Wallflower In Bloom (21 page)

I looked down and faced the new reality of my short, stubby fingers. Who knew?

“And false eyelashes,” she said.

“To cover my short, stubby natural ones,” I said.

“Your eyelashes are fine,” Gina said. “We just need to up the glam factor. And wait till you get your spray tan. You’ll look like you haven’t eaten in a week.”

“Speaking of which,” Ilya said, “let’s go grab a quick snack from craft services and get back to work. Thanks, team.”

I thanked the glam squad profusely. Too bad the winner couldn’t take them home along with the mirror ball trophy.

I’d read just enough about the entertainment industry to know that craft services meant the food that was delivered to the set of a television show or film set. As Ilya and I walked down the hall, I promised myself that I wouldn’t eat a thing when we got there. I’d just keep Ilya company while he ate.

The door to one of the other studios was open, so we peeked in. A famous football player, at least I was pretty sure it was football, was shuffling his feet slowly in a circle. A beautiful professional dancer had one leg up with her ankle resting on his shoulder. Her arms were extended gracefully, like butterfly wings.

“Whoa,” I whispered.

“Yeah,” Ilya said, “the male celebrities have it easier. They get to do a lot of holding while their partners dance around them.”

“Men,” I said.

The woman glanced over and frowned at Ilya. He grabbed my arm and we continued down the hall.

“You know,” I said, “I pictured us all practicing in a big room together, cheering each other on.”

Ilya stopped and held open the door to a little lounge with a kitchenette at one end. “We do some of that once we get to the group dances later in the season, but it’s better to put on our blinders and keep to ourselves until after the first performance. Too much looking over your shoulder to see what everybody else is doing will only make you more nervous. We need to focus on our own strengths.”

“Or lack thereof.” My stomach betrayed my lack of resolve by growling fiercely.

I sat down at a long table and used every ounce of discipline I had to pretend I wasn’t hungry. I knew you counted sheep to fall asleep, but I wasn’t sure what to count to make the hunger go away. Donuts?

Ilya sat down across from me and slid a plate in my direction.

I tried not to look at it. “That’s okay—”

“Eat,” he said.

“Oh, all right. But don’t worry, right after this, I promise I’ll start a strict diet. I’m thinking Dukan, but I was just reading about a resurgence of the apple cider vinegar diet. Did you know it was actually started in the 1820s by Lord Byron? I thought that was so fascinating.”

The truth was I had enough experience to write my own diet book. I’d gone on my first diet right after Tag’s classmate had called me a porker. Ironically, the Atkins diet involved eating copious quantities of pork rinds, and no carbs, which we called starches back then. My waistbands were loose in no time, but my pee started to smell funny and I got dizzy when I stood up too fast. When my mother found the diet page I’d ripped from one of Colleen’s magazines under my bed and threw it out, I was more relieved than disappointed.

Over the years I’d become a diet connoisseur. I’d tried the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, the Russian peasant diet, the lemonade diet, the South Beach Diet, as well as Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Slim-Fast, and Nutrisystem. They all worked. And then as soon as I started eating normally again, my weight went right back to
where I’d started, plus a few extra pounds. Sometimes I thought that if I’d never started dieting, I’d probably be looking pretty good right now. Other times I was convinced I just hadn’t found the right diet yet.

Ilya popped a strawberry into his mouth. He closed his eyes and chewed slowly, a look of pure bliss on his face.
I’ll have what he’s having
flashed through my head.

“Dying to dance is the only diet you need.” Ilya nodded at my plate, then reached for another strawberry. “Eat. But only what will help your dance. Think of your body as a fancy sports car that deserves only the best gasoline.”

My plate was piled high with fresh fruit—big slices of cantaloupe and strawberries and kiwi and papaya—plus one piece of string cheese and exactly ten almonds. I ate every bit and washed it all down with a big glass of water with lemon slices floating in it.

Ilya checked his watch. “So now we are ready to dance.”

In some ways, the second day was easier because based on the experience of the first day, I knew I would probably live through it. But in terms of the actual dance, it was harder. Mind-blowingly harder.

“Our first performance is the cha-cha,” Ilya announced as he reached for the iPod remote. Yesterday I’d been so overwhelmed trying to keep up as we tried out a variety of steps and sequences, I hadn’t even thought to ask what our first dance would be.

“Oh, good,” I said. “At least I can count to three.”

“Actually, it’s four.”

“Ha. I knew that.”

Ilya ignored me and clicked the remote. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when “Smooth” by Santana blasted out, I felt like an old friend had just shown up.

“Ohmigod,” I said. “You can cha-cha to Santana?”

Ilya winked. “As long as you don’t tell them.”

One-two-threeandfour
became my mantra, my chant, my life.
Front-back-threeandfour, back-front-threeandfour, slide-slide-threeandfour, one-two-turnturnturn, walk-walk-walkwalkwalk, step-step-chachacha. Who knew there were so many ways to count to four?

The costume really did help. The Spanx reminded me to pull in my stomach and the corset helped me stand up straighter. When the long black fringe of my minidress brushed across my thighs, I felt sexy, and when my sequins sparkled in the mirror, I could almost believe, just for a moment, that I was the one who was sparkling.

“Smooth” was the perfect song. Ilya played the first part over and over and over again, and I never got sick of it. When Santana sang the line about hearing my rhythm on the radio, I actually felt Ilya’s rhythm, my rhythm, the rhythm we were creating together. And the part about being like the ocean under the moon got to me every single time—it reminded me of home, but also moving beyond home, heading out to sea and on to my next horizon. Ilya got into it, too, and after a while, every time the
forget about it
line came around, we’d both yell it out loud.

Sometimes, when I really needed to lift my spirits, I’d put on a great old song like that and dance all around the sheep shed. I’d play it over and over and over again. I’d forget about how I probably looked and just have fun. I’d work it. I’d own it. And before I knew it I could feel all the bad stuff slipping away and I’d truly believe that my life could only get better.

In some ways, dancing with Ilya was starting to feel a lot like when I danced in secret, only a zillion times better.

Step up that pep and put some pep in that step
.

A
s soon as we’d put in our five hours, Ilya had given me a grocery list and directions to the nearest Whole Foods.

“Don’t forget to eat,” he said, as if that had ever happened in my entire life. “You need the energy. Just remember, put only the high-test fuel in your tank.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Did you just call me a tank?”

“You are a beautiful woman, Deirdre Griffin. The only thing left is for you to start behaving like one.”

“Ha,” I said. “And to learn how to dance.”

He grinned. “Okay, two things. Now go get some rest.”

I sat in the Whole Foods parking lot and turned my phone on again just long enough to delete some more messages from my family. There were a whole slew of numbers I didn’t recognize, too. I decided to save them until I had more energy.

Mitchell called as I was climbing out of the Land Rover to head into Whole Foods, my thumb poised to power off my phone again.

“What?”

“I just remembered that I forgot to tell you that my leg’s fine. I mean, it’s still sore, but nothing was broken or anything. I just didn’t want you to feel guilty.”

I held out the phone so I could roll my eyes at it, then put it back to my ear. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t.”

“Okay, I’m just going to come right out and say this. The whole time everything was going on . . . You know, the whole baby and wedding thing. . . I kept thinking that if I was ever going to get married, it should have been to you, Dee.”

“You asked me once, remember?” I heard myself say. It was years ago now, at least five, maybe more. Mitchell had come home from a friend’s bachelor party, woken me up from a dead sleep, knelt on the floor by the sheep shed bed. “Marry me,” he’d said. “You’re the best goddamn thing that ever happened to me. You’re the moon and the stars and the goddamn solar system all rolled into one.”

“Yeah, I remember. You told me to sober up and ask you again in the morning.”

I remembered that, too. And I remembered waiting, not just the next morning but for weeks, maybe months, until I pretended I wasn’t waiting anymore. “You never asked me again, Mitchell.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have shot me down when I asked you the first time.”

I didn’t say anything. I threw some organic chocolate double-chunk brownies into my cart, then remembered Ilya’s list and put them back on the display stand.

“Okay, you’re right,” Mitchell said. “I should have asked you again. I don’t know, maybe I thought we had a good thing going and I didn’t want to ruin it. And maybe sometimes I have a tendency to be kind of selfish.”

“Ya think?” I lowered a six-pack of lemon-lime seltzer into my cart.

“Would it be okay if I came out there to see you? You know, just hang out, talk things through. I could really use a break from everything around here, and I don’t know, I was thinking maybe you could use some company.”

I stopped in the middle of the aisle. I couldn’t believe he was going there. And the scary thing was, I could almost picture going there, too.

“Good-bye, Mitchell,” I said. I pushed End Call, then closed my eyes and shuddered.

I navigated the crowded aisles, tossing a premade salad with mixed baby greens, walnuts, cranberries, and goat cheese into my cart. And a veggie roll-up on whole grain. Plus a box of Skinny Cow fudge bars.

As I carried everything out to my rental car, thoughts of Mitchell still danced in my head. I pushed them away.

Traffic was a nightmare, but eventually I made it back to the apartment and curled up on the sofa with my dinner. No offense to Afterwife, but it was the best meal I’d had in ages. I savored every bite. When I was finished I felt satisfied but not stuffed.

“Delish,” I said. My whipped chocolate dessert was refreshingly cold and lighter than air. I lapped the last of it off the stick and wondered how many of these I’d have to eat to start feeling less like the cow and more like the skinny.

I fed Ginger and Fred. I tracked down the washer and dryer on the floor below and threw in my wardrobe of yoga pants and baggy T-shirts along with all my new underwear. I was exhausted, but it was a good tired.

I waited till the underwear was draped over my shower curtain rod and the rest of my clothes were twirling around in the dryer. Then I found my cell phone and scrolled past some messages from my family and about a gazillion e-mail requests for Tag. There were a few e-mails from friends, too, and a crazy number of requests to interview me. A message from someone at
DWTS
said that the contract would be on its way shortly.

I tapped the Phone icon. I found Steve Moretti’s message and listened to it twice. Every time I got to the part where he said, “Hey, this
is Steve. The guy you just kissed and ran away from?” I scrunched my eyes shut.

Did he really want to use me to get to Tag, or had I simply jumped to that conclusion because it was the tape that played, over and over in my head, whether it applied to the situation or not? Why was it so hard for me to believe that someone might actually want
me
?

I stared up at the ceiling and tried to remember exactly what had happened in Austin. First I said the Tambourine Twins’ boots looked stupid with sundresses, admittedly not my finest moment. Then Tag said something about Steve and a business deal or talking business or something like that. And then Tag went right for the jugular, like he always did, and accused Steve of trying to get more money out of him by hitting on me.