his shoulders. “I wanted to see if you tasted as good as you look.”

I can feel his smile down to my toes. “Flirt.”

“For you.”

The look he gives me is bright and fierce, and God, I should tease him more often.

Aly

Some days, I swear you can feel emotions in the air of the ballet studio. Some days feel like joy, some like revelation and some, like today, feel like pure exhaustion. There’s nothing left in us today. Zed’s only making two rehearsals a week with his other obligations, and while I’m glad the rest of the company’s adjusted their schedules to accommodate him, I’m terrified it’s not enough time for us to learn and dance this like we’re supposed to. Like we can.

“Take ten,” Jonathan says, shaking his head a little bit. He steps out of the studio and leaves us dancers in there, breathing hard. Zed leaves the center first, walking to the corner where he grabs his water bottle and takes a long drag off it. The dancers on the side watch him and whisper. He’s doing the best he can, but he’s at a disadvantage without daily classes, daily rehearsals and a left leg.

Mostly, at this point, I think it’s the dance as a daily part of his routine that’s holding him back. I never thought he’d be able to dance like he does with the prosthetic. And to be honest, I didn’t even notice his new ankle until he showed me how he’d had the leg altered so he could dance as well as he can.

I felt like an idiot for not noticing, though Zed was kind about it. Of course he was. Kindness is his default mode.

I follow him to the corner and lean against the barre, trying to read his face. He turns away from me. I nudge his leg with my toe. He catches my foot, his fingers running along my anklebones, up to the ribbons. My breath hitches in my chest, despite the room full of people, and his lips crack open into a smile around the mouth of his water bottle.

“Easy,” he murmurs under his breath as he puts his water bottle back down. He sighs and turns back to me, his face smoothed free of any telltale signs of frustration. He says, “Jonathan’s getting annoyed.”

I shrug. “He’s always annoyed about something.”

That’s not true, but it’s lying for a good cause. Zed nods a little bit and looks down at his feet. “My timing’s crap. If I prepare too much, it’s obvious. If I don’t prepare for the next movement, I’m too behind you. You’re quick and I’m just slow enough that it’s messing us up. I don’t know how to fix that.”

I reach up to touch my palm against his rough cheek. “I know.”

Zed’s jaw tightens under my hand and he closes both of his hands around the barre, bowing his body away from it. He rolls his right ankle around and flexes his foot hard, then arches it the wrong way. “At least my left foot can’t hurt. Half the pain, I guess. Lucky.”

“Thank you,” I say softly. “For stepping in. You didn’t have to. I don’t think I’ve said thank you.”

He glances up at me, his eyes a little wide with surprise. “You’re welcome.” He straightens all the way and presses a closed-mouth kiss to my cheek, his hand sliding over my stomach, soft and round as it’s becoming. “Frustrations aside, I like this. I do.”

“I know,” I say, and then suddenly I
do
know. I straighten off the barre, right into his arms, and grip his biceps. “No, wait. Zed. I can fix it. Hold on.”

I slide past him for the door and he says, confused, “What?”

Jonathan’s out in the hall, talking to Lila and I surprise him just as he says, “—it’s everything
but
the musicality. I can’t figure out how to fix it because he’s almost technically correct for everything but that leg and she’s Alyona and they should work, and it’s not quite there. I don’t get it.”

I touch his arm as I dart past him to the dressing room. “I know how to fix it. I’ll be there in a second.”

In the dressing room, I dig through the pointe shoes in my cubby. Every dancer has a particular brand and type of shoe that works for them. And then we pull them apart, shred the soles, beat them against walls and floors to soften them, stitch the ribbons into certain points to provide the best support. Sometimes we use stiffer shoes for certain ballets, like
In the Middle
,
Somewhat Elevated
that Zed and I danced all those years ago on a European tour. Sometimes we use softer shoes, like for the role of Clara or Marie in
The Nutcracker
.

In
Rubies
, I’ve been using stiffer, new pointe shoes, changing shoes every rehearsal. The stiff shoes gave me the long lines I wanted from the visual, and
Rubies
requires a lot of strange footwork, including being on my heels a lot. The stiff shoes help make me a sharper dancer. A quicker dancer.

So, what if I sacrifice a little visual beauty in my lines to come back into timing with Zed?

I trade my new pointe shoes for the ones I’ve worn for company class the past week. They’re not as soft as some of my older pairs, but they’re more pliant than the shoes I’ve been wearing for rehearsals. I tie the ribbons quickly and rise, standing on my toes to test them. Then I dash back to the studio, sliding in right behind Jonathan. Zed’s standing by himself at the barre and he frowns in confusion.

“I switched shoes,” I say breathlessly to him as Jonathan calls the main
Rubies
cast back to the center. I don’t have time to explain before our pas de deux starts. And this time, the soft shoes...they change everything.

“
Where’s the seduction?
Where’s the playfulness?
” Zed asked the first time I danced this in front of him, months ago.

This time, in softer shoes, the seduction feels less like desperation, less like trying to make something work than letting it work. This time, playfulness is easy to obtain. His hand on my hip when I start with grand battements, and I reach up, my fingers trailing down his jaw. It’s not in the choreography, not the basic steps, so I feel Zed’s surprise, the way his fingers tighten on my hips. But he keeps going as the piano music demands.

My pirouettes are simple, small and nearly against him. He steps away from me and then we move together, our hands interlaced. His steps around me are big, exaggerated. I soften my arms and my body, letting more curves than angles appear. He becomes a frame for the softness I’m offering him. When our eyes meet, the smiles that lift our mouths aren’t stage smiles. They’re real.

At the end, when we move off to the side and the rest of the cast moves back to the middle, Zed pulls me against him, his arms around me tight. He rocks me back and forth, his mouth against my temple.

“You,” he whispers. “Are brilliant and beautiful.”

I hold on to his shirt, breathless and unable to reply. Miraculously, Jonathan makes almost no corrections until our last little pas de deux section at the end. He calls us to the middle and says to me, “Good decision, Alyona. But you’re still wrapped up in the first version of
Rubies
. We’ve made a lot of changes. Don’t be afraid to think of it differently. Reinvent the wheel. Zed. That was brilliant. Keep on.”

We all clap, even Madison, and retire to the sides of the room to regroup. We have to stay through rehearsal for
Diamonds
for the company meeting at the end. Theoretically, I could stay and Zed could go home. He’s got papers to grade and he didn’t get much done over the weekend. But he leans against my legs, folding his upper body and head onto my lap. I run a finger down over his cheek and then over his mouth.

“Hi,” I whisper. “You okay?”

He turns his face and kisses my stomach through my leotard. “What comes after okay?”

“Satisfied? Good? Decent? Not too shabby?” I suggest.

He smiles up at me, exhaustion wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “Not too shabby, Kitten.”

I hook my heels around his waist. “Stay and do your grading in the corner. I promise not to be too distracting.”

“Liar,” he murmurs.

“You can face the wall if that works for you,” I tease him.

He straightens and kisses me quickly. “You made wonderful and terrible into synonyms.”

“You make teacher sound sexy.”

He pulls away, grinning. “Okay, trouble. I’m going to go home and get a head start on grading. I see where this is going. You’re okay walking to the Metro on your own?”

I promise and then watch him head to the dressing rooms to change, his robotic leg silver and black against his black tights, his shoulders strong and supple through his T-shirt, his walk more confident than I’ve seen it in years. As he leaves, the anxiety and worry and problems claw their way to the surface of my mind. I swallow, grappling for my confidence and steadiness again.

The rest of rehearsal better not take too long. I want him, and I need him.