Grace and I sit on the floor of the personal ballet studio of the loft. We both stretch out our legs as she talks about Shawn's parents. She stretches her body to her left leg, holding onto the foot, and sighs. I listen to her talk about how she felt outcast when he would bring her over to his house multiple occasions. I did feel bad; Grace was an easily likable person. One time during a show, she realized that her partner didn't enjoy dancing with her and she was affected by his feelings that she was completely lost during her solos. She almost fell and when she came into the wings, she cried in my arms.
"How do you know if they like you or not?" I ask Grace.
She shrugs her shoulders and looks at me. "I have that feeling. Sometimes it's just a little look I get, or a vibe I feel."
"Have you mentioned this to Shawn?"
"Yes, but he says that I'm just overreacting. And when I try to bring it up, he gets upset."
"When was the last time you brought it up with him? Maybe he'll be open to what you have to say and hear you out," I shrug my shoulders.
"Tina, I talked to him when he called me into the room." Grace groans.
"Oh."
"It's useless! They don't want their son to marry me."
"Don't talk like that, Grace. I have a feeling that they like you!"
"In all the years that I have been with Shawn, I don't think I ever held a conversation with them that lasted longer than thirty seconds."
I remain quiet, unsure of what to say to Grace in the moment. The man she is about to marry is in love with her, but his parents aren't so much. Her family are about to land and think that they're going to meet his family, as well, only to realize that they didn't want to show.
"I don't know what to do, Christina." Grace groaned into her hands. She picks her head up and looks at me. "Was it like this with Olivier's parents?"
"No, sadly." I say.
"Why does everyone have to love you at first sight?" Grace chuckles.
I shrug my shoulders. "Maybe it's your accent. They probably don't like the New Yorker voice."
"If I faked a French accent, would I be loved, too?"
"Mix in a Russian accent, too, and you'll do fine." Grace laughs lightly and I stop stretching and give her a hug. "How bad is it?"
We pull back and she sighs. "He wanted to throw me a birthday party. They didn't show. I just, call me crazy, Tina, but I just know that they don't like me."
"Well I don't think so. I think that they like you."
"They threw Shawn a welcome home party once and forgot to invite me."
"Okay, you're right. They might hate you." I say. Grace lets out a sad chuckle and covers her face with her hands. "But that doesn't mean you can't change that. Look, they're going to come around. I promise."
"I hope you're right. I just can't shake off this feeling that they truly don't like me. Tina, every time his mom looks at me, it's like...it's like she's thinking it. She's thinking to herself that I'm not good enough for her son." Her voice begins crack in the slightest and I stop stretching and go wrap my arms and legs around her as we hug. Koala hugs were how we let one another know how much we loved the other.
"Grace, don't think that." I say.
"I can't help but think it. They hate me. I know this. And it sucks that my fiancé doesn't even want to acknowledge the elephant in the room." She says.
"Look, you are not going to cry over this. You're not. Your family is going to be here in a few hours, you'll see them and everything will be better. It's going to be better."
- x -
Grace left to go pick up her parents at the airport while I stayed in the mini studio of the loft with my headphones in and my phone in the tucked into band on my arm as I danced to the music being played. My eyes were closed as I was barefoot with the exception of tape around my feet.
My legs carried me all over the floor and my arms became wings. I was lost inside the music and lost inside the love of dancing. I prep for a leap and then begin to turn towards the other side of the room. My eyes snap open once I feel someone grabbing me.
Shawn stands directly in front of me as he glares gently at me. I remove my ear pods and step back. "I'm sorry, I didn't see you there."
"It's okay." He smiles. "Can you do me a favor?"
"Sure." I say.
"Can you come with me to the store? Grace wants me to get a couple of things."
"Sure." I nod. Shawn smiles and lets go of his grip on my arms.
"Thanks."
"I just have to get ready."
I exit the room and head towards the guest room and lock the door. The jeans I wore earlier were folded and lying flat against the bed. I removed my pants and put on my jeans and grabbed the sweater from earlier and slipped into it. I released my hair from the bun and kept it in a ponytail and slid into a pair of shoes before grabbing my wallet and phone and exiting the room.
"What're we getting?" I asked him as he sat on the couch.
"Some things her parents weren't allowed to bring on the plane. She said she forgot to get them when they were flying and wants me to get them." He replied. Shawn got up from the couch and we headed out the loft, and then the building.
"Are we not driving?" I ask.
"Nah, it's just three blocks down. Is that okay?"
"Yeah, no, that's fine."
Shawn and I walk in silence and some people look at him and smile or wave. It makes me wonder how Grace will adjust to the married life with him when the time comes.
"I feel like since I'm about to become the life long partner of your best friend," Shawn speaks, "I should get to know you better."
"Oh, right." I agree.
"I've only heard stories about you."
"What would you like to know?"
"Your accent. Where are you from?" He asks me.
"I'm from New York, born and raised. But my mother is Russian and my father is French, they met when she studied abroad one summer during her college years in the late eighties. She was at a restaurant with her group and my father was a waiter there, he saw her, she saw him, and they eloped." I say.
"Like, on the spot?" Shawn asks me as we turn a corner.
"No," I softly chuckle. "She was studying for the whole summer and each early morning, she would sneak out of the apartment she stayed at and they would run off and hide under the trees of the gardens and have breakfast. They got caught on the last day, though. The school kicked her out because sneaking out was against the rules, so rather than her going back and feeling like she disappointed her parents, my father proposed to her."
"That's a really beautiful story." He says.
"Wanna hear something more beautiful?"
"Yeah."
"He didn't understand Russian, she didn't understand French. But they would hear each other's tone and fall deeper into love."
"Do they speak the language now?"
"Oh, yeah. As soon as they eloped, they went to the bookshop and bought those speaking dictionaries and she studied in France for a bit before they moved here."
"So their accents grew on you, basically? That's so funny, my moms accent didn't really grow on me." Shawn tells me.
"She has an accent?" I ask.
"Yeah - British." He replies.
"Lucky! I wish I had her accent."
"How come?"
"Because then people wouldn't be looking at my mouth when I talk, or going, I'm sorry, your accent is making it hard for me to understand what you're saying."
"I can understand what you're saying."
"That's because you're used to an accent."
"What else do you want to know?" I ask him.
"I never really got to hear the story of how you and Grace met." Shawn says. "She says that day will always be her favorite."
A blush creeps to my cheeks knowing that my best friend in the whole world considers that day her favorite.
"This was ten years ago and I was thirteen years old and I had just moved up into the company. I've been dancing ever since I could walk, and moving up is an incredibly big deal. Only a certain number and picked - I believe there were thirty. Of the thirty, there were ten girls. Of the ten were just two girls who were the same age, and it was Grace and I.
"The move up was sprung onto us and the director instructed us to grab our things and head upstairs to the fourth floor. So I grabbed my belongings and I remember racing up the stairs so I could be the first girl there, and I was. I gave them a three minute solo and afterwards they instructed me to place my stuff into the new dressing room and as I'm going, I see Grace crying in the hall on the phone with her dad. She had forgotten to bring her second pair of shoes and he practice ones were just dead."
"How does a shoe die?" Shawn asks me.
"I have dead shoes back at the loft, remind me to show them to you." I say.
"Sorry, continue."
"So Grace is crying and when she hangs up, I looked at her feet and realized we have the same feet and I looked at her and reached into my duffel and took out my pointe shoes and handed them to her."
"What'd she do next?"
"She cried." I chuckle.
"Geez, they're just shoes."
"Just shoes? Excuse me, I'm going to walk into oncoming traffic."
Shawn laughs and grabs my arm as he pulls me back into the sidewalk and then lets go. "I'm sorry, I really don't get what it means to be a dancer."
"Tell me the passion you get from being on stage." I say.
"It's indescribable," he says.
"No, it's not. It's that feeling of being on a cloud higher than nine. You emerge and you're greeted with screaming fans. We go out, and it's quiet. You're rewarded in screams and cries and posters. We're rewarded with claps and standing ovations. You sell out. We see empty seats sometimes. You sing because you can no longer speak. We dance because we can no longer walk."
"Holy shit," Shawn swears. "Pardon my mouth, but that was fucking beautiful what you just described."
"You and Grace are just two peas in a pod. She thinks everything I say is beautiful." I say. "Anyways, back to the story."
"Grace hugs me but I pulled back and told her, I don't know you, but you have two minutes to put those on before it's late and you don't perform an original solo for them. And she put them on and went to dance." I laugh. "But I was so tremendously shy back then, I really didn't have a single friend, I preferred to be alone. As I'm walking out the lobby on the first floor, I hear someone running and as I turn around, Grace just flings herself onto me."
Shawn laughs and his shoulders hunch over. I nod my head and the laughter consumed my voice as I pathetically attempted to continue to talk. A small snort emits from my nose as I remember how incredibly thin Grace was back then and how with her long, wavy brown hair she resembled a flying squirrel.
"So, so. She-she jumps," I demonstrate with my hand, "onto me and just hugs me like a koala! And I fell onto the floor and she just couldn't stop thanking me for the shoes. And that, Shawn, is How I Met Your Fiancé."
He lets out a chuckle and shakes his head. "I can't believe she just threw herself at you!"
"Oh, believe it!" I say.
We arrive at the store and walk in. Shawn grabs a basket and walk beside him as we head into the first aisle. Over the radio an Amy Winehouse song plays and I can't help but dancing along to it. At first, my dancing was small and random movements, but as the beat progressed to My Tears Dry On Their Own, I began to dance more noticeably and grabbing random things as if they were a dance partner.
"Pst! Tina!" Shawn whispers. I drop the carrot that was in my hand and look at him. He has the basket by his feet as he has his arms crossed and he cocks his head to the side, a smug smirk on his lips.
"What?" I ask as I stop dancing.
"You know there's people here, right?"
"So? It's a free show," I shrug my shoulders. "Besides, one just can't not dance along to Amy Winehouse."
I turn around as he grabs the basket and tap my fingers along my thigh to the song.
"Is Amy Winehouse your favorite artist?" Shawn asks me.
"Yeah, I loved her. I still do. Just because someone passed away doesn't mean you have to stop loving them." I reply. "Can I ask you something?"
"Well that depends," he replies, "but go ahead."
"When did you realize you loved Grace?" I ask.
A smile tugs at his lips and I take the basket from him as he starts to reach for the things, only for me to grab the right things; Grace is picky about packaging.
"I don't know. I guess it was the way she talked. She talked about dance and New York and her family and you and she talked so passionately about things and people she loves. I guess that love just rubbed off on me." Shawn says.
"You love her?" I ask.
"Duh," he replies.
"Then hoe come you don't believe her theory about your parents not liking her?"
His smile fades and he stands there. "I wasn't prepared for that question."
"That's another thing for you to know about me - I'm kind of he bad cop, Grace is the good cop."
"I can see that now."
"So? How come?"
"No offense, but if I don't even talk about this with Grace, what makes you think I'll talk about this with you?" Shawn tells me.
"Your posture tells me that you want to. The way you stopped smiling, you knew that I'm right and so is Grace." I reply. "And the way your back went from being hunched to straight."
"How can you tell from posture?" He asks as we walk to another aisle.
"I used to watch a lot of Criminal Minds with..." I stop. With him. It used to be our show. We would always watch it and even record it when we knew we wouldn't be able to watch it.
"Is it the ex from the photo?" Shawn asks.
"Yeah," I silently say.
"Do me a favor? Forget about him. I doubt he's thinking about you."
"I doubt he is, either." I reply.
Twenty minutes later, we've exited the shop and walk back to the loft with a brown paper bag in our hands. A paparazzo hid in a bush across the street trying to get a photo.
"How do you get used to those?" I ask Shawn.
"It comes along with the price of fame." He replies.
"How did Grace get used to it?"
"She absolutely hated it at first. I remember she used to get these mini anxiety attacks in the car or anywhere. As soon as she would see those men with cameras, she just would get incredibly scared and just cling onto me really tight."
"I think I remember her telling me about an attack or two she had recently," I pipe.
"When did she tell you?"
"I think three weeks ago."
Another man with a camera joins and the photos ensue. I laugh as I remember what Grace and I did last night.
"What's so funny?" Shawn asks me.
"Grace and I had some fun with the paps last night." I reply.
"What's you do?"
"We leapt across the street. I have to find that photo, I think my leap was pretty good."
"I never asked, how'd you get into ballet anyways? Grace told me her story." Shawn asks me.
We turn a corner and I begin the story.
"When I first started learning to walk, I would walk on my toes, and hardly ever with my feet. My mother used to dance back in Russia so she was happy to realize that I shared the same passion for dance as her."
"I take it your mother didn't continue dancing in the states?" He asks.
I shake my head. "She found a different passion - family. She quit dancing to have me and then found another job as a teacher in a private school. She would teach them Russian Literature before she quit and decided to become a nanny."
"And what does your father do, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Back in France he was a musician and he would wait tables on the side. But when they moved to New York, he found a job at a bakery and he's been working there ever since."
"Your parents seem like such wonderful people," Shawn says. "I'd love to meet them."
"Oh, no. Trust me, once you meet them it'll be hectic. I don't know how Grace survived it, but she loved it."
"Please tell me that story." Shawn chuckles.
"It's a long story, remind me some other time." I say. "But, you didn't really answer my question back in the store."
"What question?" He asks me. We have arrived at the loft and head into the building.
"About your parents and Grace."
"I don't like talking about it. I don't even like thinking about it."
He presses the elevator button and the machine whirs. "I just can't imagine people not liking her, ya know?"
"She's a very likable person," I nod. "But you need to understand that it's most likely eating away at her."
"It can't be that bad."
"Shawn, this is the girl you are going to marry. She may even be the mother of your children. You have to talk to your parents, or even hear her out."
"It's hard to even believe her theory. I just always wanted to ignore it."
The bell dings and the elevator doors open and I turn to Shawn.
"Sometimes we ignore the problems of the people we love. It's one of the many selfish things that humans do."