He was easily six inches taller than me, built like a runner, something he attributed to a combination of genetics and never sitting still. Dance was a world of constant motion, and Anders made the rest of us look lazy. He was a human cartoon in impeccably polished tap shoes . . . at least, he always had been before. Now, he was standing frozen, a sad look on his classically handsome face. Very classically handsome: he could have stepped straight out of a Gene Kelly movie, even down to the cut of his suit. Anders was the only human man I knew who thought of suspenders as a valid fashion choice. Somehow, for him, they were.
“Anders,” I said, starting to reach for him. That was when he finally moved.
He stepped away.
“I emailed you,” he said. “After your phone number was disconnected. I emailed eight times, and you never responded.”
“When did you start?” I asked.
He gaped at me. “When did I start? Because that totally makes up for you never answering me, or reaching out in the first place? We were partners, Val. You should’ve called.”
“I was in Manhattan for a year, and I didn’t get any email from you,” I said. “I would’ve answered.” I would have. I might not have been proactive about keeping in touch with the other dancers from my season—partially out of shame over my loss, and partially because there hadn’t been enough hours in the day—but I answered the people who bothered to contact me. Guilt and curiosity had been enough to guarantee that.
“I started the day after the show ended,” he said.
I blinked slowly. “Sweetie . . . I didn’t get any email from you. Not one single piece. What address were you using? Did you ever swing by Facebook and message me?”
“No, because you were already ignoring my email.” Now Anders was starting to look angry. Never good. He took a long time to wind down, and we were going to be called in to meet with the producers soon.
Lyra, ever the peacemaker, pulled out her phone and shoved it in front of his face. “Is this the email address you were using?” she asked.
Anders blinked several times as he refocused on the screen. His anger was like a rolling stone: it gathered speed as it moved, and it was difficult as hell to pull it back. Then he blinked again. “No,” he said, pulling out his own phone and scrolling through his address book before pushing it toward me. “This is.”
We made a weird sort of triangle, standing there holding phones out toward one another, and it made me want to get my own phone out, just to complete the formation. I resisted the urge in favor of frowning at Anders’ screen. “That’s not my email address,” I said. “That isn’t anything even like my email address. Who gave you that address?”
“Jessica,” said Anders. “You ducked out so fast after the finale that I didn’t have a chance to get it from you, and I wanted to keep in touch.”
Lyra and I both stared at him. Lyra lowered her phone to give herself a clearer view of Anders’ face. We were a united front again, just like we’d been during our last weeks on the show, and I wasn’t going to lie: it felt incredibly good. Lyra had never met Verity Price, would probably be appalled by Verity’s world, but she had been Valerie’s best friend. Even compartmentalized and held apart as my two worlds were, that mattered to me.
“You asked Jessica for contact information for Valerie, and you believed one, that she’d have it, and two, she’d give it to you accurately, without being an asshole about it?” Lyra planted her hands on her hips. “Did you fall and hit your head after you were eliminated, or did you just think the spirit of brotherhood would suddenly move her to not be a horrible human being?”
“She’s not that bad,” I said, with no real heat.
“Uh, excuse much? She called you a fake redhead on camera when they did alumni week. She tried to sue the show when they let Emily come back after she was eliminated, because they hadn’t let her come back. She’s awful. She’s always been awful, she’ll always be awful, and the fact that Anders listened to her for like, a second, makes him awful.” Lyra directed a glare at Anders, who squirmed. “How dare you get mad at Valerie because of something Jessica did? That’s like, awful squared.”
“Valerie still changed her number without telling anyone,” said Anders—a defensive rearguard action if I had ever heard one.
“My old phone got disconnected because someone blasted the number over Twitter,” I said.
Anders and Lyra exchanged a look before saying, in unison, “Jessica.” Then they were laughing, and I was laughing, and all was right with the world.
A chime rang through the lobby, shaking dancers out of their conversations and warmup stretches. I wrinkled my nose and turned to Dominic, who’d been looking increasingly confused during our conversation. He’d just been dropped into a world he didn’t understand, complete with preexisting social connections and rivalries. He was doing the sensible thing and staying quiet. I loved him even more for that. Common sense is less common than you’d think.
“You can come in for this part; we’re encouraged to bring friends and family to the producer meeting, since it makes the audience look fuller,” I said. The instructions had been clearly spelled out on the last prep email from the producers. “You’ll have to leave after the showboating, but at least this way you can get a look at the judges and our host.”