“Regretting that now,” she mumbles, but I hear the commitment in her voice. In the few months that I’ve gotten to know Gen—the real Gen, not the caricature everyone draws up in their mind—I’ve realized that she loves her people. And at first, that pissed me off because I could only see her unwavering devotion to Will, but now I see it with my sister. I see it with Jean. I think the people around her don’t even give her the chance to give it, never give her a minute to warm up and reveal what’s reallybehind the mask. She shows up, and she listens, and she understands, more than anyone I’ve ever met.
“So add that.” My hand shadows hers, barely doing anything as she adds the butter, adds the sugar, and turns on the mixer. I tell her that our goal is to get it light and fluffy, and she nods in earnest, concentrating on the bowl. When she stops it, the mixture actually perfect, I say so, and her shoulder ticks up as she confidently hums her acknowledgement.
We make our batter like this: I direct her, nudge her, and she takes it all in stride, trusting me, trusting the process, her satisfaction steadily growing until she pours the batter into the pans.
“Thatis going to be delicious.”
Pride beams on her face, and I fucking love it. It’s just a cake, but seeing her own her wins, watching her know that she killed whatever she was doing—it’s like a drug. It’s so different from the way I perceived her before; before, I thought she was hanging on, trailing, shadowinghim. But I wasn’t paying attention. Because if I had, I would’ve seen this all along.
Wrapping my arms low around her hips, I coast my hands down the small of her back and let them rest on the perfect swell of ass wrapped in the tight spandex of her leggings.
“No doubt about it,” I tell her just before my lips claim hers. Hints of chocolate from the batter she couldn’t stop herself from tasting swirl with the cool mintiness of her as I explore her mouth in a slow, simmering kiss. She pulls my bottom lip through her teeth, rakes her nails against my scalp, and my hold on her tightens, one hand still gripping her ass as the other melds her waist.
Our kiss suddenly breaks, and when I open my eyes, hers are slightly panicked.
“What about frosting?”
The ferocity of my feelings for Gen slam into me, and I can’t breathe for a second. She’s stolen it, it feels like, and I need her here so she can supply the air, so I can keep breathing. Being with her is like getting into bed after a long day and knowing you can just escape into the solace that is sleep—except this is aperson. Apersonhas me feeling this whole, this safe, this content, this relieved. Like she is here, and it’s going to be okay. And the truth of it—I feel it in my bones, looking at her right now.
I know I love her. I know that now, I need her.
She tilts her head, the sun filtering through the window reflecting on the high points of her face, her brow impatiently ticking up. I love when she does that.
She bites her lip. I love when she does that even more.
“You bought box cake, but no icing?” I tease her.
“I wanted to challenge myself alittle.”
Yeah. I love that, too.
20
Gen
I feel the urge to rub my nose as I steady my arms, trying to get through my eleventh fouetté, my jaw ticking with the intensity needed to hold my smile. I practice what one of the older girls taught me my freshman year—putting my tongue on the roof of my mouth. My muscles feel weaker than usual and my arms twitch with every rotation.
I know the tired ache in my core is because of the time I’ve been spending with Grant. Ever since he touched me in the woods, told me he’s been wanting for months, we’ve barely left each other's side. I can practically hear my mother chastising me in my head:Genevieve what has gotten into you, you can’t get through fifteen simple turns. She’d say that, knowing these turns are not simple in the least.
When I move to pointe on my sixteenth turn, my leg wobbles and I lose my balance, dropping my other leg to stabilize myself.
“Geneviève! Twenty single foot relevés!” My body's muscle memory takes over, having followed this exact instruction after not landing my fouettés since I was barelya pre-teen. Sweat beads at my temples after getting halfway through the set and exhaustion causes my eyes to lose focus of the movements my legs are making. It takes me a second to realize the thick french accent the command belonged to wasn’t my instructor’s.
There, in all her glory and much to my instructors dismay, is my mother, a scowl firmly plastered across her face. The faux tan on her skin stands out against the stark white of her pantsuit. Arms crossed, her eyes glare at me like lasers as she observes my technique. A few of the dancers who were stretching on the floor mats by the wall while I worked through my solo now scatter away, like mice who just spotted a predator.
I finish my final relevé and grab the towel off the bar a few feet behind me, wiping it across my face. I catch the grimace my mom makes in the reflection of the mirror and my hand clenches around the damp towel.
“What brings you here, maman?” I ask, my voice coming out more exhausted than I intended.
“Well, you don’t answer a single call in weeks. I was hoping to see that you were busy with dance, but that seems to not be the case.” My mother’s heels clack against the wood floors of the studio, the sound causing me to grind my teeth. She squints her eyes as she runs her gaze across my body, clearly dissatisfied.
“What have you been eating?” Her voice isn’t mean but medical, devoid of all feeling. As if she’s trying to comprehend why I look so out of shape, an insane thought to have seeing as I’m a high performing athlete—a professional ballerina, for god’s sake. I inhale a small breath through my nose, knowing the only thing worse to my mother than gaining a pound or not hitting a perfect sequence of turns, is losing control.
“You're distracted. What’s distracting you? What could be more important?” Her thick accent causes the hushed words to come out in a frenzied angry huff that only I’d be able to decipher. I bite my inner cheek doing my best not to scream, my hand squeezing the bar so hard my palm burns. Of course, she’d come on the first off day I’d had in months. Of course, she’d miss every day prior to this one where I hit my fouetté sequence without missing a beat.
As if on cue there’s a single knock on the dance room door and a voice that instantly blankets the tension in the room.
“Bad time?” Grant’s wearing a sheepish grin, sporting his training attire, clearly having driven here from practice. I can practically feel the steam coming off my mother, the sight of a nameless boy far worse than anything else she could’ve imagined.
