Page 14

“When were you planning to tell me you’re pregnant?” Tonya asks the minute I walk into her office the Monday after our first appointment.

I stare at her for a moment, slack-jawed.

I knew gossip in this town moved quickly, but Beau hasn’t even told his family yet, and I sure as hell haven’t told mine, so the fact that it’s running through town is a cause for concern.

I can just imagine Clint Jennings, Beau’s dad, at the feed store in town, hearing the news, and it makes my stomach swoop.

I shut the door behind me, even though we’re the only ones here. “Who told you that?”

She rolls her eyes. “No one told me. You just look like shit. Even more so than you have the past few months.” She motions to her face. “You have this green tinge all the time, like you’re one wrong move away from barfing up your breakfast.”

Well, she’s not wrong.

A heavy sigh puffs out of me, my shoulders slumping against the door. “Thank God.”

Tonya leans back in her seat, assessing me. She takes a sip of the green smoothie on her desk, the same one she’s had every single day since I’ve known her. “So when were you planning to tell me?”

I sit in the chair across from her and meet her eyes. Her gray hair is pulled back in a low bun, her deep brown skin just now starting to wrinkle with age. She’s as familiar and comforting to me as my own mother should be.

“Today, actually.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, perfect timing.”

This pulls a smile out of me. “I was. We had our first appointment on Friday.”

“And everything was okay?” The way she asks, I know she’s clued in to more of my anxiety than I thought I’d let on.

It makes my heart beat a little faster, but I force myself to stay calm.

“Everything looked great,” I say, and can’t help but smile.

They sent us home with two very blurry images of a white blob that doesn’t resemble a baby in the slightest, but every time I close my eyes, I see that little flicker of a heartbeat, feel the hope that’s taken root and begun growing inside of me.

“Good,” she says, and even though it’s not much, I know how truly happy she is with just that one word. Just the hint of a smile on her face and the way her shoulders lose the tension they were clinging to. “But you’ve been sick.”

“Ah, yes,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “Since I look like shit. When do I not, apparently?”

“When you’re happy,” she responds, completely serious, and it knocks the breath out of me. “Are you unhappy about this?”

I know she wouldn’t judge me no matter what my answer. Still, I tell her the truth. “I’m so happy. But I’m nervous too. Nervous about the pregnancy. Nervous about what it means for me and Beau.”

She nods like this all makes sense, and I feel an overwhelming sense of gratefulness toward her. “That’s fair. Can you keep teaching?”

We both know I’d have to be on my deathbed not to make it into the studio, but I appreciate her asking anyway. “Yeah, I just step out to puke a lot.”

A grin quirks her lips. “Good. Guess this will make you buying the studio a little more difficult.”

I let out a breath and roll my eyes. “I’m not buying the studio, Tonya.”

She waves me off. “Of course you’re not buying it right now. You’ve got way too much going on.”

“I’m not buying it at all .” I try to emphasize the words, but I can tell she doesn’t notice. A bolt of panic slices through me. “You’re not going to sell it to that interested buyer, though, right?”

There’s way too much change happening in my life right now for me to handle having a new boss, for me to handle not having Tonya .

She meets my gaze, her eyes softening. “No, Elsie. I won’t sell it to them.”

My heart rate slows, and I take a deep breath, exhaling it shakily. “Good.”

“But I won’t wait on you forever,” she says. “Now get out of my office.”

I feel a surge of tenderness for her as I leave her office, allowing myself one last look at her before I shut her door.

She should get to sell, get to live the life she’s worked so hard for, but she’s staying, and I know it’s for me.

I’m not going to be able to buy this place, I know that, but I vow to myself that when I’m better, I’ll tell her to sell it.

I’ll just have to deal with the changes.

The studio is quiet, which is how I like it best. It’s usually chaos, filled with screaming, giggling little girls.

I love that too, but there’s something to be said about the calm before the storm.

Maybe it’s because I used to spend so much time alone in this studio growing up.

Tonya knew I was responsible and just wanted to practice as much as possible, so she gave me a key.

I’d be the first one to arrive every morning and the one who would lock up every night.

This studio is more familiar to me than my childhood home or the one I live in now.

It’s where I grew up, and it’s where I’m growing into someone new again.

The quiet doesn’t last long, as the first of my dancers arrive.

It’s Maya Delgado, a fourteen-year-old who reminds me so much of myself at her age that I just want to tell her to let go a little, live a little, because as important as dance is, it won’t be there forever.

But I know she’d never listen, just like I wouldn’t have, so I just smile.

“Hey, Maya. How was school?”

She gives me an exasperated look, dropping her bag at her feet. “It’s so stupid that I have to go to school when I could be using that time to dance.”

My lips roll together to hold back my smile. “I’ll let the state of Montana know.”

She stares at me for a long moment, brow wrinkled as she tries to puzzle out my statement. “You’re being sarcastic.”

This does make my smile tug free. “Yes, Maya, I’m being sarcastic.”

“I don’t have time for sarcasm.” She says this as she begins to dig through her bag, rooting around until she finds her pointe shoes.

“You’re fourteen, Maya. You have nothing but time.”

Unlike me, who feels like time is racing. Time I thought I could use to figure things out is now slipping through my fingers. Just the thought of it makes my throat tight and makes the ever-present nausea roil in my stomach.

Maya stares up at me as she begins to bandage her feet, starting with her big toes, which have been causing her issues since I started. “I’m almost fifteen , and if I work hard enough, I could go pro as early as sixteen. That’s one year to get my act together.”

Maybe it’s some buried-deep maternal instinct, or maybe I just want to save her from ending up like me, but something drives me to sit next to her. She pauses in her wrapping and meets my eye.

“Maya,” I start, searching for the right words.

“Dance is…well, it feels like everything. It has a way of making you feel like it’s the only thing worth living for.

It means testing your body’s limits and beating yourself and proving to yourself that you can do things you thought were impossible.

It’s exhilarating in a way that almost nothing else is. ”

“Yeah,” she breathes, eyes far away.

I feel like I’ve gotten carried away. So, fixing my gaze on hers, I say, “But it’s not everything.

It can’t be. Because no matter how good you are, how hard you work, it can’t be forever.

So don’t make dance your everything, or you’ll wake up one day and realize you don’t have anything else, okay?

” I pause. “I just want you to have everything life has to offer.”

She stares at me for a long moment, a ringlet curl falling over her thick, dark brows. It’s unfair that a fourteen-year-old is already this pretty when the rest of us had to suffer through awkward years. “Okay, Elsie. I’ll try.”

A relieved smile hitches up the corners of my mouth. “Good, I’ve done my good deed for the day. Now wrap those feet and let’s get to work.”

The grin she gives me is so wide it makes me feel, just for a minute, like everything might be okay. I might not know who I am or what I’m doing, but at least I made a little bit of a difference in one person’s life.

It gives me hope that maybe I can get this all figured out. That maybe I’m not too far gone, too broken, to put myself back together. To be the person that Beau and this baby need me to be.