Pointe of Breaking (15 page)

“I’m better with them,” I replied. We were better together than alone and even though I performed better in my shoes, I knew that Ivan was a natural barefoot danseur. “However, Ivan is amazing—”

“—I perform however necessary with my partner,” Ivan replied, returning to the auditorium. I wondered what happened to Leo but it was Ivan’s expression of absolute resolution silenced those thoughts. Despite him over-stepping his boundaries a moment ago, this moment was what we’d trained for. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I was so lucky to have someone like him in my life that could forgive me so many times without hesitation.

“And your personal life?” Mr. Scott pressed.

“Is irrelevant,” Ivan replied for me. “We dance how we must to capture the audience’s hearts.”

“So what was that demonstration between you two and that over-bearing boyfriend type?”

The words hurt as I spoke them. “You should understand our commitment to ballet.”

Mr. Scott nodded approvingly. “Our company will not tolerate negative publicity in the tabloids, Miss Parker.”

I wanted to tell him how badly I hated seeing myself in print like that too. It was a juvenile defense. I couldn’t promise it would never happen. I couldn’t promise him anything other than that this was my life’s commitment.

“All I can promise is our devotion to each other and the arts,” I said, reaching for Ivan’s hand.

“So it would seem,” he said and turned around. He hadn’t exactly given us a no, but he hadn’t give us a yes either. As he pushed the exit door, he didn’t so much glance back at us as much as called over his shoulder. “Monday. Nine a.m. at Focal Pointe Studio. Be there.”

Ten fucking days! I’ve known this girl ten fucking days and I’m in fucking misery. Pure, unadulterated misery.

“Leave her be,”
Ivan shouted as he shoved me out Joffrey’s front doors. “That was the audition of our lifetime and you probably just ruined it for us. She’s going to lose everything! Her dreams, her career, her fucking apartment!”

I let him man handle me down the concrete steps. I had no fight left. It was gone the minute she chose him over me. All the fighting I had done for her only moments ago. All of it. For nothing.

Ivan rubbed his forehead in frustration and dropped his arms down to his sides, looking down at me sadly. “You’re going to leave her even worse than Blake.”

He shot me one last vengeful stare and turned to stride back into the building leaving me bereft on the front steps of the performing arts building. I sat down and cradled my head in my hands.

She’s going to lose her fucking apartment.

You are fucking up Addy’s career.

Her apartment? Her career? I knew nothing about this girl. Thinking back to the cocoon of sex, lust, excitement, and—hell…maybe not quite love but sure as shit getting there fast, I wondered what I’d been thinking. Was I that off? Was I that out of touch? Whatever it was that I had in my grip this morning that I thought was so special and so profound…was all ruined. Now I was in the middle of a fucked up cluster of heartache and self-pity. I felt like I’d aged twenty years.

If that prick, Ivan, would have stopped the shit he was pulling after their dance finished, I could have contained myself. Watching them dance and play out every fucking emotion I’d been feeling since Adeline Parker came blazing into my life was painful as hell.

It nearly killed me.

But that kiss that he gave her. That intimate kiss was him staking claim on something that was very much
not
his. Adeline wasn’t even mine yet! She was her own person, and I wasn’t about to sit there and let that guy piss all over her just like Blake had.

You’re going to leave her even worse than Blake.

“Leo! Leo!” my mother cried, coming out of the Joffrey doors and breaking through my internal warring.

I stood up and stormed down the steps onto a busy New York City sidewalk covered with people. I’d been avoiding her for over a week, and now I knew why.

“This is your mother speaking. You will stop when I address you!”

I stopped dead in my tracks on the sidewalk and people swerved around to avoid running into me. My shoulders rose and fell rapidly as my heart rate thundered beneath my chest.

“I see why you haven’t been returning my calls!” my mother said, coming to stand in front of me. Her brown hair and eyes matched my own, but her face was tight, a result of thousands of dollars worth of enhanced help. “It’s obvious your little tabloid display wasn’t just a drunken mistake.”

I eyed my mother harshly, attempting to ignore the flash of pain I felt at the jab to Adeline and I being just a mistake. I could already feel my heart breaking. “Mother, now is not the time.”

“Leonardo Richards. Our family expects a lot more from you than that horrid display you put on in there. If the press would have been there… You’re no worse than she was on Friday night prancing on stage in fishnets!”

“You don’t even know her!” I snapped defensively.

“I don’t need to! I know ballet. I respect ballet. The art of it was desecrated by the display she put on Friday night and Joffrey will not stand for it. Richards & Brown will not tolerate it, which is why we are revoking her scholarship.”

“What?” I asked in utter shock. My mind reeled with that unexpected information.

“Yes, Leo. Perhaps if you’d return my calls I could have told you that Adeline Parker is our scholarship recipient that transferred up here from south side Chicago. She was a student there and was offered a spot at the prestigious, well sought after and
highly competitive
Joffrey program. She had the opportunity of a lifetime with our scholarship and she blew the whole thing with that little stunt she pulled last week.”

“Mom, you can’t. You can’t take that from her.”

“It’s already done, Leo,” she snapped, her brown eyes darkening. “The ballet world is unforgiving. She was lucky to be in it as long as she was. It was just a matter of time before her pedigree showed through.”

“Enough!” I hollered and the hordes of people moving around us backed away nervously. “God damn it! I can’t take any more of this shit!” I raked my hands through my hair in utter agony.

“Leonardo. You will not speak to me this way. I am still your mother.
You
need to remember where you come from.”

“I can’t forget.” I groaned, feeling suddenly weak, like my legs could give out any second. “I am constantly reminded and all of it…all of it…makes me sick to my stomach.”

A moment of hesitation flitted over my mother’s face and for a second, I thought she might have finally cracked.

Just as quickly as her emotional shield went down, it flew right back up. “Go back to your brothers, Leonardo. It’s where you belong.” She touched her pearls and twirled on her shoes.

“I don’t know where I belong,” I whispered as I watched my mother stride quickly away from me.

My dance partner and I had been featured in the
New York Times
, the bonus being a headline that my parents would be proud of. A full page photo in the publication—it was proof that I was as strong and as talented as people claimed me to be. My persistent determination to be the best had
finally
paid off when one of the most prestigious ballet companies on the east coast offered me a gig…

So why was I trapped in a never-ending nightmare?

Every dream I’d ever prayed for came true, but at an outlandish price. A tabloid corrupted the headlines I only wished of. My heart had to break for me to find love. And my career that was being dangled overhead cost me too dearly to accept.

After the audition with Focal Pointe, I slammed my apartment door shut with my back and dug out my phone. My fingers flew over the numbers. I released a breath of air that I’d been holding when Leo answered. The show he’d put on was unacceptable; it could have cost me everything!

But it didn’t.

Now, when I closed my eyes, all I could see was his tormented face. The ache in my chest suffocated me the longer I dwelled on whatever it was that was bothering him. I wanted to wipe away all that pain. I could be that person for him. I knew it. He just needed to trust me enough to open up. He was holding onto something big, something that plagued him.

“Adeline.” My name fled from his lips like it was a goodbye.

“Don’t,” I begged. The one word came out as a gasp.

“We can’t be together.”

“In what world?” I couldn’t believe that he’d throw this all away. It couldn’t just have been Ivan’s lingering hands and that kiss after our dance. It
had
to be more! “Please, just listen to me! It’s not like this with anyone else. It’s just you!”

The line was silent for so long, I glanced at my phone to ensure the call hadn’t disconnected.

“
It’s over…”

My world drowned in a flood of tears. A high-pitched ring blocked out Leo’s confession of it being over. Exhaustion consumed my body. I didn’t know how long he’d talked for. The length of time he spoke didn’t matter. He refused to listen. He was adamant that I meant nothing to him.

Desperate to convince him otherwise, I scrambled inside my heart to find the braveness that I lost after the Blake disaster. Before I had a chance to reach my bravado and utter those important words that I had already been feeling from the moment I danced for him…

The call ended.

“I love you,” I whispered too late.

The phone slipped from my hand. In a matter of days, I understood what it meant to love and to break. All day, I’d been pushed to my breaking point. I thought when I finally broke; it would be on the dance floor, not curled on the floor of my apartment. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the fall would hurt so badly.

I dug my nails in further, wishing that the physical pain would overshadow the hurt in my heart. I pounded my fists against the door, wishing the slivers would cut deeper. Yet, my hands didn’t bleed prolifically enough to overcast the splinters in my heart. My body betrayed me, giving out before the door. I slipped to the floor and thought about everything and nothing at the same time.

Yesterday, I understood what it felt to cherish.

Today, I was consumed with misery.

Surrounded by all my worldly possessions, I never felt as poor as I did in that moment. It had nothing to do with things, but rather the matters of the heart. My fingers were numb. My legs were limp. Exhaustion threatened to overtake me.

I didn’t remember pushing myself up from the floor or walking into my bathroom. I didn’t recognize my reflection—even before I beat my fists into the glass. I didn’t remember turning on my bathtub. I didn’t remember getting in.

I didn’t know how much time passed before Ivan came racing in. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears. He turned off the faucet. Water was slipping over the sides, pooling on the floor. He threw a handful of towels on the floor and then pulled me from the tub. My soaked clothes hung to my frame. Nothing registered. Everything I’d fought for no longer mattered.

“Fuck, the water is freezing!” Ivan grabbed me under my legs and shouted at me. I just stared forward. He slapped me.

“Did you take something?” he yelled.

I shook my head. How could I be so gutted after a handful of days? Why was everything so raw? I leaned against his chest as he rocked me in his arms. When feeling returned, I shook.

My voice was raw like I’d been screaming. “Why is it so hard to love me?”

Ivan tightened his grip on me. “You aren’t the problem, Addy girl… I love you.”

“He doesn’t.”

***

That night, I fell asleep in Ivan’s arms, curled on his bed because I couldn’t bear to lay on my futon—it smelled too much of Leo. The next morning I woke in Ivan’s apartment. He was already awake, making coffee. The brew reminded me of when Leo took me to the Manhattan Diner; of him blowing on his cup. I couldn’t have been happier in that moment.

That
Adeline was naive. She should have put a little more distance between her and Leo.
This
Adeline knew better. Love was sinister and would stab you in the heart when you least expected it.

I joined Ivan at his table and stared at the coffee cup he’d placed in front of me. “Ivan, you need to talk to Higgins and let her know you’re stayin—”

“No,” he said without waver. “You’re the best thing for me and I for you, Addy girl. I’m sorry that things…that I got out of hand after our
Nickleback
performance, but I do love you and we are a team.”

Unable to hold his intense gaze, I stared at my hands and wished someone would have told me that misery was love’s evil twin. It wasn’t hate. Love and hate were mirror images of each other. Misery was much more destructive.

“I can’t afford the life I want to live, Ivan.”

“Yes, you can.” He sat down beside me. “Stay here with me. Sublet your apartment.”

Math was impossible to do right now. My head wasn’t on straight. Paying half the rent, I’d barely be able to get groceries. I was certain the super would find out about the water damage from the tenant below me. With as much that had spilled over, it had to be dripping from their ceiling.

“That’s not a permanent solution.” I wished I could take Ivan up on his offer. I needed the help, and while I wasn’t opposed to it, the idea of living with my dance partner day in and day out…seeing him before, during, and after practices, it would destroy our relationship. There had to be another way. “I’ll think of something.”

“Thank God, because I make a terrible roommate,” Ivan joked, tucking my hair behind my ear. “You’re going to amount to great things.”

Distantly, I heard pounding on a door in the hallway. It wasn’t Ivan’s. It was mine. Leo! I wished that I hadn’t raced to the door…because I didn’t see the man I’d fallen for…

…well, not the latest one.

I said, “Good morning, Blake.”