And now, that asshole Cass was making a play less than a day after my parents’ first real fight in thirteen years. If I hadn’t witnessed it, I’d have never believed seeing this shit. That bastard walked right in front of me, touched my mother like it was his right. Like he gave zero shits that she was married.
“Why don’t you just let me handle things for you, darling? I can call the musicians in, get them to record some more tracks. Hell, I even know a gal that can get the PR rolling…” He stopped talking when she leaned forward, smiling wide when Mom released a small groan of pleasure, looking way too proud of the affect those hands had on her. “Like that, gorgeous?”
Mom leaned forward further, resting her elbows on her knees as Cass moved his hands over her shoulders, down to her back. That’s when I stood and that jackass finally noticed my stare, how I held my hands in fists, leveling one harsh look at him with a clear intent: Back the fuck off.
“Cass,” I said, cocking my eyebrow when he kept rubbing her shoulders. It was only then that my mother seemed to remember where she was and what she’d allowed. She brushed his hands away and straightened in her chair.
“Ransom.” He nodded, a small challenge that dumbass thought I wouldn’t take.
“Now isn’t the time for you to be here.”
“I think your mama…”
“My mother doesn’t need your company.” I came to her side, ignoring the expression on her face when I rested my hand on the back of her chair. “Pretty sure she told you she wouldn’t need you today.”
“Keira…” Cass said, not looking away from me, but if that wannabe cowboy thought my mother would give in just because he gave a good massage, he’d be dead wrong.
“Cass, I’m busy at the moment and there’s nothing here for you to do.” She rolled forward in her chair, fiddling with the sound board, not bothering with even a glance at his face as she dismissed him.
“Alright then.” He moved that grungy hat again, lowering the brim over his eyebrows, gaze hard and settled straight at me as he spoke to my mother. “But you need anything, darling, anything whatsoever, you give me a call, hear?”
If she heard him, she didn’t say. Mom didn’t do anything more than power up her computer and load a track. A slip of her headphones over her ears and she was distracted by the music as it played. Cass glanced at her, sullen, before he left the room and I followed behind him, watching him walk slowly down the hallway before he disappeared toward the front door. I didn’t move from my spot until I heard the slam of the door and then walked across the house, moving aside the front window curtains until that asshole cranked up his rusted white Ford and left down the road.
Make me immortal
With stardust skies
Showers of a thousand lives
Shining in the bright green depth.
Make me immortal
With one timeless touch
Birthed in your heart
Beating in time with mine.
Make me immortal
With whispers of heaven
Wrapped in your breath
Warming my immortality
Fifteen
Along the backside of our rental space is the quietest studio. It’s the smallest of the three studios we’ve set up for different classes and there is a constant whine from the exposed duct work anytime the AC or heater kicks on. There is seclusion in that place with only a small hallway faintly lit separating the door and the small open area with hardwood floors and a mirrored wall reflecting the exposed brick on the opposite side of the studio.
I didn’t hear that AC unit cranking to life. I didn’t notice the loosening cracks of mortar along the brick. Not that night. Not over the moan of strings and chords and the lullaby that silenced my mind and sent me away from the building, away from myself. Arabesque and I moved into the strum of violins, the soft melody that kept me moving, kept me pretending that my world wasn’t a cluster of fighting thoughts. The images were too scattered and I used the music, and the cambré, the jeté to keep me focused. To keep me from thinking, from feeling too much.
Keira’s heart was broken. I remembered the feeling, how sometimes you feel the splinter inside your chest. How the recall of a smile, the sound of a familiar chorus reminds you that you are not whole. It’s the constant recall that you are split in sections. You may have pasted the parts together, lying to yourself that you don’t miss his touch or the way his laughter shot straight to your belly. But it’s just that—a lie. The half-truths we smear over our thoughts, a gauze to kid ourselves into believing we aren’t irrevocably broken.
“He lied, Aly.” Her face had been turned away from me, her eyes on Makana and the other girls as they danced and twirled and kicked through the steps of their competition routine at the studio just hours before. But Keira’s soft voice had still carried in my ears. I’d glanced at her, expression drawn, bags under her eyes, then back to the girls, and again she said, “He lied.”