uncles, aunts, and cousins.”
“And your sister?” she asks quietly. “What happened after that recital?”
I smile. “She was offered a position with a really prestigious dance company. It was amazing, actually, that she could achieve all of her goals. And she did it thinking she was on her own, without her family’s support.”
“She didn’t leave, did she?” Quinn’s voice turns sorrowful. “No, she couldn’t have. I’ve seen her in Soph’s videos.”
“No, she didn’t go anywhere. She was offered the position, but she didn’t take it.”
Quinn throws herself back with an almost physical ‘are you fucking kidding me?’ that makes me laugh.
“She wanted to be acknowledged,” I explain. “To be told she was a talented dancer. That, in her mind, was the real trophy. But her heart is here, so she accepted a position teaching with Soph. She trains with us at the gym most days of the week, but she doesn’t kill herself over it anymore, since she teaches full-time at the Ellie Solomon Academy. In fact, they’re working on a recital right now. Something about swans and princes. Fucked if I know.”
“You’re being facetious,” she grumbles. “Your ass knows about the swans, Jamie Kincaid.”
Laughing, I take a right turn, and head toward the complete opposite side of town to where I grew up. It’s not about a rebellion, or wanting to be away from my family. The ‘complete opposite side of town’ is still literally only ten minutes from them.
“So they’re doing their own Swan Lake, with the baby ballerinas making up most of the cast,” I continue. “But Soph and Bean are dancing too.”
“It’s going to be beautiful,” Quinn sighs, from dramatic to swooning. “Sophia and Lucy are just…” She melts back into the seat. “Wow. Separately, they’re amazing. But together, they have this powerful chemistry onstage. They’re suited to dance side by side, neither of them hogging the spotlight, but sharing it equally, and being lit up by stage lights. It’s just… wow.”
“Um… should I be worried if you and Bean ask for girls’ night sleepovers, or…?”
She scoffs. “I’m not ashamed of my crush. I can appreciate a sexy lady body just as much as the next person, and when that body can dance the way Lucy does…” She turns to me and grins. “You like the chin thing, I like the dance thing. In reality, we’re both disposable.”
I snort and finally turn into my driveway. I live on the outer edge of town, not so far from the hospital. The houses over here are old, but there was once money in the area, which means they were built to last.
“This house was built more than eighty years ago,” I tell her, “but despite its age, it’s still in really good shape. When I began shopping around for somewhere to live, and happened across this place practically buried behind overgrown trees and shrubs, it took only a weekend for me and my cousins to clear it out.”
“Only a weekend?” She sits forward and studies my home as it spreads out ahead of us at the top of a type of meadow. “Seriously, is that all?”
I kill the engine, and sit forward to study it the way she does. I try to see it through new eyes, and not the eyes of the guy who has lived here for three years already. “A weekend to clear out the mess, but Bry whined for weeks about the prickles and the poison ivy.”
She sits in her seat with her arm propped up much the same as mine, and smiles. “I can see it. I can see you all out here working hard to clear a path as quickly as possible.” After a moment, she turns to me. “Did you love growing up with so many cousins?”
“Yeah.” I pull the key from the ignition and push my door open. I’m done sitting, I’m done with the SUV completely. It’s a rental, and at some point, I’ll figure out how to return it, but in the meantime, I stand at my door, and take Quinn’s hand when she’d prefer to climb across the seats rather than slide out her side. “It was loud,” I add once she’s out and slams the door. “There was a lot of shoving, a lot of noise. We never got to be alone, and we always had to share our things. In that estate where I grew up, each of us were allowed one special thing.”
“Special?” Instead of holding my hand, Q steps in and slides her arm