A Winter of Broken Promises

Chapter 4: Just This Once

Elena POV

The studio clock ticks louder than usual.

8:17 p.m.

I am at the barre, sweat slick on my back, lungs burning in that familiar, satisfying way. Coach Larkin is marching on, with shoulder lengthened. The winter performance features music that is broadcasted in speakers that are forceful and consistent.

Again.

Again.

Again.

My phone vibrates in my bag.

I don’t look at it.

Not at first.

Coach Larkin interrupts me, Eleanor, I have something to tell you; a request on my part, I want you to hear what I am asking you to do. “Arms.”

I lift them, adjust the line. She nods and moves on.

The phone vibrates again.

I know who it is. I know what he’ll say. Just checking. Where are you? I thought you’d be done by now.

I complete the circle, and drive away, moaning. At a point, the screen is lit up when I have finally put my hand into my bag.

Daniel: You almost done?

I wastes time which I am not supposed to scan through the message.

Footsteps, breathing and the light steps of the pointe shoes crashing on the floor made me active in the studio. Maya looks across at me and eyebrows me.

I type back.

Me: Still rehearsing.

Three dots. Then:

Daniel: I had felt we should have spent a little time together this evening.

I glance at the clock again.

8:19.

The same, coach Larkin calls.

A hundred days are again broken down to ten minutes. Then fifteen. At the end of the last run my muscles are shaking.

“Good,” Coach Larkin says. “Pack up.”

Relief gushes in the room.

Once more my telephone calls and I grab my bag.

Daniel: It’s okay if you can’t.

So is the word, little and sensible.

I picture him waiting. I suppose what he will say to me in case I say no, not with an angry face, but with a disappointed one. And as I passed the decisions on his part.

I even do not want to think much when I type.

Me: I can come by for a bit.

Maya looks directly at my eyes when I am wearing my jacket. “You leaving already?”

Tonight only, I say hastily. “I’ll stay late tomorrow.”

She shrugs. At least not too much, just as long as you do not make it a habit.

“I won’t.”

It is colder out there than it used to be yesterday. My feet are stamping on the snow and I am walking faster then normal. My image in the smoked up windows, damp hair, and red cheeked and the adrenaline-filled eye.

Daniel’s car idles at the curb.

It is you, he says when I enter.

Once I say to myself, trying to fasten my seatbelt.

He is not boastful and pleased. “Of course.”

We don’t go far. Just his place. Just an hour. on the couch where we all were sitting too thick and all that music was on.

Whenever my phone is informing me about something, stretch, ice, review choreography, I just swipe it away without reading or viewing the information.

This makes him take my hand afterwards when he picks me up to the dorm before the snowfall intensifies.

“Thanks for coming,” he says.

I smile. “It’s not a big deal.”

And it feels true.

I give it the push and say to myself that I have not lost anything.

I just adjusted.