Chapter 5
Emma's face went pink.
In the dark at the edge of the stage she went up on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Somebody in the crowd whooped, a camera found them, and the shot went straight up on the big screen.
They looked like the couple everyone in that room wanted to be.
The noise went from a few voices to the whole auditorium in about two seconds.
Sweat ran into my eyes.
They stung, and everything in front of me blurred.
The room was roaring, and I had never felt so alone in my life.
After that I spent a long stretch doing everything I could to stay out of his way.
I moved out of the house, lived in the dorms during term, and rented a room off campus over the breaks.
Between classes and the studio I picked up work and paid my own way.
He kept wiring me money every month, and I never sent it back, but I never touched a dollar of it either.
I didn't see him again for close to six months.
A senior named Julian Pace passed a dance gig my way one night.
The work was easy and the money was good.
It came to under 10 minutes of ballet at somebody's birthday dinner.
Afterward Julian handed me a drink and told me I was good.
He kept insisting, so I had a few.
I couldn't hold my liquor at all, and it got to me.
When the dinner broke up, he walked me out and offered to drive me home.
Then he seemed to decide to go for it.
He stopped under the streetlight with his ears going red and told me how he felt.
He said he liked me and asked me to give him a shot.
Then a cold voice came out of the dark behind me.
"Alysha has a fiancé. You don't need to trouble yourself getting her home."
I turned around and Stephen was walking toward me.
His jacket hung over one arm and the streetlight pulled his shadow out long across the pavement.
For the first time in years he looked at me like that.
It was a casual sort of look, and it pinned me where I stood.
Julian went red and stared. "Fiancé? Who?"
Stephen closed the distance, took my hand without asking, and laced his fingers through mine.
He glanced at Julian. "Who do you think?"
I must have been drunker than I thought.
Something familiar came up through me so hard it shook, like a door opening onto a life I used to have.
Years had gone by and almost everything had changed.
For that one minute we were back where we started.
The Foster Estate didn't exist, and neither did Emma.
There was only the quiet, easy Stephen from our little hometown, the one I fell for without ever meaning to.
And there was the spoiled, headstrong Alysha he used to call his.
I looked up at him, and in that dim light his face hadn't changed at all.
Maybe it was the alcohol, but my eyes started to fill.
Julian had left a long time ago.
Stephen still hadn't let go of my hand.
I couldn't tell you when he kissed me.
The world was spinning and his voice came rough against my ear.
"Aly... They've put you through so much."
Everything I had been holding in for months came out at once.
There had been nothing but ice between us for years.
That night I went home with him anyway, half drunk and not thinking straight.
In bed, with his mouth at my ear, he told me he loved me.
He said he was ending it with Emma soon and that he and I had a future.
When the sky started to lighten he pressed his hot palm flat against my waist and said he wanted a baby with me.
He said we had a long life ahead of us and that he would never leave me again.
He said we would take care of each other and grow old together.
I hated that I still couldn't give up on him, and I held on to him anyway.
What came after that night was Stephen vanishing for almost 10 days.
When he surfaced he was holding Emma's hand in front of a wall of cameras, announcing the engagement.
I sat on the couch scrolling my phone while the story took over every feed.
The strange part was how calm I stayed, with nothing moving in me at all.
The first time he betrayed me he pulled the ring off my hand and gave it to Emma.
That night I fell apart, screamed at him, hated him.
Then I ran out and stood in the rain half the night.
This time I shocked myself with how little I felt.
He came to see me the night the news broke.
He had been drinking hard, and he came at me swaying, with the smell of it all over him.
There was nothing left worth saying.
I stood up and looked at him. "I'm going back home."