Leaps & Lies

Chapter Fifteen

“ I know I said we’d only talk about it once, but that was before you let me drop you off at a random building and walked home injured , in the rain .”

The emphasis he places on the last few words implies that her actions were far graver crimes than simply lying and walking a few blocks. Does he think she murders puppies and babies in her spare time?

“I injured my shoulder, not my leg—”

“Don’t start right now,” he snaps. Despite his position on the floor, Vivian gets the impression that he is still very much in charge of this conversation.

“It seems as though I didn’t make myself clear enough yesterday. Circumstances may prevent me from acting upon inclinations I experience, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll permit—”

In Studio B, Julian can snap his fingers and have everyone in the room dancing at his whims, but here? Now?

“ Circumstances may prevent your inclinations and what you’ll permit?! ” The words spill out of Vivian’s mouth in a sharp screech. Is he giving an HR seminar or are they having an honest conversation?

“If you have wisdom to impart, Mr. Julian , then spit it out.”

And then he’s surging up from his spot on her musty carpeted floor to pace the tiny three square feet of unoccupied space. He pulls the hat off his head and angrily spears his fingers into his brown curls, pulling in frustration.

“What do you want me to say, Viv? I’m still coming to terms with the fact that you’re not a fucking child! Now you’re lying about where you live. What’s next? Are you going to tell me you have an alien body double that dances for you? Are you dating Timmer? Is your name even really Vivian?”

Vivian scoffs from her place on the couch.

“And would you put your fucking sling on already? I didn’t waste my night in the ER just for you to re-injure it.”

That’s enough to get her to glue her butt to the futon in spite. “I told you to leave me there! You’re the one who wanted to stay! You could’ve left.”

Inexplicably, he deflates.

The tension flies out of him, a bird fleeing out an open window. He melts back to the floor at her feet, and Vivian’s stomach twists and twirls. It’s been seven weeks since they first met in the parking lot, six weeks since rehearsals began. Compared to her life—or even his—it’s a drop in the bucket, a single tear in a flood. And yet, these weeks have been enough that she’s begun to learn the curve of his jaw and the meaning behind how often he adjusts his hat.

“That’s what you don’t understand.” Julian leans in to rest his forehead on her knees and the rest of his words are warm against her legs. “I couldn’t leave any more than you could quit dancing.”

The magnitude of what he isn’t saying makes her breath shaky, as though electricity is spiking through her lungs, sparking up her chest and out her parted lips. Somehow, with her conscious decision, her life has come to be made up entirely of leaps and lies.

When Julian settles a warm hand on her knee and tips his head to gaze at her from where it rests in her lap, she does what she always does when he stares at her with his impossible hazel eyes.

She spills her secrets.

“You can get an advance from Ellapond if you need extra for a security deposit on a new apartment.”

An advance? Vivian hasn’t even gotten her first paycheck. She says as much when he presses, and he mutters darkly under his breath.

“Maureen said the bank needed to validate my account and that it could take a few business weeks.”

“You were cast seven weeks ago, and you haven’t been paid yet?” Julian asks.

“I tried asking about it during my fitting, but Adelina was there and Maureen assured me that the bank would have it sorted out soon.” Saying it aloud, the excuse sounds flimsy, but her fitting with Maureen and Adelina was miserable enough that she wants to recount as little of it as possible.

“Fucking Maureen,” he curses under his breath.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He waves her off, suspiciously refusing to elaborate. “I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to move once you get paid, but you should know that the option is there.”

Despite the mystery his words are shrouded in, his tone and warm palm on her knee are reassuring in the way that few things have been since she first left her parents and moved to Bristol.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, and yet Vivian still startles when two days later her phone dings, notifying her of an updated balance in her checking account. The singular deposit covers payment for all seven weeks since Ms. Renee first cast her back in late August.