Tan
Sweet hell.
I closed my dressing room door and flattened my back against it, barely able to breathe. Barely able to move.
There was only one reason why my parents were at Blanche's Boudoir. They were looking for me.
All of a sudden, the seventeen missed calls and the demand that I meet them in person at the hospital made sense. My aunties had done their research on Dominick DuBois and discovered that his grandmother owned this club. All it took was putting two and two together to find out Dominick was Romeo. A dancer.
And that I was staring as his Juliet.
What the hell was I going to do? What was I going to say? I couldn't lie my way out of this one.
"Tanu! Where are you!"
My mother's voice was louder now, and I could hear my father's angry muttering through the thin walls. Then one of them pounded on the door, and I nearly jumped out of my skimpy little dress.
My breath came in short, shallow pants while the room spun.
God, I'd really fucked up. I'd been avoiding them for so long, hiding all my faults and failures, that confronting them now felt overwhelming.
"Open up!" my father shouted. "We know you're in there!"
This was how I died. Of embarrassment. Right here in this dressing room. Only, when I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for my impending doom, nothing came.
They banged on the door again, and I bit my lip to keep from crying.
I knew I had to face them, whether it was right now, tomorrow morning, or next week. They were my parents. I didn't want to cut them out of my life. I loved them with my whole heart. I just wanted them to love me for who I was and not for who I could be.
Maybe this was my chance to explain that to them.
Lifting my chin, I forced myself to open the door and came face to face with my mother and father.
As soon as she saw me, my mom covered her mouth with a shaking hand. My father stared at me in disbelief through his rimless glasses. The disappointment was plain on their faces.
It reminded me so sharply of how Celeste looked at me inside her office that I nearly lost my nerve. But somehow, I held on, thinking of Dominick.
"Do you know where you are?" Mom asked, lowering her hand and stepping inside the dressing room.
My dad followed. "Of course she does. This is why she's been avoiding us."
I barely held back my tears when I replied, "Yes. I know where I am. And yes. This is one of the reasons why I've been too busy to answer your calls."
"But why would you do this? A strip club? Tanushree! You are so much better than this! We didn't raise you to be a," she dropped her voice to a whisper, "a stripper."
I could tell how disappointed they were, but instead of letting that disappointment break me and folding like a house of cards, I stepped into it. Explaining to them how it had shaped my entire life.
"I know," I said, rolling my shoulders back and standing tall even though my voice wobbled. "You raised me to become a doctor and marry a nice South Asian boy you approved of. And every move I've made away from that future has been looked at with disappointment."
"Tanushree!" my mom replied. And the way she'd said my name let me know how truly shocked she was to hear me talking to her like this. "When have we ever said you needed to marry a South Asian boy or become a doctor?"
I rolled my eyes and stuck my hands on my hips. As if it wasn't implied in every conversation we'd ever had.
My mother's voice became frustrated, and she threw her hands in the air. "We've supported your ballet career at every turn. We even brought Dadi over from India and got you an apartment in the city when you were fifteen. Who else supports their child like that?"
She was trying to make me feel guilty, but I wasn't having it. Not right now.
"You didn't have to say it," I said, then jabbed one finger at my chest. "I can tell by the way you look at me. By the way you make me feel like ballet isn't good enough." I drew in a shuddering breath as the words flowed out of me. "By the way you talk about everyone else in the medical profession like they made the right choice, and here I am, the disappointing daughter who can't seem to get her life together."
When I was done, tears were rolling down my cheeks, and as embarrassed as I was to be crying, I let them fall.
My father joined the argument, pushing up his glasses and stepping between my mother and me. "All we ever wanted was for you to be able to support yourself so you don't have to struggle," he protested.
I narrowed my eyes, knowing that wasn't true. They had a predetermined future they wanted me to achieve. "Is that why you made me double major in biology? Because I definitely struggled to keep a 4.0!"
"You love biology!" my dad countered. "Almost as much as dance!"
More tears fell down my cheeks. I had no idea that he'd known how much I loved biology. Learning about the body and how it worked was always my favorite. I always thought ballet and biology went hand in hand in some weird, nerdy way.
But my tears didn't stop my father once he got stuck in lecture mode. No. He continued, his own eyes looking slightly glassy.
"And don't forget that you sustained some very serious injuries throughout your career. Remember when you snapped your Achilles tendon?" he asked. "I certainly haven't. Seeing you on a gurney screaming in pain while being wheeled back for surgery was one of the worst moments of my life."
He set his hand on his heart, breathing heavily, as he stared into my eyes. I'd never heard him say anything like this before. He'd never showed any emotion. It was always questions about grades or asking if I'd eaten enough. I had no idea my injuries had affected him like this.
"We've always been proud of your ballet career," Mom cut in, setting her hand on my shoulder. "But we wanted to make sure you had options if you ever sustained a career-ending injury."
My slow-falling tears turned to shoulder-shaking sobs, causing my eyeliner to run into my eyes in a stinging mess. There was still one thing that I needed to get off my chest. One thing that refuted all of their platitudes.
"If you've always been so proud of me," I said, not even trying to stop the torrent of tears streaming down my face, "then why didn't you want to see me dance the Sugarplum Fairy? When I told you I was donating my tickets, you just shrugged me off."
My mother and father exchanged defeated looks, and I knew I'd been right. But being right didn't make me feel any better. It made me feel worse.
Glancing back at me, my mom said, "Of course I was hurt when you told me you'd donated your tickets. I love coming to your shows. I'm always so proud when we get ushered to our seats, and I get to tell everyone around us, 'That's my daughter!' when you come on stage." One tear landed on her cheek. "But you're old enough to make your own decisions. You've always been so independent. I thought–" She paused to wipe away the tear, "how lucky am I to have a daughter who is so charitable. I raised her to have a good heart. Now tell me, Tanu, how could I be disappointed?"
I didn't have any words. I only had tears. God, so many tears. I'd been crying so much over the past month, I thought I might've cried myself dry, but nope. Nothing could stop them. Not even dehydration, apparently.
But despite all the tears and the declarations of support and love, we were still standing in a dressing room inside a strip club, and I was still wearing a dress that honestly covered more of me than most ballet leotards, but that fact was lost on my parents.
As they looked around, taking in the small space, my mother's manicured brows crinkled with a confused look.
"But we didn't imagine all your hard work would lead you here. To a strip club."
The words came out like they were poisonous, and she was trying to spit them out. I wiped my face on a tissue, trying to pull myself together, and handed one to my mom.
It was my father who spoke next. "You're a principal ballerina for Liberty Ballet. You have achieved everything you set out to achieve in your dancing career. How on earth did you end up here?"
Guilt nearly brought me to my knees, and I felt like I might be sick all over again. As much as I'd been hiding this from them, I couldn't hide anymore. I had to come clean and tell the truth.
Looking down at the floor, I said, "I'm not a principal."
Silence followed, and honestly, it was worse than a lecture. I wished they would just start yelling at me again so that I could yell back. But they didn't. After a few awkward moments, I finally got up the courage to tell them what I'd been keeping from them for months.
"I didn't get the promotion," I explained, not meeting their eyes. "Celeste gave it to someone else."
They both made sounds of shock. My shoulders slumped, and I felt so small. So incredibly disappointing. Like I was not only a bad daughter for not being the successful ballerina they spent all this money on, but for lying to them and making them believe that I was.
"Why didn't you tell us?" my mom asked.
Tears burned in my throat, but I lifted my gaze to theirs. "Because I couldn't stand to see you looking at me the way you're looking at me right now. Like I'm such a disappointment."
Mom hugged me and squeezed me so tight, tighter than I ever remember her hugging me. It was the first time I'd let myself be this vulnerable around my parents. Showing them how I'd do anything not to disappoint them, including pushing them away.
"I'm sorry that we've made you feel like a disappointment, and because you felt that way, you thought you couldn't be honest with us," she told me, and I could hear her voice wobbling with more tears too. "I never wanted that for you."
Her words were like a healing balm on my soul, and for the first time since Celeste took the promotion away from me, I felt like myself again. Like my world wasn't flipped upside down, I wasn't drowning in regrets, guilt, and ineptitude.
I realized that was the difference between family and ballet. Family had my best interests at heart, even if they were tough on me, but Celeste didn't. And she never would.
"I'm sorry too," Dad added. "I know I can be...tough on you and your brother."
My mom and I let out strangled laughs because tough was an understatement.
"And I'm not trying to make you feel bad when I say this, but I cannot understand how my daughter turned to stripping."
I knew I needed to explain myself, but somehow, my words came out in a mess that didn't quite capture how I ended up in a dressing room at Blanche's Boudoir.
"All of this started because I was trying to help a...a friend. This was just something I was doing for fun and because I was feeling so bad about myself for losing the promotion. I don't know how it got so out of hand." I glanced between the two of them. "I'm sorry."
Both of my parents hugged me and offered encouraging words of support until a hulking form came into view just behind them. His arms crossed over his chest, and a cold look cradled in his bright green eyes.
***
The next part will become free on June 5, 2024, but until then, it can be unlocked for only 5 coins.