Breaking Away

He laughed, and it made her smile. It felt good to have someone to talk to. Usually she talked to Piper, but she had been so busy with her new family and moving into their new house. Reese felt horrible bothering her with her issues.

“The only problem is that the only girl that could step up is Claire. She is doing a group, a duet with Skylar, and a solo. I don’t know if she could handle another dance.”

“Yeah, I don’t know, ask her. I haven’t even seen the girl dance yet, except when I catch her dancing in her room, but then she screams at me and I run and hide.”

Reese snorted with laughter as he laughed. “I’ll call her, and why don’t I try to convince her to let you see her dance since you helped me? She had mentioned it a while back, but I haven’t heard anything since.”

“That would be great, thanks,” he said. She could tell that this meant a lot to him, and she wanted to make it happen.

“Okay, well, let me let you go. I’m gonna call Claire.”

“All right, I’m about to go take a nap.”

“Sweet dreams,” she said, wishing that she could nap with him, which was completely against everything she believed in. She hadn’t slept, like go to sleep, with a guy in years. So weird, that must have come from him being there for her.

“They will be if they’re about your sweet ass.”

She giggled as she shook her head. “Bye.”

“Bye,” he said.

She hung up, dialing Claire’s number. Claire answered on the fourth ring and after explaining what happened, Claire was all for doing it.

“Are you sure you have the time?” Reese asked. “Can you handle it all?”

“Yeah, no problem. The only thing is… don’t take this wrong, okay?”

“Ok,” Reese said wearily, not sure what was going to be said.

“But, the dance isn’t challenging enough for me. I’ve seen it, and I know that you did it that way for Mallory, but I am better than Mallory. I need better stuff.”

God, she was well past her years. This girl was going to blow people away one day.

“Claire, Chicago is in three weeks. I have a lot going on, and it would be hard for me to make up an award-winning dance and teach it in that amount of time. I could do it, but it wouldn’t be my best work.”

“I get that, but Brian and I actually have something.”

“What?” she asked, confused. When did they see each other but in rec? Even in that class, they didn’t even talk.

“I did a dance for us. We hang out sometimes and we were messing around. I came up with this dance. It’s amazing, really. I bet he’ll come in. I can call him. He’ll come get me, and we can come up there.”

“Y’all hang out? Huh, I’m so confused. I didn’t even know you two talked.”

“Yeah, we are kind of dating, I guess.”

What. The. Fuck. When did this happen? Did Phillip know? But, wait…

“I thought he was with Mallory?”

“No, they broke up. We started talking but Mallory freaked, and now we are keeping it on the down low.”

Reese was speechless. She always knew the ins and outs of the studio. How did this slip by her, and why did it bother her so much?

“Reese?”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m a little surprised by this all but yeah, call Brian and come on down.”

“Awesome! You won’t be disappointed!”

The line went dead, and Reese laid the phone on the floor. She had the urge to call Phillip and tell him, but she knew he would flip and that would end really badly. Instead, she sat back and closed her eyes, hoping that what Claire said was true.

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