It shouldn’t have been so hard. They both knew that with the audition looming, and Sam’s wedding right on its heels, their places in one another’s lives would lose traction and wind up. That time apart would all too soon be a final goodbye. And yet Nadia held her breath as she waited for his response.
“Yeah,” he said, running his hand through his hair, before piercing her with a dark glance. “I understand.”
Then casual as you please he ambled back to his side of the car, leaving Nadia to feel horribly bereft. Even though he’d given her exactly what she wanted. What she needed. Heck, he was the one who’d relit the fire under her with all that “you don’t need your mother’s permission” nonsense!
Desire, and exhaustion, and a goodly head of inner steam giving her a second wind, Nadia jogged across the cracked pavement leading to the heavily barred door below her apartment, and jabbed the key in the rusty lock.
“Nadia.”
She turned to find him watching her over the car. His face in near darkness.
“Break a leg,” he said, his words carrying a level of intensity that made her skin tighten all over at the thought he might not be wishing it in the spirit in which it ought to have been meant.
Nevertheless she said, “Thanks, Ryder.”
Then without looking back she jogged up the skinny steps leading to her first-floor apartment, and went straight into her bedroom, and to the drawer where she kept her choreography notes.
She spent the next few hours staring at them, poring over them, tweaking them. Imagining herself going through the motions until she was sure the routine was the best thing she’d ever created. Because despite her exhaustion, her head was clear. Clear of the muddy conflicts and doubts and strangled hopes that had suffocated her efforts for as long as she could remember. And in the clarity she knew. She was ready. More ready than she’d ever been. To dance. For her. Just her.
* * *
Nadia ducked out of the train at Richmond Station.
Turning the collar of her light jacket against the shimmer of summer rain, she made her way along the platform, down the ramp and out onto the street leading to her apartment, where the malodorous scents of Laundromats, and student accommodation, and a million different kinds of international cuisine fought one another on the hot hazy air.
Adrenalin sent wings to her feet and she found herself doing her best Singing in the Rain all along the edge of the footpath, her feet feeling as if they barely touched the ground as the audition she’d just left played over and over in her head.
Not so much the moves; truth was she could barely remember a moment of the actual routine. It was the conversation afterwards that was still blowing her mind. Not only that the producers had been so lovely, so welcoming, so honestly thrilled to see her, but how they’d raved at her transformation.
Her technical perfection, they’d gushed, had been supercharged by some new raw emotion. A new-found vulnerability had added layers to her performance. A breakthrough, they’d said. Goose bumps had been mentioned. One woman claimed that with that final tool in her arsenal she was unstoppable. With that ringing in her head, who the hell cared that her stupid ex had barely looked her in the eye?
Seeing him had been less than she’d expected. Less hurtful. Less embarrassing. Maybe because she understood his part in the debacle, maybe because she’d recently begun to understand her own. Could she work with him if she got the gig? Hell, yeah. Could he work with her? That was his problem.
Needing to share this feeling before she burst, she pulled out her phone, opened her contacts list and there her thumb hovered. She wanted her friends in Vegas to know—they’d be cheering for her. Her reasons for wanting her mother to know were thorny and complicated. And yet there was only one person she truly wanted to tell, one person who would understand the layers of pride and relief and fear and excitement it had taken to dance on her own terms...
“Hey, Ginger Rogers,” a deep voice called out.
Stopping short with one foot wavering in the air, she grabbed a lamppost to steady herself and held on tight. For there was Ryder, outside her apartment, leaning against his beautiful car in a pose that was as familiar to her as the man himself.
“Gene Kelly, actually,” she said, her voice breathless, pocketing the phone with his number still on the screen.
It had been days since she’d seen him—since the driving lesson with the life lesson thrown in. It felt like weeks.
Pushing away from the shiny black hull of his car, he came to her. A tall, dark presence who somehow still made her feel so light. “What’s up?”
“You tell me. How did the audition go?”