Always Standing Steady

Eventually Secrets Spill

142345AFEB13: February 14, 2013. 2345. Paris, France.

Mia did see William Fisher from center stage at the Palais Garnier. The applause roared around her, making everything blur. It was always like that: the rush was like a drug to her. Mia found herself smiling so widely that it was starting to hurt. Her feet were throbbing in her shoes, her legs felt strained, her heart was hammering in her chest, sweat beaded at her temples--right under her tiara. She could never let it show. She danced to center stage with her dance partner to bow; she did so with her arms held elegantly aloft, her pointer finger raised higher than the others. She popped up on point to step to one side of the stage to join hands with the other dancers.

That was the moment she saw him. Mia knew that James would be in the first three rows for three reasons: reason one, he could afford the best seats in the house; reason two, he liked being close enough to see her looking for him as she always found herself doing; reason three, it gave him great pleasure to tell all the rich ballet benefactors that she was his. He could have been there, but she didn't bother to scan the other half of the seats because her eyes found the unshaven, uncut, unpolished form of his son in the crowd. Will saw her looking at him and winked--as if to tell her why he was there.

What tore her eyes away from him was small gasps from the dancers around her. She looked to her right and saw what every girls wants to see in a big moment like that: Nick, wearing his best suit, down on one knee with a ring. Mia herself gasped too; she forgot that she was on stage a second before the curtains swept closed to remind her of that fact. She ran to him. She never told him that her answer was yes; she just kissed him, which said about the same thing.

"Oh my god," Mia panted when they broke apart. "Nick."

"I thought you would never look over!" He exclaimed. "You were so absorbed in the bows. If you didn't notice, I was going to start throwing flowers at you."

It was only then that Mia noticed a big bouquet of white and red roses. Mia wished that she was so overcome by that moment and that was the reason why she could barely speak; the truth was that all she could think about was those two men with the last name Fisher. Nick mistook her lack of words for that kind of breathless excitement that girls were supposed to feel during marriage proposals.

"Go change! I'll meet you by the stage door then we are going to dinner. You are going to love this place," Nick urged her.

Mia only nodded. She didn't want to leave him--not because she was in love with him, because he reminded her who she was supposed to love.

"Wait," Nick stopped her before she could follow the other dancers into the dressing rooms. He pulled the ring out of the box and slid it onto her finger. "Now you're good. Go change, I'll be waiting for you." He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

Mia forced herself to run down the stairs to the dressing rooms. If it was appropriate, she would have put her head to the cold walls and not moved. That, however, was not composed. She just hurried back to the dressing room only to be met with cheers and shouts from the other dancers. Mia smiled as she pushed her way through everyone--amid hugs and words of congratulations--to get to her designated seat and mirror.

Her vanity was perfectly neat with all her makeup in their labeled boxes--boxes that stacked together and fit inside a case that had its own place in her dance suitcase. She had this suitcase tucked under her vanity with her warm up clothes and casual clothes folded neatly inside. What was not part of her neat, organized vanity was the pure white box tied with pink and white ribbon.

"Your man knows how to do this right!" The ballerina, Svetlana, at the vanity to her right announced.

Mia had a feeling that this was not from Nick. "Nick does know how to romance a girl!" She lied.