1
Maybe Antoine was right and it was my fault. It had been weeks since things had started going badly for us. Too many arguments, and always about the same thing: my attitude. I wasn’t the same person I used to be. I was cold and uninterested. Absent.
And it was true, in a way. The past six months had been torture for me. The operation, recovery in the hospital. Returning home and the weeks of rehab. My grandmother’s constant reproaches, how easily she made me feel bad for everything that’s wrong with the world. Probably the polar ice caps are melting because just once, I did something without her permission.
Just because I wanted to.
Once, and the punishment was brutal.
Deep down, I think she was happy about the accident. The satisfaction on her face every time she saidI told you soorIf only you’d listened to mewas a cruel pleasure she liked to wallow in. Her eyes shoutedYou deserve itevery time they caught me in their stare, and then, with a condescending smile, she would forgive me under the sole condition that I sacrifice every second of my existence to her.
No one should be responsible for making another person’s dreamscome true. It’s impossible to live up to the expectations of a person who has failed to achieve her own dreams and desires.
But the hardest thing for me to bear was the uncertainty.
The wait was consuming me inside and I was incapable of thinking of anything else.
Maybe Antoine was right and I was pushing him away just as I was everyone else. Still, I would have appreciated a little empathy from him. A little more patience and compassion. I had known Antoine since I was fifteen, when his family moved from Paris to Madrid for work, and he began to take classes at the Mariemma Royal Conservatory of Dance, where I was studying, and I knew he was emotionally stunted. Not just that: he didn’t even know how inept he was at trying to put himself in someone else’s shoes.
Despite that, I’d learned to love him along with his defects. As a friend at first, and something more a few years later, when we both entered the National Dance Company as soloists. At twenty-two years old, the strongest relationship I’d had, apart from with ballet, was with Antoine. That was the only unconditional love I’d allowed myself.
For that reason, I was scared of losing him. I needed his affection. And I was scared, closing my eyes and holding my breath when he curled up tight to me beneath the sheets and, still sleepy, slid his hand between my legs. He pressed his hips into my buttocks, and I could feel he was aroused. I took a breath and let it out slowly, concentrating on his fingers, how they caressed me, the warmth of his chest against my back. The way he pulled me tight.
I opened my eyes and looked at the hands of the clock.
His finger tried to work its way inside of me. I flinched and grimaced. I tried to relax, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t feel anything at all.
“I’ve got to go,” I whispered.
Face beside my neck, Antoine grunted, nibbled my shoulder.
“Come on. Look what you’re doing to me.”
He pushed into me again. I was starting to get agitated.
“I’ll be late.”
“Just a quickie,” he said, using his French accent like an aphrodisiac.
But it got on my nerves.
I jerked away and got up, glancing at the clock again and feeling anxiety in my stomach. I grabbed my dress off the chair. Still in bed, Antoine huffed and lay on his back, staring at me.
“Are you for real? Dammit, Maya. We never do it anymore, and I–I have my needs.”
I pulled my dress over my head and glared back at him. “Never? What was yesterday, then?”
“Getting it on in a bathroom with our clothes on doesn’t count.”
I rolled my eyes and sat down to tie my shoes, looking for a moment at the scars on my leg. Their color was lightening, and the swelling was starting to go down. Or at least that’s what I thought. I didn’t dare to actually touch them. I stood and grabbed my cell phone off the table.
“Are you seriously leaving?” he asked, as if it weren’t obvious from the fact that I was heading for the door.
“I can’t stay any longer, OK? I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in less than an hour.”
He jumped up, looking surprised, and I couldn’t help but eye up his nude body. A whole life devoted to ballet had transformed him into a perfectly proportioned, walking sculpture. And yet, I felt nothing.
“It’s today?” he asked, and I nodded, feeling a hint of panic at what I knew he’d say next. “Shit, I’m sorry! I completely forgot.”
