Page 28 of Barre Fight
“Don’t be mad at them,” Justin said quickly. “They didn’t want to hand it over. I had to beg for it.”
“Well, you’ve wasted your time. I can’t babysit you tonight, okay?” She started to close the door, but he shot his foot out into the gap between the door and the frame. A risky move for a man whose feet were his career.
“Please just let me talk to you for a few minutes.” Oh, so now he wanted to talk to her?
Ivy gripped the doorknob and looked up at him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. He looked like he’d run here in the sweltering evening air. His face was flushed and sweat glistened on his forehead. She looked down at his sneaker, which was barring her from shutting him out and going back to the aggrieved women of musical theater.
“I don’t want to talk to you right now.” She had aimed for firm and professional, but it came out petulant. Her stomach grumbled, and she threw an arm across her ribcage, hoping he hadn’t heard. He pressed his lips together, barely suppressing a smirk. Dammit.
“Please let me in. I promise there’ll be no whinging and no pity party. I just want to talk.”
Ivy closed her eyes and let out an exasperated whimper. She was too hungry to talk. She was too hungry to do anything. “Fine. Come in. But I’m not talking to you until I’ve had something to eat, so you can either cook me dinner or sit quietly until my sushi arrives.” She turned and walked back into her apartment, leaving him to step cautiously inside.
“Thank you,” he said as she threw herself back onto the couch. He followed her into the living room and stood there, awkwardly. “And thank you for not slamming the door on my foot.”
She glared across the room at him. “I considered it,” she lied. She wasn’t a monster. “Now stop talking. Food’ll be here soon.”
He nodded, eyeing her cautiously. She was still in her work dress, which was crumpled from the heat and from her spending the last hour on the couch. When she’d arrived home, she’d pulled her hair up off her neck into a high ponytail, which had sagged sideways and let half her hair escape. She shouldn’t care if Justin Winters saw her looking this bedraggled, but she pulled the ponytail out and redid it hastily anyway. After a few moments, he pulled out one of her chairs and settled himself at her small dining table, fidgeting as Effie sang about how she wasn’t going.
“What the hell are you listening t—” he started, but she shushed him.
“Quiet until sushi, remember?”
“Okay, okay,” he held his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Can I, um, have a glass of water? Please?”
Ivy nodded and gestured towards the kitchen.
She dropped her head back against the couch cushions and let the music wash over her. Effie roared her rage and betrayal into the living room, tearing down the mountains, yelling, screaming, and shouting. Ivy had grown up listening to Broadway soundtracks, because her opa had loved them. A cheaper version of opera, he’d called it—plus tap dancing! In truth, he’d have preferred opera, which his family had attended all the time in Vienna before the war. But when he arrived in Sydney, he couldn’t afford the opera. Tickets to musicals were within reach, though, and he’d come to love it. Whenever Ivy and the boys visited his house, there was always a Broadway record spinning in his living room.
A few blessedly short minutes later the doorbell rang again. Ivy sat up, but Justin was already on his feet. By the time she stood and took a few steps towards the door, he’d already pulled it open and was accepting a plastic bag and handing over a five-dollar bill. And then he was closing the door and pulling outthe plastic containers and setting them all out on the table. He unwrapped the chopsticks, snapped them apart, and placed them next to the food. Then for good measure, he screwed the top off the wine bottle and topped off her glass.
“Eat,” he said. “Drink. Become human.”
Ivy scowled at him, but the smell of the gyoza took priority over telling him off. She made quick work of the food and took a few gulps of wine. Within minutes, her head felt less fuzzy and she had less of a desire to impale the nearest person on her chopsticks. Or one particular person. Justin leaned over and collected the empty containers, and she watched, a little confused, as he carried them into her kitchen, then found her bin and threw them out.
“Thank you,” she said, warily, as he sat back down.
“No worries. It was mostly self-preservation. You’re clearly one of those people who turns into a terrifying monster when they’re hungry. My cousin’s the same.”
“I don’t turn into a monster,” she objected, choosing not to mention her chopstick-shiv fantasy. “I just… Don’t have a lot of patience. Especially for people who have already tested my patience.”
He cleared his throat. Message received, then. “At the risk of testing it again, I want to talk to you about New York.”
She rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t want to do it.”
Mabel Normand was now singing about going wherever he ain’t.Fitting, Ivy thought.
“You won’t even consider it?” Justin sounded disbelieving.
“I didn’t say that. I considered it. But I’m not a nanny.”
“I know you’re not, and I don’t need a nanny.”
“Well, I guess that settles it, doesn’t it?” Ivy crossed her arms.
“But I do need you.”
Ivy stared at him, her cheeks suddenly warm. In another context those words would have been… no. Must have been the wine making her face feel flushed. She reminded herself of what he was asking her to do. What the company was asking her to do. Em had been right, she thought again. She wasn’t a good fit for this job. But she’d been desperate and hasty and she’d taken it anyway, and now here she was.
