Page 44 of Barre Fight
“You think so?”
Ivy waved her hands, as if weighing invisible options. “Speaking as Ivy Page, PR associate for Australian NationalBallet, I don’t condone violence and I find the incident regrettable and not to be repeated. Speaking as Ivy Page, private and off-the-record citizen? Some people need to get punched in the face.”
Justin laughed, throwing his head back and lifting his feet off the floor in delight, and Ivy’s stomach flipped over. He was beautiful when he danced, and he was breathtaking when he laughed. She gave herself a little shake, remembering his palpable relief at not having to share a hotel room with her. Beautiful or not, he wasn’t interested in her.
“Thanks for telling me the whole story,” she said, when he was done laughing. “I know it wasn’t easy, but knowing everything really does help me help you.”
Justin nodded. “Sorry I held out on you so long. I didn’t mean to make things harder for you.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Okay, I did, at first. But now… Now we’re good, right? Same team?”
She nodded. “Same team.”
“Alright, then. What’s the plan for dinner tonight?”
Chapter Eleven
Justin stood in front of the dressing room mirror and checked his costume for the umpteenth time. It was fine, he knew it was fine, but checking it gave him something to do with himself.
He didn’t often get nervous before a show. His first time dancing at the Opera House, he’d been 18 and in the corps, playing a courtier inSwan Lake. He’d been so distracted by the elaborate costume and the wig that he’d hardly had time to think about the fact that he was about to step onto the stage of one of the world’s most recognizable theaters and perform as a professional ballet dancer for the first time in his life. By the time he was actually dancing, he was so focused on the steps—and so afraid his wig would topple off his head—that the whole first act swept by him in a blur.
But tonight he was nervous as fuck. This was Lincoln Center, for god’s sake. He readjusted the waistband of his tights yet again and tried not to think about all the legends who’d danced on this stage before him. Rudolf Nureyev. Mikhail Baryshnikov. Arthur Mitchell. And, as Alice had squealed the first time she’d emerged from the wings and taken in the huge, sumptuous theater, “This is where they filmedCenter Stage!”
Alice was nervous, too, which was unusual enough to be disorienting. In his years of dancing alongside her, he’d never known her to be anything but frankly confident, but in tonight’s company warm-up class, she’d been quiet and serious, not at all her normal gregarious self. Now, on either side of him, Ricky and Matty were putting the final touches on their hair and makeup in similar silence, only speaking when they needed to. Justin thought about what Peter had said in that first, tense class after the video went viral: they’d all worked really hard for this, and they wanted it to pay off. He was lucky—really lucky—that he’d been allowed to come along for it.
The woman who was responsible for that luck was out in the audience now, or perhaps milling around in the grand lobby waiting to take her seat. She’d walked him to the stage door, assuring him that she didn’t need to keep an eye on him as he did his makeup, warmed up, and got into costume.
“But I promise I’ll be watching once the curtain comes up,” she said, and he’d felt an odd mix of nerves and comfort at that.
“I’ll try to make it worth the price of admission.”
“My ticket was free, so that shouldn’t be hard,” she smiled.
He chuckled, and an awkward silence settled over them. Katarina and her girlfriend came down the stairs from the plaza and he and Ivy nodded in greeting.
“You coming in?” Kat asked as she pulled the door open. “It’s freezing out here.”
“Yeah, just a sec,” Justin said.
He looked back at Ivy, who was fiddling with the knot in her coat belt and looking up at him through her long lashes. She’d worn a dress and a pair of short, high-heeled boots for opening night, and curled her hair into big, rolling waves. Behind her glasses, her makeup was more pronounced than usual, and it was hard not to notice her mouth when her lips were painted adeep, matte red. She looked nervous, and even prettier than usual.
“Well, chookas,” she said. “Or as I think they say here, merde?”
“Why don’t you cover all our bases and tell me to break a leg, too?” he said with a weak chuckl. “And… Thank you. For helping me get here.”
“Thanks for letting me help,” she said. She smiled up at him, the same warm, intimate curve of her lips she’d given him yesterday, after he’d told her the whole miserable story. That smile did something to him, made him feel like he’d earned something rare and precious, and for a moment he let himself stand in the freezing air and bask in it.
They were standing close, and he could see faint freckles across her nose and smell the perfume she must have sprayed on for the occasion. Something velvety and floral that for some reason made him think of a still summer morning and a tree full of birds. He let himself breathe it in, and for a moment he forgot to be nervous about the theater and its huge stage and its 2000 red velvet seats.
She kept smiling, looking up at him like she understood him, like they were a team and they’d already won. Before he could think better of it—he didn’t want to think better of it—he had extended one arm and pulled her into a hug, one arm curved around her shoulder in a brief, professional gesture of thanks. He felt her sway slightly in her towering heels, but she wrapped both arms around his waist, steadying herself, and a second later, he felt her small, warm body go soft against his, her muscles relaxed under that impossibly fine coat.
Heat rushed through his body, fiercer and more urgent than any warmth that might have radiated through her coat. It lit up his bones, that heat, turning what should have been a brief and professional hug—perfunctory, almost meaningless—intosomething else entirely. He wanted to bask in this, too, wanted to wrap his other arm around her shoulder, or bring his hand to the back of her head and sift his fingers through her hair. He could have sworn she’d been gripped by the same urge, too, because he felt her ribcage shift against his body as her breath seemed to go short.
But then a couple of corps dancers came jogging down the stairs, and he and Ivy leapt apart. The other two stepped between him and Ivy to pull the door open, and she tucked her hair self-consciously behind her ear.
“I should go,” she said hastily. “I’ll find you after, okay?”
