Dance Without You.

Chapter Three

“Good work today, Sage.  Very good.  The final scene is difficult, but you’ll get use to the feeling of letting yourself go.  It’s only your first time through, don’t fret with it so much.”  

Melody, the choreographer, was one of the few people that Sage actually felt comfortable dancing in front in this place.  Maybe, because, she was one of the more supportive and helpful instructors at the company.  She didn’t immediately judge or get irritated at the fact that someone wasn’t perfect their first time around.  She had really trained Sage a lot, behind the scenes, since she first started to come around here at the age of eight. She saw talent and potential in the young girl almost as soon as Angel had, but of course, could never convince her to audition for a lead role.

“Thank you,” Sage said softly as she moved over to the corner where her things were waiting for her.  Squatting down slowly, she heard Melody speak to Dominic, telling him that he had done excellent work as usual, while she exited the room but Sage remained focused on the task at hand.  That is until she could feel his presence moving nearer to her.  She was expecting him to approach her, actually, but she didn’t know why.  Maybe it was more hopeful than expectant.  She didn’t know how to differentiate those two emotions yet.

What did shock her about the situation was that he was silent at first.  Instead of saying anything, he simply pushed his back against the wall before sliding down it slowly.  Extending one leg out and pushing the knee of the other leg up, he rested an elbow a top it and pushed his fingers through his untamed hair.   Then, he just sat there.  He sat there until she stopped putting water bottles and shoes into her bag and until she sat down, Indian style, across from him.  

“You’ll get used to it.  We spend our entire lives training how to be frigid – tense – in our dancing.  It’s going to feel abnormal, at first, when you have to completely let yourself go and be limp.”  His voice was rough and deep, laced with rasp from being tired.  His eyes pierced through her, locking her glance on his for the first time, when she finally did look up at him.  She couldn’t look away.  “Plus, you don’t trust me yet. Once you do, it will get better…  You’ll let me do the dancing for you.”

Sage was still as stone as she sat there with her eyes locked on his.  She didn’t know if he meant to keep her staring at him or if it was just a hazard of him being so amazingly beautiful and having such stunning eyes.   Either way, her anxiety level went up two fold, but she still couldn’t look away nor conjure any words to speak to him.

“You’re cute,” he said with a smile as he finally broke their gaze and looked away.  The instant his eyes turned, it was like whatever hold he had on her was immediately broken and she was snapped out of her trance.  “Do you always get reeled in that easily or is it just me?”

“Um…”  The shade of red on her cheeks deepened from a natural flush to a deep cherry in just moments after that question.  Her eyes fell back down to her lap as she realized that this guy really did make her uncomfortable – but in the best way.  “I…I think it’s just you.”  A side glance allowed Sage to watch as Dominic’s eyebrows forced themselves upward as he let his head fall back into her direction.  A small smirk accompanied that momentary expression of shock as well.

“And I thought that you were the shy one,” he said in tone laced with amusement.  “I think you may be the only girl in this place that I have ever gotten to admit that.  And I didn’t even have to try hard.”  After that, he laughed and somehow…that relieved Sage of some of her anxiety and allowed her to breathe again.

“Yesterday…everything that you told me…” Sage started to question.  “Why did you tell me all of that?”

It was a question that had been on her mind since Dominic left her at her door the night before.  Probably before, but there were too many other thoughts crowding her brain for that one to make it to the surface.  All of this was sudden.  Their first interaction was weird, to put it mildly, then he spilled all of these details that she never could have imagined being true – but for what purpose would he have to lie?  And even though Sage was shy, she wasn’t stupid, so she knew that there was far more to this story than just what he told.