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Every ounce of anger bleeds from my soul and into my steps. I make impossible shapes with my body as rage implodes, detonating inside my chest and making me fearless. All those years I spent learning the hardest hip-hop tricks and never quite coming up to scratch seems to fall in place now as I shred my fear with every head spin and flare of my legs. With every flip and thrust I own my anger, and lay bare my truth.
Drawing in ragged breaths I turn and focus my gaze on Zayn, the boy who found me in the playground and decided I was worth knowing. Without uttering a word, he approaches me, jerking his chin. I take the bait, more than willing to battle. I watch him with sweat beading on my brow as he responds to my steps with a rage of his own, vaguely aware that Xeno has stepped forward to break this up, only to be prevented by Dax’s thick forearm holding him back.
Zayn moves around me, jerking his body in movements that surpass any kind of hip-hop step I recognise. He rips off his t-shirt, shredding himself for no other reason than to take my fucking breath away. I’ve seen the tattoos on his arms, but across his chest is another kind of tattoo, except these are raised scars that cut horizontally across his pecs. Scars that weren’t there the last time I saw him with his top off three years ago.
“What happened to you?” I mutter, stumbling back as he comes at me in a series of vicious steps before dropping into a corkscrew, only to rear back up, his nostrils flaring. Standing before me, our noses almost touching, all I can do is stare into his night-time eyes. They used to give me comfort, their black pools somewhere I could find peace. Not today. Today they’re a black hole ready to drag me under.
“Zayn…”
His lip curls up. “Don’t,” he warns, before dropping to the floor and performing an air-flare.
I watch in awe as his legs windmill, his feet inches from my face. I have no choice to move away or get hit. The power and the strength to perform with such skill shouldn’t be underestimated. Zayn only makes it look easy because he’s an incredible dancer.
Hip-hop is inherently aggressive, but what he’s sharing with me now is painful to watch because this isn’t about the dance, this is aboutus, aboutme. I’m not the only one telling my truth today. When he finally comes to a standstill, both of our chests heaving, I narrow my eyes and launch myself into a backflip, my feet only inches from his body as I slice through the air. Six feet apart and both of us glaring at the other, York steps in front of Zayn. He cocks his head to the side and for the first time since he’s been back he lets me see what he’s been holding inside.
Anguish.
“My turn…” he snarls.
Those two words slash at my resolve to remain strong and I flinch as he begins to move. The sound of his feet slamming against the wooden floor, a percussive kind of anger that makes me want to cover my ears, close my eyes, and curl up in a ball. Instead, I stand tall, taking the beating with every last ounce of strength I have. York’s feet move with lightning speed as I try and absorb the tap steps that are so familiar and yet, so alien. I can barely keep up as he slams his feet onto the wooden floor so quickly that my eyes tear up from the sheer weight of his truth.
He’s furious, so fucking mad, and I reel from the emotion he displays.
The one person who was always so kind to me, who understood me even when I failed to understand myself, rips into me with every step. All I can do is watch and wait for him to tire himself out. On the surface tap appears to be such a cheerful dance, teamed with Jazz music and the light, fluffy black and white movies York so loved to watch as a kid, it often brings happiness and joy, but it’s origins come from something more tribal. Seeped in black history of repression and slavery, tap has a darker, more sinister edge. Today, his moves are percussive, well-timed, and varying in tempo, but every single one of them angry. Every time his feet hit the floor I flinch as though he’s struck me.
Feeling raw with emotion at his pain. I try to match his movements, making my own feet light in an attempt to draw out the boy I knew with a wobbly smile and pain etched around my eyes. “York…” I plead.
His feet suddenly still at the sound of my voice, and he lifts his eyes from my feet to meet mine. With a heaving chest, he speaks a thousand words without saying anything at all.
My heart plummets.
Twisting on his feet, he strides to the edge of the room and sits, clasping his head in his hands as he stares at the floor, refusing to meet my gaze.
I mirror him.
Gripping my head, I sway from side to side, my body rocking on my feet. Around me, the room is charged with a pungent kind of electricity that barbs the air with unspoken words. Three long years of distance separate who we were to who we are now, that and the terrible decisions of that one night. To each other they’re still the Breakers, I can sense their deep-seated loyalty to one another, but me? I’m someone to be wary of, to hold at arm’s length. Someone that’s separate from the cohesion they still share, an outsider looking in.
Someone to hate.
Shaking with adrenaline, I push on, the anger making way for hopelessness. Stretching my arm wide and lifting my right leg out whilst holding all my weight on my toes, I form my body into an arabesque. It’s not perfect, far from it, and my feet still throb from the recent torture I put them through, but I push through, wanting to express myself in the lighter more graceful movements of contemporary dance. Right now, I need the soothing fluidity.
This is where I’m most comfortable. This is where healing comes from, at least for me.
With featherlight movements, arched feet, and soft hands, I glide around the studio, twisting, turning, soaring with long-held emotion. After a while, the Breakers here in this room with me now fall away, and the boys I loved return, their ghosts dancing alongside me. Over the years, my loneliness has conjured them up like this. It’s the only way I’ve got through their absence.
When I feel warm hands at my waist and I’m lifted into the air, I know it’s the real-life Dax and not some figment of my imagination dancing with me now. Dax lowers me to my feet, his arm encircling my waist, his fingers digging into my side as he takes my free hand and pushes my body away from him. I twist outwards, only to be pulled back and lifted again. It’s instinctual, how we dance together, and when he holds me against his chest, his heart beating into the smouldering heat of my back, tears finally prick my eyes.
“You destroyed us. That ain’t something we can let go,” he grinds out before folding himself over my body, not giving me a chance to defend myself. Smoothing his palm down my thigh and encouraging my leg to slide out beneath his extended leg, I feel the hot rash of heat and the familiar shiver run up my spine at being close to him again. He mirrors me, movement for movement, not once letting me go until all I am is an extension of him.
The physical contact has me quaking, my heart racing and my core clenching with an ache I don’t think I’ll ever be able to soothe. We move fluidly, and to an unsuspecting audience it would look as though we were two people in love, dancing for enjoyment, but I know different. The tightness of his grip, the harshness of his breath and the trembling of his body, not to mention his harsh words, tell me his anger is just a whisper away. Dax has never once hurt me, not physically anyway, but he wants me to feel his pain, to hurt me the way he believes I’ve hurt him. When he lets me go abruptly and storms away with clenched fists, I know I’m right.
Panting and with sweat sliding over every inch of my skin, I remain standing in the centre of the room, my emotions all over the place. For three years I’ve tried to forget about the Breakers. I’ve blamed them so I didn’t have to blame myself. I’ve tried to hate them, so I didn’t miss them, but when all is said and done, the only person I truly hate is myself.
I loved them.
Istilllove them, and if I do what David asks, I’m going to destroy them once and for all. Can I really be that person? Can I make the Breakers love me again only to betray that love so cruelly? Can I survive hurting them all over again? The truth is, it doesn’t matter either way because the consequences of not doing as David asks are too horrific to even contemplate.
Drawing on the remains of my strength, I look at each of my Breakers in turn trying to decide how to wade through this volatile situation. In the end, I opt for a version of the truth, the only version I’m able to share right now.
