I have hated the majority of my life I could remember. My mother died in a car accident when I was young, on the day of my 10th birthday. From that day my father had blamed me for her death, all because I had thrown a tantrum over not having ice cream with my cake, so she went to get some and was struck by a drunk driver.
That was the day the horrors of my childhood had begun. My father had become a recluse drunk who lost his job and claimed disability to sit at home and drink. He would have flashbacks of my mother and get into a drunken rage, which usually ended with me as his punching bag and anger release.
I tried several times to tell an adult about it, I showed them the bruises on my legs and arms, but my father was the world’s greatest actor. Every time someone had come to the door under the suspicion something was happening to me in the house, he pretended to act like a sober and loving father, which in turn made me look like a liar.
So, I stopped telling people, and I waited for the day I could escape. I used to love dancing, my mother put me in ballet classes at the age of 5 and I fell in love with it, but that had to come to an end. It was nearly impossible to hide the bruises with a leotard on.
I had to give up all the things I loved and had become an entirely different person. It wasn’t until my teen years that the drinking and beatings got worse. I was 14 when my father struck me in the face for the first time and left me with a black eye. I turned to heavy make-up and hoodies to hide my face.
This only turned me into the weirdo at school, and no one wanted to go near me. No one except one person.
Ace Huxley. Star captain of the hockey team and my biggest bully throughout high school. He always found me in the halls and made fun of the way I was dressed or the way I acted. He loved to target my heavy make-up and baggy hoodies, taunting me about being fat and ugly, so I tried and hide it. When in truth I had received tons of compliments before I began to hide my face and make myself look hideous.
He was the popular kid, the rich kid, every girl wanted him, and every guy wanted to be him unless they were gay, then they most likely wanted him too. It was infuriating how no one saw the true asshole that he was because I was the only person he blessed with his time of day to bully.
But during the last year of high school, I had found my calling, and my answer to escaping my father’s wretched house. He never allowed me to get a job, the one time I did behind his back, he found the money hidden in my mattress and beat me until I confessed to where I had gotten it. I was given a curfew until 8 pm, even on weekends, and I wasn’t allowed to go over to friends' houses or have any over, which basically meant I wasn’t allowed to have friends.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to go out. I soon found that there was an underground club in our small town of Athens, one that hosted a lot of dance competitions. Since most of the contestants had come from the hip-hop style of dance, it was something new and refreshing when I entered with a mix of hip-hop and ballet.
I was winning competition after competition until I finally had enough money to get my own small place at the age of 18 and get the hell out of there. It was the most exhilarating and liberating feeling I had ever felt when I was handed the keys and walked into that empty apartment. I had only enough money to pay the first and last months' rent, and a group of guys from the club had come with me to get everything that was in my room.
But that was only a mattress and a dresser, it was all I was given in that room. But I didn’t care, I was free and that was all that mattered. Now, I had the opportunity to go to school for dance, it was the first thing I did while I continued to compete in competitions and saved as much money as I could.
Then had come the disappointment. Rejection after rejection of all the top schools, despite my great grades in high school, I had no experience in dance since I was 12 years old. The only school that was willing to accept me was a private school for all kinds of talent, whether it was arts, sports, media etc., they seemed to have a course for everything.
Although it wasn’t quite Julliard, it was better than a community college that would get me a job as a dance teacher at a rundown studio at best. That would barely keep me afloat, I might as well continue with the underground competitions. But I didn’t want to be doing that for the rest of my life, I wanted to own my own studio, a glorious and magnificent one.
I wanted to teach all kinds of dance styles and have my own dance club, one that wasn’t underground and could be out in the open. I already had a bunch of ideas for us to form dance groups and post on social media to get our name out there and compete in actual competitions, one that came with both wealth and fame.
It took about 6 months for all the bruises and burn marks to completely disappear from my body, I used all types of scarring creams and bruising lotions to get them down as much as possible and since my father had always used an open hand, there was never anything that broke or fractured in my body.
I was finally able to dress how I wanted and no longer had to hide my face, just in time for my first day of school. I made sure to keep my make-up light and wore my chestnut brown hair down in natural wavy curls, then threw on a simple pair of skinny jeans and an olive green tank top. I usually tried to avoid green colours as my eyes were also a light green colour, but an olive tone seemed to accent them nicely.
This was my first day and my first impression. Gone were the days when I suffocated myself in baggy hoodies and caked-on make-up. I could be free and who I wanted to be, a chant I had been telling myself since the day I got my apartment. Now, I was even more free to finally pursue a dance career and nothing was holding me back.
“Incoming!”
I turned and looked down the hallway just in time to see a hacky sac that was flying my way. Thanks to quick dance reflexes, I ducked but managed to catch it and went to throw it back to its owner but stopped cold in my tracks.
Stood in front of me was none other than my biggest nightmare.
Ace Huxley.
“Hey, haven’t seen you around here before,” he said with a cocky grin. The same damned cocky grin he always used to pick up skanks, and now he was using it on me.“Here’s your sac back,” I said and tossed it to him, then turned and walked away.“Wha – wait, hold on!” He jogged after me and started walking backwards next to me to keep up. “What class are you headed to; I can maybe help you find it?”I held up the school map I printed out this morning. “Thanks, I got it covered.”This stumped him and he had no choice but to stop and watch as I continued to walk away like he was never there. I kept walking until I saw the signs for the bathrooms and ducked into them, then let out a gasping breath.It had been so long since I last saw him, all the memories of high school had come rushing back. Of all the people to run into on the first day, why did it have to be him?I sat in the bathroom until I thought the coast was clear then snuck out and raced to my first class, which was the History
Weirdly enough, I didn’t see Ace for the rest of the week, not even in the halls or the cafeteria, it was like he disappeared. Only to return on Friday with the biggest grin on his face as he awaited the start of the game.I sat at the top of the bleachers, as far away from the ice as possible and hoped he wouldn’t see me up there, but to my luck, he scanned the crowd and spotted me right away. He gave a huge wave which only attracted all the female attention to me.‘Oh, great. I haven’t even been here hardly a week, and I’m already the target of envy.’ I could feel all the jealous stares as the game started. At first, I didn’t find myself very interested, until I heard the horn go off, which I guessed signalled a goal as the players celebrated on the ice. I looked and realized it wasn’t our team, and it was only the first 5 minutes out of 20 minutes.Maybe this was going to be a lot easier than I thought. I started to pay a little more attention to the game, even though I didn’t und
I walked out of that cafeteria so fast you would think my ass was on fire. I expected Ace to run after me but to my surprise, he didn’t.‘Maybe he figured out a lot faster than I thought he would. I guess it would be hard to forget someone like who I was in high school.’ I still had 20 minutes until my next class, and it was right next to the library building, so I wandered over to kill time and read a book. It was another passion of mine that I loved to do, but I stopped reading in public after Ace constantly shouted out the embarrassing and weird books I read. Eventually, I just stopped reading.How could a guy like that ever think he could stand a chance of being my friend? He wouldn’t last two minutes with me before he ran off crying.Maybe that was it. This was my chance to finally get back at him for all those years of bullying me.That was laughable.I scanned the library's aisles until I came upon a beloved classic; A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. I fell in love wit
I was on my way to my Jazz-Ballet class when I got a random text message that said to go to the arena after class. I had my hunches that it was Ace, but I never remembered giving him my number. The worst it could be was a trap set by another, but again, how did anyone get my number? I hadn’t changed it since I first got my phone plan back at the end of high school, when I could finally afford one without my Dad knowing, but I wasn’t one to easily give it out or post it around social media like others. It wasn’t that easy to get a hold of. Since my gut told me not to, I avoided the arena for the rest of the morning, until I had saw Ace running down the hall to my classroom just as I was leaving. “Where were you?” he asked and looked quite breathless. I wanted to ask how he knew this was my class and that I had just finished, but I remembered he had been forcefully walking me to class every day since I got there. “What do
We had stayed like that for what seemed like hours before I finally scrambled off of him and stopped crushing him with my weight. “I’m sorry, I overestimated myself,” I muttered. I tried to hide my face as I felt my face heat up, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. “It’s okay, that’s uh, a good thing. You’re getting the hang of this a lot faster than I expected. Do you want to keep going?” “Uh, no, I think I’m done for today. My ass can’t take the hits anymore.” I crawled on my hands and knees over to the side of the rink and used the wall to help myself up, then scooted along the side toward the door. Ace busted a gut laughing as he watched me shuffle like a penguin off the ice, then glided with ease toward the door and stepped off the ice like it was nothing. “Show off,” I grumbled. I was relieved to sit down and be on stable ground once more, but I was shocked when Ace bent down to start untying my s
I gawked at him for a few seconds, unsure if I had heard him correctly. “Can I go to it if it’s after my game?” He wasn’t kidding. “You…want to go?” He shrugged. “Why not? I’d love to see you dance, I’m sure it’s awesome. What kind of dance competition?” “It starts a few minutes after your game ends, I don’t think you’ll be able to make it in time.” I wanted to think of any excuse for him not to go. That was the last thing I wanted him to see. Knowing about the competition was one fear, seeing me dance was a whole other level of terror I didn’t want to experience with Ace Huxley. I could only imagine what he would’ve done to me back in high school if he had ever seen me dance. Thankfully, it wasn’t a passion I could afford at the time, and now it is the passion that helps me afford everything. “I have my car, if it isn’t too far, I’m sure I can drive there right after. If you let me go, that is.” He smiled, and for the first time, it didn’t touch his eyes. He was acting as if
Ace was quiet for a long time, and he refused to meet my eye. “Answer me; do you remember who I am, and that we’ve met before?” “What if I said yes?” he answered quietly. The blood ran cold in my veins, and I hated that I was right. He knew this whole time. Or maybe he didn’t, when did he realize? “How long have you known, and you just didn’t say anything?” I asked. “The moment I first saw you.” I sucked in a sharp gasp as it felt like I was sucker-punched in the stomach. “Why didn’t you say anything?” He scoffed. “I don’t need a reminder of the way I treated you; I didn’t think you’d give me the time of day. I thought…this was maybe my second chance.” “Second chance for what, to bully me even worse this time? What were you planning now, to wait until the moment was right and humiliate me with everything you learned about me? Was that the only reason you wanted to be friends?” I went off on him, though I hadn’t intended to. I wanted the truth, and I got it, but I wasn’t sure
I sat down at the island bar while Ace grabbed two beers and cracked them open.“What’s your fancy?” he asked and opened the fridge. “I could make chicken alfredo?”“Won’t that take awhile?”He shrugged and started grabbing the ingredients. “For me, it won’t take long.”“How did you get so good at cooking?”He lifted a brow. “I thought we were asking questions about our past, not just mine specifically?”“Okay, I can take a hint.” I pondered a few questions. “Why was I the only one you picked on, and why so harshly?”“A lot of the friends I had were guys from the hockey team, and my Dad made sure to go out of his way to get on good terms with them. It made them feel better when they snitched on me for not following my father’s pristine guidelines for the perfect life. If I showed interest in a girl like you, one of them would’ve definitely told my Dad, and like I said, I was an idiot and I was scared. I cared more about myself than I did my feelings for you, which is why I never belie