Jiley and TRITTANY Oneshots

I Know

The stress of being Studio Head gets to Riley when she makes a wish she never dreamed would actually come true.

Riley's POV
I slammed down the mass of files on the surface of my desk and sighed deeply, resting my head in my hands, feeling like I was about to burst into tears of frustration. Nothing appeared to be going right for me.

Running the studio: it was hard. I didn't expect it to be anything less than hard. Miss Kate always told us how stressed she was handling 3 dance troupes and baby ballet. Between J-Troupe competitions, B-Troupe choreography and all of the major stresses of being first leader of A-Troupe - of course there was a lot to deal with. Not to mention things like paying bills and taking care of health and safety, studio maintenance, dancer wellbeing, straightening out drama, booking competitions, sorting out costumes, so and so forth until your head felt like it would burst. Of course I had believed Miss Kate when she said that running The Next Step was hard, and it didn't take a brain surgeon to work out that it would be. However, nobody warned me how hard it was going to be. Nobody told me that every day I would be so stressed out that my risks of a heart attack were very promising. Nobody told me that I would have to give up how many hours of sleep I was so happy to have.

And the biggest shock of all - was that nobody, nobody at all, told me I would have to do it alone.

I am first to admit that naturally, I'm a very dependent person. In my younger years, I relied a lot on the watchful eye my older sister always had on me. I'd claim how much I detested her overprotectiveness and lack of letting me be my own person, which even still I believed were reasonable statements to make about her. However, those annoying older sister qualities, I was no stranger to using when I needed help.

There came days when my sister and I hit some bumpy roads. We had a rough time when our team was preparing for Regionals, and not being able to depend on her quite so much helped me grow up a little I guess. However by then, I had found James to lean on.

I had found James as my new rock, and slowly began to build friendships with a small group of A-Troupers who worked together with me to protest my sister's dance captaincy. In a way there wasn't really time without anybody there for me. When Emily left, James came and when Emily came back, James stayed. It felt like, aside from dance, James was the one constant thing in my life.

But now that I had taken on the role as studio head, that had been pulled from under my feet. Stress, just like James had been, was now also a constant factor of my life. And James? He was off exploring London with James and Eldon whilst they competed in a hiphop extravaganza. Of course I was proud of him; proud of all three of them; but the timing for this competition could not have been worse. Did my boyfriend really have to leave when I had taken on the biggest challenge of my life?

At this particular moment in time, I was almost willing the tears to leak past my eyelids, feeling like crying would make me feel better. However just like everything else in my life, it didn't work. My eyes stayed dry and heavy, despite the huge lump in my throat. I ran my hands through my hair, closing by eyes to try and relax as much as I could. As I lowered my elbows back to my desk, my arm hit the white coffee mug which read Absolute Dance Internationals Miami. The mug fell to the floor, coffee collecting in a puddle around my feet.

I thumped the desk with my fist and cursed. Couldn't anything, any small thing at all, go right?

"Why did I take this job?!" I said loudly to nobody but myself, as it was way past midnight and the dancers had long since gone home. "I wish I didn't come to The Next Step."

Of course, looking back on this outburst I realise I was tired and weepy and stressed. Regrets about ever joining The Next Step weren't really in my mind - not truly. But in my fragile state on this Wednesday night at 12:34 am, I thought I meant exactly what I said.