Present Day

It was late in the afternoon before their director called it a day. Evie lay on the floor waiting for the stars to leave her vision. She would get up. Soon. Her limbs felt lighter, but the satisfaction of letting herself sink and fuse with the floor was too heavenly to end. Evie's breath stilled and evened out. There was a peaceful moment in which she forgot about seeing Jake the night before. When she could no longer lie there, she tuned her ears back into the conversations happening around and above her.

"I need a shower," mused Marilyn. Marilyn hated being sticky or smelly in the slightest.

"I know. I can smell you from here," Lisa responded from across the space. "What is that? Pure vodka and cheese fry grease leaving your pores?"

Marilyn threw her sweaty neck towel at Lisa before saying, "No, it's your boyfriend's cum." This response earned her a playful punch in the arm from Lisa.

"Oh you mean my vibrator? He's free to see other people."

It was the day before the final show of their USO tour and it had been a hard final workout. Tomorrow would be filled with a few run throughs and lots of stretching. Evie didn't think it had been their hardest day of practice, but everyone had been especially mean to PJ today. The thing Evie struggled with was that by normal people's standards PJ wasn't remotely fat. It was just the company that wanted all the Rockettes to be nearly identical lest any small individuality alert viewers that they were humans and not automatons.

Evie looked between the two of them and then over to PJ who was in her usual post workout stupor. She loved them so much at that moment. Maybe it was the fatigue that lowered her inhibitions or maybe it was the endorphins making her happy. Evie stood and moved over the PJ and then sat next her in solidarity as Marilyn and Lisa continued to spar.

"Do you have an extra Gatorade?"

"Always," PJ replied and passed Evie a small bottle of yellow Gatorade.

"Thanks." Evie wasn't sure how to ask what she wanted. The moment stretched into a comfortable silence most of their teammates left for the showers and for a hot meal. "Does it bother you?"

"The fat shaming?" she replied. She knew. Evie could read it on her face before bringing it up.

"Yea. Everyone was particularly vicious today."

PJ spoke without any shake in her voice, "Yes, it bothers me. It makes me work harder, which earns me some respect. I can take it from Kramer and from some of the other girls, but when it's from Lisa it's just a little too much." They sit in silence for a minute. Evie never made comments about her friend, but she could see why other people would. PJ's shoulders were broader than everyone else's which means she had to work harder to keep her arms smaller. Evie caught herself thinking through all of that before wondering herself, why? Why had she analyzed PJ's body so much? For the first time she felt like something was wrong with that. She decided not to say any of that until she fully formed the thought for herself.

"Why haven't you said anything?" Evie asked instead.

"Because I can take it," PJ answered in a smaller voice than before. The glumness of that moment sank between them. Surely PJ was realizing how sad that was to actually say out loud and Evie for the first time was really stuck on how PJ must be feeling. Evie opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by Marilyn and Lisa remembering she and PJ were even there.

"Should we go? Hopefully the showers aren't that crowded," Lisa's voice broke into the reverie of Evie's private thoughts and the short moment between her and PJ.

"Yea, let's high tail it," Marilyn declares. They do.

The showers aren't packed. Evie resented being on a base for the entirety of this tour. There was very little privacy. She much preferred any other tour. Staying in hotels with only one person to share a room with is by far more private than this shit. The steam from the water cleared out her nose and soothed the back of her throat. These were the moments where Evie could close her eyes and pretend to be the only person in the world. However, the pruning of her feet brought her back into her body and hopped out of the shower before completing her plumification.

When Evie got to the mirror by the sinks, she wiped her hand over the surface to reveal her face looking back at her. Some of the other girls were putting on lotion and chatting amongst themselves. Evie flossed and brushed her teeth before deciding to head back to the quiet isolation of her room and finish her skincare. As she dressed in her lounge clothes and packed up her things, Evie said bye to the girls, promising to catch up with them later, and entered the hall. She walked for a while in silence when a pair of footsteps drew her attention upwards and brought her face to face with Jake Seresin.

Evie was relieved when he was the first to speak. "I didn't get to talk to you the other night," Jake spoke in a steady voice though he looked anxious and unsettled. He was dressed in a tan uniform that brought out the hazel of his eyes. He looked perfect, not a hair out of place, but something obviously upsetting and forcing him to nervously shift between his feet.

"Oh yea we were in a bit of a rush on our way out," Evie's voice sounded like it came from someone else. She didn't remember deciding to speak. Hoping it was just the shock of seeing him twice in twenty four hours after thinking of him only sporadically in the last fifteen years, Evie tried to put her brain back together.

"May I walk with you?"

"Yes. I'm just heading back to my room. I tend to get a little turned around here anyways." They fell into an easy pace together. The silence stretched for a bit too long before Evie asked, "Was there something specific you wanted to talk about?"

"I suppose not. I was just very surprised to see you. Of course, I knew it was you immediately," he paused and seemed to consider if he should say the next thing or not. "I've thought about you a bit over the years and hoped you were well."

"I am," she stumbled over the next bit saying, "well that is." He nodded in acknowledgement of that. They walked a little ways further and when Evie went straight Jake put his hand on her lower back to guide her to the left. It was just a brief touch and then he removed his hand. "Was there something else?" Evie just really didn't know what to say to him. He smelt of peppermint and looked far too handsome to be the same high school boy who teased her.

"Are you wanting to be rid of me so soon?" He sounded playful and light. He turned and looked down at her with a bright smile that reached his eyes.

"Oh, no," they both let out light laughs at that. "It's just been a while. I didn't expect to see you either." The silence fell again, but less awkward this time. It was suddenly clear to Evie that she had been rude, "I'm sorry I didn't even ask how you are."

"I'm fine," he replied. He seemed to think before speaking again and said, "Actually that's not true. I'm anxious."

"Why?"

"I've just been assigned a mission that will be very hard to fly. That is assuming they end up taking me of course."

"Fly?"

"Do I only get one syllable, rhyming response now? I'm a pilot. I fly for the navy," he said that proudly and tapped his left shoulder indicating his uniform. This movement drew Evie's eye to his shoulders. She let her eyes linger over where his shoulder turned into his arm and no doubtedly sloped into hard muscles. A blush came to Evie's cheeks as her middle school crush came flooding back, which made her feel ridiculous as a grown woman.

"This one is my door," Evie spoke as she pointed at the number twenty two on the door. They stopped in front of the door when Evie piped up again, "I actually have my pilot's license." As soon as the words left her mouth she realized how stupid they probably sounded to him. She could only fly low tech planes and he surely got to fly state of the art fighters.

Before she could say anything else to cover Jake leaned against the door frame and uttered one syllable in a low voice, "Hot." That Tik Tok audio, the woman was too stunned to speak, played in her head, when Jake spoke again, putting her at ease, "Sorry I thought it was my turn for the one syllable responses."

In a desperate attempt to try and move the conversation, Evie asked, "What makes the mission hard to fly?" Jake was clearly done being nervous as the question didn't shake him from his languid, easy going aura.

"Because I might die."

"How is that different from any other mission?"

"You're cheeky now," he drawled as he stood to his full height and took a step into her space. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and looked down into her eyes, "Enough about me. You're the Rockette. So I guess that fancy dance school paid off?"

"If by 'paid off' you mean left me with bad knees and virtually no hobbies? Then yes," Evie silently cursed herself for not thinking of anything more clever. His expression changed a bit and Evie thought surely she'd made the conversation weird. When people spend their most formative flirting and dating years at a ballet bar around other socially starved teens, not to mention having been asked out as a joke, they don't usually emerge as witty conversationalists.

"I'm sorry about that."

"My knees?"

He chuckled at that and said, "No. Prom. And that last day of school."

"It's ok. You don't have to apologize," when she said it she meant it too. It really was ok and Evie had gotten over it years ago. "We were teenagers. I'm sure half of everything we did was terrible." He seemed to ponder that with a low sound in his throat.

"I know, but I wanted to say it." She could tell he meant that too. Then Jake looked between her eyes and her lips and back. He did it so naturally Evie couldn't tell if he'd intended to do it or just ran on instinct. She was shyly suspecting he might kiss her. It wasn't that she didn't want to kiss him, but it was more that she was scared what emotion might crop up. A kiss would have been everything she'd wanted fifteen years ago and a few years after that all she'd wanted to do was yell at him and his friends. Her fury dissipated with her teenage years and, as she dated and loved other people, the hurt and embarrassment became just a memory. But he didn't kiss her, Jake instead moved himself out of her space.

"I had better be going," Jake announced. "I should let you go, but I'm excited to catch your show tomorrow."

"You'll be there?" Evie was ashamed to have so much hope in her voice. She did want him to see her dance. She had spent years on her craft and liked to show off now that she was an adult with a social life outside of dance. If she was being honest with herself, she also wanted him to see her dance.

"Yea, Riordan. I wouldn't miss you in one of those little dance outfits. 'Night."

With that final word, he left. Evie opened the door to her room. The room was the same, but holy moly did she feel different. She wasn't sure if it was her middle school crush on Jake that was rearing its ugly head or if this was something new. Could they come together as adults after everything and all this time? She did think him handsome. She wasn't being glib when she said he didn't have to apologize, but that he did said a lot about him.

Evie braided her hair for bed in that daze that usually follows a first date. She resigned herself to romanticize tonight until she fell asleep and would tackle how she actually felt in the morning.