The Saint (Notorious 3)

“My hands,” Sophie muttered.

“Five fingers,” I said, manipulating the girl’s hand into something more elegant than a claw. I extended the girl’s arm. “Finish the movement, all the way down your arm into your hand and finally your fingers. Without your fingers, you’re leaving the movement incomplete. You’re chopping it off at the elbow. Got it?”

Sophie nodded. “I’m trying,” she said truthfully, without whining, which was a serious improvement. “I really am.”

“I know you are,” I said with a slight smile, playing the benevolent teacher to the hilt. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sophie walked away. Her back was straight and strong, but ballet was a cruel master and the strength it required to be a professional was not found only in the muscles.

“She got a chance?” Phillip asked from behind me, making me jump in surprise.

“Maybe,” I sighed, “hard to say just yet.” I turned, resigned to this moment. I’d been dodging his calls all week and I couldn’t avoid him forever. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know,” he said and handed me a decaf latte and a grease-stained bag.

“Frayley’s Beignets?” I couldn’t stop my voice from squealing. Thirty-seven years old and I squealed for beignets.

“Salted,” Phillip said with a face. “Just how you like them.”

I popped a hot grease ball into my mouth and it exploded with salt and sweetness. Why wasn’t the whole world eating beignets this way?

“So, why don’t you tell me why you’re avoiding me?”

“I haven’t—”

“Cut the crap, Zoe. What’s going on?”

Phillip crossed his arms over a thin cashmere sweater that did fabulous things for both his eyes and his chest.

“Not much,” I hedged, and he snorted.

“Fine,” I said, “I went to the ballet with Carter O’Neill.”

“I saw the picture,” he said, his eyebrows raised. “You went to the ballet wearing a tablecloth from an Italian restaurant.”

“It was all I had,” I said, regretting my decision not to care what I looked like Wednesday night. Especially since the photograph was all over the paper.

“How was the ballet?” he asked.

“Gorgeous,” I answered truthfully. But the rest of the night, sitting beside Carter, awkwardly trying not to hit each other with elbows and knees, was terrible.

And after the photo and all that nonsense, there’d been a strange moment when, against all my better judgment, I’d been about to ask him to go for coffee. It had seemed as if he’d been about to do the same, and we’d laughed like teenagers.

But then, that cold mask had settled over his face, and Carter had said good-night and left.

And I’d watched him go, feeling foolish.

“So, you’re dating Carter O’Neill?” Phillip asked.

“We’re just friends.”

“Bullshit, Zoe. There’s a photographer outside,” he said, pointing toward the door. “I don’t think photographers are following O’Neill’s other friends.”

I put another beignet in my mouth. That photographer had been following me since Tuesday morning, and I didn’t understand why.

“And some reporter called me,” Phillip said. “Wanted to know all about you and the mayor pro tem.”

I twisted to look at him. Carter had been right. “What did you say?”

“That it was none of his business,” he said with a shrug. “If my best friend has found love with a suit that doesn’t mind her dressing in tablecloths, more power to her.”

I laughed, but it was greasy with guilt. I stepped away across the small dark studio toward the makeshift stage, next to the wall of cracked and broken mirrors. I sat my pregnant self down next to the stereo and put the brown bag in my lap where the beignets nestled together like eggs in a nest.

Unable to pretend to my best friend that all was right in my world, I let the whole story spill out.

“So you and Carter aren’t real?” he asked when I was done, and I shook my head. “It’s all a press stunt?”

“I’m calling it public service,” I said.

“Oh, honey,” Phillip said, putting his arm around me and hugging me tight. “I hated feeling left in the dark, and I’m pretty pissed you’ve kept it a secret, but I was beginning to be happy with the idea that you’d found someone.”

I pulled away from Phillip, looking up into his warm brown eyes. I remembered when I used to love him, before I’d understood that he was gay. We’d taken dance classes together for years, and I often wondered if I’d have stuck with dance for as long as I had if it hadn’t been for him.

“I’m lonely,” I said, cupping his cheek. “But I’m not desperate to bring a man into my life.”

“What about sex?”

“Sex?” I asked. “Isn’t that a chair from IKEA?”

“That bad, huh?”

“You have no idea,” I groaned, slumping against him.

“It’s only been five months,” Phillip laughed, rubbing my belly.

Oops, I thought. I really needed to be more careful if I didn’t want to end up explaining the father of my baby. Phillip wasn’t dumb—he’d catch on sooner or later.