He laughs, sharp and hollow. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
And then, I feel the sharpest, fieriest pain that I’ve ever felt in my life. So much so that I finally stumble back and my body goes down.
I finally fall on my knees, my vision going blurry for a few seconds.
Because Ledger has kicked my ankle. Myrightankle, which has weakened from years of playing soccer. And since he’s played with me, used my weakness against me on the field due to our rivalry, he knows about that.
Like I know that his left knee bothers him more than the right because of an old injury he had back in our junior year.
“Watch your back, Jackson,” he says, moving away from the car and laying a last punch on my jaw that makes me go completely down on my back. “You don’t want to mess with people who know your weaknesses. Years of soccer should’ve taught you that.”
He leaves then.
While I stay on the ground, my entire body on fire, chuckling at the pain, watching the night sky.
In a white dressand a flimsy green cardigan, she stares at something.
Through the window of her darkened studio.
She doesn’t know that there’s a Mustang parked a block over and I’m sitting in it. And that I’m watching her. I’ve been watching ever since she scared the fuck out of me when she appeared out of nowhere, walking down the street.
In fact, I don’t think she knows anything that’s happening around her.
And with every second that passes, my anger mounts.
What the fuck is she thinking?
What the fuck is she doing here in the middle of the night?
Where in the fuckingfuckare her brothers now? Especially now when they know that she needs to take better care of herself. Especially now that they know how I fucked her over.
Again.
Only this time I’ve done it worse.
And so this is pissing me the fuck off.
That she’s out here alone.
But more than that, it’s making my chest tight, my lungs contract as I watch her stand there, looking at her dream through the glass.
I’ve been watching it too.
That dream.
For the past week, I’ve either been working on my Chevy at Auto Alpha for long hours — Pete thinks I’ve gone crazy but he doesn’t interfere because he knows what I did — or I’ve been driving here to this street, watching her dark studio.
Just so I can imagine her, dancing, spinning on her toes inside that building.
Like a fairy.
Like she was born to do.
She moves then.
She walks away from her studio and I can’t get air inside my body. I choke on the pain as she stops a few paces down. In front of another ballet studio: Baby Blues.
A sister branch of Blue Madonna, where they teach ballet to little girls.
