Heather watched the dots dance on her screen for a moment before disappearing. After a long pause, a reply appeared.
Carly, 9:05AM: Please come home soon.
Heather replied with a hasty thumbs-up emoji, then dialed Marcus’s number, pacing anxiously as she waited for him to pick up.
“What did Peter say to you?” he asked, without preamble, when he finally did. He sounded hoarse and congested, like he’d been crying.
“What did he say to you?” she asked, even more worried than she’d been before he answered.
“Exactly what he said to Adrian and Robbie and Ricky and Kimiko and you, I suspect. The policy is clear, and there are no exceptions. I’m out.”
Heather hung her head and sank onto the couch. She’d known it was coming, but that didn’t make it easier to hear.
“I’m so sorry, Marcus. If there’s anything I can do ...”
He gave a humorless laugh. “I think you’ve done enough.”
“What is that supposed to mean? I didn’t film that video, and it wasn’t my idea to go up into the mountains with someone who turns out to be a French travel influencer.”
Marcus sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair. And it’s not like you can do anything to change Peter’s mind anyway, since you’re out of a job, too.”
Heather paused, then willed herself to speak. “I...um... I’m not.”
“Not what?”
“He didn’t terminate my contract. I’m staying on and dancing the rest of the run, as planned.”
There was a long silence. “I don’t understand. You know how strongly Peter feels about Pas de Don’t.”
“I know, but when I talked to him today, he said because ticket sales are so strong, he had no choice but to let me stay on. He said the board would have his head if he made me leave.” Peter had sounded furious but resigned. In the moment, Heather hadn’t had time to feel anything but relief. Now, though, guilt stole over her, creeping hot and prickly up her shoulders.
“So the policy is ironclad unless ticket sales are good enough?”
“I...no, but—” Heather started, taken aback.
“Unless the person who broke it is a star?”
“No, it’s not like that, it’s just—”
“I guess rules can be bent when it’s The Heather Hays and you don’t want the board on your back, huh? But they’re not worth bending for someone who’s half washed up.” Marcus’s voice was heated and bitter, like she’d never heard it before. It made her stomach churn.
“Marcus, do youwantme to lose my job?” she snapped.
“Of course not,” he shot back. “All I’m asking for is a little consistency. Either sexual harassment matters, or it doesn’t. Either you lose your job for breaking Peter’s rule, or you don’t. I didn’t realize there was a carve-out for people who bring in enough money for the company. I thought you and I were taking the same risk, but I was wrong.”
Heather sat frozen on the couch. How could he not understand the risks she’d taken? How much she’d gambled by leaving Jack and coming here in the first place, and how she’d nearly thrown it all away by getting involved with him? What was she supposed to do, insist Peter fire her?
“That’s not fair,” she said, hearing the tremble in her own voice and hating it. “This is why I came here. To work. I came here to show the world I exist without Jack, that I’m my own person who deserves to be here. I didn’t come here to mess around and lose my job and go back to New York humiliated. I came here to dance. So I’m going to dance.”
For a long moment, all Heather could hear was the steady pounding of her own heart, and the sound of Marcus’s heavy, angry breathing on the other end. Silently, she begged him to say something.Say you understand. Say you see why this matters to me. Say you love me and you want me to succeed.
But when he finally spoke, his voice was cold and distant. The voice of a stranger.
“Good luck with the rest of the run, then.”
Chapter 18
Heather had known all kinds of exhaustion in her decade as a professional dancer, and in her time as a ballet student before that. Once, when she was in the corps, she had danced forty-one of the company’s forty-seven shows ofThe Nutcracker, showing up to the theater almost every day of the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve to climb into her snowflake and flower costumes and dance on that famed Lincoln Center stage. There had been a few nights when she’d had to sit down on the dusty third floor landing of the fifth-floor walkup she shared with Carly, because her quads and calves couldn’t carry her all the way to the top without a rest in the middle. After the last show, she had slept for almost three days straight, waking up only to go to the bathroom, and when she finally got out of bed it was to find two of her toenails were about to fall off.
