The quiet on the streets was only a slumber, meant the crowds were skeletal, not bustling as usual. Not yet anyway. For a moment, I had the quiet and the lights beaming off of Saint Patrick’s just down the block. I had the pre-dawn light, my solitude and the rhythm waffling through the speakers. My studio, my place, where no man had dominion. Where no worry entered my thoughts. Not as long as I danced. Not as long as my fouetté ended in an arabesque and I kept my spine straight, my arms moving and became part of the ballet, the act, the escape that it offered.
I had thought to work through Giselle because there was symmetry in the old ballet about a girl caught between two lovers. But that didn’t feel right, no matter how beautiful I found Coralli and Perot’s choreography. I settled, instead on Midsummer’s Night Dream because it would take me furthest away. Because there was something ethereal, magical about Mendelssohn’s music. There was no sound but for the sound of strings spilling out their beautiful melodies. There was no feeling but for the erratic beat of my heart brought on by my exertion. There was no emotion but for the sway of the dance and the hypnotic song that took me from the real world that was my studio. Then there, right then, I stumbled. Turned when I shouldn’t have, let that inkling of regret swim a little too far into my thoughts. Again I tried, coming back into the middle, to a fondue and jeté passé, letting the music soak into my skin so I did not have to remember what I’d done and how it had made me feel.
Wanted.
Needed.
Beloved.
Another turn, then brisé, brisé, brisé and the flash of Ethan’s bare skin broke through my subconscious. Sweat sliding down his lithe, defined chest, the slow, methodical way he kissed my stomach, the easy glide of his fingers on my hips.
“You feel like heaven, Aly. My own personal heaven on earth.”
Ethan took me away from my modest life, but I kept a firm grip on the reins. He never demanded, hardly requested. A touch on my stomach, and his gaze on me, seeking permission, gaining it because it felt good. He never pressed or pushed, but I knew how badly he wanted me. It was in every press of lips against mine, in each grip of his fingers into my flesh.
He took away my worry and all the cluster of things that had me thinking too much. For a few seconds I floated above myself on some sweet orgasmic cloud he wove for me. Something I had not allowed another man to do for years and years. And, God help me, I liked it. I liked the warmth of his mouth, the surety in every touch his mouth made against and inside my body. I’d liked the sensations he worked in me. I’d liked it all for a full two minutes, just long enough for me to settle, land on my feet with Ethan’s face breaking through the fog his mouth and fingers had made of my mind.
“You are perfect.”
It was a compliment I couldn’t take, didn’t believe and it was enough of a ruthless kindness that it brought me down from the high I’d been soaring on. It didn’t feel right, somehow, afterward, with Ethan still inside me, pulsing, panting against my skin and the bliss from our orgasms ebbing away. Somehow, dammit, it felt false. I felt suffocated, breathless by the realization that I’d given more than I’d meant to. That I’d liked it, him, more than I thought I could.
I ran from it. Him, which made no sense at all. I loved Ransom. No one would take that from me, but he couldn’t be who I needed. Ethan could. Though I didn’t love him in the same way, he still held a promise of being someone I didn’t have to run from.
No. I was not perfect. I was broken, my secret failure hidden away, terrified of discovery. And I was something else altogether, the antithesis of perfect because I let that sweet, sweet man think that I could love him. Modi, I wish I could.
There was nothing for it. I could only stand alone in the center of my studio with sweat beading down my back, with the low, soothing refrain of Mendelsohn’s melodies tempting me, offering me more reprieve, more freedom from my worry, but it would not last. I knew that. My hands, fingers shook as I watched them—the deep lines that creased into my palm, the wide thumbnails, the small scar that lanced up the center of my left palm. Ransom had held the injury closed until we made it to the hospital. A stupid broken wine glass fractured in my hand when he proposed the first time. He hadn’t pressed me for an answer. Not then. Not again until the next year and then he made sure there were no wine glasses in arm’s reach. Why hadn’t I just said yes then?
No. Not that memory, I thought, refocusing on the music, on the reason I was hiding in the first place.
The song would end and so would the dance and I’d be left to face the truth. I’d be forced to admit I was really a coward. My mind filed through excuses; rational reasons that I’d run from Ethan with no explanation. None sounded reasonable. None made any sense at all and just when I began to devise a plan, something to keep me from looking like a complete orto, something prickled my awareness, telling me I was not alone. I jerked my gaze up and met Ethan’s in the mirror in front of me.