Page 52 of Barre Fight
Ivy looked around and took the place in as she pulled off her coat. The lights were low, and each of the small tables had a candle flickering on it, making the place feel intimate and smoky, even though it could probably hold 150 people and no one was allowed to smoke anymore. Most of the tables were full, and the sight of all these elegantly dressed people sipping cocktails while jazz played, low and sultry, made her feel glamorous and sophisticated in a way she rarely felt in Sydney.
She glanced back at Justin and found him watching her, eyes intent and hungry. Had he watched her take off her coat? The suspicion made her pulse speed, and when she sat down she crossed her legs, feeling the same anticipation racing between them that she’d felt in the theater.
“Do you like jazz?” she asked, when he’d sat down across from her. His charcoal-grey jumper clung to his shoulders and chest as he leaned back in his chair and looked around the club.
“I don’t really know,” he turned back to her, “but you do.”
“How do you know that?” she asked, surprised.
“Because you told me,” he shrugged .
“I did? When?” she raised her eyebrows.
“When I came over to your place that day. You said that you wanted to go to museums and jazz clubs, and eat bagels and see musicals. And I figured we’ve already done museums and bagels, and you know how I feel about musicals, so…”
“Oh,” Ivy said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. He’d remembered that?
“You do like jazz, right?” He frowned, suddenly looking concerned. “If you don’t, we can go somewhere else.”
“No, this is great,” she said encouragingly. “I probablywould have dragged you here eventually anyway. But I thought you were going to pick the place.”
“I did. I picked a place I knew you’d want to go. Or as you put it, a place you’d drag me to anyway.”
Ivy opened her mouth to say something, though she didn’t know what, because the gesture was thoughtful and sweet and those weren’t words she really associated with Justin Winters. She was saved from having to reply when a tall man wearing head-to-toe black stepped out onto the stage with a microphone in hand.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the legendary Birdland Jazz Club in the heart of New York City,” he said in a deep baritone, and Justin and Ivy joined the tables around them in light applause. “Thank you for joining us here tonight in the house Charlie Parker built. We’ll be welcoming the James Jefferson Quintet to the stage in just a few minutes, but for now, sit back, order a drink, and enjoy yourselves.”
A waitress came by a few minutes later, and Ivy ordered a cocktail, figuring it was only right to drink a Manhattan when at a jazz club in Manhattan. Justin ordered the same, and a few minutes later their drinks arrived, glowing a warm orange-brown in the light of the winking candle at the center of the small table.
Ivy took a sip and smiled against the delicate coupe glass. It was sweet and strong, and she knew that if she didn’t drink it slowly it would go straight to her legs, until her muscles were swimming and loose. Across the table, Justin hadn’t touched his drink. Instead, he was watching her sip hers, that steady heat back in his gaze.
“Can I ask you something?” he said quietly.
“Sure.”
“Is it hard to watch us dance all the time?”
“Only when the corps is out of sync,” Ivy smiled. “And that’s not very often.”
Justin chuckled, but it sounded like he was humoring her. “I mean, does it make you miss dancing?”
Ivy sloshed a little of her drink over the lip of the glass as she set it back on the table. She hadn’t been expecting that.Yes, she wanted to say.Part of me burns with envy every time I watch you put your hands on Alice’s body.But she knew that wasn’t what he meant, and she didn’t want to answer his question.
“What makes you think I used to dance?”
“Didn’t you?”
Ivy picked up her napkin and wiped the sweet, sticky liquid that had dripped onto her fingers, buying herself a little time. She avoided Justin’s eyes as she spent far too long making sure there wasn’t a trace of liquor left on her skin, but when she looked up, he was still watching her. “How did you know?”
Justin tipped his head to the side slightly, considering her. “You knew the difference between a high passé and a regular one. You said the painting looked like dancing feels. And,” he reached across the small table and stroked the fingertips of one hand lightly down the side of her neck, over the place where, under her dress, lines of muscle connected her neck to her shoulders, “your traps are extremely strong. I noticed that this morning.”
Ivy shivered, whether because of his touch or the mention of the way they’d devoured each other this morning, she didn’t know. For a moment, their eyes locked, and she knew he was remembering it too, and thinking about touching her again, without the barrier of a table or a dress between them. His eyes flicked back down to the place he’d stroked, and something in her stomach twisted bitterly.
“Betrayed by my traps yet again,” she muttered, reaching for her drink again. They weren’t as pronounced as they’d been theday she met Liv—after more than a decade, her body had softened and expanded and rounded in ways ballet hadn’t permitted—but he’d noticed them anyway. She’d probably wear the remnants of ballet in her body for the rest of her life, she thought, a permanent tell for people who knew what to look for. But they didn’t see the full story when they looked at her. It didn’t matter that she’d given her body over to ballet, shaped it for the artform in all the ways she could control; ballet had found the one thing that was out of her control and used it to disqualify her.
“What do you mean?” Justin asked.
“It’s nothing,” Ivy said quickly. She tried to inject some levity into her expression, even though his list of things he’d observed about her made her feel somewhat exposed. “You sure think you know a lot about me,” she joked, looking at him over her glass.
