This Much Is True (9 page)

His breath stirs my hair. He’s so close that I can feel his heart beat. It answers mine.

Closeness erases the many secrets still held between us although the important ones remain. No longer strangers, we venture to a secret place where just the two of us exist. This connection of continuity seems to contain a degree of permanence, but that’s further up ahead.

This is just a girl’s dream.

“You’ll know when it’s love,” Holly once said. “It’ll mean something. It’ll mean
everything
.” I envision my sister’s last dazed smile, now so permanently lost.

She died quickly. There was very little pain.

They lie.

I can’t get the image of my charred Mercedes sedan out of my mind. My parents couldn’t bear to see it, but I couldn’t look away. Someone had to be there while the firemen culled through the ashes for the last of Holly’s remains. I remember their faces, dazed with ultimate horror. All their faces conveyed the unanswerable question: Why does a girl so young die so tragically? Burned beyond recognition. I remember cringing at first, then gasping for air. All these panic attacks later. Triggers unknown. Just that image in my head that never really goes away and her dying screams—the constancy of her last dying sounds that reverberate through all of me. Because yes; it’s an unbelievable sight when your sister dies at the scene. And, you hear it. It’s the worst horror film. Only it’s real. It happened right in front of me.

Linc traces my lips. “Are you okay?” He searches my face and looks anxious.

“I’m okay. I’m fine.”

It is true that I lie. It is true that I have become very good at it.
“Are you okay?” my parents still ask me every day. “Are you okay?” Marla asks every time she sees me. “Are you okay?” my teachers ask as I walk down the hallways. “I’m fine,” I always say.

It’s been months. Who wouldn’t be fine? Is it true it doesn’t matter? Or is it true because it does?

His radiance reaches for me. It brings me back. He catches a single tear with his index finger as it trails down my face and surprises me once again with his compassion. “Holly, where were you just now?”

After a long pause, I gaze up at him and smile because he brought me back. “Nowhere.”

Lies told in a carefree tone with lips parted in a practiced smile are often believed.

“You’re so beautiful,” Linc says. “Your eyes. They’re this amazing green—not hazel exactly or just plain green—they’re always changing. They’re mesmerizing. You’re so…beautiful.” He lingers near my face with his own. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

My sister. My sister always told me that.
Holly would say, “Tally, you’re so beautiful,” and then she’d laugh. Her laugh was like the melody of a song. Holly made everything magical.
But now she’s gone, and I’m still here—half-here, anyway.
I look away from him and attempt to combat the sadness at losing Holly.
Get it together.

He fingers my chin and turns my face toward his. He gazes at me curiously in the dim light.

“Holly.” He breathes my sister’s name into the pulse at my neck. I shudder at his passion and my lies.

For a moment, I hesitate beneath him and hold my breath and wonder about the truth. The amazing joy of being with him starts to seep away while remorse for all the lies I’ve told him threatens to take over.
No.
I draw a deep breath. Determined to outrun both the newfound guilt and the ever-present sadness, I smile up at him. It’s harder now, but I’m intent on staying within the realm of this newfound wonder—this amazing nirvana I’ve discovered with him—for a little while longer.

Playful, I pull away from him in one moment and straddle him in the next. Evocative, I finger his medal ribbon. It sways between my breasts and still radiates warmth from our combined body heat. I lean in and dangle the medal near his face. He kisses my fingertips and slips the ribbon from my neck and casts it aside.

I’ll serve as one of his trophies. This is a girl’s dream.

“Holly,” he breathes my sister’s name again.

Holly smiles.

It’s true, when you want to, you can be someone else.

* * *

I wake up in a panic, unused to the complete darkness inside the room and unsure of exactly where I am. It takes a full minute to realize that I’m not alone as I begin to hear the steady breaths of the sleeping baseball player beside me.

My head pounds. It’s clear that drinking the champagne late last night while we watched some old movie, combined with the red punch from earlier, was not a good idea. Despite the delicious food, Linc prepared and served to me earlier in the evening, my head aches. I slip from his arms and work my way out of the twisted bed sheets.

I acknowledge my nakedness in a clinical kind of way to keep myself from completely freaking out about breaking my first golden rule
—
never stay over at a guy
’
s place. I go in search of my clothes and a much-needed bottle of Advil.

Linc turns in his sleep. I pause mid-step across the room from him and wait. I only move again when I hear his steady breathing once again.
This walk of shame definitely needs to be done alone.

I quietly close the bathroom door just off of his bedroom, fumble for the light switch, and silently wince at both the bright light stabbing my eyes and my mascara-streaked face gazing back at me from the mirror.
Accusing. I should not be here.
I should have left with Marla when I got her text a couple of hours ago. She and Charlie had a major fight, and she went home without me because I was nowhere to be found. She felt bad for leaving me since she’d driven me here but didn’t quite know what she should do. So much for being her wingman. Now I am in need of one. My parents are still under the impression that I’m staying at Marla’s. At least I have that particular misdirection going for me. Even so, at three in the morning, all the lying I’ve been doing really makes me uneasy.

Linc called me
Holly
at several euphoric junctures. I should have just come clean with that particular omission and told him my real name. Now it’s too late.

It’s finished.

We’re done.

I’m out of here.
After performing a mini sponge-bath of sorts by using a fresh bar of lavender soap I found in one of the drawers, that I’m pretty sure Charlie’s mom must have picked out, I feel reasonably put back together. I slip on the black leotard and long skirt I happen to have in my bag since I was supposed to be at Marla’s. We have plans to leave directly from her place for an early dance class with Tremblay in the morning. A five-minute make-up job reestablishes a semblance of order with my face. I finger-comb my hair, turn out the light, and wait another self-designated two minutes while telling myself to keep it together before embarking on the walk of shame through his dark house. Intent on not disturbing the guy and making my way back home the long ten blocks without saying good-bye, I stoop to pick up my discarded boots off his great room floor just as the lights are turned on.
Shit.

“Going somewhere?” Linc asks.

“Geez, you scared me.” My heart races, different from the panic attack, but the same kind of surge of adrenaline swarms me.

“Sorry.” He smiles and seems perfectly comfortable standing there buck-naked and partially aroused.

Apparently, he’s just waiting for me. I ruefully smile. I can’t help it.
He is fun.
We had a fantastic encounter—a nice memorable connection—he and I. On a scale of one to ten, I would give it a firm nine without any hesitation whatsoever. If I hadn’t been so needy and could have more fully concentrated on all he was offering, it probably would have topped out at a ten. I can unequivocally say that he is the best lay I’ve ever had. And, if lovers were classified in the dictionary by prowess and style points, Lincoln Presley’s photograph would certainly come up first on that particular search. I bite at my lip to stop all these provoking thoughts from taking me over completely.

“I have an early class,” I say with a nervous wave.
Lame, but it’s true.
He gets this dubious look as if he doesn’t quite believe me. “Don’t you have practice or something?”

“Not at three in the morning. I don’t play until this afternoon. Another twelve hours.” He crosses his arms. It proves more distracting. “What kind of class?”

I sweep my arm across the room. “Dance class.”

“This early in the morning,” he deadpans. “On a Saturday?”

He doesn’t believe me.

For some reason, this bothers me. Yes, I’ve lied about virtually everything else but the fact that he doesn’t believe me when I say I have a ballet class is what pisses me off. “Tremblay doesn’t care that it’s a long weekend.” I don’t make an effort to hide my annoyance.

“Who’s Tremblay?”

“Allaire Tremblay is one of the best ballet teachers in San Francisco. She was a principal ballerina at the New York City Ballet for more than ten years. She’s going to help ensure we get into the School of American Ballet full-time and with NYC Ballet after that.
That’s
who she is.” I’ve said too much, and I bite at my lower lip again to keep myself from saying more. But then, I wait and hold my breath because for some unfathomable reason, it’s important to me to know what he thinks of ballet.
And me.

“Ballet.” He nods and slowly runs his hands through his wavy hair. “It’s important to you?”

I reward him with a knowing look. “It’s everything.”

He winces. We share this look of understanding. “So what’s it like? Ballet, I mean. There’s lots of training. Do you do the shoes?”

“The shoes? You mean
toe shoes
?
Of course.”
I practically snort with derision at his lack of knowledge.

“Show me. Show me what you can do.”

He extends his arm across the room. I take in the hard wood floors and gauge the location of the furniture strewn about the room, including the heavy coffee table in front of the sofa. Within fifteen seconds, he’s moving it out of the way; and I’m laughing at the spectacle of him moving the furniture in his current naked state. He hears me laugh and turns back towards me and looks a little disconcerted.

“You’re naked. Moving furniture at three in the morning. It’s kind of funny.”

“Is it?” Now he smiles mischievously and comes over to me and grabs my hand and pulls me into the somewhat cleared space of the room. “Show me,” he says again. “Show me how you do ballet. I’ve already experienced all your other moves. Show me what you do on stage.”

I blush at his carnal reference. The guy is seriously attractive. I’m still attracted to him, because, for some reason, the hardening of my emotional heart has not quite set in yet, like it normally does.

I sigh with pretended exasperation and blithely sit down on the edge of the sofa and search through my bag for a pair of toe shoes. It’s standard fare in any dancer’s bag. You don’t go anywhere without them. I slide some on and begin to tie up the ribbons on the right one. He regards me carefully even as I watch him casually slip into a pair of black sweats and a black T-shirt while I’m getting ready. His not being naked anymore is strangely disappointing on this remote emotional level that I allow myself to feel. I finish with the ribbons on the second shoe and pretend nonchalance as I stand in front of him prepared to perform just the basic steps.

“Hey,” he chides. “Warm up first. I mean I know you’re fairly warmed up from tonight’s earlier escapades, but don’t pull a muscle or aggravate your sore ribs trying to show off right away.”

“Right.”

I incline my head and start doing a number of warm-up stretches. I slowly smile, having decided to teach him a real lesson, show him what I can do since he obviously doesn’t seem to be taking my ability to dance all that seriously. I start out nice and slow. I stretch this way and that showing off my agility in ways that seem to surprise and also arouse him. He sits there with his mouth half-open and gets this enthralled interested look on his face at my prowess. I smile to myself, enjoying the exhibitionist part of this little game with him.

Normally, this is the easiest part of my day. I perform warm-up stretches at almost a rote level, but with an audience, it’s different and even sensual in ways that I’ve only just become aware of. I feel powerful. I can sense his growing libido stirring as he straightens his shoulders and looks at me more intently as I do a couple of the more difficult moves, including arabesques and a few running jumps across the floor and back. With Linc being a professional athlete, I imagine he has a better appreciation for the degree of difficulty involved in performing these moves than most people do.

“Music?” he asks. “You should have music. What do you like to listen to?”

I stop and stare at him for a long moment. “I can dance to anything.”

“I guess I already knew that.” He dips his head in that charming way of his before striding over to his entertainment system, which takes up an entire wall of his great room.

He surprises me with one of Kelly Clarkson songs,
Already Gone
. An interesting choice. Haunting but seductive.

After a few minutes, I forget about my captive audience and move solely with the music. I do an arabesque and another and then incorporate fouettes—these whip-like rapid foot movements which are some of the most difficult to perform. Tremblay has been intent on both Marla and me mastering them. We spent all year perfecting these for a performance of Swan Lake that we did last summer. The competition had been brutal but Marla and I were the standouts in that class. And now, with the plan already in motion to return to SAB, it appears Tremblay was right to train us so hard. We’ll probably tour the country and possibly even Europe sometime next spring if all goes according to our plan, and we make it into NYC Ballet. This is the plan. Our plan. Marla and me.
Holly
.

Our plan.

The three of us in New York that was the plan.

But plans change, don’t they?

I miss a step in the routine and lose my count. I stop—suddenly unsure of my surroundings and still woozy from the last traces of alcohol and something else. Perhaps, the theatrics with Linc earlier and definitely the lack of a good night’s sleep with all the foreplay and play between the two of us is wreaking havoc on me now. Maybe, the lies. All of it seems to be crashing in on me.
It’s three-thirty in the morning. What am I doing here? What am I doing?

Linc stands in front of me now. He has this purposeful almost untamed look as he reaches out and then deftly lifts me high up over his head again being careful to avoid my ribcage. He holds me lower, intimately. I’m caught up in the moment with him and the exhilaration that comes with the dizzying height. I gaze into his eyes from up above. He doesn’t even seem to strain with the lift. He studies my face as I extend my arms out to the sides like a child playing airplane with a parent.

“You’re incredible. Where did you come from?” Linc gingerly puts me back down. I land on my feet but grasp his shoulders for want of certain balance. “You’re one of a kind.”

“No. I’m not.” I blush under the intensity of his powerful gaze. His words ‘you’re one of a kind’ cut across me like a slow tear in the fiber of my very being.
I was part of a pair; but now Holly’s gone. And it’s all different.
It’s lonely and empty, and I’ve been battling this harsh truth for months. And yet this painful reality still continues to lurch its way below the surface of my consciousness, confirming the only truth I still know to be true: this profound ache and this almost unbearable loneliness that will probably always be there inside of me at the loss of Holly.