Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 234
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
When I asked about her at breakfast, he said, “She was just a girl I met at Pink Noir.” It was a club where all the dancers frequented after performances. Beckett invited me to go out with him that night to meet his friends in the ballet company, but I bailed on him too.
That one still fists my lungs painfully. Even if Beckett hasn’t acted like I’m the worst brother alive, it’s pretty clear that I am.
“Will you see her again?” I asked him.
“No,” he said definitively. “Relationships are work, and I have too much going on at work with Leo.” The uncommon bite to Beckett’s voice was reserved for his rival at NYBC. “The company is casting him as Albrecht in the first cast of Giselle in a couple weeks.”
Giselle is Beckett’s favorite ballet to dance in, and as a principal, he’s been given the lead spot before. But he competes with Leo Valavanis for the top-billed male roles in every production. Most have double casts, and I know that Beckett being relegated to the lead role in the second cast is like being kicked to the JV team.
I was about to offer him some words of affirmation. My siblings and I know that the New York Ballet Company loves pitting Leo and Beckett against each other to drum up drama, which has increased ticket sales before. It’s not a reflection of our brother’s talent.
But he added, “There is no room in my life for the complications of love. Sex is simple.” He cut his eggs with a fork and knife. “L’amour romantique est une maladie.” Romantic love is a disease.
I wondered if that’s what’s happening to me.
Have I been unwell since I met Harriet? The times I’m with her, where I’m even thinking of her, the panic subsides. The restlessness inside me goes so still. The crawling beneath my skin begins to freeze.
Every breath I take is deeper. Every smile is bigger.
If romance is a disease, then I want to be stricken with whatever malady she’s plagued me with. I feel myself chasing after it like a drug.
It’s why I’m on my bed now and staring at my phone. Debating whether to text her at an obscenely late hour like a junkie needing a hit.
Don’t suffocate her. You’ll scare her off.
Harriet seems to startle easily, and if I come on too strong at the start, I might chase her away. Most people I talk to absorb into my sphere like they plan to make a home there.
Harriet, though, she’s more guarded. Balanced on her tiptoes, prepared to sprint and save herself.
I wonder if someone hurt her.
That kills me.
The urge to talk to her intensifies, but baby steps, maybe.
I drag myself off the pull-out. Unable to sleep, I near the built-in shelves. Only wearing dark-blue boxer-briefs, the cold air from the AC chills my warmed skin. I notice French novels like Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. More French writers: Proust, Voltaire, Émile Zola.
They aren’t unfamiliar to me. Neither is the language. We all learned French from our parents, who were taught at a young age in school. They fostered our knowledge through carrying conversations at home and our travels to Europe. It feels like I’ve always known French, the same way my siblings have.
Another book draws my attention. Tugging it out, I thumb through a hardcover titled Grandes Esperanzas by Charles Dickens.
I can speak Spanish better than I can read it—thanks to all the time I spent with the Meadows. My Uncle Ryke is fluent from learning in school as a kid too, and he helped teach some of us, including his daughters (Sullivan and Winona) and Maximoff Hale and me.
I’m really close to my Uncle Ryke and Aunt Daisy. Hell, I spent more time at the Meadows Cottage than the Cobalt Estate some months as a kid. They were right down the street, but they had the most acres of woods, the most secret hideouts, the most creeks to wade through.
I haven’t hung out there since I left for college. Since I distanced myself from Winona. Losing a friendship with my cousin was painful, but losing time I loved spending with my aunt and uncle hurts more somehow.
I stare at the book in my hands. This Spanish edition of Great Expectations has to belong to Charlie. He’s a polyglot like our dad and knows more languages than I can count. Spanish is on that list.
As the yellowed pages brush my fingers, my thumb catches one, and I see Pip. From Pirrip.
My middle name.
My pulse skips. I shut the book. Put it back between other classics. Then I pick up the kantharos by one of the two swooping handles. The black Grecian cup has intricate artwork of a girl cradling a fruit…maybe a pomegranate?
I can’t see much else in the dark. So I turn to grab my phone to use the light. As I tap on the flashlight app, I lose grip of the cup. It slips and drops.