Breaking Skin Read Free Page A

home to meet their mothers. It’s a double standard, but a reality just the same.
    I scrub my hands over my face, feeling so unlike myself because I’m sore, not from dancing, but from being with Cole. Pulling my hair back into a knot, I trudge into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face.
    When I look up at my reflection in the mirror, I spot a note taped there.
     

     
    Unexpected emotion clogs my throat. I pull the note off the mirror and trace Cole’s bold handwriting with the tip of my finger.
    When I brought him home last night, there was no question of exchanging numbers or seeing each other again. That wasn’t going to happen. It was meant to be one night, and I can’t describe how I knew that. I just did. It was there in his cool blue eyes, and one night was fine with me.
    That’s what I wanted too. To leave myself behind, give in to the lack of inhibition too much alcohol provided, just be with him without any expectation of more.
    At least, I thought that’s what I wanted. But looking at Cole’s note, I sense a tug at my heart, a heaviness in my chest I didn’t expect, and it feels like longing but it also feels like loss.
    The loss of something I didn’t know I wanted, but understand I’ll never have.

 
    Almost two years later . . .
     
    M y phone vibrates from inside my bag. The staccato buzzing noise, like a manic bee, tempts me each time I pass the metal folding chair where my bag rests. But I won’t give in.
    If I can ignore the pain in my knee, screaming like the lead singer of a heavy metal band, a phone can barely make a dent in my determination to learn this masochistic choreography, meant to push a dancer to her limits. At least, this dancer is being pushed. But it’s not my part I’m learning. It’s the principal role, and each leap I attempt illustrates why I’m not a principal dancer but still a member of the corps.
    “Stop thinking so hard, Nikki. Feel it.”
    I hear my former dance teacher’s voice in my head. Miss Emily believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. She helped me see dance as a form of expression, a therapeutic release, a way to find joy in my unjoyful life.
    With her as a teacher, dancing felt like flying. I could soar above turmoil and disappear into the dance for just a little while. Miss Emily taught me that each muscle has a purpose and each pose can be a work of art. Because of her, I fell in love with dance. Because of me pushing myself too hard, I’m losing that love, and I don’t know how to get it back.
    I try the leap once more, doing it for Miss Emily this time as I struggle to find the joy and not let the pain overshadow it, but my knee gives out. It buckles again and my ass hits the floor with a bone-jarring thud.
    “Dammit,” I mutter as an exasperated breath leaves my lungs.
    Tchaikovskycontinues to play despite the abrupt end of my performance, but it’s not loud enough to drown out the buzzing of my phone.
    As I continue to mutter miserably to myself, I inch my behind across the floor and toward my bag. I don’t want to put pressure on my knee yet.
    “What?” I grumble when I see it’s my best friend Deedee calling.
    “Excuse me, princess.” The sarcasm dripping off her voice practically flows through the phone.
    “Sorry. I’m cranky.”
    “You’re not still at the studio, are you? Rehearsal ended hours ago. You said you’d meet us at Boomers.”
    “I hate Boomers.”
    “We all hate Boomers. But the drinks are cheap and the guys are hot. Hence, we hang at Boomers.”
    “Yeah. Hence.” After a moment, I ask, “Is Tag there?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is Meredith there too?” I hold my breath.
    After too long a stretch, Deedee says, “Yes.”
    I picture them together and my shoulders slump.
    “They’re talking to each other at the bar. You should probably get down here if you want to salvage things with him.”
    I laugh bitterly. “How romantic.”
    “Romance isn’t always flowers and hearts, Nikki. Sometimes you have