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At the front desk, I hesitated, eyeballing the hallway, where I could hear her whining protests.
“Go,” Mandy, the receptionist of Little Angels, said. “We’ll be fine.”
“I know, I just...” I stifled a breath. I was being extra. I knew that. I relented at Mandy’s sweet, understanding smile. “I know. See you later.”
She nodded and I pushed outside to my car. I knew my mom would love to keep her while I worked, and often did if I taught a weekend class or had to stay late, but it was too much to ask of her now that she was retired. Plus, where my folks lived, out on Lake Livingston, was too far out of the way from the studio. I didn’t want to have to get Elizabeth up extra early and drive that every morning.
As I slowed to turn from the daycare driveway, the sound of squeaky brakes gave me pause and I realized just how much life could change in such a short time. How your dreams could come crashing down around you in the span of a heartbeat. In the time it took for that fist-sized muscle in your chest to squeeze its blood supply once—exchange the old, deoxygenated liquid for the new stuff that is fresh and full of life—all that you thought you knew about yourself and what you held dear, could be altered irrevocably.
That happened to me over three years ago when I walked into the La Scala Academy Ballet School, a wide-eyed ballerina fresh out of my second year with the Houston Ballet and wanting to make a name for myself in the world of dance. Little did I know I’d leave Italy with... well... something else entirely.
Those thoughts haunted me as I drove. I wasn’t sure why. I thought I’d gotten over myself. Moved on. Made something new that I could be proud of. I was proud. Still...
“Jesus.” I shook myself from that thought and took a fortifying breath as I pulled into the studio lot and parked. I wiped under my eyes and glanced through the windshield of my four-door mom-mobile at my new life.
My better life, I reminded myself.
Colomba Dance Academy had been born of a necessity to survive and still contribute somehow to my love of the arts, though in the months leading up it its inception, I’d felt like my life was over. Ever since I was a little girl, all I’d ever wanted to be was a dancer. A ballerina, just like the ones I saw every year at Christmastime when my mom took me to see The Nutcracker ballet. I was over the moon when my parents signed me up for lessons, and I worked my ass off until I was the best in our little studio, earning myself a scholarship for dance at college, and eventually a spot at the Houston Ballet. I’d made it. I was living my lifelong dream. I didn’t care what I did, as long as I got to dance, but I worked my way up quickly to principal dancer within two years, then was recommended by my artistic director for the La Scala intensive—another dream come true. Until it wasn’t.
Coming home from Italy pregnant and ashamed, knowing I had to give up my career—at least temporarily, which in this world is often permanent—or give up my baby, the choice was clear, but still exorbitantly painful.
At least until I laid eyes on my daughter. Then I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I had made the right choice. That while I had been grieving the death of my former life, I’d been missing the beauty growing inside of me. A new life. A new chance. So that sunny spring morning, as I held my squalling, red-cheeked infant in my arms, I realized my dreams had been reborn with her.
Now, thinking back on that day, I still got choked up. It felt so far away, yet sometimes just like yesterday. I wouldn’t change a thing, but sometimes, like when a certain song was played in the studio and the right memory hit, the longing for what I once had still hit me like a freight train. Such are lost dreams, I supposed—like friendly ghosts that didn’t usually bother you but, given the right circumstances, could sneak into the fracture lines of your heart simply to remind you they were still there.
Hand to my chest to hold in the invisible throb, I watched as a few students trickled in and out the doors of Colomba, including Rosa, the star student in my advanced pointe class, as well as a few of the younger ones there for Whitney’s jazz class and Sofia’s beginner’s ballet.
I stepped out and slammed the door, making a mental note to have my brakes checked as I shouldered my dance bag and headed toward the studio, the unseasonably warm fall sunshine bright on my face.
“Hey, boss lady!” Deanna chirped from behind the front desk as I pushed inside.
“Hey.” I couldn’t help but smile at her fitted and rhinestone-embellished number three San Antonio Spartans jersey with matching aqua-blue leggings and thick horn-rimmed glasses. At sixty-something, Deanna was not only unapologetic in her fashion choices, but she was also my brother, Camden’s, biggest fangirl. “Got a new jersey?”
She gave me a sassy spin. “Like?”
I plopped my bag behind the desk and set down my water bottle. “Love.”
She wiggled her brows and fluffed her gray bob. “Think Cammy-poo will love, too?”
An automatic laugh bubbled from my chest. “Cammy-poo will definitely love this one, same as he’s loved every other one.”
Her cheeks lit with a grin as she hustled to answer the ringing phone, but she struck a saucy pose for me as I snapped him a pic on my cell. As I hit send, I wondered what my goofy big brother had ever done other than run fast with a stupid football to garner this much attention from the female species. It honestly made no sense to me.
I waved at a few students and their parents as I moved down the hall toward my office and sat to trade my shoes for ballet slippers. Just that move alone had something that felt like home humming through my veins.
A quick knock sounded at my door, and I glanced up. “Hey!”
My best friend, Whitney, leaned in the doorway, her deep-mahogany hair spilling over one shoulder like a model as she watched me with those big gray eyes of hers. “You didn’t return my text,” she said by way of hello.
“What text?” I stood and began to stretch.
She quirked a brow. “Seriously? I text you to commiserate about the worst blind date in the history of blind dates and you don’t even see it? What kind of friend are you?”
“What date... wait. That was last night?” My mind scrambled to catch up through the fog of single momness and the general lack of sleep I seemed to always suffer from due to a combination of Elizabeth, owning my own business, and well, just being me.
Whitney tilted her head. “Yes, it was last night.”
“Oh, Whit, I’m sorry. I was... It doesn’t matter.” I pulled her in to sit and closed the door. “What happened?”
