Page 2 of Barre Fight
“Obviously,” she tutted. “You weren’t thinking at all. You could have really hurt the guy. Did he hit his head?”
Hurt and betrayal flared in Justin’s chest.That’swhat she was worried about? She snapped right into HR Mode, without checking if her own cousin was okay?
“I don’t know,” Justin repeated, frustrated now, “but he insulted me and my friends. I couldn’t walk away. Couldn’t just let him get away with it.”
Missy’s eyes went wide and disbelieving under her mop of unruly brown curls. “Couldn’t let him get away with it? What kind of country town crap is that? You had to defend your honor? Jesus, Justin, why not just call for pistols at dawn?”
“Give me a break, okay?” he ground out. His cousin had always been more of a big sister, and usually he didn’t mind that she kept him in line and told him when he was full of crap, but this morning he had no patience for it. He knew he’d fucked up. He knew there’d be consequences—hell, even without video evidence, the guy might try to press charges—and he was worried about that. But he couldn’t bring himself to regret what he’d done. Every time he thought about Matty standing beside him, the younger man’s smile sliding off his face as his pride turned to doubt, and doubt turned to fear, Justin clenched his jaw. Some people deserved to get punched.
“I’ll give you a break when you explain to me why the hell you did something so totally out of character, something that could have done another human being serious harm and result in a criminal record, and that will now live on the internet forever,” she shot back.
“I can’t explain it,” he said shortly.
She fixed him with a look, then spoke in a dry, don’t-bullshit-me tone he knew she’d never use on an employee. “Try.”
He rolled his shoulders again and heaved out a heavy sigh. “I’m not bullshitting you. I really didn’t know what had happened. I was… outside of my body almost. And not in the good way like when I dance. It was like… like my brain went blank. I panicked, and then it was all instinct.”
Missy cocked her head and gave him a shrewd, assessing look. “Like, you disassociated? And went into fight or flight?”
Still in HR Mode, then. “Maybe.” He shrugged.
She looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes, which usually sparkled with mischief, were sharp and serious. When she spoke, though, her voice was gentle. “What did he say to you?”
Justin let out a long breath. “I don’t want to repeat it. Itwas…” He trailed off, reluctant to even paraphrase the guy’s taunts.
“Homophobic and shitty, and really triggering for you?” Missy finished for him.
Justin swallowed, and nodded gratefully.
“Okay,” she said. “I understand.”
He knew she did, too, because they’d grown up together, and she knew what Hillstone had been like for him. They’d spent an awful lot of time together as kids. Until his stepdad had entered the picture when he was seven, his mum had been on her own, and Justin remembered stretches of time when Missy and his aunt Justine had moved in with them. He and Missy had gone to the same primary school, then the same high school. She’d left Hillstone a year before he did, and gone to uni in Sydney, but he’d moved in with her when he’d come to the city to dance. And it was because of Missy that he’d started dancing in the first place: Because he’d idolized her, followed her everywhere she went, including the local church hall for her weekly ballet classes.
That meant that Missy had been there for all the teasing and ostracism—and worse—that had followed. She’d been there when the bullying had made his life miserable, and when ballet had been the rare place he could go to escape the misery, to express his feelings by dancing instead of by, say, punching people.
Missy remembered all that, and he’d tried to forget it. He wanted that can of worms shut tight forever. Just his luck that fate—and the bouncer at the Stoned Crow—had decided to re-open it for him.
“I’m not proud of it,” he said. “And my hand hurts like hell.” He flexed his fingers and winced, studying the movement of the bones and tendons. Nothing felt broken, but the dull ache across the top of his hand was going to make barre workuncomfortable for the next few days, and he’d have to find a way to avoid partnering and lifting.
Missy pushed her chair back and disappeared into the kitchen, returning a moment later and handing him a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel. He pressed it gratefully to the top of his hand and muttered his thanks.
“We both know that guy got what he deserved, and you landed a hell of a punch. But, shit. You could be in real trouble here. What are you gonna do?”
Whatwashe going to do? Try to get the video taken down? That seemed impossible. Wait for the guy to press charges? The thought made that ugly, rotten thing stir under his ribs again. If the guy tried that, maybe Ricky and Matty would tell the cops how long he’d spent talking shit, provoking them before Justin finally snapped. And they didn’t even know the half of it.
Justin sighed and shook his head. “Wait and see, I guess. With any luck, it’ll blow over and he’ll be too embarrassed to file charges.” Heshouldbe embarrassed, getting laid out on the tiles like that by afancy little freak.
Missy glanced at her phone. “What about your boss?”
Justin groaned. He hadn’t even thought about what Peter would say if he saw the video. If there was one thing the artistic director of Australian National Ballet hated, it was negative publicity, and footage of one of his principal dancers socking someone in the jaw in a crowded bar as two other dancers tried to hold him back was pretty bloody negative.
“Let’s just hope he doesn’t see it,” he said to Missy, standing and pushing his chair back, suddenly needing to move, the way he always did when he was antsy. “Let’s hope no one else sees it.”
The video was really good. Like, explosively good. What was it Alan liked to say? “If it bleeds it leads, and with video it succeeds?” There wasn’t much bleeding on the arts beat, but this story was an exception. And it had one hell of a video.
Ivy absentmindedly reached up and pressed the STOP button as the bus lurched in the morning traffic, then hit PLAY on her phone for the fourth time. She already had her lede half-written in her head.On stage, Justin Winters floats like a butterfly. Off stage, the 33-year-old principal dancer at the Australian National Ballet apparently stings like a bee.
A few minutes later the bus doors whooshed open, and Ivy shouldered her way around the remaining passengers, her gaze half on her phone and half on the footpath as she hustled to work as fast as her short legs would carry her. At the cafe in the lobby, she tapped the toe of her block-heeled pump impatiently, tapping out copy on her phone until the barista called her name. Coffee in hand, she couldn’t write any more, but she pulled up the number for ANB and called the company’s press department. By the time the lift doors opened on the 9th floor, she had a clipped “no comment” and most of her story drafted. A few hundred words, plus that video, and they had a hit on their hands.
