Fever: A Ballroom Romance, Book One by Tonya Plank

Author:Tonya Plank [Plank, Tonya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance novel set in the world of ballroom dance
Publisher: Dark Swan Press
Published: 2015-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Tired and hungry though I was after the evening’s classes, I found myself in the practice room. I was too exhausted to practice myself so I plopped down on a bench in front of Kendra and Josie and played spectator/cheerleader, clapping at the end of every impressive trick and phrase full of fast footwork. The bench gave me the best opportunity to spy on Sasha and his new partner without actually walking into the back room. Kendra was right; she was gorgeous. But she was slightly crazed to say this girl looked anything like me. Unfortunately. She had long, honey-blonde hair, like mine, but hers flowed all the way down to the top of her butt. And she had a long, willowy, ballerina-ish frame with arms and legs that went on forever. She looked like a spider. A beautiful spider. I tried hard to keep the stabs of jealousy at bay. She had the ideal ballerina body I’d longed for most of my life. Mine was ruined when I developed my curves. And I used to wear my hair that long but I’d cut it in law school, feeling out of place with my abnormal bunhead-length hair. It was still long, but just normal-long, not making-a-statement-about-who-I-am long.

Watching her momentarily brought me back to ballet class, to how fat I’d felt after I’d developed earlier than the other girls, especially after the headmistress, Miss Betty, told me I needed to do something about my breast size.

“They make you top heavy, will throw you off balance.”

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Diet,” she said and walked off.

I tried not eating, or eating very little. I’d have an apple in the morning, a handful of strawberries at night, maybe a spoonful of peanut butter at night if I was feeling weak. I lost a lot of weight but most of the meat I still had on me seemed concentrated in my breasts. And my curvy hips.

“Maybe you just need a more flattening bra,” she later said, when it was clear my diet was only making me thinner in places I was already boney—like my arms and legs.

I wore a severe sports bra under my leotard, hating the feeling of having to wear this gigantic contraption in order to look like the others. I continued trying to eat as little as possible, hoping all the fat would eventually melt off my body. Breasts were only fat, so if I had no fat content, I’d have no breasts, I’d told myself.

“You wanna know all about her, don’t ya?” Kendra said, catching me off guard.

“Um…”

“Oh come on, the time for bullshitting me is long past, you!” she screamed.

I laughed. She was right. I might as well just own my obsession at this point. “Do you know anything?”

“Duh!” she said, and we both cracked up. “Name is Arabelle Fonseca! She used to be a championship show dancer. You heard of her?” Kendra asked.

I shook my head.

“You really are new to ballroom! She and her old partner won Blackpool like five times in a row, but in the cabaret, show dance division, not Latin.

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