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He looked so comically sad, how could I do anything else? And everything was nice again for a short while, until he asked me about college.
“It is not the best,” he said. “You are in the top class, the best dancer there. What can it offer you? How can it stretch you?”
“I can’t go to the best. I don’t have the perfect body type.”
“You are completely perfect. Why did you pick this school?”
“Peter suggested it.”
“He was your teacher and wanted to continue teaching you. And this, about your body, it is from him?”
“No. He never said anything like that. But Peter was right. I didn’t want to narrow my options to only ballet. I love acting too. I mean, really love it. The drama teacher is off this term, and I miss it terribly.”
“But you are made for ballet. You are beautiful doing anything – I see you with Justin on the college website – but is a waste. Your potential is not being recognised. Your training should be exclusively classical.”
“You’re a ballet snob, Aleks.”
He hit his palm to his forehead. “Ah no, I am do again. I am being nervous, is giving me the foot-in-mouth disease. I will go bathroom,” he said. “When I come back, there will be no snobbing or judging. Truly this is not what I feel. If you were not at this school, I would never be seeing you, and you are complete loveliness to me.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. A sarcastic ‘ok-ay’ didn’t seem right, and I wasn’t brave enough to tell him he was complete loveliness to me too. Self-effacing humour was surely the best idea. “Maybe you need glasses?”
He laughed in misunderstanding. “You are not to be letting me off so easy, I see. Is okay, I deserve.”
He went. The food came. I waited, and then wondered if he had climbed out the window to escape the mad vegetarian, and decided to start eating anyway. If I were to be bankrupted by the meal, I might as well enjoy it, and the pancakes were delicious.
He returned. “Alas, I am to be everything wrong tonight. The tap is spraying me, is not work right.”
Both his trousers and shirt had taken quite a soaking, and I couldn’t help laughing. He was reflected in several mirrors as he stood in front of me, which only seemed to multiply the misfortune.
“If you are wanting to go, I will understand,” he said. “I do not wish to embarrass you.”
“Would I be friends with Justin if I embarrassed so easily? But if you’re cold and uncomfortable…”
“See? Complete loveliness.”
He sat down, leant his chin on one hand and smiled at me. Then he moved his hands down and somehow caught his watch strap in the opposite sleeve and was stuck. He really was nervous. I reached forward and untangled him.
“Is never happen to me before,” he said and closed his eyes. “I am just to say unfortunate things all night.”
“It’s actually quite nice,” I told him. “I was worried you would be intimidatingly sophisticated, and that I wouldn’t know what to do or say, and it isn’t like that at all.”
His smile was too small to be golden.
“Eat up your lump of dead animal,” I advised. “And you’ll feel better.”
Everything became more relaxed after that, and by the time we had the lusciously layered chocolate cake and ice cream in front of us, his body language was completely open. He leant back, one hand behind his head as he spoke of his childhood. He told me about the place he’d been born, how his mother had died when he was five and then his father when he was eight, just after he’d started ballet school. “I am not sad for it now,” he said as I looked at him in horror. “Please eat.” The school he’d attended had been harsh. He was cold much of the time and beaten with a stick.
“Please tell me you are making this up,” I said.
“This is just how it is.”
“Poor little boy. I want to give him hot chocolate and cuddles.”
“Is appropriate, I think.”
Chapter 5
Thepredominatingconcern,oncewe were back in the car, silly as it was, was that we hadn’t kissed. Maybe we weren’t going to? Uncertainty returned as Aleks walked round to the driver’s side. Was he going to take me home, and that would be it? He considered the evening a disaster and was glad it was over? There’d been opportunities. His face had been very close when he’d helped me on with my coat, and again when I climbed into the car.
