Finding Center (4 page)

Zed

July’s stickiness is only overshadowed by the coming August and though the meeting room we use in the basement of a church by the Capitol isn’t air-conditioned, it’s a relief after outside. I shift on the metal chair, stretching my left leg in front of me, staring into my coffee cup. The powdered creamer’s curdled on the top. I can’t get last night in the studio out of my head. I keep breathing in and expecting to taste blood on my tongue. Instead, there’s nothing but stale coffee and old cigarettes clinging to the air.

There’ve always been parts of AA that work for me, and parts of AA that don’t work for me. I replaced alcohol and painkillers with meetings, then piano, then teaching. The quiet motions of a desperate person trying to figure out where he belongs in his new world. Then Aly came along and slowly, my life with her filled up that time in my life and that space in my chest.

I’m an all-or-nothing person. I don’t like my mind to be quiet. I don’t like to be still and I don’t like to just do nothing. But here, in a meeting, I have to learn to sit and listen. Just listen.

It’s easier said than done. Trust me. Tonight, my fingers play out the music for
Rubies
on my leg. Tonight, I can’t stop thinking about Aly’s pointe shoe ribbons and the feel of the barre beneath my hand. The tension in my chest hasn’t ebbed all day and I think it’s from last night, being at DBC and nearly saying
yes
when Aly asked me to dance with her.

But I can’t. I’m never going to dance like I did, and I don’t want to know what it looks like if I was to try now.

At the end of the meeting, I slip out before the group leader can nab me. I’m just not in the mood to talk tonight. When he asked me how I was doing, I said I was grateful to be here, because there’s no way to say,
I’m not here to take up space.
I’m here to let space exist.

I walk the long way to Metro Center and hop on the nearly silent train down to Foggy Bottom. The walk from the Metro station across the bridge to Georgetown where Aly and I live is almost always bustling with students and tonight’s no different. The bigger the crowd around me, the more desperate I get for the café, a piano, Aly, something I haven’t yet found.

I own the building where we live and I rent out the café below the apartment. It’s become an extension of our home, really, and an easy way to find each other. Today, Aly’s sitting with Sofia, a half-finished quiche in front of her and her feet up on the seat next to her friend. When I open the door, the barista, Carmen, says hi, and I barely manage to wave to her before stumbling to the seat next to Aly and resting my head against her shoulder. When I breathe in, all I can smell is her. Her hand curls around my face and her nails draw lightly down my jaw, scratching me through a beard that’s a few days beyond scruff.

“Hey, Sofia,” I mumble.

“Hi, Zed,” Sofia says, her voice low and musical. People mistake her for an easy target but her softness isn’t without its intensity. “How’s camp going?”

“It’s going.” I pick up the fork and poke at Aly’s quiche. “If I’m interrupting, I can go up.”

“We’re just bitching about Madison,” Aly says with a laugh. “Nothing you can’t interrupt.”

“Anything new?”

“Madison’s laying it on thick with Jonathan,” Sofia says with a snort. “It’s both amusing and disgusting to watch.”

I sit up and glance at Aly. “I didn’t know he was bribable. Should we be sending him a fruit basket or something?”

“Ugh, no, that’s embarrassing. I’m not stooping to that level.” Aly wrinkles her nose and then adds, “Yet.”

“You’ll be fine. You’re Alyona Miller,” I tell her, wrapping a long strand of pale blond hair around my finger. She makes a face at me and I mimic her. She steals the fork back from me and stabs it into the quiche. I try, and fail, to hide my grin. “I like when you get competitive and bitchy.”

“I am
not
getting bitchy,” she said, a warning in her tone.

“It’s possible to bitch without being bitchy?” I ask.

“Yes,” Aly and Sofia say at the same time.

“I stand corrected.” I nudge Aly’s foot under the table. “No more midnight dances, then?”

She blushes, strawberry red flooding her cheeks, and heat—arousal and victory—sweeps through me. She sends me a sidelong glance and I feign innocence. “No.”

“Midnight dances?” Sofia asks, a wickedness in her tone.

“Don’t,” Aly warns, raising a finger to me. She points at Sofia. “I don’t like the look on your face either.”

Smug, I settle an arm around her shoulders. “If you change your mind, I’m game.”

“You two are ridiculous,” Sofia said, shaking her head. “But I’m heading out. Alyona, see you in the morning?”

“Sure, it’s my morning to grab coffee. Large, two sugars?”

“This is why you’re my best friend. Thanks,
querida
.” Sofia slides out of the booth and waves goodbye as she heads out the door.

Aly pokes me in the side. “Terrible, as always.”

“I am.” I agree and kiss her temple. She leans into me and slides her hand into mine. Our fingers interlock and Aly holds our hands up, studying them. She’s warm and soft and I think I could sit here forever.

“It doesn’t bother you to go to the studio?” she asks, her voice soft.

I’m not usually this transparent. To anyone, even Aly. And I don’t know the right way to answer this. And it feels like the type of question that has a right or wrong answer. If I told her it does, I don’t know how she’ll work that through in her head. I don’t know if she can, honestly. But she can tell when I’m lying. I pull our hands up to my mouth and kiss the knuckle of her thumb. “I never mind where I am, if I’m with you.”

She laughs a little bit. “Flirt.”

“Your flirt,” I whisper teasingly over our hands.

“Your meeting was good?”

“Good enough,” I tell her. She’s the one part of my life where I haven’t settled for good enough. She’s the one part where
perfect
and
this is exactly where I’m supposed to be
actually turned out right for me.

“Good. I kind of want to eat ice cream and watch
So You Think You Can Dance
reruns. Want to shirk adulthood for the night?”

I sit up, pulling away from her a little bit. “Um, yes please. Right now.”

She nudges me toward the edge of the bench. “Then let’s go.”

Aly

“Hi, Alyona. How’re you today?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Yes. Week whatever number of feeling fine in a row.”

“Does it bother you to be feeling stable and happy?”

“A little.”

“Why?”

“Well, what will I do with the time I usually use to come here?”

“Ah, you no longer want to come to therapy. But
want
isn’t really the right word there, is it?”

“I’m doing well and I have been for a while now. It’s ridiculous to keep coming here, isn’t it? I’m maintaining my weight. I’m doing well with Zed. I’m happy. My career’s going well.”

“Stability does not mean that you lose me, Alyona. Are you worried it does?”

“It should.”

“Do you want to stop coming here?”

“...No.”

“What’s really going on here?”

“Being fine doesn’t mean...I don’t know how to say it. I’m anxious, about being okay, and that seems weird. And wrong. And stupid.”

“It’s none of those things. It makes perfect sense. You have an invisible illness, Alyona. It’s always been invisible, except for when your weight was extremely low or to Zed and me, perhaps, in your most anxious moments, but it’s largely invisible. And now it’s invisible even to those who know you best. It’s incredibly hard to feel like an important part of you is unseen by those around you. It can feel delegitimizing. Is that how you feel?”

“Maybe. But, also, I’m sure you have people who can use this time slot.”

“I make time for my patients. You will always have a place in my schedule. That doesn’t change, even if you want to stop for a while.”

“It’s expensive.”

“Is anyone giving you flak about that? If you’re having trouble paying and want to be here, we’ll talk about a sliding scale. It isn’t anyone else’s business. If you want to be here, you belong here.”

“I don’t though. I’m doing well. I feel like a fraud.”

“Recovery and stability do not undermine the work you did or how ill you were.”

“It feels like having a bad day now is seen like I’m begging for attention.”

“Do you think you are?”

“I don’t think so, but it makes me doubt myself. I like not hiding myself around Zed, letting myself have bad days with him and my parents, but what if they think I’m not trying hard enough? If I can have good days, then why do I ever have bad ones?”

“Because your neurochemistry doesn’t ascribe to such value systems such as
good
and
bad
. Because you live in a dynamic world that is constantly in flux around you. You are always adjusting and you are more sensitive to changes in your biology and your environment than other people.”

“Less resilient.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that. You’ve survived, haven’t you? I think you’re incredibly resilient.”

“It still feels weird to come here if I have nothing to talk about.”

“This conversation is hardly nothing.”

“But I can’t have this conversation next time.”

“We could, if you needed to. But I have no doubt that we’ll find something to talk about, Alyona. You live an interesting life with interesting people. Something will come up. I heard that they’re running out of tutu makers for instance.”

“They are, but you don’t want to talk about that.”

“Not today, but if you wanted to talk about that, I would. And, Alyona, it wouldn’t be a waste of a session. You put a great deal of importance on your conversations, both in here and out there in the real world. You are an intense person, so you give things great significance. Light conversations are good. They give your mind and body time to slow down and breathe.”

“Healing.”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“So you don’t have someone sicker than me who needs this time slot?”

“This is your time. This is your space. That’s all you need to worry about. This is where you and your illnesses are seen, on both your good days and your bad days.”

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

Aly

After rehearsal on Saturday, I walk from the Metro down to the canal walk in Georgetown, my phone buzzing in my pocket every thirty seconds as Zed impatiently texts me to find how far away I am. I can’t blame him for his excitement—getting his health insurance to approve a new prosthetic leg has been an exasperating process.

This one will let him be as active as he wants to be. It’s calibrated to his gait and has a better fit, hopefully eliminating his chronic back and hip pain. He did a lot on an older version of the leg, one not built to go the gym or go on long walks, which meant he suffered from back and hip pain often and sometimes his stump would be rubbed raw.

He’s sitting on a bench by the start of the walk, wearing shorts and a grin that threatens to crack open his face and let his happiness spill out. He stretches his foot out, metal for bone and a black rubberlike material around the ankle, and pulls it back in as I sit down. “Pretty fancy, yeah?”

“Hi.” I smile and kiss him. “It’s crazy-fancy. It feels good? It’s working like you hoped it would?”

“Better,” he admits. “I didn’t know if it’d actually work like it did in the trial. But it feels amazing. I have to be conscious not to work as hard as I did in the other leg.” He stands up and stomps his left foot, rocking up onto the ball of his shoe. The knee immediately bends and starts to straighten, propelling him forward. “Remember that video we watched? So it has all these sensors that change the hydraulics depending on how fast I’m moving, the weight I put on the foot, the length of my stride. It’s crazy.”

“Crazy-
wonderful.
And it feels better? Your back doesn’t hurt?” It looks more comfortable. He used to swing his leg out a little bit to the left, his body’s unconscious attempt at trying to relieve the pain and normalize his gait. He still does, but it seems to be more habit than anything. His stride is smoother now as he walks up and down the path in front of me.

“They said I should do the Pilates class with you in the mornings.” He stretches, touching his toes. “My muscles need to adjust to the newness.”

“It’s not fair,” I tease him. “You’ll be able to hold some of those poses better than I can. Your leg is mechanical. It doesn’t get tired.”

He grabs my hands and hauls me to my feet, looping his hands around my back. “Jealousy? From the woman with steel legs?”

I laugh. “Hardly. My legs are Jell-O after rehearsal today.”

“Still want to walk?” He almost hides the disappointment in his voice.

I slip my arm around his and start walking, pulling him alongside me. It’s easier than answering. In the setting sun, the heat’s almost bearable and we talk about our days—his prosthetic fitting and my rehearsal—as we walk along the canal, watching the tourists on the mule rides, and then cut across back up into Georgetown to walk along the shops back toward our apartment. I watch his leg carefully out of the corner of my eye and his gait grows steadier as we walk. As tired as I am, I’m glad we’re out here.

“How was Madison today?” Zed asks as we reach our door. “Still being a pill?”

“She’s insane. She’s asking Jonathan about
Alice
already. He hasn’t cast our October ballet and she wants to know about November.” I unlock the door and hold it open for him, wanting to watch him walk up the stairs. If his leg didn’t help make these stairs easier for him, that would be a problem.

“You just want to stare at my ass.” He winks as he passes me. “What’d Jonathan say?”

I shut and lock the bottom door behind us. “That she’d know when he posted the decisions and not a moment sooner.”

“That guy’s growing on me. And there’s no way he’s not casting you as Alice. He makes it to the top of the stairs a little smoother than he used to, but not by much. He shrugs at the look on my face. “Some things take different muscle memory. I don’t want to trip. Slower isn’t the worst thing.”

He jiggles the lock and then opens it into our apartment. Inside the door, I kiss his jaw, catching him by surprise. “You do have a great ass, though.”

He smiles. “Knew it. You weren’t worried about my leg at all.” He runs his fingers down the line of my throat and my skin burns where he touches me. I half expect there to be blisters when I touch my skin. “Why do you think I usually follow you up the stairs?”

I grin. “Oh, I
know
you do it for the view.”

Zed swears as he takes my face in both of his beautiful, warm hands, with his long fingers that once told stories on a stage and now tell stories on the keys of a piano and on my skin, and kisses me, as though he hasn’t kissed me in years, or ever before this moment. His tongue sends an electric shock straight down my breastbone, right into my core, right between my legs.

“I thought,” he murmurs against my mouth, “you were actually going to make me
work
for this—”

“Zed. Shut up.”

“Shutting up.” He kisses my collarbone, pressing me back against the door. His hands find the warm skin of my stomach and I only hate myself a tiny bit for arching into his touch. His smile breaks open against my skin. “Tell me what’s next, Kitten.”

“My shirt,” I gasp, and then close my teeth against his bottom lip when he kisses me before listening. “Do you require assistance?”

He pulls off my shirt in a single smooth motion and tosses it somewhere behind us into the living room. He kisses me, victorious, pulling me forward on my chair against his hips. I can feel him against my hip, his hands needy against my stomach, my waist, my breasts. We are both getting better at knowing what we need and what we want. We’re getting better together.

He slides me over to the barre, trying to kiss me at the same time, and we’re disasters in the mirrors. We manage to undress each other in illogical starts and stops between kissing and laughing. Zed kisses his way down my spine and back up again. I reach for him and he hisses softly.

“Careful, Kitten,” he whispers.

“Did I ask you to be careful with me?” I murmur back.

His kiss is victorious and sharp. “No, you didn’t.”

He turns me to watch us in the mirrors, my hands wrapping around the barre. He dips his head, his mouth against my skin, and thus rendering me speechless and devoid of all rational, reasonable thought as he sends shockwaves straight down my core, my spine arching. He teases me with his fingers, kissing me hard enough to mark me and I don’t even care. I can’t care.

He’s lightning in my blood. He’s turning me to glass. I’m going to shatter.

He’s hard against my thigh. His prosthetic is cold against the heat of my leg. We’re all of the extremes right now.

“Watch,” Zed whispers, lifting my chin with one of his hands. “Watch us, Aly.”

He slides into me and both of us inhale at the same time. I want to close my eyes against the fullness, at him slowly sliding out of me, and pushing his way back in, but then I’d miss the wonder in his eyes. His arm sticks to my stomach; we’re the sea and the sky. There’s such a fine line between where one of us ends and the other one begins.