I admit… I have trouble picturing that. “I thought you told me she was a top?”
“Was.” Jordan chuckles. “But that whole time you were busy with Rochelle and Quin I was training her. I told you that.”
“It was only a couple weeks,” I say, doubting.
“She liked it, Bric. Well,” he says, taking a moment to think. “She liked it with me, anyway. Maybe she just doesn’t like you?”
I’m done here. “I gotta go,” I say, standing. “I got things to do today.” I take out my wallet, throw down a fifty, and say, “Order whatever you want. Breakfast’s on me,” as I turn away.
“So we’re still on for tonight?” Jordan calls after me.
But I don’t even know what he’s talking about, so I don’t bother answering. I have nothing planned for today, let alone tonight. But I don’t want to have a conversation about how a girl I don’t even care about prefers Jordan over me.
I go up to the second-floor elevator, take it back up to my apartment, undress, and crawl back into bed.
There is nothingness… and then there is emptiness.
I’m still trying to figure out the difference.
Chapter Two - Nadia
My feet are killing me and my nipples are sore from the clamps Jordan’s friend used on me last night. My ass still stings when I sit down from the slaps, and my thighs tremble even though all I’m doing is walking around the classroom, pointing out imperfections in form.
“Point your toes,” I say to the room filled with little girls. They are at the barre, left feet turned out, ankles already hurting as they stretch their right arms over their right legs propped up on the barre. “Keep your body straight, Kallie. And hold for one. Two. Three. Don’t bend your knees, Jessica. And other side.”
There are seven nine-and ten-year-old wannabe ballerinas in my morning class. They wear pink tights, light-blue leotards, and pink slippers. They all have their hair pulled tightly back into buns, strained, serious expressions on their faces, and their young muscles tremble as we progress through warm-up.
By the time they are nine, they know most of them will fail. They watch each other with an even more critical eye than I do. They assess their peers, then self-assess, then reassess.
Maybe one of these seven girls will make it. Maybe.
I’m new here at the Mountain Ballet. They barely know me. But none of them are new. All of them have been in the Mountain Ballet School since they were five years old. All of them understand the rigors of ballet training. All of them dream, and stress, and hope, and pray that one day they will be like me.
The rest of the class proceeds as usual. This is a special holiday camp for the most promising level-three students. And they will work hard. It’s my job to push them just enough to make them rethink their choices. So I do.
These seven will not quit until some outside force requires them to. They move away. Their parents get divorced and can no longer afford us. They get sick or injured.
“Excuse me? Nadia?” Chris, the teenager who runs the reception desk, whisper-yells over the classical music. “You have a phone call. He says it’s urgent.”
I sigh, looking at the clock. We have five minutes left. I know it’s Jordan on the phone. He does this on purpose to make me leave my class and obey him. I want to punch him in the face.
But I also want to keep seeing him. “Can you cool them down, Chris? Thank you.” I don’t wait for her answer. She, too, has dreams of being me. I entered the Mountain Ballet as a demi-soloist, but she is only junior company. I outrank her. She will not complain.
“This is Nadia,” I say into the phone, smiling at parents in the lobby waiting to pick up their children.
“Nadia,” Jordan says. I take a seat at the reception desk so the parents can no longer see me.
“Yes, sir,” I say demurely. It makes me sick to call him that. But I can’t stop myself. This… relationship we have has progressed to a point I don’t completely understand. I’m compelled to do it.
“I’m in the parking lot. Join me immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
He hangs up. I stand, smile, straighten my black ballet skirt, and walk around the front of the desk. More smiling for the parents, then through the back door and out into the parking lot. Jordan’s black BMW is idling. He’s checking his phone. I run to the car, cringing at the thought of my black slippers getting wet from the snow, and get in.
“I had breakfast with Mr. Bricman this morning.”
Oh, shit.
“He says you didn’t enjoy yourself.”
I say nothing. It wasn’t a question.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” Jordan asks.
“Yes, sir.”
He rubs a hand across his jaw. He hasn’t shaved today and the stubble turns me on. “Well, Elias Bricman didn’t feel you did. I had high hopes for you, Nadia. And when we started this, I made it very clear what kind of woman we were interested in. I don’t want you, Nadia. I want you and him. Do you understand?”
I have to stop myself from swallowing hard. He’s going to do something about this later. Something that terrifies and excites me at the same time. “Yes, sir.”
“So we’re going to try again tonight. And if you want to be around tomorrow, you had better make him happy. Now get out.”
I open the door and stand up.
“And Nadia,” he says, leaning over into the passenger seat so he can see my face. “Do not disappoint me.”
“Yes, sir.”
He reaches for the inside handle of the door and yanks it closed, ripping it from my hand.
He doesn’t screech the tires when he pulls away, but I can tell he’s angry with me.
I turn, my feet already soaked from the snow, my slippers already ruined, and wrap my arms around my body, hugging myself as I go back inside.
This hour’s classes are over, Chris is back at the desk, and the lobby is filled with the pre-ballet students in the half-day camp.
My students are at lunch. Our classes won’t begin again for another hour. So I go to the break room and sit with my new friends, pretend to eat the low-calorie lunch I brought from home, just like everyone else, and lose myself in my thoughts.
I don’t understand how I got here. All the parts that involve here are included. I don’t understand how I got this position, or the apartment I’m living in, or the man who just left.
I don’t understand any of it, but I can map it out quite clearly.
Matthew, one of the guys at my table, says something that makes everyone laugh, so I laugh with them before returning to my thoughts.
I am not a shoddy dancer. I am not undisciplined. I am not lazy, and I do not take anything for granted. I worked hard to get where I am. I worked hard to pay for ballet classes back in New York. I deserve this. This, meaning my career. I earned it.
But the offer to dance with Mountain Ballet was unexpected. I was rising in the corps back in New York. I would’ve made demi-soloist eventually if I had stayed. But it would’ve meant at least three more years of corps work. And three more years is a long time in the dance world. I would be twenty-six.
I’d rather be twenty-three. So I came. I was offered the position pretty much out of nowhere. And two weeks later I was living in a company apartment in Denver.
It was a whirlwind dream come true.
But there has to be a string. Everything requires payment. And even though Jordan has nothing to do with the ballet—hates it, in fact. Hasn’t even ever seen The Nutcracker, for fuck’s sake—he’s the condition. Fate or luck or whatever you want to call it always has a price and I think Jordan Wells is my price.
That’s why I put up with his bullshit. I just know—feel it in my heart—that if I walk away from him luck will walk away from me.
It’s stupid. I realize this. But I still believe it. So I stay.
But he’s dangerous, this man. He has rules, and expectations, and he insists on being in control.
Control is something I like as well. I’m in control of everything in my life if you take Jordan out of the equation. It’s why I told him I wasn’t submissive. I’m not. That wasn’t a lie. But I was hoping to dissuade him after his offer.