Drenched in Light by Lisa Wingate

Author:Lisa Wingate
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Saturday morning, I woke up stiff and sore. The phone was ringing, and for some reason, nobody was answering it. Rolling over, I grabbed it clumsily and croaked, “Hello?”

“Julia?”

It took a minute for my mind to register the voice. My thoughts swam sluggishly through a murky mixture of past and present. “Jonathan?” I murmured, blinking sleep from my eyes, momentarily snuggling into the idea that the past eight months had never happened—that my breakup with Jonathan, rehab, the end of my dance career, moving home with Mom and Dad, the job at Harrington, the scene with Jonathan and his new wife at the Target gift registry were all part of a long, strange dream, and I was finally waking up.

“Jonathan?” I said again.

“Julia? Are you all right?”

“I just woke up.”

He chuckled. “Sleepyhead. It’s after eight.” Jonathan was always an early riser. He’d never understood those of us who weren’t. The tenderness in his voice made me laugh along with him.

“It’s quiet here this morning.” The words ended in a sigh, and I closed my eyes again, my mind wandering back in time, convincing my body to travel along.

“I just wanted to”—he arrested the sentence with an odd hesitation—“see how you were doing. I figured if I called early, your folks might still be out for their walk.” Every Saturday morning, my parents took a walk to the park and back. Jonathan, of course, knew the routine.

“I’m sore from . . .” From what? I dragged my eyes open again. Why was I so sore? I was never sore after a performance . . .

Slowly, the memory of dancing with the Jumpkids wound into my consciousness. I recalled lifting tiny dancers into the air as they practiced pas de chat and changement de pieds over, and over, and over. Yawning, I surveyed the grant paperwork strewn on the floor, where I’d worked last night after surviving Mrs. Mindia’s latest dance class, dinner with the Jumpkids, and countless exuberant hugs.

My mind snapped back to the present like a rubber band with a spit wad of reality attached to it.

Clearing my throat, I sat up, brushing strands of tangled hair out of my face. “Jonathan, why are you calling me?”

“I just . . .” Another trailing sentence, punctuated by a gap, during which I tried to imagine what he was thinking. “I just . . . I’ve been . . . You’ve been on my mind this past week. I wanted to know that you’re all right.”

“I’m all right,” I replied flatly, then felt a pang of guilt. His concern was genuine, his voice colored with shades of leftover feelings and latent regrets. It only made talking to him more painful.

“I knew. I knew what you were doing, Julia, and I didn’t do anything about it. I just put more pressure on you. I didn’t understand how serious it was. I . . . I thought it was something you could control.” The words rushed out as if he’d stored them up, practiced them before dialing my number.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.