Dance Moms meets Little Fires Everywhere in award winning author Tammy Greenwood’s addictive new novel set in the hyper cutthroat world of ballet girls and their mothers as they compete for a prestigious prize…
"The Still Point is a must-read full of love, hope, desire and jealousy – a vivid, compelling and deeply nuanced look at a place where lives are forever shaped and changed.” –Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of Just the Nicest Couple
“She had never seen Bea dance like this. Ever sat spellbound as her daughter grew from a little girl into a woman before her eyes…”
Ever, Lindsay, and Josie have ushered their daughters—Bea, Olive, and Savvy—through years of dance classes in their coastal California town. They’ve tended bloodied feet, stitched ribbons to countless pairs of pointe shoes, and in the process, forged friendships that seem to transcend rivalry.
But now Etienne Bernay, enfant terrible of French ballet, has come to their conservatory. Not only will he direct this year’s production of The Nutcracker, but he’s brought along a film crew to document his search for one special student who will receive a full scholarship to the Ballet de Paris Academie. For the girls, this is the chance to fulfill lifelong dreams. For Ever, recently widowed and struggling financially, it may be the only way to keep Bea dancing. And Bea is a truly gifted dancer—poetic and ethereal, breathtaking to watch.
Lindsay, meanwhile, frets that Olive is growing tired of the punishing reality of training, while Josie has no such qualms about Savvy, who is a powerhouse of ambition.
From auditions to casting to rehearsals, the cameras capture the selection process, with its backstabbing and jealousy, disappointment and triumph. But it’s behind the scenes that Bernay’s arrival will yield the most shocking revelations, exposing the secrets and lies at the heart of all three families—and the sacrifices women make for their children, for friendship, and for art.
“Instantly transports you to the cutthroat, brutally competitive, and beautiful world of ballet in this richly-detailed, expertly-plotted, absorbing tale of friendship, motherhood, passion, and dreams, found, lost, and found again.” – Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of The Overnight Guest
“Fans of Dance Moms and Megan Abbott will love this literary take on the competitive world of elite ballet training. With Tammy Greenwood’s firsthand knowledge of the subject, precise writing and well-drawn characters, The Still Point is an authentic and eloquent rumination on the ways that love—in all its forms—shapes our lives. Parental hopes, marital bonds, youthful passions: What does commitment mean in a life filled with inevitable changes?” – Zoje Stage, USA Today bestselling author of Baby Teeth and Wonderland
Release date:
February 20, 2024
Publisher:
Kensington Books
Print pages:
432
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Ever Henderson felt twitchy as she drove Beatrice to the studio that afternoon for the first day of classes. Bea seemed jumpy, too, an odd mixture of excitement and irritation. It must have been the Santa Anas, those dry, wicked winds that roll down from the mountains in Southern California this time of year. When the winds come, the air temperature rises and humidity drops; the air electrified. The winds frazzle nerves, make people restless. Ornery and suspicious. Happily married couples suddenly find themselves squabbling, lifelong friends bickering. Old grievances get whipped up in the winds. Bad behavior abounds. They call them the devil winds, for the trouble they stir up.
Ever tried not to think about all the trouble swirling in her head since she got the message from her lawyer, Carl, that morning: Ever, call me. I have news. She hadn’t returned the call yet. So long as she didn’t call him back, his news would remain suspended, floating about in the ethers. It could be good or bad. Indefinitely indefinite. Later, she’d thought. After she’d dropped Bea off at ballet. But then he’d texted, URGENT Can you swing by the office today? 4::30?, and she’d agreed.
“Are you excited?” she asked Bea, forcing a smile. “To get back to the studio?”
Bea looked in the visor’s mirror, touched the tip of her finger to an invisible blemish. “Yeah. I miss Miss V.”
“And Olive?”
Bea shrugged, and her dismissiveness worried Ever. Olive hadn’t been over since Bea got back from New York. Bea hadn’t asked to go to Olive’s, either. The girls had been best friends since they were ten, since the day Bea walked into Miss V.’s studio and Olive marched up to her like Pippi Longstocking, with her bright red hair and freckles, and took her hand. Come stand next to me. From that moment on, they had been thick as thieves, like sisters. For years, Olive had practically lived at their house; she knew where to find the honey in the cupboard, the trick of their fussy doorknob (a gentle twist and nudge of the hip), and Cobain never barked when she came to the door. Something was up with the girls.
Olive had stayed home this summer, opting for Vivienne’s program rather than going to New York or Houston or Boston for a big company summer intensive as Bea had. Ever hadn’t wanted Bea to go away, either; with Ethan gone and all of them still reeling in the aftermath, Ever had hoped she would stay home, heal, but Bea had insisted this was what she wanted. These summers away were all part of the grand plan: to train with the best teachers in the country, to build her resume, but mostly to be seen early on by the company directors so that later, when she was auditioning in a room full of dancers, they would remember her. Besides, even after all these months, Ever knew the house was so dense with sorrow, it was hard to breathe.
And so Ever had flown with her to New York to drop her off, and like the last three years, Bea had spent the summer training at NYRB. Ethan had been the worrier in the family, and Bea’s first summer away at fourteen, he’d been reluctant. Some parents got apartments in the city where they stayed as chaperones, but Ethan taught private music lessons all summer when school was out, and Ever had Danny to take care of and classes of her own to teach, never mind the cost of subletting an apartment in Manhattan for six weeks. The only people Ever knew in the city were her editor and her agent, but they had both insisted that New York was one of the safest places on earth now—children growing up there were expected to take the subways alone by the time they were twelve. Still, Ethan had made Bea put both Leona and Edward’s numbers in her phone, and each day that first summer he’d studied the tracker app they’d all installed, watching her icon traverse the map of the city. Ever had thought he was being overprotective; neither one of them had ever been tracked by their parents as teens. She’d been such a fool, she thought, to trust the world to be a benevolent place.
Bea had only been back for a week, and they were all trying to regain their equilibrium, whatever that meant now. With Bea gone, Ever had been on her own. Danny was busy at his job busing tables, at the beach, or at the skate park with his best friend, Dylan. She had bided her time puttering around the house, trying to write. She spent entire days staring at the blank screen, or traveling down one internet rabbit hole or another—“research,” she might have justified if there was anyone to justify it to. But she didn’t have a contract, which also meant she didn’t have a deadline. “Take some time,” Leona had said. “You’ll write again when you’re ready.” Ever had no idea what ready looked like, though. The empty house had felt like a mausoleum, a monument to so many lost things. She was glad Bea was back, though her heart hurt when she thought about her graduating in June, about the girl-size hole she would leave in her world. Danny would follow in just a year, off to college, and she’d be completely alone.
“I can’t believe this is your last year,” Ever said. “It makes me sad.”
Bea nodded but stared out the window.
“Is everybody coming back to the studio this fall?” she asked as they pulled into the lot.
“Mary quit,” Bea said.
“Mary quit?” Mary O’Leary was a dark-haired, coltish girl, one of the strongest dancers at Costa de la Luna Conservatory of Ballet; Ever had been certain she’d be one of the few to make a career of it.
“She’s doing water polo,” Bea said.
“Wow,” Ever said. “She’s been at CLCB forever. Longer than you, even.”
Ever was mystified by the girls, the ones whose lives, like Bea’s, revolved around classes and rehearsals, who suddenly opted out. They’d stop by the studio sometimes, their complexions now golden from days at the beach, their bodies filled out as if they’d been released from some sort of binding: their clothes showing new cleavage and bare legs, the sinewy muscles just memories now. They all seemed happy, though, released from this strange captivity.
“I really need to get my license,” Bea said as they pulled into a parking space next to Savannah Jacobs, who was doing her hair in the BMW convertible her father had bought for her that spring. Ever had a few thoughts about that, and about Savannah as well, but kept them—mostly—to herself.
“I know, Bumble,” Ever said. “We’ll practice this fall.”
Bea was seventeen, turning eighteen next June. She had her permit, but there simply hadn’t been time for lessons; there was hardly time for any of those normal teenage milestones. She did online schooling and danced six days a week. While her friends from junior high went off to high school, their moms posting homecoming photos and prom photos and pictures of them behind the wheel (Lookout, new driver on the road! or God help us!), Bea was at the barre.
Ethan had always promised to teach the kids to drive. When Ever had been overwhelmed with the demands of two toddlers, she’d made him pinkie swear there would be a changing of the guard when they hit the teen years. “You get puberty, SATs, and driving,” she’d joked. But by the time Bea got her permit, Ethan was sick, and in less than a year, he was gone.
Ever turned off the engine. The Volvo wagon had been Ethan’s car—this beast with its COEXIST and BERNIE 2016 bumper stickers and its rusted muffler. He’d liked it because it accommodated his longboard. He’d also argued that its size made it safe, six feet of protection ahead of them and six feet behind. It felt like she was driving a tank, but now that her Jetta’s clutch had gone, she was grateful to have it, despite the stained upholstery and the mystery scent (wet dog? olives?) coming from the floor mats.
“You don’t need to come in,” Bea said, her voice soft and her hazel eyes downcast.
“But it’s the first day. I was going in to say hi to everybody.” Ever had longed for the normalcy of this routine all summer.
“The moms aren’t in there. Everybody else drove themselves.” Bea gestured with her chin to Savannah Jacobs, who was still sitting in her car, looking at her reflection in the rearview mirror as she did her bun.
“Well, Olive doesn’t even have her permit yet, so Lindsay will be here. I also need to fill out the registration papers and give Vivienne your tuition,” Ever said, and felt the distinct plummeting feeling she experienced whenever she thought about money lately. And thinking about money made her think about the call from Carl again. Their meeting was in an hour.
Bea sighed and shut the car door, and—without acknowledging Savannah in the next space over, Ever noted—disappeared into the building.
Then, as if Ever had conjured her, Lindsay pulled into the lot. Ever waved, and behind glass, Lindsay’s face bloomed into a beaming smile. She parked and threw open her door. Olive got out and went to Savannah’s car, sliding into the passenger seat.
“Hi!” Lindsay said, embracing Ever tightly. Lindsay’s hugs were always warm and long. Ever noticed she had lost weight; Lindsay was always dieting, inflating and deflating like a balloon. With her dark auburn hair and big brown eyes, Ever thought Lindsay was beautiful no matter her dress size, but Lindsay wouldn’t hear it.
Lindsay Chase wasn’t anyone Ever would have known if not for the studio. Despite living in the same town, they could be from totally different planets. The only thing they had in common was ballet, their daughters engaged in this daily ritual like congregants at the same church. But Lindsay had become one of Ever’s best friends, a friendship forged over the last seven years as they sat for hours on end in the greenroom, embellishing tutus or sewing ribbons onto pointe shoes. Sometimes they just set up camp with their laptops: Ever writing and Lindsay, who was a realtor, working. They lived on opposite sides of town, however, and so their friendship played out mostly in the studio. With Bea away, they’d texted over the summer, gotten together for coffee a couple times, but Ever missed these daily interactions. They grounded her. She needed this.
Lindsay linked arms with her as they walked across the lot. “So, do you think he’s in there?” she whispered.
“Who’s that?” Ever asked.
“The new ballet master,” Lindsay said.
“Vivienne hired somebody new?” Vivienne ran the studio alone, with only the help of Eloise, who taught the Littles. There had never been anyone else.
“Oh my god. Ever, don’t you ever check your email?”
No. She almost never checked her email. She’d glance at it, of course, every few days, but unless there was a bill or something from Leona, she largely ignored the messages.
In the last decade, Ever had gone from knowing nothing about ballet to knowing nearly everything. Thanks to Bea, she could list not only all the major ballet companies, but the names of their principal dancers, as well. There had been an article about Etienne Bernay in Bea’s Pointe Magazine last spring; she’d read it while she was waiting for Bea to get out of a private lesson. He was a twenty-seven-year-old principal at Ballet de Paris. A wunderkind in the ballet world, his story a sort of miracle. Raised in one of Paris’s dangerous and poverty-stricken banlieues, he was discovered in an after-school ballet program as a child and taken under the wing of the company’s director. According to the article, he joined the corps at sixteen and quickly climbed the ranks. He was gifted, but undisciplined. He failed to show up for practices, purportedly got high prior to a performance before the Queen (though Bea had shown her the video on YouTube, and it was stunning—with him executing a series of flawless triple sauts de Basque), and had unapologetically had his torso tattooed with a bull’s-eye, claiming he was always being unfairly targeted. (C’est une métaphore, he’d told the interviewer, winking devilishly.)
“So, you don’t know about the documentary, either?” Lindsay said. “The scholarship?”
Ever shook her head. Documentary? Scholarship?
“Here,” Lindsay said, handing Ever her phone, and she read the email announcing that there would be a visiting faculty member at CLCB this fall, a principal dancer from the Ballet de Paris, on “hiatus.” He would not only be joining the faculty for the fall semester and assisting Vivienne with the Conservatory’s production of The Nutcracker, but he would also be selecting one dancer to send back to the Ballet de Paris Académie for the spring term, on a scholarship he would sponsor. An award-winning filmmaker would be documenting the process.
If Bea had had any idea that Etienne Bernay was coming to CLCB, she would have been abuzz. Ballet de Paris was one of her dream companies. Ever felt a flicker ignite inside her. It had been so long since she’d felt anything like this, it took her several moments to recognize it.
Hope. That’s what it was. Until Ethan’s life insurance claim came through, she’d been trying to figure out how they would navigate the exorbitant cost of ballet. There was tuition, but soon they would also have to finance audition season; Bea insisted that video auditions were not the same as getting in front of a school or company’s director. But this meant cross-country flights, a trip to Europe even. If Bea could skip all this, if she could simply be chosen, the burden would be lifted.
“Why here?” Ever asked. None of this made any sense. Their tiny coastal town, more than fifty miles south of Los Angeles, was hardly a celebrity hotspot, and Etienne Bernay was just that—a celebrity, in the world of ballet, at least.
“Apparently, Vivienne’s known him since he was a kid,” Lindsay said.
Vivienne never spoke of her past, but everyone knew she had danced all over the world: at Ballet de Paris herself, with a stint in New York for Balanchine. And later with Baryshnikov. One rumor had it that he had followed her around like a lovesick puppy for months.
“He’s taking over Level Six,” Lindsay said, grabbing Ever’s hand.
“Our girls?” Ever said.
“Our girls.”
Grief had fingers. The ghostly touch gentle as a wish, caressing with its sad strokes or, sometimes, poking at her, the way the kids used to in the wee hours of the morning. Dappled light, Mommy and Daddy, wake up! But other times, those fingers curled into fists, striking. Or suffocating. Nearly every morning since Ethan died, Ever had awoken breathless.
On Sunday morning, she gasped as she woke, and wondered if she should call the whole thing off. Really, no one would think any less of her if she were to cancel the memorial and just curl up in bed. The guys could still paddle out at sunset. She’d wave to them from the deck, her very own widow’s walk. She had no idea what to do on the anniversary of her husband’s death. Was she supposed to languish or push through her grief?
Lately, she felt like she was standing on the precipice of a cliff, staring down at her own life from a dizzying height. She should probably see someone, but the idea of sharing her troubles with a stranger made her throat close, so she’d used the tools at her disposal: yoga videos, CBD, and, occasionally, the special gummies stashed in her underwear drawer.
After the accident, Bea had sought solace at the barre, exorcising Ethan’s ghost, exercising it. Released her grief in sweat. Danny had found distraction in his friends, in work. But what had she done? What progress had she made? A whole year later, the world kept moving while her sorrow stood still.
She heard a door shut down the hall, the sound of feet padding across the wood floors. “Morning,” Bea said, and came to her for a hug. Ever buried her nose in Bea’s hair, the tangled mess she so rarely saw with it always pulled back into a bun. Rather than releasing her after her usual quick squeeze, Bea held on, and Ever’s throat hitched.
All Bea had been talking about all week was the scholarship. Paris. Oh my god, Paris. But when Ever tried to imagine her nearly six thousand miles away, sadness filled her, like liquid in a glass. She missed her already, and she wasn’t even gone yet. She and Ethan had lamented the day that their little birds would fly from the nest; but she’d never thought that when it finally happened, she would be left alone in that hollow space.
“Mmm, smells good,” Danny said as he loped into the kitchen before plopping down at the table and reaching for the pitcher of juice.
She’d woken early, tried (and failed) to write again, then made pancakes for Danny and a tofu scramble with bell peppers for Bea. She squeezed oranges from the tree in their yard, and put out a tub of Greek yogurt and a wooden bowl full of fresh raspberries from the farmers’ market. She made coffee in the French press and tea for Bea in her favorite mug. Something about being seated around this table with her children made her feel grounded. So long as she had this—oak, sunlight, the sea outside—they might be able to survive. Even with Ethan gone, this was still their home.
The house on the cliffs had been Ethan’s family’s second home, their retreat. When he and his brothers were young, they spent their summers here with their mom while his dad stayed down in San Diego for work. After Ethan’s father died, his brothers had all scattered to the wind—none of them in California anymore. None of them interested in the run-down bungalow. Ethan and she had inherited the house without a mortgage, but now they owed more than a hundred thousand dollars on it. Carl was right: this was nothing compared to what it was worth, but the monthly payments still had to be made. There were many times when the well ran dangerously dry that they could have sold it, but Ethan loved this house. He joked that he would die here, and then he did.
It had been a year. An entire year without him, but it still felt like any minute, he might just walk in through the French doors from the deck, dripping water on the scuffed hardwood floors.
Ever looked at the dusty floors. She really needed to clean. Ethan had been the one to scour the house each weekend: vacuuming the dog hair from under the furniture, scrubbing the grout and the sticky bins in the refrigerator. Having grown up in rustic cabins, most without indoor plumbing, Ever had watched his efforts both mystified and amused. It would have driven him mad to see the grubby floorboards and the dust.
“Can you guys help me clean today?” she asked the kids. “Danny, your room is really bad.” Bea was tidy, but Danny was a slob. The room was not only messy but filthy, a collection of dirty plates teetering on every horizontal surface. Empty chip bags and energy drink cans tipped on their sides.
“Can I just close my door?” he said.
“Can you? Because right now the basket of laundry I put there last week is blocking it.”
“I’m kidding, Mom. I’ll clean,” Danny said, and helped himself to a second stack of pancakes. “Can Dylan come tonight?”
“Of course. Anybody you want to invite. Are all the girls coming?” she asked Bea.
Bea had filled a bowl with yogurt and fruit. She squeezed the plastic bear, drizzling honey in concentric circles over her breakfast. She shrugged.
“I sent a text to the moms. I asked Nancy to invite Vivienne, the new teacher, too.”
Bea’s eyes widened, and she set down the honey. “Why would you do that?”
They had always invited not only friends and neighbors, but families from the studio as well. Vivienne, Nancy, and Eloise. Vivienne never came, of course; the boundaries between teacher and student were sacred to her. It had surprised Ever when she’d shown up to Ethan’s funeral, touched her deeply.
“Bardo’s having a party tonight. Some people might be there,” Danny said, and chugged down his juice in a few gulps. Greg Bardo’s mom was single; rumor was that she not only hosted but partied with the kids. It used to irritate Ever, but now she felt an odd commiseration. She was probably just lonely, and maybe having teenagers around filled a void.
“What about Olive? She’ll be here, right?” she asked, but was met with silence, Bea’s eyes downcast.
“She’ll probably be at Bardo’s, too,” Bea said.
Ever’s heart ached. She couldn’t imagine that Olive would skip the memorial. Olive had loved Ethan, playfully called him Dad. When he passed, Lindsay said she’d been inconsolable. She’d try to talk to Bea about Olive later when Danny wasn’t around.
“Well, Lindsay’s offered to do the shopping. What would you guys like to eat tonight? We can do veggie kabobs on the grill if you want, Bea? You want fajitas, D?”
Ever flashed on a party she’d planned for the kids’ seventh and eighth birthdays. (They were born exactly a year apart on the same day in June.) There’d been an outbreak of strep at school, and not a single kid could come. Ethan had run to the store and come back with a giant chocolate sheet cake anyway. They played games and whacked at a piñata until its candy guts spilled all over the deck. They ate almost the whole cake. By midnight, they all had sore throats and were trembling with fevers, but Danny said it was his favorite birthday ever. She’d had the profound and satisfying belief that all they needed was each other. But if that were true, what were they supposed to do now?
Lindsay had an open house from ten to one on Sunday, so she’d gone to eight o’clock Mass that morning. Alone as usual. Olive was exhausted from ballet, sleeping in on her only day off, and Steve had stopped going to church years ago. But she found comfort in the services. She loved the ritual of it. The predictability. At St. Mary’s, things never changed. She always left Mass feeling a little bit better about the world. No small feat these days.
St. Mary’s was also one of the few places outside the studio where she saw Vivienne, who sat in a pew near the back each week, also alone. Lindsay always smiled, and Vivienne nodded in acknowledgment, though they never chatted. But today, she couldn’t help herself. As she passed her on her way to her own seat, she stopped and said softly, “Vivienne, I just wanted to say how amazing it is that the kids are getting to work with Mr. Bernay. Olive is thrilled.” Of course, she had no idea if this were true or not. She’d barely spoken to Olive all week. Then she wondered if lying inside a church qualified as a mortal sin.
“He certainly is challenging,” Vivienne had said vaguely, and returned to her missal.
What on earth did that mean?
After Communion, she returned to her kneeler and squeezed her eyes shut. Please, God, let Olive get the scholarship. Also, make the bump go away?
In the parking lot, she saw Vivienne again, but this time, Lindsay simply waved a goodbye before popping her trunk to make sure she’d loaded up her signs for the open house.
The property was one of those old bungalows along the cliffs, a little bit down the road from Ever and Ethan’s. A thousand-square-foot Craftsman that had been uninhabited for several years: an inheritance. Someone’s nest egg in the form of moldy drywall and asbestos tiles. Outdated appliances and popcorn ceilings. But Lindsay knew exactly how to make a home like this appeal to prospective buyers; it was simply a matter of suggestion. She had learned early on that no matter the condition of the home, she was never really selling the house but what the house could be. Here? This is where the crib would go, of course, she would offer a young couple. The same spot might become a place for an aspiring writer’s desk or place to paint? She knew how to read people, intuiting exactly what they wanted and then showing them how a house might fulfill those desires. This kitchen is perfect for entertaining, she might tell a childless couple. Or, When the kids come home, they can all gather here, she’d offer the empty nesters. It’s just a block to the elementary school, she’d say to the harried mother of three or to the old woman who, Lindsay suspected, fancied herself the neighborhood grandmother. She’d open the windows to the sounds of children playing, and the woman’s eyes would sparkle with delight. She wasn’t selling houses so much as dreams.
By the time the first couple showed up today (pregnant woman, broad-chested husband), she’d baked the tray of chocolate chip cookies she’d assembled at home in the outdated oven.
“Boy or girl?” Lindsay asked.
“Boy!” the dad said, beaming.
“There’s a rope swing,” she said. “In the backyard. It’s amazing. Let me show you.”
It didn’t matter if no one else showed up. She was certain she’d have an offer by the time she pulled up the OPEN HOUSE signs.
She was good at this; she really was. But lately, after everyone was gone, all those hopeful glowing couples, after she’d shut the lights off and put the key back in the lockbox, she’d sit in her car and cry. She couldn’t help but think that fifty percent of those newlyweds would eventually be divorced. That the economy might crash, and someone would miss a payment and then another and eventually lose the house. That some houses would be flooded or consumed by fire, some would tumble off these eroding cliffs. And even those couples who lasted, who managed to hold on, wouldn’t be able to stop time. Their babies would grow up inside these walls, the children would become teenagers and then adults, the couples would grow old, and then there would one day be nothing but a FOR SALE sign out front. Open house days used to be exciting, but now they were challenging.
Melissa had come over to Josie’s on Sunday afternoon, to try to catch a glimpse of the new ballet master. She’d been rattling on for hours about the scholarship, the documentary, speculating, hoping. She was Josie’s best friend, but she was exhausting.
“So we are going tonight?” Melissa asked.
Josie knew she should go to Ethan’s memorial. All the Level 6 families were invited; even Melissa thought they should make an appearance, and Melissa couldn’t stand Ever Henderson or her elfin fairy daughter. It was still sad. Ethan had been a great guy, the kind of guy that made her feel hopeful that not all men were assholes. They used to say all the good ones were gay or taken, but as they all got older, it seemed she’d have to add dead to the list.
“BYOB is bring your own bong, right?” Melissa asked, snorting. Whenever Ever Henderson was around, Melissa’s nose would twitch at the faint stink of sandalwood or patchouli or whatever it was she wore that made her smell like a walking headshop. “I swear though, if there’s a drum circle, I am out of there.”
They’d been sitting by the pool since noon, waiting for Etienne to emerge from the guesthouse. Until rehearsals started, the ballet studio was closed on Sundays. Josie had seen his light on and heard some godawful techno music coming from inside last night, but he hadn’t come out today. Granted, the guesthouse was equipped with a mini fridge, a microwave, and a Keurig. She’d shown him where the Whole Foods was so he could pick up a few staples, told him he was welcome to use the kitchen. But he appeared to be living off delivery so far; pizza boxes, Panda Express cartons, and Chipotle bags filled the dumpster on the side of the house. He spent a good deal of time this first week elsewhere, probably with that minxy French camera girl at the Seacoast Suites. Just a hunch, but her hunches were usually pretty on the money.
That first night, she’d declined his offer to go get a beer, so not appropriate, and instead told him she had a fridge full of beers and he was welcome to help himself. She didn’t add that her ex had left them behind. She’d given him a tour of the downstairs, then the backyard amenities, during which he drank the beer she’d offered. When he yawned and stretched, his shirt rose to reveal the perfectly taut and tattooed abs of a man almost ten years her junior. Trouble with a capital T. So, rather than offering him another beer, she’d shown him to the guesthouse, and since then, she’d hardly seen him. He slept in every morning that week and was at the studio teaching every night.
Melissa had only caught a quick glimpse of him at CLCB earlier in the week and had insisted on coming over so she might be “properly introduced.” But, it appeared, he was using the whole day to sleep off whatever it was he’d been doing the night before.
“Well, let’s go together at least. That way, we only need one excuse to leave early,” Melissa said, standing up and walking to the edge of the pool, which was surrounded by a lush lawn that met the water’s edge. The property backed up to a canyon, and the illusion was that the water dropped off into an abyss. It was Josie’s favorite thing about the house. She’d miss this.
Melissa dipped her French-manicured toes into the water and glanced toward the guesthouse. She was wearing a bikini so small it looked like she’d borrowed it from Jaz. While the boobs were bought and paid for, the rest was earned by the hours Melissa spent at the gym. Josie liked to get her exercise more passively: hiking or biking. Swimming. She was also genetically blessed, which was basically just a humble way of saying she didn’t have to work out.
Josie hadn’t always been beautiful. As a child, she was on the chubby side. She also
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