Page 54 of Barre Fight
Ivy bit her lip. She’d known the question was coming, but she didn’t want to answer it. She remembered those first miserable months after she’d walked away from ballet, when everyone in her life asked her why, over and over again. Why Ivy the Ballerina wasn’t a ballerina anymore. As if the idea of Ivy without ballet didn’t make sense to them. It hadn’t made sense to her, either.
“I didn’t get a company contract, and I decided to go to uni instead,” she said. The truth, albeit a little sanded down and sanitized. She looked at him, waiting for him to ask morequestions, but he sat quietly and watched her, his eyes curious but his mouth closed.
“I was too short,” she said after a long silent second, and wow, the tables had truly turned now. He didn’t have a notebook, but if he had, it would be covered with “shut up, shut up,” and she was falling right into the trap. She found she didn’t mind, though. She trusted him with this. “I sent out lots of videos and was ready to audition anywhere that would let me, but I’m 5’2”, so I always got cut after the first round.”
“Did you ever audition for ANB?”
She shook her head. “I sent in my video but I didn’t make it as far as an in-person audition. They were rigid about height requirements back then, before Peter. Missed the cut-off by two inches.”
“Fucking stupid,” Justin muttered.
“I know. Like anyone in the audience would notice if a few girls in the corps were a few inches shorter or taller than the rest. It’s not like all real swans are the same size, right?”
Justin shrugged. “So what if people did notice? Why should everyone have to be the same height at all? It’s so arbitrary, and it means the company misses out on talented dancers for no good reason. And if it’s partnering they’re worried about, just hire shorter men. Or taller men. Or whatever we need to make the partnering work. It’s not rocket science, it’s just common sense, isn’t it?”
Ivy looked across the table at him in surprise. He sounded like he’d been hanging out with Em.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to rant, especially when you probably know all this.”
“It’s okay,” Ivy said slowly. “I know it, but I guess I didn’t expect you to agree with it.”
“Well, I do. I’m glad Peter changed the policy when he took over. A bit late for you, though, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Ivy said quietly. “I’m happy for the women who are benefitting from the change now.”
“I wouldn’t be happy, I’d be pissed,” he said. “To miss out on the career I’d worked for my whole life because of a stupid policy that can be changed that easily? It’s bullshit.”
“Well, I’m happy for them,” she said firmly. And she was. Mostly.
Justin watched her like he knew what she was thinking. That it didn’t matter how many times she told herself the rules were arbitrary and stupid, she’d still had to play by them, and she’d still lost. That she’d broken her own heart by foolishly hoping some company somewhere would bend them for her. That she’d been so depressed and angry back then that she couldn’t get out of bed, or fathom stepping foot in a ballet studio ever again. That she was happy ballet had made some progress, but it stung sometimes that she had been born too late, or given up too early, to enjoy it.
“Then I’ll be pissed on your behalf,” he said stoutly.
Ivy opened her mouth to argue but found she didn’t want to. The declaration was oddly touching, given how long he’d spent being pissedather.
“What are you going to do, punch ballet in the face?” she said archly, but there was no real challenge in the words, and he chuckled.
“Careful what you wish for, we all know what these hands can do,” he said, clenching his fists and striking an exaggerated put-’em–up-pose, but Ivy found her thoughts slipping sideways.
I don’t, but I want to find out.
Before she could come up with something more appropriate to say aloud, a group of musicians started trooping onto the stage, two of them with instruments in hand. The lights above Ivy and Justin’s table dimmed even further, and the chatter in the club petered out as the musicians, dressed in sharp suits thatcomplemented each other but didn’t precisely match, took their places. A tall Black man with a saxophone in hand stepped to the mic at the front of the stage and introduced himself as James Jefferson, and then introduced the bassist, the pianist, the trumpeter, and the drummer.
A moment later they started playing, and Ivy pivoted slightly in her chair so she could watch them at work. But she could feel Justin’s eyes on her yet again. Watching her, noticing her. She kept her eyes straight ahead, trying to focus on the music and the talent in front of her. But even as she listened, letting the warm, lively music wash over her, she couldn’t stop thinking about the man across the table from her—and what his hands could do.
ChapterFourteen
Justin hadn’t been sure how to answer when Ivy had asked if he liked jazz. He’d never heard it played live, and mostly he associated it with the kind of pretentious people who wouldn’t drink a glass of wine unless they could swirl it around the glass and sniff it first, then talk about how it tasted like pencil shavings and tobacco.
After thirty minutes of listening to James Jefferson play in a darkened room three feet away from Ivy Page, however, Justin decided he liked jazz just fine. When she shifted a little in her seat and her leg touched his under the table, and she left it there, her calf pressing against his, warmth from her skin seeping into his, he decided he liked jazz a lot. And when the band finished their set and Ivy turned to him, eyes bright and lips full in the candlelight, and thanked him for bringing her here, he decided he loved jazz.
The streetlights seemed especially glaring after the club’s intimate glow, the honking cars and trundling buses even louder than usual after the smooth, smoky music and quiet tinkling of cutlery on plates. Unable to bear the bright lights and loud noises of the subway again, and eager to get back into the bubblethat had formed around them in the club, the cocoon of quiet conversation and long looks and soft touches, Justin threw out a hand and hailed an oncoming yellow taxi.Just like they do in the movies, he thought vaguely. He’d have to tell Alice about it tomorrow.
He held the door open for Ivy and she scooted in, but when he climbed in after her he found that she hadn’t scooted all the way over. She’d stayed in the middle of the backseat so that his thigh pressed up against hers, her soft coat spilling over his leg once he’d pulled the door shut behind him. For one insane moment, he wanted to kiss her right there. Dive his hand into her hair and take her mouth like she’d taken his this morning, slide his other hand inside that coat and resume his exploration of her shoulders, her collarbone, and what lay under her snug black dress.
Then he remembered that the driver probably didn’t need his shift interrupted by a stranger’s horniness, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. He could wait. He’d waited all day, and for quite a while before that. He could wait until they got back to the hotel.
He told himself that several times as the cab lurched through heavy traffic on its way uptown, every sudden stop causing Ivy’s thigh to rub against his, every corner pressing her hip into the side of his body. When they passed 70th Street, Ivy looked up at him and said, “Almost there now,” in what to the driver would have sounded like a blandly reassuring tone. The heat in her eyes was unmistakable, though, and Justin’s pulse kicked as she placed her hand on his knee and squeezed lightly. His cock twitched in his jeans. If this was what it was like when she touched his knee through a pair of pants, what the hell would it be like when her hands were back on his bare skin?
