hard as he finally let me up for air. His thumb pulled on my swollen lower lip. “Just let me do something nice for you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You could just say that without getting me all turned on.”
He threw his head back, his chuckle deep and amused. “Someone put you on this planet just to stroke my ego.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Just your ego?”
“Thankfully, no.”
We shared a knowing, heated smile that was interrupted by a couple who were trying to get past us to their seats.
Twenty minutes later, the vibrations from the orchestra below tickled my feet. Goose bumps prickled my skin and I sat tense in my seat, fingers gripped to the arms of the theater chair as I strained to take in everything that happened on stage.
Female dancers in traditional costume with stiff tutus and brocaded, sparkling corsets danced across the stage and into the arms of male dancers who had bodies like Roman sculptures. The dancers’ bodies were machines, honed and muscular, sleek and powerful, and they moved with such grace and elegance, emoting so much with a mere flourish of their arms.
Memories assailed me. Ballet classes. Standing at the barre, learning how to turn my feet out. How to plié. My mom, Marissa, who was now just a shadowy impression in my memories, gushing over me after my first recital.
The longing when I’d see advertisements for ballet or a little girl in a tutu going to class. The crushing envy I felt when I heard Keelie Meyers in seventh grade telling our whole class she was attending a ballet school in Paris during the summer.
All of it had symbolized a life I’d wanted.
A life that should have been mine.
A life I hadn’t known how to let go of until Lorna McKenna hauled me into her world.
Yet, it wasn’t until Jamie that I finally felt I’d found home. That I finally gave up longing for Margot Higgins and grew content with being Jane Doe. I could watch the stunning dancers tell a beautiful story, and it didn’t hurt anymore.
I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt Jamie’s hand on my cheek. I turned to him in the theater’s dark as he caught one on his thumb, his frown severe.
Grabbing his wrist, I pressed a kiss to his knuckles and smiled. “They’re good tears,” I whispered. I leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to his mouth. “Thank you.”
Assured I was happy, he settled in his seat.
I did the same, drawn back to the stage, where I fell in love all over again with ballet. It swept me up in the music and the feeling and the utter beauty of how many ways humans were capable of telling stories that enraptured.
Jamie didn’t say a word as we left the theater ninety minutes later. His hand clenched mine tight, and I realized he was waiting for me to say something. Traffic sounded, laughter, music, lights flared from headlights, from streetlights, from neon signs hanging on buildings as we walked through the evening world that was Brand Boulevard.
“Were you bored?” I asked.
“I thought I would be. But I wasn’t. It was beautiful.”
I loved that he could admit that. It’s his artist’s soul, I thought. “Maybe we can go again sometime?”
“If it’ll make you happy, we’ll go anytime you want.”
Hugging into him, I inhaled a deep breath and let it go. “It made me forget everything for a little while.”
“Yeah, me too.”
The mood between us was somewhat intense as Jamie stopped at a taco place and got us a quick bite to eat. We ate as we walked back to his house, a silent agreement between us that we weren’t ready for the night to be over. Every inch of me vibrated as we strolled through Glendale. Now and then, he’d squeeze my hand, as if reassuring himself I was there. Or perhaps reassuring me that he felt what I felt.
Something had cemented deep inside me as soon as I stood outside the Alex and realized what Jamie had done for me.
I knew I loved him.
But now I knew that he was so deeply, intrinsically a part of me, to lose him would be like someone tearing me in half. For someone who’d always been slightly detached, even from the people I cared about, this should have terrified me.
Instead, I was electrified. And desperately wanting.
I was done waiting to be with him.
The house was empty when Jamie let us in. He called out anyway, double-checking, but there was no