I smile. “I haven’t been on a stage for a very long time,” I reply. “I gave up on that dream a long time ago.”
“Tell me,” he says.
“What?”
“Everything. I want to know absolutely everything.”
I laugh, and he smiles at me, like I’m completely fascinating.
We arrive at the restaurant and we order drinks. When I ask for a Diet Coke, he gets the same. I wonder if I’d wanted a glass of wine, if he would have joined me in that too.
Jack asks for cans, and when he hands me mine, he asks whether we can continue our walk while we drink.
“I like that idea,” I say. I don’t know if looking directly at him would be too much. But it’s not just his face. He’s tall and broad, but the way he moves is so graceful and confident. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he told me he had some dance training.
He opens his can of Coke and lifts it in a toast. “To unexpected evenings,” he says.
I raise my can and laugh. “Unexpected evenings.”
“Tell me about dancing,” he says as we start to walk farther into the park. Any nervousness I felt at first has gone. Even though he’s a stranger, somehow, I know I’m safe with Jack. “We can start there.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Do I get to ask questions?”
“I’ll answer any question you ever ask of me.”
“You’ll give me the truth?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.
“The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Deal?”
And somehow, I know he will.
“I wanted to dance my entire life. My parents wouldn’t let me go away to ballet school. They had a family business so couldn’t move the entire family. And they didn’t want their daughter away at school. We were—wearea close family, and they wanted to keep me close.”
He nods, his eyes darting from me to the path ahead.
“They said that if I finished high school, I could go study wherever I wanted. My plan was to attend a school in New York. I took classes in… Colorado.” He doesn’t need to know exactly where I’m from. “I worked on my technique. I studied the masters. From Fonteyn to Misty Copeland and everyone in between. I wasn’t allowed to come to New York for ballet school until I turned eighteen, but I wasn’t going to let that stop my training. My ballet teacher understood my passion and let me use her studio—even when she was teaching other students. I practiced constantly, like I was three months out from auditioning for the part of my career.”
“You were dedicated.”
“Ballet was my entire world.”
We come to a natural stop and he turns to face me. It’s like he knows what I’m going to say next is going to take all my energy, and I can’t walk and speak at the same time.
“Then my mother died.”
He closes his eyes, like he feels my pain for a split second. He reaches out and rests his hand on my shoulder.
“There was all the grief of that—and I could have danced my way out of my pain, I think. But my brother and my father didn’t have the outlet that I had. They couldn’t handle their grief.”
“How did she die?”
It’s not a question many people ask me. Most of Star Falls knows the story of how Maureen Wilde got mowed down by a drunk driver who, despite being caught on a local camera, was never found. If people don’t know the story, most of them don’task. It’s oddly a relief that Jack feels so comfortable asking me. And it makes talking about it a little less devastating.
“Drunk driver,” I say.
“Fuck.” He winces.
“My mom was the brains of our business. Not that my dad and brother aren’t smart. They totally are. But my mom was sharp and organized and just took care of all the stuff that made the business run. I knew that without her, our entire family would go under. And we needed the business to keep us afloat or we’d all drown.”
