Page 21 of Barre Fight
“I’ve dated before, I’m not a monk,” he interrupted.
“Yes, I think we’ve established that. Monks aren’t known for their right hooks. So when you date, who do you date?”
“You wantnames?” he asked, as though this was her most offensive question yet. “Are you going to track them down, dig through their garbage, tap their phones?”
“Oh, not just them,” Ivy said sarcastically. “I’ll go talk to their parents, and their friends, and their primary school classmates, and their hairdressers. No, I don’t want names. I just want to know if you usually date women, men, a mix, whatever.”
“Oh.” The crease between Justin’s eyebrows relaxed ever so slightly. “Women.”
“Okay, and when you date these women…” She paused, trying to figure out how to phrase the question so he might actually answer it, “I don’t mean to pry, but?—”
“Sure you don’t,” he scoffed, but Ivy pressed on.
“Are we talking… casual? Short-term relationships, serial monogamy, headed for marriage?” She just stopped herself from wincing as the words came out. She wouldn’t be surprised if he stormed away from the table rather than answer.
“Definitely not the last one.”
Ivy waited for him to elaborate, but of course he didn’t. Ivy stared down at her mostly-nonexistent notes, feeling a little desperate. “So, not interested in marriage,” she tried again.
“Romance isn’t for me. Although I guess I’m interested in halving my rent,” he conceded.
“Wow, the future Mrs. Justin Winters is a lucky lady,” Ivy snarked, before she could stop herself.
Justin grinned, his face lighting up with triumphant glee, and she felt her stomach tip sideways. “Now why do you assume my future wife would take my surname? I thought you were a feminist.”
Ivy closed her eyes again and took another deep breath. As he kept reminding her, she was a feminist, and contrary to popular belief, feminists didn’t hate all men. But she reserved the right to hate certain individual men, especially the ones who made her life this fucking difficult.
“Fine, Bertie Friedan. Please, just tell me something about yourself, something I can actually use. Anything at all,” she said, hating the pleading tone in her own voice. “Favorite color. Favorite song. Ice cream flavor. Anything.”
Justin reached across the table and snatched his coffee cup back, then drained it in a single gulp and stood. “Can’t, we’re outta time. I gotta go.”
He turned and walked away, leaving Ivy and her untouched lunch at the table. She stared after him, all the victory and hopeshe’d felt this morning drained out of her, and nothing but desperation remaining. He’d been on board just a few hours ago, but the second she’d actually started asking questions, he’d shut down and given her nothing.
She sat, clutching her pen in her sweating hand, and watched as he tossed his coffee cup in the bin and made a beeline for the exit. Ivy looked down at her notes, a collection of useless, perfunctory non-answers, and wanted to scream. This impossible man. This professional cockblocker. He was going to make her fail! Again! Even if that meant defying Peter and being left behind in Sydney when the rest of the company went to New York without him. Ivy didn’t know why—and at this point, she didn’tcare—but from the moment she’d walked in here, he’d decided that watching her fall on her face was more important to him than saving his own career.
Well, she wasn’t going to fall on her face. She was not going to let this man make a failure out of her. She was going to get what she needed, and write a great story, and prove that quitting journalism had not been a mistake. Ivy stood up so quickly her chair almost toppled over behind her. She righted it hastily, then marched after Justin, out of the cafe and down the hallway past the main studios and the physio room, all the places she’d followed him uselessly for the past week.
She arrived at the end of the hall and came face to face with the closed door of the men’s locker room. She stared at the large “M” on the door for a long second, then took a deep breath and pulled herself up as tall as she could. She was going to get what she needed.
Justin had just started peeling off the damp clothes he’d worn for class when he heard a distinctly feminine throat clearbehind him, and spun around so fast he nearly tripped over his dance bag.
Ivy was standing in the doorway, gripping her blue biro like it was some kind of weapon, and glaring across the room at him, cheeks flushed and glasses halfway down the bridge of her nose, like she’d run in here after him.
Oh shit, had she run in here after him? He glanced around, but thankfully, the room seemed deserted. At this hour most of his colleagues were at lunch, in the physio room, or in the lounge. But still.
“You can’t be in here.”
“And yet here I am,” she replied, her voice thin with breathlessness.
When she’d promised to follow him anywhere, including the men’s locker room, he’d thought she’d been exaggerating, but clearly she’d been serious. Justin glanced around again, making sure there was no one else in here. When he looked back at her, she darted her eyes away from his bare chest and fixed them on his face.
Justin wasn’t embarrassed by his body—he danced in skintight Lycra in front of a mirror all day, for god’s sake, and half the contemporary choreographers the company brought in seemed to think they were legally required to put dancers on stage wearing as little clothing as possible. But something about the way Ivy averted her eyes from his chest made his pulse kick. Had she liked what she’d seen? Had she seen it and found it wanting?
Who fucking cares what she thinks? She barged in on you half naked in the men’s room looking like she wants to shank you with a pen.
He was about to tell her to get out and leave him the hell alone when she took a step forward, threw her shoulders back, and launched into a tirade.
“You want to do this the hard way, that’s fine with me. You want to punish me for every story I’ve ever written, I don’t care. You want to do everything you can to put me out of a job for the second time in a month, you go right ahead,” she said, gesturing wildly with the biro. “But this company is getting on a plane to New York in two weeks, and the longer you freeze me out like this, the less likely it is that you’re going to be on it. I amtryingtohelpyou, even though you seem determined to throw away a career most of us can only dream of because you’re too stubborn to save yourself. And I will keep trying until the day that plane takes off, even if you keep freezing me out, because I am a goddamn fuckingprofessional.”
