Page 24 of Barre Fight
Winters fuels for his bushwalks almost as carefully as he fuels for his long days of class, rehearsal, and performance, with whole wheat pasta and lots of greens (“broccolini makes broccoli feel fancy, and less like… well, broccoli”). He drinks alcohol sparingly and goes through several bottles of watered-down Gatorade a day—more when he’s going on a long walk on a hot day. When he gets home from the bush, he’ll fuel up for the following day, and then stretch out with a little help from his foam roller.
And as for how he’ll recover from the 20-hour journey to New York? “I have a travel-size foam roller,” Winters assures me. “It’s always the firstthing I pack.”
It hadn’t been easy to ask questions, think of smart follow-ups, and avoid tripping over a root and breaking an ankle all at the same time, but Ivy had done it. She and Justin had spent two sweaty hours on a track in the national park, walking along the banks of the trickling creeks and clambering over fallen trees. It wasn’t neutral territory—it was Justin’s place, and he knew it so well that he’d walked straight past the map at the start of the trail without bothering to glance at it—but that was even better. He seemed relaxed out here, the way he did when she watched him in class and rehearsal. Loose and jovial, with none of the guarded tension she’d become accustomed to. She steered clear of questions about his past and focused instead on his present and his future.
Ivy had been surprised when he’d named the location, and even more shocked to discover that he was a regular out here. A fellow bushwalker had recognized him on the track, and they’d stopped to chat briefly about the woman’s lower back, which had apparently been giving her trouble lately. Justin Winters was full of surprises.
But a bushwalk was perfect for PR purposes: it was quiet, solitary, and out in the bright sunshine. Wholesome. The exact opposite of a pub crawl. No chance of getting into a fistfight out here, just a slight possibility of passing out in the sweltering heat of the day, as the birds trilled overhead and fallen leaves crunched under their feet.
The track wove between the gumtrees, rocky and narrow, and on more than one occasion Ivy’s bare shoulder brushed against the side of Justin’s arm. Eventually she let him walk in front of her, which made it easier to focus on the track and on her long list of questions instead of on the way her stomach fluttered when her skin brushed against his. She’d felt it in the locker room the other day, when she’d barged in to find him shirtless, his pale skin still damp from class and glowing in the middaylight. She shouldn’t have been affected; she’d watched him dance in tights all week, and she knew he was lean and muscular, like all his colleagues, butgood god.
Ivy knew from her own time in ballet that dancers were trained to find the tiniest imperfections in their own bodies and fixate on them until they were fixed. She’s obsessed over her turnout, the arch of her upper back, the angle of her pinkie fingers when her arms were in high fifth. Their bodies were constantly on display and constantly being compared to each other as every tiny flaw and imperfection stared back at them in the mirror. But there were no flaws or imperfections in Justin Winters’ body. She could not find a single thing she’d change. His handsome, brooding face was one thing, but he was cut like a freaking statue, all shifting sinew and hard-won muscle under smooth-looking skin a dusting of golden-brown hair. She thought about the barely-there costume for “If Love” and swallowed hard. If Justin actually made it onto the plane, something told her it was going to be New York’s favorite ballet, too.
Ivy tried not to think about Justin shirtless, or about the skin of his back under his sweat-damp T-shirt, as he walked a meter in front of her and occasionally glanced over his shoulder to answer a question. She told herself not to notice the graceful way he stepped over a fallen log, or the way his voice went wistful when he talked about how being out in the bush felt like going back home. When she couldn’t stop herself from noticing, she told herself it was her job to notice. She was a professionally observant person, after all, and all these details would make her story stronger, which would improve his image in the eyes of the company’s subscribers and donors and the press, which would make it more likely she could get him on the plane in barely ten days.
That was her job, she reminded herself, pinning her eyes to the track as it approached a creek that would eventually run intoSydney Harbour. It was barely a trickle this time of year, but the water sparkled, and it looked cool and clear enough that Ivy had dearly wanted to stop and take her sneakers off to wade into it. She didn’t suggest it, though. She wasn’t there to dip her toes in the creek or think about her colleague’s abs. She was there to work, to get as many answers out of Justin as she could before he froze her out again.
When it was over, when they’d completed the loop and he’d climbed into his old but well-maintained ute, she’d driven home as quickly as she could without getting a ticket, played back the audio, and threw everything she had onto a page. The result was almost 800 words about the man who’d barely been willing to give her eight earlier in the week. It wasn’t going to win a Walkley, but it was good enough—and better than she could have done had she not spent most of her afternoon getting sunburnt and sore out in the bush.
“What do you think?” she asked Connie nervously.
“Give me more than ten seconds to read it and I’ll tell you.” Connie smiled over her monitor.
“Give it to me, I’m a speed reader,” Oliver said, standing up and striding over to stand behind Connie’s chair. Oliver adjusted their tie and cleared their throat officiously, and Ivy shot them a quick, nervous smile.
“You are not, stop telling people that.” Connie shook her head up at them, her long ponytail swishing over her slender shoulders.
“I took a quiz! It said I’m a moderate speed reader!”
“I took a quiz that said the Disney princess I’m most like is Mulan, which is a) probably the answer they give all the Asian girls and b) not true because I’m a pacifist,” Connie replied. “Those quizzes just tell you what they think you want to hear.”
“No one is reading!” Ivy exclaimed, before she could stop herself. She’d been up half the night last night rewriting themiddle, then flipping it back, then re-rewriting it, and she was a little wired this morning. The monthly subscriber newsletter was scheduled to go out later in the day, and her story would be in it, along with some professional photos of Justin and some candids she’d snapped with her phone on their bushwalk. The company was leaving in ten days, and Peter would be making his decision about tour casting any day now. If this didn’t work, if it didn’t satisfy Peter and the suits, she didn’t have much time to figure out something that would.
“Relax, I’m sure it’s fine,” Oliver said. “But now we will read it to be absolutely definitely sure.”
“Bet I can read it faster,” Connie said in a sing-song voice.
“You’re on,” Oliver said, and they both focused their attention on Connie’s screen.
A few minutes later, Oliver looked up with a gasp. “I won, because I’m a speed reader, and you did fine. Better than fine, actually. This is really good.”
Connie poked her tongue out at Oliver, then gave Ivy another smile and nodded encouragingly. “I’ve got a few small suggestions, but I agree. It’s really good.”
“You’re sure?” Ivy asked, tucking her hair behind her ears nervously.
“I’m sure.”
“It captures the clean cut, well-behaved side of him, which is exactly what you need,” Oliver confirmed. “Just a country boy, out in nature, eating his veggies, not punching anyone.”
“Right,” Ivy said faintly. She wished she weren’t so nervous about this. It wasn’t a real article, it was just a puff piece for the company’s subscribers. Like Oliver said, there was nothing in it that the company didn’t want people to know—and there was no mention of all the things the company didn’t want readers thinking about. It was just PR.
As she made the few changes Connie had suggested andprepared the text and the photos in the newsletter software, she tried to muster the feeling that used to pulse through her right before she published a story she’d worked hard on. A thrumming excitement, a sense of power knowing that her words would soon be out in the world. But as she proofed the copy one last time and made sure all the captions were free of typos, she couldn’t summon any kind of thrum. Just a dull, nervous ache in the pit of her stomach, which she supposed was the knowledge that once she hit “send” on this newsletter, she’d have officially crossed over the line between journalism and PR—and that if this didn’t work, she’d have crossed it for nothing.
Justin usually spent five or ten minutes after company class messing around with Ricky and Matty, taking turns filming each other attempting the biggest and hardest leaps they could pull off. Ricky said it made for good social media content. Matty claimed he didn’t care about “all that Instacrap,” but he usually ended up posting the videos anyway, albeit with an ironic, self-effacing caption.
Today, though, Justin made a beeline for his bag as soon as Peter dismissed them after reverence, and shook his head when Ricky looked over at him, eyebrows raised in invitation. Justin hastily dug around in the bag until he found his phone. Ivy’s story was going out today, and he wanted to know if it had been sent while they were in class.
He found an email from her at the top of his inbox, sent about an hour ago.
