But it was impossible. Her colleagues observed her closely, waiting to see what would happen on today’s episode of the in-house soap opera they had been watching for the past few weeks. Heather had a lot of practice concealing inner turmoil and pain for the benefit of an audience that would be disappointed by anything but outer perfection. Ballet audiences didn’t want to think about the broken toes and herniated discs that made ballet possible; they just wanted to watch their Sleeping Beauty sparkle and smile and spin across the stage. But this was different.
It felt as though her colleagueswantedto see her armor crack, wanted to watch the anguish leak out of her as Jack and Melissa laughed at an inside joke at the barre across the room. Once the ballet gossip blogs caught wind of the breakup, things got even worse: Whenever a ballet fan spotted her in the street or in the dancewear store across from the theater, she’d watch their faces light up with recognition, then dim into patronizing pity.America’s Brokenhearted Ballet Sweetheart.
By the start of August, Heather could barely sleep. She’d lie awake at night listening to the sirens and late-night roadwork outside, dreading the morning as shame and self-doubt simmered in her chest. She had spent so many years thinking of herself as Jack Andersen’s Girlfriend, the lucky woman on his arm. Now she was just...Heather.
“Mr. K never would have promoted you if you hadn’t been with me. If it weren’t for me, no one would know who the fuck you are.”
Some nights, panic clutched at her throat, and she’d imagine losing all of it. Mr. K would decide promoting her had been a mistake, and while he couldn’t demote her, he could choose to cast her in fewer and fewer dances until she got the message. Quietly, she’d slip out of the company. No Jack, no job, no working alongside her best friend.
On those nights, she clenched her jaw to hold back her tears. She’d wake up tucked in a tight ball a few fitful hours later with a pain in the side of her face, drag herself off the couch, tend to the struggling plant, and dress mindlessly for company class.
One night, she’d been lying awake on the couch, scrolling through her phone in the dark after yet another fruitless attempt at sleep, when Carly had arrived home, knocking a stack of mail off the little table in the entryway as she came through the door.
“Honey, I’m home,” she’d said to Heather in a tipsy stage whisper. “Sorry I woke you.”
Heather sighed, kicking restlessly at the blanket and sitting up. “You didn’t. How was your date?”
“He spent the first twenty minutes explaining ballet to me.” Carly rolled her eyes. “Because he watched his sister dance in a few localNutcrackers twenty years ago.”
Heather scoffed. Dating male ballet dancers was hard, but she’d learned from Carly over the years that dating male civilians wasn’t much easier. Most of them had no idea how time consuming—how all-consuming—a ballet career was. More than one guy had asked Carly what her “real” job was, and some of them were only interested in finding out just how flexible ballerinas truly were. For a while, Carly had told men she met at bars that she worked in marketing.
“And how was your evening?” Carly asked, plopping herself onto the arm of the couch.
“The same,” Heather said dully, fiddling with the blanket. The same as every other sleepless, anxious, tight-chested night since she had moved out of Jack’s apartment.
“Did you hear back from Moscow?”
Heather nodded, then shook her head glumly.
“Another no? What’s wrong with these people?”
“They don’t want me without Jack,” Heather said.
Since she had been promoted to principal, a number of companies had invited her and Jack to join them for a month or two as guestartists. But Jack had never wanted to leave New York—probably, she realized now, because it would mean leaving behind whoever he was secretly screwing—so they’d always turned the offers down. But now the fall season was approaching. Casting would go up any day now, and what if Mr. K cast her and Jack together? The idea of having to rehearseSwan LakeorFirebirdfor hours a day with the man who had dragged her heart up and down Broadway filled her with dread. Every time she tried to imagine dancing with him on stage, her Odette falling in love with his Siegfried, panic rose in her chest, threatening to flood her whole system.
So she’d reached out to a few of those companies, asking if their offers still stood. The Moscow Ballet had given her the same answer as all the other premiere companies: they were very sorry, but they weren’t interested unless Jack came with her. She’d been so thrilled to receive their invitations last year, and it was humiliating to realize that they’d never really wanted her—not enough to take her on her own merits, anyway.
“This is crazy. You’re Heather Fucking Hays, principal dancer at NYB, not some random dancer they’ve never heard of.” Carly pushed Heather’s legs off the couch and slid down to sit next to her. “Who gives a crap if Jack comes too? Surely they have some dude they can pair you with in London, and Paris, and Moscow.”
“Don’t forget Berlin.” They’d all said no. They’d all said she was nothing without Jack.“If it weren’t for me, no one would know who the fuck you are.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t try to leave. Wouldn’t I just be running away? Letting them win?”
“Listen,” Carly started. Even through the haze of a few drinks, Heather could hear she was trying to be serious. “You’re miserable. You wouldn’t berunning away; you’d be removing yourself from a shitty situation. Which, I’m sorry to say this, could soon get a lot shittier. Mr. K will probably cast Melissa with Jack, and it’ll get a ton of press attention. Do you really want to spend the fall season trapped here with those two?”
“I know,” Heather sighed, “you’re right.”
“I know,” Carly echoed, with a wiggle of her eyebrows, her voice playful again. “I’m always right.”
“Which doesn’t actually solve my problem: there’s no company that wants me. Apparently, I’m nothing without Jack.” Heather tried to match Carly’s light tone but couldn’t quite pull it off. The words felt a little too true tonight.
“That’s bullshit,” Carly said. “And I’ll tell you so as many times as I have to, until you believe it. You’re not the problem here; they are.”
Heather nodded limply, but Carly wasn’t done.
“Listen to me, because I’m always right. You’ve got it backward, and so do all these companies:Jackis nothing withoutyou. That asshole is lucky he gets to breathe the same air as you. He might be the bigger star, but that doesn’t make him better than you, okay?”
“Okay,” Heather managed.
