My heart crawled into my throat while I waited for her to continue.
“I…” Scarlett finally met my eyes, her expression alive with nerves. “I know we’ve been dating without a real label, but it’s almost the end of summer so I was thinking we could maybe make it official? It would be easier when we’re explaining things to Vincent,” she rushed out. “To tell him we’re boyfriend and girlfriend instead of this weird non-boyfriend and girlfriend thing we have going on.”
“Scarlett.” I placed my forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Do you want us to be official because of Vincent or because you want to?”
My question hung in the charged air, held aloft by the thundering beats of my heart.
A second passed.
Two.
Then… “Because I want to.”
Scarlett’s soft admission dispelled the breath from my lungs. I leaned back, relief a cool balm for the knot in my gut. “Then we’re official.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.” I looked at her, this beautiful, incredible woman whom I never would’ve expected would turn my world upside down, and marveled that she was mine. The universe knew what it was doing after all. “I’ve been here since day one, darling. I was simply waiting for you to join me.”
Scarlett’s smile spread so wide and warm I felt it all the way in my bones.
“I haven’t had an official boyfriend in years, so this is exciting,” she said. “Does this mean you’ll hold my bag and let me borrow your shirts to sleep in because men’s shirts are always more comfortable than women’s, for some reason?”
“The shirts, yes. The bag, depends. If you have as much shit in it as the day we met, then no.” I raised a brow. “I’m a top athlete, you know. I have to conserve my strength.”
I laughed when she kicked me under the table.
“My old therapist would be proud of me.” Scarlett slid her pendant along its chain. “She said healing wasn’t just about closing the door on my past. It was about allowing myself to open one for the future too. We worked a lot on my trust issues after Rafael. If it weren’t for her, I’d carry a lot more resentment than I do now.”
I noted the past tense of her words. “You don’t see her anymore?”
She shook her head. “Some people fold therapy into their daily lifestyle, but I got to a good place. However, I know I can always call her if I need to, even if I hate asking for help.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Ha ha.” She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “My parents weren’t thrilled at first. They’re old school. There’s this stigma around therapy in their generation, but once they saw how much it helped, they were onboard.”
Curiosity wound through me.
Scarlett didn’t talk about her parents much. I knew they divorced when she was young and that she had a fairly normal relationship with them, but that was it.
“How did they…”
“Deal with my accident?” she finished. “As well as they could, I suppose, but my mother was shattered. She was worried about me, obviously, but I think she was equally devastated about the end of my career. She liked having a prima ballerina daughter that she could brag about to her friends. My father moved to London for the first few months after the crash. Vincent was already here. They rallied.”
“Do you resent your mother for that?”
I tried to imagine how my father would react if I got injured and couldn’t play football anymore.
My blood congealed at the mental image.
I’d checked in with him a few times since his heart attack, but it was always through my mother. I hadn’t spoken with him directly since the hospital. However, it didn’t escape my notice that he never reached out to answer my question.
Your team or your son?
“Surprisingly, no.” Thankfully, Scarlett’s response drew my thoughts back to her. The last person I wanted to focus on during our last night here was my father. “I knew she felt those things, but she didn’t act on them, if that makes sense. She didn’t push me to try dancing again, and she was supportive when I became a teacher at RAB instead.” The wind blew stray strands of hair across her face, obscuring her pensive expression. “We all have ugly feelings sometimes. It’s a part of human nature. But it’s what we do with them that counts.”
Every time I thought she couldn’t get more amazing, she proved me wrong.
“That’s a mature way to look at it. I’m sure your old therapist would’ve been proud of that, too,” I teased.
She offered a flicker of a smile. “Maybe. But can I confess something?”
“Always.”
“Sometimes…” Her smile dimmed. “I get so jealous of my students that I can’t breathe. I want them to be happy, and I’m truly proud of their success, but there are days when I look at them and see not only the potential they have, but the potential I used to have. They have their entire careers ahead of them, shiny and untarnished, while I’m a has-been. It’s the wrong way to think about things, but it can be…difficult to live in the shadows when I’ve trained my whole life to be in the spotlight.” Her cheeks reddened. “I know this makes me sound like a terrible person. I’m their teacher. I shouldn’t be jealous of teenagers. And I don’t feel that way all the time. But on bad days, it can make me spiral.”
“They’re human feelings,” I said gently. “Like you said, they’re normal, and you’re not trying to sabotage your students. You’re allowed to feel what you feel.”
“I know. But it’s easier to give advice than to take it.” Scarlett played with the edges of her napkin. “Emma, one of my top students, got the role of Sugar Plum Fairy in the school’s student showcase this year. She wants me to attend the opening night. The staff showcase is at the school, but the student one takes place at Westbury, and I can’t bring myself to go there.”
Westbury was one of the leading performing arts venues in London. I’d never attended a show there, but I passed by it all the time.
“I was on my way to perform at Westbury when the other car hit us,” Scarlett said, her voice quiet. “It was also where I got my first rave review for my performance in Swan Lake. That review put me on the map. In many ways, Westbury is the ultimate symbol of my old life, and I haven’t been able to step foot near it since the accident. It hurts too much to remember what used to be.”
Her eyes were a thousand miles away, and I let the revelations of the night settle around us instead of disrupting it with an immediate response.
Sometimes, listening was a better strategy than talking.
