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Bye.
Is it possible for your heart to feel both heavier and somehow lighter at the same time?
GRACE
Never settle for bad coffee, boring friends, or sensible men.
All three should set your soul on fire.
–Grace’s secret thoughts
“Idon’t understand how you can watch this nonsense,” Lennon groans as she sits on the floor in front of the sofa I’m lying on and breaks in a new pair of pointe shoes. “You’ve been here six months now, Grace. Come on...”
“Listen.” I toss a piece of air-popped popcorn at her face, then quickly turn back to my MacBook in time to catch Cross taking the puck down the ice. “I’ve given in and stopped calling soccersoccer. The least you can do is stop calling hockeynonsense.”
I’ve been trying to catch the Revolution games whenever I can.
Most of the time, I resort to YouTube because different time zones are a bitch.
At least I can still catch them, even if the game was already played twelve hours ago. I put an embargo on the girls. They know not to text me what happens until I tell them I saw the game. Which happens to be killing Evie today. I woke up to three texts asking if I saw it last night, which could be good or bad. The Revolution are fighting for the Stanley Cup. If they won last night, they won the whole thing. If they lost, they’ve got to finish out the series.
“Just because you don’t use the termsoccerdoesn’t mean you’re using the termfootballcorrectly, little miss America,” she snaps back sarcastically and bangs the hell out of her shoe against the hardwood floor.
We break our shoes so we can build them back the way we want them.
Some dancers burn them with a lighter.
Some scrape their soles with a grater.
I rip out the inside sole.
We all do something to make them bend to our needs and our will.
Ballet is a constant battle.
We bend our shoes, our bodies, and our souls all in the name of the performance.
I move the ice pack on my foot, ignoring the sharp pain shooting into my toes as my director’s words from earlier play over and over and over again in my mind.
I’d hate for Tasha to have to dance your part tonight, Miss Sinclair.
Me too, Jenkins. Me too.
“Did you fall asleep on me, Grace?” Lennon bangs with a little extra oomph, bringing me out of my spiraling thoughts.
What had she said . . . ?
I think about it for a second, then remember... Right. Football and soccer. Our age-old fight. “Agree to disagree,” Ioffer because it’s the closest we’ll ever come to an understanding on our love of sports.
I’m sorry, but to me, football will always be the game my father dominated for over twenty years. And no one, not even my barely twenty-year-old, beautiful ballerina roommate, no matter how quintessentially British she is, is going to change my mind.
“That one is your brother-in-law, right?” She nods toward the screen as Cross gets checked against the boards and Ares comes flying behind the net to take down the player who cross-checked Cross.
“And that one is your secret lov-ah...” she teases as my stomach drops.
“He is not.”
“Then how come you blush like you’re seeing your first knob every time you text him?”
