ONE
Willow
I’d started crying from the minute Allee found out she had incurable cancer. I felt her pain and Ryan’s in every bone of my body. The words on the page became blurs as my teary eyes brushed over their first and last dance…their fateful trip to Allee’s beloved Paris…Allee’s final words as Ryan lay beside her in her death bed. Their song, “I Won’t Give Up,” played in my head as I flipped the pages. Then, I totally lost it when I came to Allee’s love letter to her Superman. Big fat ugly tears pouring down my face, my sobs clogging my ears, I bawled until there were no more tears to shed. The last page of the book was soaked. Ready to fall apart like me. Emotionally drained, I closed the book and gazed at the cover. A beautiful young couple in love. They had everything to live for; unexpectedly, death took all that away. But their love, immortalized in this memoir, would never die.
The title of the book stared me in the face. I had experienced my own Undying Love. I’ll never forget the day I came home from high school, and my father sat me down at one of the tables in his deli. In fact, it was the very one I was sitting at today.
“Pumpkin, I have to tell you something you’re not going to want to hear.”
My eyes searched his misty, bloodshot ones. It looked as if he’d been crying.
“Mom is no longer with us.”
A chill traveled down my spine. “What do you mean, Pop?”
And then he told me. My mother, Belinda, had been hit by a cab. Instant death. She was only thirty-five. The tears just poured and poured. Enough to make brine in a barrel of pickles. The sadness was unbearable, the guilt unshakable. I never told her how much I loved her during my rebellious teenage years nor did I get a chance to say goodbye.
Pop and I went on with life without mom. His deli, Mel’s Famous, was a landmark institution on New York’s Lower East Side, and regular customers kept him busy. As for me, I threw myself into my dancing at Julliard. An aspiring ballerina, my dancing kept the pain away. My father was concerned about my obsessive-compulsive behavior and made me see a shrink. I’d become dangerously anorexic. All skin and bones. Dr. Jules Goodman saved my life.
Dr. Goodman was now saving my life again. I was on a sabbatical from the Royal Latvia Ballet. On my way to becoming a world-class ballerina, I had collapsed on stage while performing in Vienna. The in-house doctor said I was exhausted and malnourished. That’s what my dad was told. Only Dr. Goodman knew what really brought me almost to complete destruction. Physical and emotional. The real extent of the damage. For now, as I healed, that secret needed to stay between us. Gustave Fontaine, the company’s infamously handsome and brilliant artistic director, had gone on to another dancer. And not just any ballerina. Mira Abramovitch. My archrival since we’d been in tutus together in pre-school. I had given him everything—my heart, my soul, my body. My passion. But I was just another conquest. Stupid, stupid me should have known better. The other girls in the troupe had warned me, but foolishly I thought I was different. Special.
Being back home in New York, living with my dad, was good for me. Afraid of losing the other great love of his life, he took care of me, feeding me lots of homemade chicken soup—the soup that made Mel’s Famous legendary. Slowly, I put back on the weight I’d lost though I was still very thin by most standards. But the obsessive desire that had almost consumed me was gnawing at me. Now six months away from the stage, I was aching to put on a leotard and my pointe shoes. To dance for him.
Gustave had been my master. He possessed me, both figuratively and literally. Hungering to please him, I surrendered to the power he had over me as if he were a drug. He would be showing me how he wanted my leg to extend and before I knew it, my legs were extended around him, and he was fucking me without mercy until orgasms pirouetted through my body. One after another.
No place was sacred. He fucked me anywhere, anytime he could. Or should I say wanted. I was at his command. Between acts. During intermissions. In my dressing room. Behind the curtain. On the stage floor after the lights dimmed.
I don’t know if I loved him. But for sure, I was obsessed. Maybe more. I worshipped him like a god. His beauty and sexuality were irresistible, and the control he exerted over me trumped the gut-wrenching pain of being pushed to the limit. I even withstood the harsh punishments for not being good enough. For not being perfect. How many tears had I shed? Yet, more than anything, no matter what it took, I wanted to be his. So when I found him humping Mira in my dressing room, I was crushed to the bone. I was nothing to him. Just another beautiful body to fuck and control. My downward spiral began and accelerated at the speed of a bullet train until I was a shell of the person I was. Thinking back to the devastating events of the past year, self-loathing seeped into my bloodstream.
Don’t go there.
“What’s the matter, pumpkin?
The husky voice stopped me before I could descend into darkness. I looked up. My father. In his perpetually stained, floor-length deli apron over his ill-fitting baggy pants and a Mel’s Famous T-shirt. There was alarm in both his voice and warm chocolate brown eyes. His bushy brows furrowed.
“Oh, Pop! I just read the saddest book ever.” I showed him the cover.
My burly father smiled with relief as he wiped away my tears with the edge of his apron. “The author’s a regular. He comes in here from time to time.”
“Ryan Madewell? Really?” My tears subsided. “Do you think he’d be willing to sign my book the next time he comes in?”
My father’s smile broadened. “It doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“And, Pop, it doesn’t hurt to lose weight.”
Ryan Madewell showed up at my father’s deli exactly one week later. I recognized him instantly because I’d spent the whole week Googling him.
With a laid back but confidant gait, he strode up to the well-stocked deli case and surveyed the contents. An Indian summer kind of day, he was wearing black jeans and a simple white T-shirt. God, he was gorgeous. Tousled sandy hair, gemstone blue eyes, a movie star-handsome face, and a six foot-plus lean, buff body that shouted, “I work out.” In his Google images, he was gorgeous too. Just not this insanely gorgeous. His hair was now longer, the scruff on his face thicker, and his muscles more pronounced, making him even more impossibly sexy.
I was minding the store while my father was at the bank making a deposit. Almost three in the afternoon, it wasn’t very busy. In fact, he was the sole customer.
My gaze stayed fixed on him while he lingered in front of the meat counter. Finally, he said, “I’ll have my regular—a pastrami sandwich to go with a side of slaw.”
“Would you like it hot?” I asked, my eyes meeting his.
There was a short stretch of silence before he replied. “Yeah, I like it hot.”
His soft, raspy voice was so damn sexy. I swear my temperature rose ten degrees.
“What kind of bread?”
“Rye, please.”
Rye bread for Ry-man. I wondered what it would feel like to be sandwiched between him and a mattress. Oh God. This guy was making my mind travel to places it hadn’t been for a long time.
I prepared the sandwich for him. I was good at this, having made deli sandwiches ever since I could remember. Putting the slab of pastrami onto the meat slicer, I held out my plastic-gloved hand as one lean piece of meat after another fell onto my palm. After heating it, I set the three-inch high pile on the counter.
“Would you like mustard?”
“Just mayo, please.”
Without overthinking it, I squeezed some mayonnaise from a nearby plastic bottle onto the two slices of bread. Something about the way the creamy white condiment squirted out from the pointed cap sent a rush of tingles to my core. It was totally erotic. Jesus! What was I thinking?
I felt his eyes on me as I spread the mayo with a knife and then transferred the pastrami onto one of the slices of bread.
“That looks delicious,” he said as I completed the mouthwatering sandwich.
So do you.
I wrapped up the sandwich and threw it with the pre-packed slaw into a paper bag.
“Would you like anything else?” I managed.
“A cream soda would be great. In fact, I’ll have that now.”
Retrieving a bottle from the cooler, I handed him the soda, my fingers brushing against his. They were long, strong, and purposeful. The fingers of a writer.
He held the bottle in his right hand, and for the first time, I noticed the gold band around his ring finger as he popped off the cap with his other hand. His wedding band. I was surprised he still wore it. Obviously, he was still clinging to Allee. Maybe he wasn’t ready to let go. My stomach tightened. I tried not to linger on it or on what it symbolized and instead focused on his lush lips as they wrapped around the bottle. Tilting his head back, his eyes closed as he savored the cold, carbonated beverage, and as he swallowed, a satisfied moan escaped his throat. A pulse beat between my legs, and I wondered if this is what he looked like after having an orgasm. In my head, I began to undress him, imagining how beautiful he must look in the raw. Then, I remembered his beloved late wife’s last words to him—telling him how beautiful he was. Indeed, he was.
“How much do I owe?” he asked, bringing me out of my reverie.
“It’s on the house if you sign my book.”
His beautiful squiggle of a brow arched before he quirked a wry smile, made sexy by the way the left corner curled upward. “So, you know who I am?”
I quirked a shy smile. “Yeah. I loved your book. Will you sign it?”
“Sure.”
I was taken aback. I suddenly realized that the book was upstairs in our apartment above the deli. “I have to get it. Would you mind watching the store for just a few minutes?”
“Not a problem.”
I hurried to the back of the restaurant and raced up the flight of stairs to the apartment my dad and I shared. The book was on a nightstand in my bedroom. I reread passages of the book every night before I went to sleep. I think it helped me from having the nightmares that haunted me.
When I jogged downstairs, book in hand, Ryan was behind the counter, attempting to cater to a twitchy elderly man. I had to bite down on my bottom lip to stifle my laughter. The customer, one of our pickiest, was asking for an extra lean roast beef sandwich, ketchup on the side, and French fries well done. Poor Ryan. No matter how many pieces of meat he sliced, it was never lean enough for Mr. Picky Wicky.
Scurrying behind the counter, I said, “I’ll handle this while you sign my book.” He let out a loud sigh of relief.
“What’s your name?” he asked, taking my book from me.
“Willow. Willow Rosenthal.”
“Willow.” My skin prickled as he repeated my name. He made it sound like pure poetry.
“That’s a beautiful name.” He smiled a dimpled smile that rendered me breathless. It stretched across his magnificent face as he pulled out a pen from his back pocket. Being a writer, I guess he always carried one with him. You could never tell when or where inspiration would hit.
I took care of the curmudgeon while watching Ryan sign my book from the corner of my eye. I had mechanically signed dozens of ballet programs for fervent fans, but I hadn’t been on the other side of the table for a long time. It was simultaneously nerve wracking and exhilarating. After I got rid of Mr. Picky, I handed Ryan the bag with his sandwich. He, in turn, handed me back the book.
“Thanks,” we said in unison, our eyes never straying from one another.
A saucy grin spread across his lips as he headed to the front door with his sandwich bag in hand.
When he was gone, I eagerly opened my book. On the inscription page were these words:
Willow~
I look forward to seeing you again.
~Ryan
What did that mean? Did he want to go out with me? Or was he talking about coming back for another sandwich? My heart pounded with anticipation and anxiety. The truth was I couldn’t wait to see him again.