#scenebreak
I killed time until my official meeting with Katy by exploring the town. Didn’t take long. One exit off the highway direct to Main Street: three bars, two churches, one motel, a high school the size of Austin High’s locker room, a drug store with—I swear to God—a soda fountain, and there I was at the other end of town. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that small, but the streets were empty except for a cop car making its rounds and a couple of folks outside the motel. Most of the houses were already dark.
Ten o’clock found me back in the studio as appointed. “Hey, Katy.”
Katy stretched at the barre to cool, downtempo, Middle Eastern music. “What happened to Tango?” She watched my approach in the mirror.
“You name people. We don’t get to name you.” I lifted a foot onto the barre.
“I don’t know.” Lifting her leg, she pulled it up until her foot was almost directly above her head. “I kind of liked Tango.”
Wow, flexible. Distracting thoughts plagued me. With a dramatic sweep of one arm, I indicated the entire dance floor. “As you are a tango dancer,” I said in my best goofy, Disney channel sit-com voice, “it was weirdly appropriate, was it not?”
After a final tug, she released her leg and bent to touch her nose to her knee. More distracting thoughts. “Okay, just say it,” she demanded.
I refused to say what I was thinking as I watched her stretch. “Huh?”
She rose and looked at me without the mirror. “I could see what you were thinking the entire time you were ‘practicing’.” Air quotes and all.
“And what exactly was I thinking?”
She grabbed her towel from the barre. “No bullshit, Foxtrot. Just say it. You think we suck.”
“Not at all.” Of course I did.
“No.” The snap of her towel in my chest startled me. “If we’re going to work together, do not lie to me. Do not try to make things nice because you’re only here to flirt with me.”
“Flirt with you?”
The balled up towel hit me in the face. It smelled nice. Her perfume was spicy.
“You told Boyfriend you’re gay?”
Yeah, that was bound to raise suspicions. “I wanted him to be comfortable about our professional relationship.”
“He doesn’t even know we’re working together.” She punched my shoulder. “It’s a secret, remember?”
I smacked myself on the forehead. “D’oh.”
“The Simpsons? Really? What are you, like, forty?” She unzipped her hoodie.
“I blame my father.” Hoping for purple. Hoping for purple.
She wore perfectly respectable layered sports bras. Nothing girls didn’t wear all the time in public and they didn’t reveal a thing. . . but she pulled the hoodie off one shoulder and then the other. . . slowly. It dribbled down her arms and dropped into her hands. As she draped it over a chair, she stared at me with a smolder in her eyes and a pout on her lips. . . and broke down laughing. “You are so-o-o easy, Foxtrot.”
Holy crap! She got me! “Dude! That is so not fair!”
“We have work to do. I’m paying you, remember?” She nabbed her towel from me and tossed it on a table. “Seriously. How bad are we?”
I stepped away for some breathing room after the last hormonal onslaught. “Okay. . . you know how girls ask guys if they look fat in a dress and the guy gets in trouble no matter what he says because guys are always wrong?”
She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. Very Mexican, but I chose to save up my freebie jokes.
“Is this one of those times?” I asked.
She raised an eyebrow.
Okay. She’d asked for honesty. Time to find out if she’d meant it. “They suck.”
Wait for it.
Wait for it.
“Are we salvageable?” Her tone was calm and professional. Girl knew how to take a hit. Sexy.
“You’re better than you think you are,” I told her. “And I’m not saying that just to get into your pants. K-pop has potential, but you baby him. Juicy could be good if she stopped trying to be sexy.” The list went on for several minutes. If she could take a hit, I didn’t need to pull my punches.
When I was through, she processed for a couple of seconds. “Just?”
Try as I might, I had no idea what she meant. “Heh?”
“You said you weren’t being nice just to get into my pants.” She leaned against the barre. “So you are flirting with me?”
Was this a boxing match? Should I duck or jab?
She broke out laughing again but this time it was with me, not at me, so one small step for man, yada, yada. “All right, Foxtrot. I told you to be honest and you were. I gotta give you that one.” She picked up her iPhone. “You were pretty spot on too. I hate to admit it, but you were.”
She played the song.
“So. . . now that we’re all business,” I asked as I joined her, “should I quit with the witty banter?”
She wore a funny smile. “The witty banter’s the best part.” She elbowed me. “You need to loosen up.”
It was meant as a joke, and I don’t think she realized how accurate she was. “You’re right. I do.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, apparently noticing the change in my tone.
“If I say something real do you promise not to use it against me?”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
A guy can hope. “Your friends need a lot of work, but they have one thing I’ve never had in all my years of dancing.”
“What’s that?”
“Friends. There are people I worked with for years. I thought they were my friends. They’re gone.” I didn’t want to go into details right then, but, well, it was true. My cell had stopped ringing after Monika dumped me, when it was obvious I was off the circuit.
Katy stared at me, apparently fighting between a snarky quip and whatever the opposite of that is. The opposite won. She scrolled her iPhone to the second chorus of the song. “We have the first minute, forty seconds choreographed.”
I moved out to the middle of the floor, stretching my arms above my head. “I started the new material there.”
She looked up quickly. “You have material for us?”
“Wasn’t I supposed to?”
“Didn’t say that.” She paused the music. “Do I need to play the song so you can review?”
“I got it.”
“You already knew the song?”
“Never heard it before tonight. It’s stellar. I like it.”
“How much material you have?”
“About two minutes. I need to work out the counting on the bridge at the end.”
Again with the eyebrow. “Only two minutes?”
Totally lost. “Oh, sorry. I thought that would be enough for tonight.”
“For the song you heard for the first time. . .” She glanced at her cell. “Two hours ago?”
Did I do good or bad? “I put some sequences together while I was ‘practicing’.” Air quotes back at her.
She heaved a huge sigh. “Okay, as much as I want to keep playing totally cool about this. . . you just came up with this tonight while we were practicing and you’re not going to act all superior about it?”
I nodded and shrugged at the same time to demonstrate my confusion.
She rolled her shoulders and hit the middle of the floor. “This humble side is freaking me out, Foxtrot.”
I waited for her to elaborate.
“Okay, two full minutes of choreo would take me, and most other people, at least a couple of days.” First of all, really? Secondly, was there something new in her expression? Attraction? “The fact that you aren’t all full of yourself about it is. . .”
“Sexy?” Blame my defense mechanisms.
A little scoffing laugh jumped out of her mouth. “And you’re obnoxious again.” She stretched her right arm across her chest, definitely returning to work mode. “I hope the choreo’s good.”
r /> For a second there, though. . . it almost seemed like maybe I had a shot.
“Oh. It is. It is.” I faced the mirrors and shook out my legs. “When the chorus starts, I see you and Juicy front and center for fouettés.”
“Cool. I’ve seen them, but never done one.” Her honesty was hot. “How do you do it?” How awesome. She was training with me to make sure no one else saw her limitations.
I showed her the fouetté. Hard to describe. Think repeating roundhouse kicks, I guess. With pointed toes. Wikipedia has a GIF.
She applauded sarcastically, which is kind of a trick. “You’re a lovely dancer, Foxtrot. I’m all impressed and shit. But how. do. I. do. it?”
Moving slower, I spoke as I moved. “Prep. Spin. Kick. Close. Repeat.”
She shook her head. “See, that’s why you suck as a teacher.” Huh. The disarming honesty wasn’t as sexy when it drove on the other side of the road. “Mirrors.” She turned me to face them. “Not everyone learns just by watching what you do. This move is going to kick Juicy’s ass.” She positioned me slightly in front and off to one side. “Okay, show me the prep. And hold it.”
She could do it in less than five minutes but spent another twenty figuring out how to break it down and explain it. Teaching. is. really. tedious.
“Bored already?” she asked.
“I. . .” I wasn’t supposed to lie. “I just don’t understand why it takes people so long to get this shit.”
It earned me one of those hand-on-her-thrust-out-hip things I liked so much.
“You said to be honest,” I reminded her.
“Do you know Argentine tango?”
“No.”
Her arched eyebrows told me she must have seen her own “cheerleader” expression all over my face. “Something. . . wrong. . . with Argentine?”
“No. It’s just a different world, and I’ve never had time for it.” Thank God I recover quickly.
“Mmhm.” She sauntered to the sound system and changed the music. She also dimmed the lights. Although it was something Argentine tango teachers liked to do, under the circumstances, I really wanted to read more into it than relax-the-student mood lighting.
Argentine is a specific kind of tango based on rhythm and movement that doesn’t really have patterns and the music doesn’t exactly have a beat. I mean. . . is that even a dance?
“I know you ballroom types look down on tah-ngo.” Oops. And now she was pronouncing it Spanish-like. “Can you follow, or do you just lead?”
The question surprised me. “I can follow. Kinda.”
“It’s easier for me to teach you if I lead.”
“Yeah. Sure. Stellar.” I sucked at following but was hardly going to cop to it. Dancing tah-ngo meant I’d be able to touch her. A lot. “All right.” I pulled her into dance position and gave her my best dramatic tango face.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m leading, remember?” She changed our frame so I was following. She shook me gently with her arms. “Relax.” She shook me again. “Really relax.”
“I am relaxed.”
She thought a moment. “You’re a boxer, right?” She broke away from me and adjusted her posture, shifted forward to the balls of her feet, brought her hands up and danced from foot to foot in a bad imitation of a boxer. It did very cool things to her chest. “Give me boxer posture.”
It would bring me closer to her bouncing breasts, so yeah, whatever. I switched gears and hunched. She stopped shifting weight and took me into dance position. “Much better.” She directed my face to look the same direction as hers. It was the exact opposite of what I’d been taught. “Let me shift your weight.”
She’d touched my chin. I could feel the spot. . .
We shifted from foot to foot for a long time. “Close your eyes.” We shifted some more. She smelled like cinnamon. “Let me move you.”
Deep breath. I forced myself to relax. Dad used to do stuff like this to get me out of ballroom mode, too, so it wasn’t completely foreign. I focused on my breathing and the smell of cinnamon. Her hand shifted on my back, drawing me closer. I looked into her face.
“Close your eyes.”
But she’d been staring at me. Good sign!
My heart beat faster, and, behind my closed eyelids, little spots of light flared. Wow. Even considering two years of hot sex with Monika, I’d never felt so. . . alive.
She started with walking.
No. Really. Walking.
To the beat.
Yeah. My thought too, but it I didn’t care about learning Argentine tango. I cared about letting Tango teach me and dancing with her, one hand on my back, our hands curled together in a way that actually felt intimate. The clasp was almost worthless for connection, it seemed, but it felt. . . tender.
Wow, she smelled nice.
Wow, she felt nice.
Wow, I wished she was wearing the purple bra.
Damn, I stepped on her foot.
She was patient and, after half an hour or so, I could follow some of the basic stuff and she stopped laughing at my tendency to turn everything into ballroom tango, which is totally different.
Every few minutes, she’d make me let go and shadow box to reboot the boxer mode. She was an amazing teacher. Damp with sweat, we moved across the floor and the music played gentle and sexy.
“Ballroom tango is for the audience, for the people watching,” she whispered. “It’s flashy and exaggerated and the couple doesn’t even look at each other.” The music slowed and we followed the rhythm. “Tah-ngo is for the couple. It doesn’t care who’s watching.”
She held me so close her breath was warm on my cheek. “It’s more intimate.” Our cheeks touched. Err. . . I had to move my hips away a bit. I pretended it was for balance.
She led me through some swivels and pulled me forward so I was leaning above her. It was creepy to give up control. . . but sexy to let her call the shots. “It’s about communication and connection. . . not showing off.”
She drew me closer. We stared into each other’s eyes.
My heart beat like a motherfucker.
I wanted to kiss her. . . but she had a boyfriend. She’d made that clear—
She kissed me! Everything about this girl was a role reversal.
Okay, enough with the following.
I grabbed her, dipped her and planted a hot one on her meant to shake her to her toes. She responded by wrapping her arms around my neck and holding on tight. She tasted like raspberries. Bent backward, she weighed nothing in my arms, which meant she had wicked control of her center. It gave me ideas. Über sexy.
Loud, slow applause startled me so much I almost let go, certain Boyfriend was about to coldcock me. Not him, but the girl at the edge of the floor didn’t need to touch me to lay me flat.
Brain. too. juiced. to. think. good.
Perfect. moment. ruined.
“Monika?”
“Bravo, Ethan.” Clack, clack, clack, clack went her five inch spikes. “Not even a week here and you’ve already moved on, I see.” She stopped a few feet away and crossed her arms. “Congratulations.”
As always, she was stunning: blonde hair pulled up in a ballroom bun, bright red, full lips and cleavage for days and days. I actually felt guilty at being caught with Katy. But damn it, Monika had dumped me.
Katy appeared guilty for her own reasons, but she clearly recognized my former partner and girlfriend and chose to stay out of it.
“What are you doing here?” I glanced at a clock. “At eleven o’clock?”
Monika seemed surprised. “This is when you and I usually practiced,” she said. “I asked a colorful local where I might find the only studio in this one-horse town.” She held out her hands in a ta-daa pose. “Where else would you be?” Pulling a bag off her shoulder, she moved closer to a table near the dance floor. She dropped a folder onto it. “I got us a sponsor.”
Wait. . . what? She acted as if we’d just seen each other at the studio yeste
rday, as if this appearance out of the blue was the most normal thing on the planet.
“Eight months in New York. A time share, personal chef, tutors and all the. . . coaching you can stand.”
She stood near the table with her feet wide enough to pull her short skirt tight across her thighs. The way she emphasized the word “coaching” with her feet spread like that assured me she meant the word to be both literal and euphemistic.
“Last time we took second. . . this time we win.” She glanced around the studio as if seeing it for the first time, even though I knew she’d been scrutinizing it from the moment she walked through the door. “Holy pathetic shit, Batman.” Always the lady. “Is it just me or did Liberace puke up 1978 in this funeral home?” One perfectly manicured hand slipped to her mouth. “I’m sorry, senorita. Was that rude?”
Deep breath.
You know what? She might have had me.
A full sponsorship to train in New York? Hell yeah.
A real shot at the full championship? Utterly.
All the rowdy sex I could stand? Duh.
But she slammed Katy’s studio. Not cool. She slammed Katy. Even less cool.
Katy herself? Über cool. She turned off the music. “You took second at Blackpool? Wow.”
Monika smiled.
Katy leaned against the barre. “Isn’t there a saying? Second place winner is just first place loser.”
Ouch.
Monika managed to hold the smile, and I only noticed the pause because I’d known her so long. “And what have you ever won?” She looked around at the shabby studio before returning her attention to Katy and raising an eyebrow.
Katy’s gaze shifted between Monika and me. Okay, I’m not psychic, but this is exactly what ran through her mind: I’m smarter than her. I could take her if I wanted to. But she’s just not worth the trouble. She lifted both hands in the air in a gesture of submission. “Feel free to use my studio to proposition Mr. Fox, Ms. Sterling. I have no claim to him.” She turned away from us and started stuffing stuff into her duffle bag.
Monika smirked and slunk her way to me. “Foxxy?” God, I hated that nickname. “If you get packed tonight, we can be in New York tomorrow and we can pick up right where we left off.” She stopped a foot away and placed a hand on my chest. “Before your dad ruined everything for us.”
In the mirror, Katy glanced at me.
The word epiphany is a cliché. I won’t say angels started singing or a holy light shone down from heaven. . . but standing in that crappy dance studio where I’d had more fun in one day, one lousy day than in all the years I’d trained for competition, I knew just how shallow I’d been.
How could I blame Dad for what’d happened to us?
Sure the studio was dingy, but they had fun here.
That one moment Katy had looked into my eyes before she kissed me meant more to me than the entire two years with Monika.
Retreating from Monika’s hand, I softly declared, “I am a douchebag.”
In the mirror, Katy smirked. She did it so much better than Monika.
“Well, yes you are, sweetie,” Monika said, “but I’d still like to win Blackpool with you.” Her hands slipped behind her back, which was her way to feign little girl innocence.
Why did she want me, specifically? It was eight months to Blackpool, and no matter how many dancers in movies and TV shows can pull off a World Championship in one motivational montage, it takes a helluva lot longer in real life. Even if she found another dude at our level without a partner, dance competitions are like sex: you never get it right the first time.
“Do it.”
We both turned to Katy.
“Do it,” she repeated and slung her duffle bag onto one shoulder.
“You want me to go?” I asked, more than a bit surprised.
Katy strode across the floor with the same determination she’d had the first time we met. . . was it just yesterday? “Don’t be an ass, Foxtrot.” Her nickname was much better than Monika’s. “You will never have another opportunity like this.”
She stopped beside Monika, facing me as if they fought on the same team. “Once you turn eighteen, it’s a completely different playing field and you start from scratch. Turn this down and you will live the rest of your life with regret.” She shoved a hundred dollar bill into my hand. “Don’t spend the next fifty years playing the ‘what if’ game.”
Across the floor and away from me. “Thanks for the choreography. Make sure the door catches on the way out.”
“Katy.”
“I have a boyfriend.” She waved a hand over her head once. “Good luck in Blackpool.”
The door creaked open then slammed shut.
To her credit, Monika didn’t say something snotty. “Apparently, you have good taste in girls, Foxxy. She seems intelligent.” She turned to me and rubbed her hands together. “Alone at last.”
I shook my head. I’d known her for nine years. After one month away and a single day in this podunk town, she’d reappeared and was suddenly someone I never really knew.
She wasn’t there because she loved me. She was there because she wanted to win.
Was she even jealous at seeing me with another girl?
What the hell had I been thinking all that time?
My hesitations must have been obvious. “Foxxy, I know we had our problems.”
“You dumped me because I couldn’t afford coaching.”
She opened her hands and smiled. “And now you can. Problem solved.” She rolled closer with that pouty look she knew got me going. “Foxxy. . . I said bad things. You said bad things.” Her hands found my chest again. They crept up to my shoulders. “The past is dead. It’s time to move forward.” She leaned in, wearing the perfume that gave me instant wood. “Don’t you want to win?” She brushed my nose with the tip of hers. “It’s a chance for your dad to make up for everything he did to you. To us.”
“What does my dad have to do with it?” I moved away from the powerful spell of her scent.
She rubbed her hands together again. “If he hadn’t lost his business, we wouldn’t have lost each other.” She shrugged. “Your dad screwed up and killed a man, Ethan. Why should you have to pay the price for his mistake?”
All the blood rushed to my face. I had to work to catch my breath. For the second time that night, I’d heard my own words out of her mouth. Hearing them from her showed me how evil and self-centered they sounded.
She must have realized she was losing me. “All right, Ethan. If I can’t seduce you, listen to what the girl said. You give up this opportunity you will regret it the rest of your life.” She waved at the folder on the table. “The contract’s there. Read it. I assume you still know my number?” She clacked her way off the dance floor. “Think about it and call me.”
Apparently, it was my day to watch hot girls walk away from me.
I looked at the money in my hand and thought about Katy. . . and about tango. That short time dancing with her had felt more real, more intimate than nine years of dancing and two years of sex with Monika. How was that even possible?
The competitions. The titles. I’d worked so damn hard for them. It was always work.
I thought about K-pop helping Taco. About Tango teaching me. . . the faces of the crew as they helped each other get a new step.
There was this feeling I’d get standing in front of a crowd of thousands, when they handed me a trophy. It was all adrenaline and excitement, and for a few minutes I was the king of the fucking world. And championship sex was the best.
But the next day, it was back to work because there was always another competition. The crowd went home. My friends only called me when they wanted to show me off to their new dance partner. “This is my friend Ethan Fox,” they’d say. “He’s a champion.” It usually got them laid. I never knew why.
I wandered off the dance floor, staring into every nook and cranny of that old place, hoping there was some secret there, some way t
o explain why all of a sudden all those years of hard work and success seemed like pointless bullshit. I sat cross-legged on that ugly, ugly carpet and stared at the mirrors and the lights and the old-fashioned parquet floor.
I shook my head. Tiny, tiny movements.
That old studio was home to memories that would last forever. Three generations, for Christ’s sake. And the crew, they helped each other. Their passion was for each other, not just a bunch of stupid trophies.
I had to swallow hard. I stared at Katy’s money. Her studio needed it, but she gave it to me so she could do her job better, so she could help her friends. It meant she was coaching the crew for free.
Monika would never do that.
Six months ago? Me neither. I rose to my feet and spotted the folder Monika had left. Someone was willing to give us shit-tons of money so they could say they helped us win. Because somehow, in some way or other, it would get them laid.
Did I want to win?
Fuck yeah, I wanted to win. I’d spent every waking moment for nine years building toward Blackpool, so fuck yeah, I wanted to win.
But. . . But it just didn’t matter anymore. How could it? Watching someone die, seeing the look on my dad’s face. . . it’d changed everything.
Four
David threw a kitchen chair across his living room. Fox had kissed her! That son of a bitch kissed her! The coffee table was over David’s head when he stopped himself. If he threw it through the window, someone would notice. He sucked in ragged air.
The apartment was a wreck. Everything glowed with a red aura. He didn’t remember throwing anything but the kitchen chair. Damn it. He set the table down. How had it all been destroyed? He hugged himself to keep from breaking something else. He’d need hours to put everything back in place. The disorder crawled across his skin like a cockroach.
He yanked a cell from his pocket. It was one of twenty disposables he’d bought in Austin. Texting was hard because his hands shook so badly. He needed to make Katy like him, to agree to meet before things with Fox went too far. Did you like the rose? he typed. You’re so pretty like a rose.
The naked chick wasn’t helping. At all. He needed something more serious.