Skye Blue, page 22
part #6 of Firsts and Forever Series
“You’re no fun,” she huffed. “I should have brought your brother Dante instead. He’d let me shoot this guy in the nuts.”
“Like hell he would!” her grandson exclaimed.
“Okay, so are we done casing the joint?” I asked. “Maybe we should call it a night.”
“We’re done here until we form a plan,” Nana said, “but nobody’s calling it a night. We’ve still got art supplies to secure!”
*****
It was past midnight when we dropped a sleepy Dare off at his apartment in the Western Addition. He kissed me goodnight and murmured, “Thank you for a truly memorable evening,” then said goodbye to our companions before exiting the limo. I watched him descend a set of stairs and unlock a door halfway below street level before disappearing inside.
I was still staring after him as we pulled away from the curb and rolled down the street, and Trevor said, “Wow, you’re so smitten!”
“Can you blame me?” I murmured. The big metal claw at my feet shifted a bit and I focused my attention back inside the vehicle, stopping its roll with the sole of my sneaker. Nana had been right about the dumpster treasure trove she’d discovered, it had been epic.
“Dare seems like a great guy. Maybe you two can share a cozy cell after Nana gets us all arrested for dognapping.” Trevor grinned at me, and I glanced over at Mrs. Dombruso. She was sound asleep, her head back and her mouth wide open, snoring steadily.
“I have a feeling that whole thing’s going to spiral way out of control,” I said.
“This is Nana we’re talking about,” Vincent reminded me. “How could it not?”
Chapter Ten
I got to the dance studio while Dare’s morning class was still in session and tried to be unobtrusive as I sat down just inside the door. It was a ballet class consisting of six women and two men, all in their twenties. They were lined up at the long barre repeating a series of exercises, and some of them glanced my way as I came in.
Dare did too, giving me a shy smile before becoming focused again. A couple of his students needed assistance, so he rested his left hand on the barre and gave them a demonstration, making it look fluid and effortless. God was he beautiful.
When class ended, the dancers grabbed their towels and backpacks and began to filter out, a few looking at me curiously. I smiled at them as I got up and crossed the studio to Dare, then asked him, “How do you feel about P.D.A. around your students?”
He grinned and said, “If you’re involved, I’m all for it.”
When I leaned in and kissed him, a young woman with short blonde hair exclaimed, “Well, that explains it!” Dare raised an eyebrow at her and she flashed him a big smile. “I was wondering why you were so much nicer all of a sudden and now I get it. There’s nothing like love to soothe the savage beast.” He rolled his eyes at that, and she called as she headed for the door, “Bye Teach, see you next week! And you, blue haired boy, keep doing what you’re doing. I could get used to an instructor that doesn’t bite my head off every time I confuse my left foot for my right!”
“She really does that,” he told me as he perched on a corner of the desk. “All the time. That’s not my fault.”
When all the students were gone, I slipped my hands around Dare’s waist and smiled at him. “Hi.”
“Hi Skye. Did you sleep well? More importantly, did you take six showers after climbing around in those dumpsters last night? I know I did.”
I was so busy marveling at his perfect smile that I almost forgot to answer him, but eventually murmured, “Oh. Um, yeah. Not six, but one really thorough one. Thanks for being such a good sport with all of that. Dumpster diving has to be a tidy person’s nightmare.”
“It was interesting,” he said. “I can hardly wait to watch you weld a sculpture together out of the treasures we found. I suspect that’s going to be incredibly hot.”
“Only if you’re somehow turned on by huge gloves and a big, awkward welding mask.”
“On you, I just might be.”
“Maybe you’ll find out soon. I was able to get my welding equipment out of hock with my first paycheck, so now all I need is an idea for my senior project.”
“You don’t have any?”
“I have a million mediocre ideas. I’m holding out for one that’s great.”
“I’m sure something will come to you.” Dare gently brushed my hair out of my eyes as we were talking.
“Yeah, eventually.” I kissed him again, just because it was too tempting not to, and changed the subject by saying, “Do you want me to get you an ice pack since you just finished class?”
“I don’t need it yet, the pain’s still tolerable.”
“Do you think...” I started to say, but then told him, “never mind.”
“What?”
“Well, I’ve never seen you dance ballet and was going to ask you to show me a little of what you can do, but that was a dumb idea. I don’t want to make your knee hurt.”
“I’d love to show you,” he said. “I can easily adjust what I’m doing to work around my injury, just like I do every night at the club.” He jumped up and wheeled the office chair around the desk for me. “I’ll put on some music. Be right back.”
I settled onto the chair as he jogged through the door in the corner. Classical music filled the air, and when he reappeared he took a spot in the center of the room. He smiled self-consciously, clearing his throat and scratching the bridge of his nose with his knuckle. And then he completely transformed.
He straightened up, arranging his feet, his arms sweeping into the air, and began to dance. I’d always been impressed by what he could do at the club, but I had no idea what he was truly capable of until that moment. He crossed the floor, leaping high into the air, one leg stretched in front of him, the other behind, then crouched down and spun before executing another series of jumps. His moves were bold, confident, grace and power woven into pure poetry. I was completely overwhelmed. I never knew that anything in all the world could be so beautiful.
When the song ended and a soft instrumental piece began to play, Dare came to rest in the center of the studio, then shot me another self-conscious smile. “Thank you,” I whispered, my voice rough with emotion.
“You’re welcome.” He crossed the room and sat at my feet, watching me curiously. I probably looked a bit dazed after that.
“It’s funny, we were just talking about my sculptures and I was feeling so uninspired. But then you did that. You did the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. You became art, right in front of my eyes.” He smiled at that and I said, “I just found my muse. You make me want to be a better artist, Dare, because I want to be able to show people what you just showed me. I can’t thank you enough for that.”
“You just got all of that from one four-minute routine?”
I nodded and dropped to my knees in front of him, the office chair rolling away as I took him in my arms and hugged him for a long moment. Then I got up, crossed the room and locked the door to the studio before pulling down the floor-to-ceiling rice paper shades over the glass wall facing the hallway. When I turned back to Dare, he was watching me with an expression that was equal parts amused and tender.
I crossed to the other side of the room and grabbed a couple of the yoga mats, then pulled open the desk drawers one by one, finally ending up with a tube of hand lotion. When I returned to Dare, I set these things beside him and pulled off his black tank top. He shifted over to the stacked blue mats and reclined on his elbows as I stripped him, then myself. Once we were both naked, I climbed on top of him and kissed him for a long time, my hands exploring his wondrous body.
We worked each other up gradually and when he was hard, he slicked himself with the lotion and slid inside me. He made love to me slowly, sensually. Even though I was on top of him he set the pace, pushing up into me, his eyes locked with mine. It was so different than the wild, urgent way we’d fucked last night, and no less perfect.
Eventually he came in me, then rolled us both onto our sides and cradled me with one arm. He dispensed some lotion into his palm and wrapped his hand around my cock, kissing me as he stroked me. His touch was gentle at first, but became more urgent as I moaned against his lips.
When he brought me to orgasm I grabbed his body, my cum spraying his belly and mine. He carried me through to the end, then held me in his arms as a couple aftershocks rattled me. When I looked up at him he smiled at me and said, “I think the customers at Thrust are really going to enjoy this new routine we’ve just choreographed.”
I burst out laughing. “Absolutely. Sure, the club will get raided and subsequently shut down, but it’ll be worth it.”
“Totally. May as well go out with a bang.”
“Literally!”
“Literally,” he agreed. His eyes slid shut and after a while he murmured, “Oh man, I could fall asleep right now.”
“Go ahead. I kept you up late last night in my quest to show you the finest dumpsters in the Bay Area. You’re probably exhausted.”
“Can’t sleep though,” he murmured, his eyes still closed. “We’re supposed to be working out a routine.”
“We can probably wing it.”
“And another class will be here at two....” He was fading fast.
“So I’ll wake you before then.”
“Okay.” Dare nodded off in my arms, his full lips parting slightly, his expression softening. He usually looked just a bit older than twenty-four, but when he was asleep the years dropped away. Seeing him looking so young and defenseless made my protective instinct flare and I held him a bit tighter.
I studied him, memorizing every detail, from the curve of his lips to the sweep of his thick eyelashes. After a while, I decided I just had to draw him, so I untangled myself carefully and raided the desk. I hadn’t brought along any art supplies, but a stack of copy paper and a number two pencil would do just fine.
While he napped, I recorded all the details that made up this beautiful boy, then began sketching ideas for a sculpture based on the way he’d danced. If I could even sort of convey Dare’s gracefulness, it would be the greatest thing I’d ever created.
Sometime later, as I sat cross-legged on the wood floor surrounded by drawings, doing yet another sketch as I tried to work out how to best convey fluid movement in solid metal, Dare said softly, “I love watching you like that.”
I glanced up at him. He was still reclining on the mat, his arm tucked under his head, a smile on his lips. “Like what?”
“Lost in your work. If you’re that intense when you draw, I really can’t wait to watch you sculpt.”
I grinned at him. “It’s because of you. I have the world’s most perfect muse. I wish I’d taken the time to get my studio set up on campus, it’s still a mess from last year. If it wasn’t, I’d go straight there when your next class starts and begin working on some ideas.”
He sat up, rubbing an eye with the back of his index finger, and said, “Speaking of class starting, what time is it?” I reached for my jeans, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and told him the time. “Shit, we need to get dressed. Some of my students like to arrive early to warm up.”
We put on our clothes and tidied up the studio, and just a few moments after we’d unlocked the door and rolled up all the blinds, the first student arrived. It turned out to be Ellis, the cute blond dancer that worked with Dare and me at Thrust. “Hi guys,” he said with a smile. “Are you teaching here too now, Skye?”
“Oh. Um, no. I was just visiting Dare.”
“Visiting,” he repeated, his smile getting wider. “That’s a polite euphemism for screwing.”
“Who says we were screwing?” Dare asked, knitting his brows.
“Oh please,” Ellis said as he put down the messenger bag he was carrying and peeled off his sweatshirt. “It’s written all over your ridiculously content faces. Also, it smells like sex in here.”
Dare turned and jogged to the office, murmuring, “I’m going to turn the fan on.”
“So,” I said to Ellis, feeling a bit awkward and trying to change the subject, “what made you want to study dance?”
He bent at the waist, touching the floor as he said, “Dare’s the best dancer I’ve ever seen. Before, I never really cared what I was doing up on stage. I considered being a club dancer a ‘for now’ job until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, you know? But then Dare came along a few months ago and...I don’t know. I guess he inspired me. He’s so unbelievably good at what he does that it made me want to be better, too.”
“I totally get that.”
He straightened up and pushed his blond hair out of his big brown eyes. “By the way, I’m absolutely thrilled that you came along and thawed the Ice King. He may be incredibly talented, but he also used to be pretty insufferable until you transformed him.”
“You’re the second one of his students to tell me that.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Dare joined us as I picked up my drawings. “I’m going to head to campus and work on cleaning up my studio,” I told him.
“I’ll walk you out.”
I said goodbye to Ellis and Dare and I went downstairs hand-in-hand. When we reached the sidewalk, I turned to him and asked, “Were you in a ton of pain when you were dancing for me?”
“No more than usual. Like I said, I can modify my movements to work around my knee.”
“If you’re able to do that, I guess I don’t understand why you can’t go back to dancing professionally once you have your operation.”
“Well, because I’ll still have to accommodate my reduced range of motion and favor my artificial knee, and you just can’t do that as a ballet dancer. You have to be able to do exactly what everyone else is doing, in exactly the same way. For example, if the entire company’s executing a jeté and landing on their right leg, I can’t very well land on my left.”
“So, you know what that means.”
“Yeah. No more career.”
I shook my head. “It only means no more being part of someone else’s company. You can still dance professionally, Dare. Hell, you’re already doing that, every day at the club. After your knee’s fixed, you could start your own dance troupe and choreograph routines that work around whatever range of motion issues you’re left with.”
“I...could, I guess.” He smiled at me and said, “That’s actually quite the epiphany and you just threw it out so casually. I always thought being part of an established company was the only road to success, but you’ve given me something to think about.”
“Glad I could offer a fresh perspective.” As I kissed him goodbye, a chorus of cat calls went up from a group of Dare’s students that had just reached the building.
“So that’s why you’re nice all of a sudden!” one of them exclaimed. I chuckled and headed for the bus stop.
*****
My studio was trashed. To return it to a useable state, I began by removing all of last year’s sketches from the white walls and pinning up the series of drawings I’d just done. That was the easy part.
I unearthed my old MP3 player and its speaker and got some Lady Gaga going to pump up my energy level. As I sang along (badly) I began to neatly stack the miscellaneous odds and ends that cluttered the studio. At one point, I ran out to the dumpsters behind the building and retrieved a big cardboard box, which I began filling with some of my surplus. This would go outside the building with a ‘free’ sign on it. Given the fact that many art students thought like I did, I knew all those bits and pieces would be put to good use.
I’d made great progress when a familiar voice said, “You know, it’s impossible to listen to Lady Gaga without thinking of you.”
I turned to look at my best friend, who was leaning against the doorframe. Christian was dressed simply in a white t-shirt and jeans, his light brown curls disheveled, his gaze directed at the floor. I crossed the distance between us and grabbed him in a hug. “You’re an asshole for not returning my texts,” I told him as I clutched him to me.
“I’m an asshole for a lot of reasons, that’s only one of them. I’m so fucking sorry I made things weird between us, Skye.”
I led him into the studio and turned the music off before sitting on my scarred, wooden work table. He sat beside me and gestured at the sketches covering the far wall. “I just got it. When I stuck my head in your studio and saw these new drawings, I suddenly understood what that guy means to you.” I smiled at that. Only a fellow artist would be able to read so much into some pencil sketches on copy paper.
“I really hope you two learn to be friends,” I said. “Dare’s going to be a part of my life for a very long time and so are you, so it’d make me really happy if you got along.”
“Actually,” Christian said, looking down at his long, elegant hands, which were folded on his lap, “I’m going away when the school year’s over. I’ll always love you, Skye, but I won’t always be around. That’s the real reason why I never pursued a sexual relationship with you, because I knew it’d make it way too hard to walk away from you when this is all over.”
“I don’t understand. Where are you going?”
“Back to reality.”
“You lost me.”
He sighed and said, “I know. I’ll tell you about it when the time comes, but until then could you please just let me be Christian George a bit longer?”
“You won’t be Christian George after we graduate?”
His full lips turned up in a sad smile. “That’s not even my real name. Well, yes it is. It’s my real first name, but George is my middle name, not my last name.”
That newsflash left me reeling a little. “I’ve never understood it. Why you feel you have to keep so much from me, I mean. I think I’m probably the only person alive that doesn’t even know where his best friend works, let alone the first thing about your family, your childhood, your life in general before I met you. And now I find out I don’t even know your last name!”
“You’ve been great about accepting my limitations. I love the fact that you never pushed for answers.”
