I saw her from the corner of my eye: sad, but cagey.
Neither of us said anything for a while.
The sea was calm, with faint traces of foam on the waves that lazily lapped the shore. I tried to swallow, to get rid of my nerves, and waited for her to say something as I watched the tiny bubbles pop on the sand.
She exhaled, then started to speak. “When I saw Giulio for the first time, I thought he was the handsomest guy in the world. Right away, I was hooked. I couldn’t even look at him without holding my breath. We got to know each other from one class to the next. He was funny, he was nice, a sweetheart—he had everything. When the first summer semester was over, we organized a farewell dinner. Giulio and I sat together, we got to talking, and the hours just flew by. I don’tknow how, but we ended up in the bedroom at his dorm, and… Well, you know the rest.”
“You went to bed with him,” I said, just to make sure, but from the way she’d smiled subtly as she remembered him, there wasn’t really any doubt.
“Yeah, we went to bed together. And after that night, we went out a few more times, and I guess you could say I got hung up on him. He stayed longer to do another class. I wound up falling in love with him. I even told him so. And then he started getting weird. He avoided me and spent all his time with another one of the students, a guy. I didn’t get it, and I ended up confronting him. We argued, and he confessed that he was pretty sure he liked men. I got angry, of course. Furious. But then, how could I blame him for being human? After the auditions, he left, and we never saw each other again.”
“You didn’t try to stay in touch with him?”
“He did, but I never responded. I was still stupidly in love with him, and I thought I needed to try and forget.”
“And after?” I asked.
“I learned I was pregnant when I was eleven weeks along. I’d always had very irregular periods, so the fact that I’d missed a couple hadn’t really worried me. My mother lost her mind when she found out. She moved heaven and earth to try to make me get an abortion, and she nearly threw me out of the house when I told her I wanted to keep you.”
I felt a sharp jab in my chest. “She wanted you to get an abortion…”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because…” she said, closing her eyes. She was hesitating. Doubtful. Trying to think of something. I wasn’t sure what I felt just then, but I knew I was ready to take whatever came out of her mouth.
“Tell me the truth, please,” I asked her.
“Because I wanted to stop dancing. I couldn’t take it anymore. The pressure she put on me, her demands, her expectations… It was impossible to live up to them. You were my way out.”
That hurt. Bad.
I cleared my throat to try to relieve the tension. “I remember you always dancing. Rehearsing with her at the school.”
“She forced me to as soon as I’d recovered from giving birth. It was that or move out with you, and… I was just eighteen years old, I didn’t know how I’d take care of us.” She wiped away the tears that were dripping down her face.
“It never passed through your head to get in touch with Giulio and ask him for help?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was a scared little girl and I had lied about him from the beginning. I made the wrong decisions, and there was no undoing them, and it was all just too much for me. So I put my head down once more and did everything my mother asked of me. That meant going back to the ballet, back to auditions, just trying to get through each day as best I could.”
“But…”
“You should understand that better than anyone. Why did you come back from London? You had made it. You’d escaped,” she said with a tormented expression.
My breathing kept speeding up as we locked eyes. She was scared, terribly scared—and I was, too. Scared of everything that brought us together, everything we were feeling. That fear was a bond stronger than blood and would tie us together forever.
Because we were two versions of the same story.
Trained animals scared of their master’s hand, even if they were stronger than that master would ever be. Obedient, waiting to bepetted. Afraid of punishment. Thankful every time they were tossed a rotten morsel of love, because the pain of hunger was so much worse than the pain of eating those poisoned crumbs.
My rancor, my rage evaporated in waves, and all that was left was my vulnerability, and I saw that she was as fragile as I was. I looked out at the sea. Then I asked something. I don’t know where it came from.
“Did you like dancing?”
