Joe's PoV
As it would turn out, a lot of the team had had the same idea as me.
"JUST BECAUSE I KEPT YOU LATE LAST NIGHT DOES NOT GIVE YOU AN EXCUSE TO SKIP COMPULSORY MORNING CLASSES," Alesha yells at us that afternoon. "Do you know how many of you showed up? FOUR! FOUR DANCERS! Thank you to Lola, Dianne, Zoe and Chloe, the rest of you, HOW DARE YOU!"
I look around at everyone sitting down. Anna looks a bit sorry, but Jack and Neil are rolling their eyes.
"If I'd gone to the morning class you can bet I wouldn't have turned up this afternoon," Neil says. "I was exhausted, and I think I speak for all of us when I say you can't work us too hard or we'll break."
We nod in agreement.
"If four of you can do it, all of you can do it," is all Alesha responds.
I look at Dianne and Zoe who are smiling sweetly and looking at me. I narrow my eyes. Of course Zoe went. Even after I didn't go, she still went.
"Now, everyone warm up, we're going to continue what we were working on yesterday," Alesha sighs, standing up to turn on the music.
"This is why I'm going to be the better choreographer and my duet will win," Dianne winks at me, brushing my shoulder and walking to find a space.
I roll my eyes, but smile. It's cute she thinks her duet will beat mine. As if.
———
We'd promised Sophia, Cinzia, Mikey and Alfie that we'd work with them on their duets in our spare hours. I have to say, they're going well. Dianne showed me how her duet was going and I did the same, and was thrilled to see the shock on her face. Now we're going through steps, and I'm having to really focus on Sophia's footwork. It's not that she's a bad dancer, she's actually really pretty to watch, but this is a really advanced street routine and I know she's a pretty lyrical dancer, not a street dance genius.
Half way through our routine, Mikey's phone, which is playing the music, annoyingly rings. Mikey runs over and shuts it down without checking who it is. He restarts the music, but it only gets four seconds in when his phone rings again. This time, he picks it up.
"Mum, what's up?" he asks. I watch him carefully. He cares about his mum more than anyone in the world, and it's actually quite sweet. "Shit, okay, I'll be right there!"
I've never seen Mikey unplug his phone so fast.
"I have to go, sorry, major family emergency," Mikey says, blatantly panicked.
"Are you alright?" I ask, pretty alarmed.
"Mum's panicked because my dad has gone missing," he grimaces. "She was with him in town half an hour ago but she's searched everywhere they've been and can't find him. He's not answering his phone or texts either. I'm sure he'll turn up and has just wandered off in typical Dad fashion, but my mum's freaking out and when she freaks out it's like the whole world collapses, so I need to go get her."
"Shit bro, yeah go to her," I say. He smiles gratefully and leaves, leaving me with Sophia.
I slump down onto the floor, and she follows me.
"Guess our duet is gonna fall behind," she says sadly.
"Not necessarily," I say. "Dianne looked worried when she saw it, and yours is just as good as theirs!"
"You really think so?" Sophia asks. "Honestly Joe, this isn't my forté at all and I know I'm going wrong everywhere."
"You're seriously not," I say. "And I wouldn't lie to you about dance, you know that. Yes, it's not your strongest area of dance, but you're definitely not bad at it. You're still at an advanced level, just not quite as good as some others."
"I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult," Sophia laughs.
"A compliment," I laugh too. "Promise."
"Hey do you wanna hear a story," she says excitedly.
"Sure," I smile. Although I'm very aware I should probably be stepping in as Mikey's replacement and making our dance better, I'm actually enjoying just sitting down and chilling - we haven't actually done that yet.
"Okay so I was out shopping with Cinzia the other week getting makeup and the cutest guy was in Bobbi Brown looking at eyeshadow palettes for god knows what purpose, so we went up to him and Cinzia was like 'are you okay? You look pretty confused' and he said 'oh yeah, just trying to get a blush thing for my little sister's birthday tomorrow and I have no idea which one to get' and like we all laughed because that's such a guy thing, not knowing the difference between eye shadow and blush, so we showed him the right thing to look at and then he literally turned to us, to thank us I assume, and went 'Hey wait I know you two, you were some of those dancers that won that big International dance competition thing!' and looked really thrilled and literally got selfies with us to send to his little sister who's apparently wanted to dance at the BDC for ages but never passed the auditions for any of the teams and now like long story short we're gonna be at his sister's birthday party on Saturday and we're gonna perform for them and like Alfie and Mikey have agreed to come too and it's gonna be so great and I could just tell Cinzia was SO into him which isn't hard because he's cute as hell and had this beautiful accent and ugh he's just perfect honestly."
I laugh at the story, because it's such a Sophia and Cinzia thing to do. I haven't really spoken to them like this properly since they were demoted to B Troupe, and it struck me just how much I've missed it. They're so lighthearted and yes, Sophia's crush on me was annoying, but hearing her talk about this 'perfect' guy made me feel more comfortable around her because her crush on me clearly isn't that big.
"I can imagine this literally perfectly," I shake my head, laughing.
"I felt like an actual celebrity it was amazing," Sophia grins. "I've never been recognised before, it's incredible. Like, they must be huge fans because Cinzia and I have never really been featured at a competition, so usually it's just you and Amy that get all the notices because you're amazing."
"I mean, I've been recognised only a few times," I point out. "And it's weird more than anything else. Like a stranger knows about my existence even though I've never met them."
"Have you been on twitter?" Sophia asks.
"What, no?" I look at her, confused. Twitter isn't really something I use often.
"Omg wait," Sophia says and rushes over to her bag to grab her phone, almost sitting on top of me when she comes back. "Look at this, hang on," she goes onto twitter and pulls up a British Dance Company fan page.
"This," I point at the screen, "this is why I don't use twitter."
"It literally had two thousand followers, Joe!" she exclaims.
"This is so odd," I shake my head. "So, so odd. Like I knew we had people who were fans of dance so follow all the top dancers on social media, which includes us, but to have a fan page? That's kinda strange. It's usually Zoe who's got all those fan pages for her Zoella stuff."
"Well you're almost as famous as her," Sophia winks. I laugh again. Weird as it may be, I have to admit it is pretty cool to have people who appreciate your work so much to the extent where they make an account dedicated to it.
"Ah, I'll never trump the mighty Zoella," I laugh.
"Ryan showed it to me and Cinzia," she smiles. "Ryan is the cute guy we were talking about. It's followed by other accounts for Zoella and Conor Maynard and other dance accounts that post updates about competitions."
"This is the weirdest thing ever," I shake my head, still in disbelief.
"Joe?" Dianne comes into the room. "Wait where's Mikey?"
"Mikey has to leave," I say, standing up. "But you have to look at this."
I drag her over to Sophia and show her the account. Weirdly, Dianne seems a lot less surprised.
"Yeah," she looks at me, amused. "Did you really not know? We had a bunch in Australia, and Canada has quite a few too. I always knew you guys had them. How is this a surprise to you?" she laughed.
I shoved her lightly, smiling. "Sorry for not paying as much attention to my apparent fame than you."
"My boyfriend has a complete disregard for those who love and support him it would seem," she says, but this time it sounded less playful. I laugh, but it doesn't reach my eyes.
"Are you finished with Cinzia?" Sophia asks Dianne. "We've gotta go prep for something."
"She's all yours," Dianne gestures for her to leave.
"We should probably be getting back to rehearsals or Alesha will throw a tantrum again," I laugh, grabbing her hand. She smiles at me and squeezes my hand too.
"You'd tell me anything, right?" she looks at me seriously. I can instantly tell what she's referring to.
"Sophia is just a friend," I say, looking her dead in the eye. "My heart belongs only to you, and it'll always be you, I promise."
Dianne nods, seemingly more relaxed. "Yeah, and you're right we really should go or Neil's gonna make some joke about us making out and losing track of time."
I laugh, and kiss her. "You mean the world to me and more," I smile, and kiss her again.
"You too," she smiles back, hugging me tightly.
K cool we good short chapter but I think I'd rather make short and more frequent chapters than longer and more spread out chapters.
Hope y'all enjoyed. Also, please don't hate me for the chapters to come thank u xxxxx - B xo