Page 60 of Pas de Don't
But then Christine had turned out to be, well, Christine. A woman who looked down her surgically reshaped nose at Heather, and thought Heather was so obviously beneath her son. Who had all but told Heather to her face that she thought she was using Jack to get ahead in the company.
“That was quite a sigh,” Marcus mumbled, and Heather started.
“Good morning,” she said, propping herself up on her elbow and pushing thoughts of Jack’s mother away. Slowly Marcus winced and stretched his body straight in his sleeping bag. “How’d you sleep?”
“Ow,” he groaned.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “Same.”
“I am...so sorry,” he half moaned, half yawned. Marcus eased himself up onto one elbow, wincing again.
“I forgive you, but I don’t know if Sharon will. That can’t have been good for my hips or your ankle.”
Marcus huffed a tired laugh, and smiled, the crinkles around his eyes deeper than normal and his eyes the color of the valley outside. She smiled back, and saw his eyes drop to her lips, and then to her chin. His gaze lingered there, and she felt her cheeks heat as her smile faded.
Heather glanced away and studied the seam of fabric just above her head, but she could feel Marcus watching her closely.
“Hey,” he said, “what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she lied.
He sat up tentatively. He didn’t say anything, just looked at her, expectantly, and waited.
“You were staring at my chin,” Heather sighed, finally. “And I hate my chin. It’s too pointy and sharp and...I have stage face.”
He glanced at the offending facial feature, then met her eyes again, a hint of a smile on his face. “What the fuck is stage face? Is it a medical condition? Oh my God, is it contagious?”
Heather rolled her eyes. “It’s when...it’s this thing someone said to me once, that my face doesn’t look good up close, but that means it looks good on stage.”
Marcus stared at her, a frown crumpling his forehead and his mouth half open. “Someone said that about your face...to your face?”
She nodded. “She wasn’t wrong, and it’s not like I haven’t heard hard feedback about my body before. I mean, it’s ballet.” Basically every visible part of her was fair game. Teachers had been assessing her legs and hips and pinkie fingers since she was a child. Random people on Instagram posted zoomed-in, disembodied photos of her feet in pointe shoes. Why should her chin be any different?
“Shewaswrong, but hang on a second, a teacher said this to you?”
“No, my ex’s mom,” Heather said, quietly. Her would-be mother-in-law. The former reigning queen of American ballet.
“Well, she sounds delightful.”
Heather shrugged. “It’s over now.”
Except it wasn’t, not really. Even if Christine would never be her mother-in-law, even if she never saw the woman again, that barb still snagged in Heather’s mind every time she looked in the mirror. She couldn’t watch Marcus watch her without thinking about it.
Marcus looked at her intently for a moment, a small crease between his eyebrows. Then he cupped her face gently in his hand. She resisted the urge to glance away again, willed herself to hold steady under his gaze.
“Do you know what I thought the very first time I saw you?” he asked, his voice quiet and deadly serious.
Heather smiled ruefully. “What is this woman doing in the men’s locker room?”
“Well, yeah. But after that?”
She gave her head a tiny shake, pressing her jaw into his hand.
“I thought, ‘This woman has a face shaped like a heart. And it’s so beautiful I can barely stand to look. But if she’d let me, I’d want to look at her up close every day.’”
Heather opened her mouth to reply, but she was too stunned to speak. He’d said that so frankly and guilelessly, as though it were a self-evident truth.Water is wet. What goes up must come down. Heather Hays has a face like a heart.There was no agenda, no strategy, and he wasn’t going to turn around and twist the compliment into something cruel to throw her off balance. And Heather knew he’d tell her as many times as she needed to hear it. Until she could look in the mirror and believe it.
Her eyes welled with tears, and she blinked them away with a small smile. Deep in her chest, a tight knot of anxiety began to loosen, and she thought suddenly of a curled new leaf on a plant,unfurling slowly in the light. She took a long breath, feeling a few more leaves unfurl as she closed her eyes and pressed her cheek into his large, warm palm. Contentment crept through her, radiating from his hand and settling into her aching muscles. A few minutes ago, she’d have said she never wanted to spend another moment in a tent. Now, she would have happily lain here with him all day.
