If This Was a Movie (Evergreen Park #2)

Chapter 1 – Jules

ONE

JULES

“Miss Jules! I can’t find my tutu!”

The shout makes me jump, forcing the tip of my mascara wand to poke me in the eye, and I’m reminded once again how badly I need to finish my office.

I sigh, blinking as my eye waters, a black smear of mascara ruining my nearly finished makeup. “Have you checked your bag?” I ask the adorable, if not incredibly forgetful, little girl who ran in.

There’s silence before she says, “Not yet,” running off to find what she was looking for, probably exactly where it’s supposed to be.

I sigh, grabbing a makeup wipe while my assistant, Claire, laughs at me. I glare in her direction before she steps over, grabbing the makeup wipe from me, carefully cleaning the mess so I don’t have to redo my entire face.

“I could have done this, you know,” she says. “Filled in for Gina.”

Standing in full ballet costume to understudy the Sugar Plum Fairy for our dress rehearsal of the Nutcracker, I groan. “Yes, except you’re abandoning me tomorrow, and the point of today is to make sure the rest of the kids know how things will go for the performance. If the twins aren’t better by then, I’ll be the one taking their place, unfortunately.”

Claire, the godsend who fell into my lap just under a year ago, is leaving tomorrow to move across the country with her boyfriend. She showed up for an interview for a teacher and assistant and got the job on the spot, seeming to be everything I needed to keep my sanity. As excited as I am for her to have an adventure, I also have no idea how I’m going to function without her now that my business is booming.

“I’m not abandoning you, Jules! Stop making me feel bad,” she says with a huff.

I smile and shake my head. “You know I’m just kidding. It’s just a lot going on right now.”

Two years ago, my best friend Ava joined a beauty pageant to help my and our friend Harper’s businesses out, and it changed all of our lives for good. Then last year, I had my hopeless romantic heart broken once and for all, so I decided to fall into my work, to ignore any dreams of love and romance because it never, ever lives up to your dreams, and continued to build the dance studio of my dreams.

What started as one small dance studio and a waiting area is now two large studios, a lounge for parents, and a locker room with room to grow.

It’s everything I dreamed of when I was a kid taking dance classes and daydreaming about the future. Even though I danced for as long as I could remember, I always knew I was never going to be some prima ballerina, performing on grand stages. I just love the feeling of losing myself, drifting to a secret place of content and safety in my mind where no one can touch.

No nagging mom, no men who always disappoint, no expectations, no reality.

Just me, myself, and the music.

“You just need to finish up the green room, Jules,” she says, sitting on the edge of my desk as I finish the rest of my makeup. “And your office.”

I groan aloud, knowing she’s right.

Two years ago, when I bought the building and opened First Position, we were only two small studios, a lounge for parents, and a front desk on the first floor of the three-story building, my apartment on the top floor.

Slowly, I’ve been finishing each room to be the studio of my dreams, but I’m also only one person, and while the studio is doing well, I enjoy paying those who work with me a living wage. That being said, I’m still working to finish a formal office with a working door , another studio, and a dressing room for the dancers.

“I know, I know. I just need to save up a bit more, and then it’s next on the list.”

Claire shakes her head and rolls her eyes.

“You really should just let me call my brother. I know he would be more than willing to help out. I could even get you a family discount.”

“And you know that I want to do this on my own. I don’t need any help,” I tell her, not for the first time.

“I think you’ve more than proved to your mom you can do it, Jules. You don’t need to keep struggling just to prove a point.”

She’s never going to appreciate it anyway, Claire doesn’t say it aloud, but the words hang in the air anyway.

When my grandmother passed, leaving me a small inheritance, my mother begged me to use it for something practical, like a nice house in a well-off neighborhood where I could go on hot girl walks and bump into some rich man and convince him to marry me.

Instead, I bought the building where First Position was born and have been barely scraping by, updating it room by room all by myself.

My mother doesn’t get it, and Claire doesn’t understand why I refuse to get help, but I do. It’s mine. I’m proud of this place, knowing that every inch of this place has my blood, sweat, and tears.

Heavy on the tears, if I’m being honest.

I love walking into this place every day, knowing I helped to lay every plank of wood, that I picked out the fixtures and painted the walls. Knowing I built this wonderful, amazing thing all on my own when the people who were supposed to believe in me the most rolled their eyes and told me I’d fail.

“I’m just saying, if you had him help you six months ago when I first suggested it, you wouldn’t have kids jump-scaring you every five seconds because the girls would have their own place to get ready and warm up.” She is right, of course. “You could even have a man to get you out of your dry spell, since he’s single and, objectively, because he’s my brother and that’s disgusting, pretty good-looking.”

“I’m not looking for a man,” I remind her.

“Oh, yes, yes, I forgot. You found your dream man a whole year ago, spent one night with him, decided he was the one, only to find out he was a piece of trash. Got it. That makes sense, you meet one piece of shit and rule out all romance for the rest of your life. Logic, you know?”

I glare at my friend. “It was two nights, thank you very much,” I say.

Claire smiles and opens her mouth but is interrupted.

“Miss JULES!” another girl yells, entering my office.

A door.

First thing after the winter recital, I’m buying and installing a goddamn door. Who cares if I do things out of order if it means I get a semblance of peace?

“Martina says she’s going to be the sugar plum fairy next year, but I said I am going to and?—”

“How about we figure this out next year?” Claire says with a calm smile, ushering the arguing girls out of my office. “Part of those decisions are made based on how you do at this recital, so why don’t you go warm-up with Miss Christine downstairs, yes?” There’s more mumbling before Claire is back in my office, closing the door behind her with a sigh.

“You know, if this was a movie—” I start before she cuts me off.

“Let me guess, you’d have a group of hot men doing your hair and makeup rather than getting a cramp while doing it over a bookshelf in a messy office?”

I pause with the mascara wand once more near my lashes before turning to look at her.

“What kind of movies are you watching?” I ask.

“The good kind,” she replies with a smile.

“Uh, I was going to say that this is where some rich billionaire would kick down the door and tell me I deserve the world and magically fix all of my issues.”

She laughs out loud, grabbing a can of hairspray and dousing my tight bun before nodding like she approves of what she sees.

I wasn’t supposed to get into a dancer's costume today, much less get completely dolled up, but it’s dress rehearsal for our winter performance, and one of the dancers called in sick. I want to make sure the kids get the full experience, and considering I stupidly penciled myself in as Gina’s understudy, I’m wearing a pink leotard and tutu while Claire finishes up my slicked-back bun.

It’s just another moment in a series of shitty luck I’ve been experiencing as of late: a dancer calling in sick (which means I now have to stress for the next two weeks to see if it’s the kind of sick that runs through the entire group or a one-off), the hot water in my apartment not working this morning, the kids reporting one of the sinks downstairs isn’t turning on, my mom once again incessantly calling me to set me up on a date, the contractor who was supposed to help me this month finish up the final studio telling me he double booked himself and had to postpone, and, of course, Claire leaving.

This utterly horrid string of bad luck all started nearly a year ago, not that I’ll let myself think about it that much. Instead, I force myself to think about the good: Ava meeting Jaime and getting engaged, Harper seemingly happy with Jeremy, even though he isn’t my first choice in partners for her, First Position doing exceedingly well, and?—

I don’t have time to continue my list of things I’m grateful for when a noise breaks into my conscious thoughts, forcing my hand to shift and swipe the mascara well past my lashes to my eyelid. At least I didn’t poke myself in the eye, right?

“Goddammit!” I groan, grabbing another makeup wipe and folding it to clean the spot precisely. When the blaring continues, I turn to Claire. “Can you please shut your phone up?”

She rolls her eyes and smiles. “Sorry, babe, that’s your phone.”

She’s right, of course. I forgot Ava changed the song to “Barbie Girl” the other day, and it is in fact my phone obnoxiously blaring from my bag. With a sigh, I cap the mascara before reaching for my phone and seeing a number I don’t know on the screen.

Don’t be more bad news. Please, God, don’t let it be more bad news.

Taking a deep breath, I hover over the answer button, but before I can, a fat drop of water falls on my head, trailing down my forehead to my nose, followed by another.

“What the?—”

And then all hell breaks loose.