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But his eyes … there had been something else there, alongside the sadness.
“A dancer can get pretty far on technical ability,” Linda was saying. “But everyone I’ve ever seen light up a stage has one thing in common.”
Hayley realized it was her turn. “They were connecting?”
“They all saw dance asgivingsomething.” Linda stressed the verb. “It’s a two-way street, of course. The audience feeds you too. But the divas, the ones who need the spotlight or need to be great, they never have the luminescence of the dancers who can’t wait togiveof themselves.”
“You’ve felt that way.” Hayley could hear it in the other woman’s voice. “Like you had to move, or something inside of you wouldn’t be able to get out.”
Linda nodded, chuckling. “My hubby would tell you I dance like others howl at the moon.”
“I like that.” Hayley said, and she did, very much so.
You can move like gravity’s just an option for you.
What had Nick seen when he’d watched her? How had he felt?
“You didn’t go to school for dance?” Linda asked.
Focus, girl.“I’ve been taking lessons since I was three,” she said.
“But your degree is in early childhood education.”
Hayley shrugged. “My mom is a professor, so tuition was free.”
“So you could have ended up teaching kids somewhere.”
“I could’ve, yeah.”
Linda leaned back in her chair. “I couldn’t do it,” she admitted. “I had dreams of homeschooling my kid when he was younger.” She looked over at the framed photo of a teenager on her desk. “Somehow I thought keeping him at home would keep him away from every mean kid in existence.” She laughed. “Thank God I knew I could never be here and do that at the same time. Ben’s got a scholarship to Ohio State in the fall.”
“Congratulations!”
“He put in the work, I did the worrying. So.” Linda got back on topic. “Why spend four years learning to teach kids, only to run off to Icarus after graduation?”
Hayley looked away for a moment, absently digging the nail of her index finger into the fabric of the chair. She’d found the Icarus Showcase when she was in junior high, and she still remembered every detail of that Saturday night: carpooling up to Indianapolis with her dance class for the show, discovering an entire building of people living her dream, then riding back home, knowing she needed to join them.
“I had to,” she said simply.
She’d given the same answer when Mom had asked that question. Hayley had agreed to college as a backup plan, living at home to save money, finding comfort in doing the responsible thing, fighting the urge to be reckless and the certainty that she was smothering something important within her.
But two days after graduation, she’d arrived at Icarus, nearly begging for a chance to finally give in to who she was.
Linda was watching her, waiting. Hayley looked for a better answer.
“The degree … well, it seemed like a good idea.”
“You still think so?” Linda surprised her with that one. “Four years at school is four years you can’t give to the stage. This job only gets harder as you get older.”
Hayley took her time. “I think everything worked out the way it was supposed to.”
Linda’s eyebrows went up as Hayley’s heart sank. Her answer had been supposed to get them to move on, not dig deeper.
“How so?” Linda asked.
Hayley sighed, looked Linda in the eye. “I don’t think I was ready for Icarus at eighteen.”
“The work?”
