“And you dance for me,” he said quietly, but not a sweet quiet, an angry one, “begging me to kiss you like I mean it. I wait over an hour for you in the parking lot after, and you run away. You dance for a room full of people, but it’s all about me, then you run away from me.”
God.
I’d done that.
After the opening night of the Revue, I’d delayed as long as I could before I’d gone out.
Partly because the girls and guys were all meeting at an after-hours bar to celebrate, and I intended to do a flyby, but the longer I delayed getting there, the less time I’d have to spend there before I could say I was tired and leave.
Mostly, though, it was because I worried, after I looked at Axl when the dance was done, that he’d be waiting for me.
And he was.
Right outside the door.
And I’d run from him.
I hadn’t even allowed myself to think about it since.
But now that he brought it up …
Humiliating.
“The girls tell me you’re shy,” he said. “They tell me I gotta put in the effort. I do, and time and again, you make a goddamn fool of me.”
Oh no!
I didn’t want him to feel like a fool.
“Ax—”
“So yeah, Hattie, last night, hurting Lottie, you fuckin’,” he got nearly nose to nose with me, so close, I could see thin threads of midnight striking through the steel of his eyes, “blew it.”
And with that, he moved away, walked around me to the door, and he slammed it behind him.
I didn’t even turn to look at it.
I stared at “After.”
He was right.
That was me.
After my failed audition for the Chicago Academy for the Arts.
Mom had been there, and of course Dad, both of them together, even though she’d moved out and got her own apartment at least a year before.
I’d been fourteen.
Two years before that, my ballet teacher had told my father, “Don, she’s talented. There’s no doubt about it. She just doesn’t have the body for it. Through no fault of her own. Hattie’s healthy. Fit. Limber. She has grace and power. She’s just too tall and big boned. She simply isn’t built to be a prima ballerina.”
And even before that, Mom had said, “Hattie, sweetie, dance for you. If you’re not dancing for you, you need to stop dancing.”
I thought I was dancing for me.
I loved dancing.
I loved dancing and painting and calligraphy and helping Mom decorate her cakes.
“My artsy girl, my free spirit, my rainbow,” Mom used to call me.
But I’d messed up, twice, during my solo routine at the audition for the Chicago Academy. They’d let me start again, but not a third time.
And after, Dad had lost it, backhanding me, catching me on the jaw.
Right in front of everybody.
Huge drama.
Huge.
The teachers were horrified and ticked. They threatened to phone the police.
Mom had lost her mind.
“If you think you’re getting custody now, Don, you’re insane. I’ll fight you ’til I die, until I die, you monster.”
And I’d retreated from their hate, doing physically what for years as they hurled it at each other I did mentally. I curled into myself in a corner, just like “After.”
A teacher and Mom had talked me out of my solitary huddle, and all the way back to the hotel, Mom was on me, “Has that happened before, Hattie? Has your father touched you like that before?”
I told her no.
And he hadn’t.
He’d never hit me.
But she stayed on me.
So I confessed that he’d pinch me. Grab my arm in a way it hurt. Sometimes pull my hair.
“How had I not seen this?” she’d lamented, openly torn to shreds. “How did I miss this? How didn’t I know this was happening?”
I didn’t have the courage to tell her it was because I hid it.
Though, it was out then and Mom had carried through with her vow. She dragged it all out into the open during the divorce and she won custody of me.
It came with a price though.
One I paid when I was with my father.
So my dad had hit me, my mom was a mess, and I felt guilt and shame I didn’t tell her what was happening so it was me that made her feel that way, I was humiliated in front of the admissions board of one of the most prestigious performing arts high schools in the U.S., this after I failed my audition because …
Well …
I blew it.
And I stared at “After” knowing I was really, really good at one thing.
Blowing it.
My phone rang in my bag, and automatically, I reached in and found it.
I pulled it out and it was a number I didn’t know.
I was so in my head, against all the laws of dealing with robocalls, I answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hattie Yates?”
“Yes.”
“Hattie Yates.”
“Yes.”
“Nice voice.”
“What?”
“Nice voice. Nice tits. Nice hair. Great ass. Tie you down. Tie you down tight. Whip that ass. Whip you until—”