Thick Love (Thin Love, #2)(20)
It’s the freest I ever am.
But even that freedom and the effort I put into teaching dance was secondary to the fear I felt that Sunday. Fifteen pre-teens danced around me, their faces red with exertion, their budding bodies drenched with sweat as they worked through every step, each lunge and chasse I’d choreographed for the Christmas recital. I barely noticed the mess ups or the missed timed steps.
“Oke, cheris, one more time. From the five count please. And… senk, sis, sèt, uit…”
It was a distraction. Through the small window to my right, behind the eager parents watching how well their daughters performed, stood Ransom. Leann was talking to him, pointing this way and that, and I said a small prayer wishing for her to keep him busy so I could make an escape at the end of rehearsal without being seen. A quick glance at the clock above the window and I took a breath, tried to get my heart back into a normal rhythm.
When one o’clock hit, I’d have to step out the room and walk past him. Then I’d see if he had figured out that I was the woman who had danced for him. It was my body that he had touched.
“Ms. Aly, are you watching?”
I wasn’t, but I didn’t let that stop me from making a few suggestions to the girls before I let them go.
One o’clock.
Some of the students straggled, most immediately dug in their bags for their phones or shared gossip about whatever the hell it is that twelve year olds gossip about, until I shooed them out the door. One quick glance into the hallway and I spotted Leann in her office, blissfully free of Ransom’s company. I thought of sneaking past her, begging off anything else she needed from me, and maybe heading to my job at the diner an hour early just to avoid Ransom. I’d even managed to slip past Leann’s open door before she called for me.
“Aly, hang on a second please.”
Leanna wasn’t quite forty yet and still looked young enough that she’d be flattered if anyone tried guessing her age. She kept herself in shape and didn’t do that weird thing that I’d noticed some of our dance moms did—forget that radio station tees, mom jeans and Crocs looked good on no one. She didn’t sport yoga pants all the time or run around as though it was perfectly fine to forego any thought about how she dressed. Her hair was still thick, dark with chunky highlights of red around the crown of her head and the ends of her hair.
As I slipped into her office, she moved a file folder from the chair, offering me a seat. Then she theatrically slumped behind the white washed desk. “It’s only September and I’m already so over this recital.”
“Usually the way it goes.” I didn’t ask what she needed with me. Leann ran hurried and ragged most of the time and in the time I’d worked for her I’d learned that there was a method in all her frazzled madness. She’d take a minute to collect her thoughts, then spew out a list of things she hoped I’d help her with.
Finally, she exhaled, stretched her shoulders and then smiled at me. “Okay, you know Beth is taking college classes this semester and her mom is spending a good bit of the month in California for some work thing.”
“Beth mentioned that, yeah.”
“So,” Leann started, that friendly smile stretching, “I was hoping you could help me with the costume fittings.”
“I don’t know anything about taking measurements.”
I could keep myself washed, fed, and dressed, but I knew nothing about taking measurements or sewing or anything remotely artsy or craftsy. Leann waved off my excuse like my lack was nothing to worry about.
“We have that seamstress we used last year coming in to do the measurements. I just need you to call all the students and schedule their first fittings. I have a list somewhere…” Her desk was cluttered with an array of files, loose papers and costume magazines that always had my neat-freak tendencies twitching every time I walked past her office. “Here,” she said, pulling out a small stack of stapled papers. Immediately three folders fell off her desk, upturning loose pages and documents all over her beige carpet. “Shit.”
“I got it,” I said, going to the floor to gather the scattered paper. “Me zanmi, Leann, you have to let me get this office straightened out.”
“Oh, honey, that’s pointless. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“It’s nothing.” I had the papers neatly stacked and into the folders before Leann could leave her seat. “I kinda love doing that stuff.” Her exaggerated eye roll had me laughing despite myself. “What? Does that make me a weirdo or something?”
“No, but I do question your social life. You’re not even twenty yet, Aly. You shouldn’t be spending your weekends at that damn diner or, that other place.” I didn’t miss the frown Leann gave me when she alluded to Summerland’s, but I didn’t bother making excuses. My boss hated me helping Misty out. “And you damn sure shouldn’t be spending your time organizing my office, or for God’s sake that tiny apartment of yours.”
“I like things neat. Some stuff you just can’t shake.”
I didn’t miss Leann’s frown or how her eyes took on that soft, pitying stare. I hated when she did that. She knew a little about how I grew up in my father’s strict home. She knew about the ridiculous curfews, and how I, being the only female, was expected to do all the cooking and cleaning. How no matter what I did, how hard I worked to make him happy, I always disappointed my father and when I did, I was punished. He blamed me for everything—the breakdown of his contracting career because he had to take care of me, how he was forced into drinking two six packs a night because I stressed him out. How it disgusted him that by age sixteen I still hadn’t landed a husband. At sixteen! Most of all, he was upset with me because he thought I’d killed my mother the day I was born.