Her Escape, His Safe Haven

Chapter 9- First Rehearsal

I spent Saturday cooped up in my room. I didn't even leave to eat or anything. I didn't want to risk a runin with him. I did a lot of reading. It was actually kind of nice to relax and not have to worry about hiding the secret. 

I did text Eli a lot during the day. I guess him and Mark were hanging out. I told Vanna about talking to him and she freaked out...through text at least. I got a lot of all caps messages full of gibberish. 

It's Sunday morning now and I'm getting ready to spend some time with Eli working on choreography. I just got out of the shower. I pulled my hair up in a nice ponytail and began applying makeup to cover my bruises. I pulled foundation down my neck after color correcting to counter the darkness of the bruises. I got them all covered up pretty well, but I had to add some eyeliner and mascara as well as filling in my brows and throwing on a mauve nude kind of lipstick. After looking at my reflection something felt off so I added a little contour and blush to add dimension to my face. Perfect. A little much for working on choreography, but that's okay.

I got dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a long sleeve t shirt. I pulled on a pair of slides and grabbed my things. I quietly opened my bedroom door and made my way down and out of the house. I let out a breath of relief when I made it without seeing him. I walked over to Eli's where he was leaning against his car.

"You ready beautiful?" He asked standing up and going to the passenger side to open the door for me.

"Yeah, let's go." I hopped in the seat and we took off. We were heading to the studio, Ms. Mack said we could use it for our dance. We pulled up and got out going to the locked door of the studio. I pulled out my copy of the key and opened up the door.

"Welcome to the studio." I announced with a smile as I directed Eli to go inside.

"Why thank you ma' lady." He chuckled. 

We walked further into the studio and set our stuff down. "Do you have the sheet with all of the rules?" I asked 

"Yep." He pulled a sheet of paper out of his back pocket. "Okay, so the dance has to be at least two minutes, but no more than five. We can choose any genre of dance and any song as long as there's no profanity. The dance will be judged on the level of difficulty, the creativity, how well we work together and how well it is executed." He rattled off from the sheet.

"Sounds easy enough. Do you want to take it easy? Or should we impress everyone? I'm sure you can keep up with me, what with you extensive dance background and all." I chuckled.

"Let's make it something that they'll never forget." He responded before pulling me to him.

"Okay, well let's decide the genre and the song first." I said as I back away slightly.

"We should do whatever that style of dance I've seen you practicing. It's mesmerizing." He said looking me square in the eyes.

"Lyrical. We could do that. We could tell a story, it'd be pretty easy. Any song ideas?" I asked

"I don't know what about, The A team?"

I thought about the sing considering I know it well. I tried to imagine the steps we could do the story we could tell. "Nah, doesn't feel right."

"Okay, what about Someone Like You?" 

"No, I bet you Bea would choose a song like that." I chuckled.

"Right." He laughed as well "What if we go with Unsteady, by the X Ambassadors?" 

"I don't know that song..." I said

"I'll pull it up." He said grabbing his phone from his pocket and putting the song on.

Right away I knew that this was the song. I began choreographing everything in me head. I could already see the positions I would want to do with flexed feet instead of pointed, or where I would want to do a lift. I could imagine where we would be in sync or where I would be doing something apart from Eli.