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Closing my eyes, I gyrate my hips to the music, letting my hands skim the sides of my breasts as I roll my body in a series of moves I’ve seen Mom do from the backstage when I was younger.

Dipping my body low, I flip back up, making sure to stick out my bottom and arch my back, my hands trailing back up my body.

My eyes flutter open and I stare at a spot above Sofia and execute a pirouette, letting my body become one with the music.

“Good. That’s enough.” The music stops and my heavy breathing fills the air as I stand still, waiting for the verdict.

Sofia steps away from her desk and stands in front of me.

“The moves were rudimentary but well done, and we have teachers and choreographers here who will work with you.” She smiles warmly at me. “You know, I have a feeling you’ll do very well here. And your eyes…that beautiful shade of violet, they’ll draw them in.”

Them as in men.

The nausea, which disappeared for a few moments when I slipped on the dancer role, resurges and I fight to remain still.

She extends her hand again. “Welcome to The Orchid, Grace.”

Later that night, after Taylor is fast asleep on her twin bed and Mom retired to her bedroom after work, none the wiser to the events that transpired a few hours ago, I sit at my desk facing the windows. The moonlight casts a faint glow through the half-opened blinds.

After my audition, Sofia took out a checkbook and wrote me a hefty sum, big enough to pay off the loan with leftover to move us into employee housing closer to The Orchid.

When I returned home with the check in my hand, my heart felt like it was razed by a bulldozer, and my eyes were on the verge of tears again.

Taylor pulled me aside, and I told her about the offer and that I’d be dancing.

I didn’t tell her about the stripping. I knew she wouldn’t let me if she knew.

Mom fussed over us at dinner, her forehead crinkling when she asked us why both of our eyes were red and swollen. We made up some excuse about allergies and I tried my best to fake a smile even though my soul felt battered. Splintered into tiny pieces.

But now, in the stillness of the late hours, with the wispy moonlight as my companion, the sorrow I’ve been holding inside me threatens to unleash, the final quake of the earth breaking the dam wide open.

My nose burns and tears gather in my eyes as I stare at the starry skies, my mind mourning the future I thought I had, but was cruelly wrenched away from me at the last second.

I’m young. I could start over.

It’s only dancing. After two years, we’d be free.

It’s not a big deal.

My mind whispers lies to my heart, trying to soothe its shudders and calm its cries.

Growing up, watching Mom depend on men, one after the other, using her beauty, her charms, but failing to keep any of them, I vowed to myself I’d never be in her shoes.

I’d never resort to using my body or my face to eke out a living.

I’d use my intelligence and my brain to carve a path for myself and my family.

But life is ironic, and Lady Luck is not on our side yet again. Now, I’m relegated to using the same features I never thought I’d use, to learn to stomach men gawking at me with lust in their eyes. I’m going to have to get used to my body not truly being my own.

Somehow, amid all this aching sadness, I think of him.

The man from a different walk of life, his shiny dress shoes to my scuffed leather ones, his luxury car to my subway rides, his penthouse apartment to my hole in the wall with barred windows.

Now, the distance between us will be even wider, even more insurmountable.

I don’t want him to see me as a dancer in skimpy clothing.

I want him to remember me as the brilliant intern who could make him laugh.

Perhaps it’s for the best. Men will always disappoint you and Steven has never made any promises to me. I know what happened with the job offer wasn’t his fault—it was clear as day from the conversation in his office. But still, he wasn’t able to protect me this time.

But you didn’t tell him why you needed the job, Grace.

Does it matter? The results would still be the same and I don’t want a job out of pity.

I stare at the moon, shining so brightly in the inky skies, even though the light within me has snuffed out.

He’s only a friend, if even that. The way my heart beats around him, the way my skin sizzles from his touch? Biological reactions between a man and a woman. Nothing more.

Before anything could happen, not that anything would, our story would have to end. He’d live in his castle with air conditioning and fine dining, and I’d disappear from his life.

And perhaps, on the dreadful nights when the storm surges outside, the winds rioting against the windows, maybe he’d remember there once was a girl who felt the same way on those lonely nights.

Maybe as he laid awake on his bed, waiting for the chaos to subside, he’d think about our afternoon at the park or the evening at the movies, or perhaps he might read a curious fact about the world and think of me.

The lump in my throat grows, and I retrieve a piece of paper from the drawer.

I uncap the pen and scrawl out my farewell to him.

Wetness slips down my cheeks as I realize he’d never know my feelings for him, that in these final words to him, written on a scrap and to be stuffed into an envelope and mailed later, he’d never know all the words I want to say but can’t write.

How I wish I could stay by his side, to bring the spark dwelling inside him to the surface, to tell him to stop punishing himself by not living.

Even as our path diverges, I hope he can find peace in the night.

She disappeared.

Like everything was a figment of my imagination, my mind creating a soulmate because the hollow in my heart required it.

My heart, an organ I thought wasn’t working anymore, spasms in pain.

Because of her, and the hole she left in it.

My mind flits back to us standing on her doorstep when I dropped her home after the movie at the pier, when she stood in front of me, mere inches separating us.

I could smell the jasmine wrapping around me like a hug.

I saw the way her bright eyes widened, how the moonlight added a sparkle to her glittering irises.

I remembered her plump lips parting, the perfect, beautiful lips drawing my attention, begging me to taste them.

Begging me to taste her and feel her and surround myself with her.

It took all my willpower to step away because I thought I had more time. I thought if she forgave me, then maybe, just maybe, I’d let myself be selfish once again.

But after that night, she disappeared from my life without a trace.

She didn’t return my calls or texts. Worried she took the news of the job offers too hard, I lasted two days trying to distract myself in the office until I couldn’t stand it and went to her apartment and knocked on her door because unease wound around my throat like a snake, crushing my windpipe.

Something was wrong. It was a gut feeling. And my gut was never wrong.

She didn’t answer, and I tried again the next day. And the next. Until one day, one punk I’d seen lingering on the doorsteps before told me she and her family moved without a forwarding address .

I remembered how my three hours of sleep each night dwindled into one, if I was lucky, how she occupied every waking hour, and how for the first time in my life, I was worried about something, or someone, other than work.

Worried sick. The gnawing pain in my stomach grew with each passing day.

Until the following Monday, HR notified me she tendered her notice, and a small, unassuming letter arrived on my desk. Her farewell letter to me, asking me not to find her.

Perhaps it’s for the best, because if I take her lips with mine, I’d fall into the path of my father, and one day, I’d sit with my son on the backyard deck, looking at the starry skies, thinking about the woman who captured my heart and ran away with it, because she couldn’t stand how broken I was inside.

I’d then tell my son not to get his heart entangled, because it’d only end up in regret.

But I realize the only regret I have right now is not kissing her and not knowing the sweetness of her lips.