Pirouette

11: Can't Stop The Feeling

• The song that goes with this chapter won't make sense until the end. Another trigger warning in this one •

"Sit."

The moment Fiona had walked into the DanceDec that following Wednesday, Adam had led her to the studio and proceeded to close the door. Fiona had dumped her bag down and taken off her shoes to start their usual warmup routine, but when she looked up, she saw Adam was nowhere near the stereo. Instead he had walked up to the wall, grabbed a chair and dragged it into the centre.

"I thought we were supposed to dance?" Fiona said, watching as he repeated the process and went to the wall and grabbed another chair, placing it so they were facing each other with a few feet's distance. The setup strangely reminded her of an AA meeting.

"We'll get to that," He replied and then slung himself into one of the chairs. He gestured towards the second and looked at her. "First, we talk."

Fiona felt the resistance in her body as she looked at the chair and watched Adam patiently wait for her to come sit in it. Suddenly the AA scenario turned into a shrink session. After last night, she knew they couldn't go on pretending. He had seen and she couldn't keep going on the way she was if she wanted to continue to dance with him.

'If you want to keep working with me, and I know you do, you have to stop doing this, do you hear me?'

Taking a deep breath, Fiona therefore reluctantly stepped forward and slowly took a seat in the chair. She felt herself close up like a shy clam when Adam eyed her with a long, probing stare, like he was trying to see through her. Fiona lowered her eyes to the floor and stayed silent, hoping to get this over with quick.

"When I was ten years old, I started to ask my grams where my parents were," He then suddenly started. Fiona blinked and looked up to see Adam pursing his lips. "I said to her; 'Grams, will I ever get to meet my family?' and she replied to me, 'that depends on who you see as you family.'"

Fiona watched him meet her with a small smile. It wasn't happy like his smiles usually were, though. There was a doleful glint to it.

"I didn't like that answer," He continued. "Not one bit. I knew my parents had left me at the orphanage for a reason, but I didn't know why. Around my 12th birthday, I started to lose hope that they'd ever come back for me. Kids at that age rarely get adopted. My only chance of having a family was either waiting for my mom and dad to come back, or go and make my own. You know which one I chose."

Fiona pressed her lips together. She remembered; "You joined a gang."

Adam slowly nodded and turned his eyes down again. "I was so ready to not be alone anymore. My friends were getting adopted, and the ones who weren't... they ran off and joined a gang," He exhaled and then ran a hand through his hair. "For someone who's never had a family, that was the closest we ever got to having one. They took care of us, they protected us, they fed us and said we were part of something bigger now. Something better." He slowly lifted his eyes and gazed at Fiona with a sad look. "I believed them."

Fiona's face softened. He was telling her how he had felt so desperate for a family, he had taken anything that resembled it remotely. And how his desperation to get what he wanted had led him down a dark road of mistakes.

"I hated doing what I did," He told, lowering his eyes and shaking his head. "I didn't know what I was carrying in those bags, but I know it wasn't spices. I hated that I was delivering them to people who passed it on to other people—people my own age. I was contributing to all the violence on the streets, but I didn't care because I finally had a home for the first time in my life."