Chapter 8: Cracks in the Snow
875 Words
Daniel POV
She even is wilting before my very eyes.
Snow is clinging to her head, and it exists as black curls on her garment. Her eyes aren’t angry. That’s the worst part. They are distant--because when I cannot get her, she is already somewhere.
I tell her, more slowly, Elena. “Listen to me.”
Her arms are crossed, like she is hugging herself. “I am.”
“I didn’t plan this,” I say. “The offer. The timing. Any of it.”
“I know.” Her voice does not change but her jaw pulls in. You are not inclined to figure out any thing that is going to cost you.
That strikes better than a blow at the field.
I shake my head. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” she asks quietly. “You get to want everything. I just get to adjust.”
I am not moving and the drip of cold splashes through my sneakers. “I thought—you’d come with me.”
She took a little gasping laugh. “Of course you did.”
Well, I say--after graduation, I say. I am not going away to-morrow. We have time.”
“Time for what?” she asks. “For me to keep waiting?”
I take a step toward her. “I love you.”
Then she looks at me, she really looks at me, she appears to be feeling around after something familiar. You prefer the version of me, which occupies your life.
“That’s not—”
I gave up ballet, she say, she broke in on me. I gave up late nights, competitions, a scholarship which I never even opened. I convinced myself that it was temporary. That love was worth it.”
My stomach twists. The scholarship has never been mentioned by you.
“You never asked.”
The silence is prolonged and interrupted by faint hiss of the falling snow.
I have already told her all that, I tell her faintly and hardly vocal, I say. And now you are telling me to earn more.
I open my mouth. Close it.
This is the first time I am not sure of what to say that will not aggravate it.
“I need space,” she says. Not dramatic. Final.
She passes in her ice-crunching boots and goes off down the road to the car-park.
“Elena,” I call after her. “Please.”
She pauses--but she does not start.
In the absence of the things I loved I do not know who I am, she says. And I do not know where to see her in case I should still prefer you.
Then she keeps walking.
I stay there long after she has left, and the snow seals over her foot-tracks as though there never had been any.
and somehow I never felt like it before since the start of this entire affair I question whether success can make the rest of it cost me everything.
------------------------------
Chapter 9: Christmas Break Silence.
Elena POV
The Christmas vacation is a long empty room.
No bells. No rushing between classes. No reasons to run into him at the hallway by mistake. J.T.—Too much too much of J.T.—and the silent well-being of the house settling down around me.
Daniel writes after the initial night.
Can we talk?
I don’t answer.
My ballet shoes are there standing by the door. My reason is that I move them to vacuum, and then replace them to their exact position. And like in case I switch them, something irreparable may occur.
Maya comes with coffee and constrained cheerfulness. She doesn’t push. She simply sits on the floor with me with the back to the bed scrolling through her phone.
He is going crazy, she says casually. “In a sad, not-fun way.”
It is not my business, I say, and gaze at the flickering Christmas lights over my window.
She nods. “Good. Just checking.”
The days crawl. I get up, open my phone, do not respond. I revisit the studio, the stage, his voice telling me that we will see how it can be makes it sound like a plan.
On the third day, I am able to open the ballet website. Auditions. Programs. Deadlines already passed.
Too late.
Too late.
Too late.
On the eve of Christmas, snow falls once again.
The type that is intentional.
I am on the floor wrapping presents and the doorbell goes off.
Once.
Twice.
My heart stutters.
Mom looks up from the kitchen. “I’ll get it.”
No, I say hastily and stand up. “I will.”
The passage is longer than it is most of times. I reach out to the door my hands shake.
I open it.
Daniel is standing on the porch with red cheeks caused by the cold, whereas his breath is visible and he is holding something behind his back.
I say nothing and neither did he.
“Elena,” he says finally. “Please.”
A snow is falling down the middle of us, silent and unstoppable.
And I know—whatever he has come to say is going to be something.
- Writer
