The Devil of DiRisio (19 page)

“You are good enough.  You are too good for him.  And if he does not realize that, he is crazy.” After crying for another hour or so in Damian’s arms, I fell asleep. 

I awoke around three in the morning in his bed, alone.  I didn’t want to be alone.  I wanted to be held.  I wanted to feel loved.  I went into the living room and found him sleeping on the couch. I knelt beside him and started kissing his checks, his forehead, his chin and finally his mouth.  He kissed me back with his strong sensuous cinnamon lips.  Then he opened his eyes and sat straight up while pushing me away.

“What are you doing?”

“What?  This is what you’ve always wanted isn’t it?” I said as I started taking off my clothes.  “Well, here I am.  Take me.”

“You are doing this to make him jealous. I am understudy to no one.”

“What does it matter?  We can both get what we want.  I’m yours willingly and unconditionally.”  Damian’s jaw tightened.

“You think this is some sort of game?” he yelled.

“Yeah, I do!  That’s all I’ve been to you.  From the beginning, you’ve been doing everything you can just to get me into bed.  You’ve been playing with my head, interfering with my relationship. You even slept with my sister, all so you can conquer me somehow. Add me to your list.  Well, I’m telling you now, you win.  I surrender.”  Damian glared at me.  Why was he so angry? Isn’t this what he wanted?

Damian grabbed his keys and headed for the door.  Before he walked out he looked at me and said accusingly, “You don’t know me.”

What did that mean?

For the next few days, I was glued to my television.  I wanted to see what the news was saying about Will and Veronica.  Every entertainment show covered the story.  Even some supposedly legitimate news programs talked about her pregnancy.  One show was making bets as to who the father was.

Will didn’t call the entire time.  It was like he decided for himself that our relationship was over without even informing me. I guess he thought I would figure it out through the media.  I just wanted to talk to him one time just so I could get some sort of explanation.  I thought maybe he would say something to me in one of his interviews after a game or something so, I became addicted to seeing him play on television. 

From the first jump ball to the final buzzer, my eyes were fixed to the screen.  I guess I also watched because I missed him.  Anyway, his game really suffered because of all he was going through with me, Veronica and the media.  The first game after the story dropped, he was ejected for fighting.  That wasn’t like my Will at all.  My Will was always so calm and collected. My Will used to get knocked down and get back up with a smile as he went to do his free throws.  But of course, he wasn’t my Will anymore.  That Voluptuous Vixen had corrupted him.

Alejandro was using my new notoriety to his advantage.  For some reason, Damian agreed to do another performance with me for The
DiRisio
Ballet Company.  What was I talking about?  I knew the reason.  He was continuing his fanatical obsession with me.  I swear he was dead set on driving me just as crazy as he was.  It was like he had split personalities.

 I was glad I didn’t have to deal with Pierre for another performance, but Damian was acting really strange ever since I spent the night in his hotel room.  He would go through entire rehearsals without saying a word to me.  I could stand the silence because for one thing, I wasn’t being dropped all the time and for another, I didn’t really feel like talking anyway. 

Even though Damian was my partner for the performance, I still had to take
pas de
deux
class with Pierre.  One blessed day, however, he was sick with food poisoning. 
Food poisoning, brilliant.
  Why didn’t I think of that?  I could have gotten rid of him much earlier. Isabella also happened to be out that day as well.  She was auditioning for a company in Spain, so I got to dance with Lucas.  I was so happy that I didn’t have to deal with nose picking and body odor that I almost didn’t mind the way Lucas continuously tried to make conversation with me even though he could barely speak English.  Every once in a while he would stop, mutter some phrases in Romanian, and try again. 

“I am so happy to be dancing with you and not to be dancing with Isabella this day,” he whispered as we were sitting against the mirror waiting for Anna Marie and
Sebastien
to finish a combination.  “She
always counting
music wrong.
She always late.
Make me look bad. Not like you.  You dance perfect.”  He smiled at me so pleased with himself for stringing together so many sentences in English. His dark brown eyes gleamed with pride as he scooted closer to me and tried to contort his body in a way to show off his muscles.  He was quite muscular, but in a steroid-popping-Mr.-Body-Builder-of-the-Universe kind of way. I gave him a patronizing ‘okay, the conversation is over now’ kind of grin. I didn’t feel like talking, especially during class so I could get yelled at by Madame Mara. But Lucas didn’t get the hint.

“So, I read you and
basketballer
are no more,” he said. I ignored him.  Why did everyone want to talk about Will around this place?  The reporters had started to back off slightly, but it still seemed like everyone around me was so interested in my love life.  They were probably just fascinated by the fact that I knew someone who was sleeping with Veronica
Valerio
. 

“We have no one that
look
like you in my country.  I should take picture of you to show family in Romania.  I never touch someone with skin like you. 
It soft and pretty.”
  I rolled my eyes.  He was hitting on me.  He could barely speak English and he was hitting on me.  “What say you and me go for drink this night?”  Lucas stared at me trying to seem sexy, but all I could see were his bushy eyebrows.  They looked like two caterpillars meeting at the center of his forehead for a brawl.  I
f
Raffaele
was here, he would tie Lucas down and give him an emergency waxing.  I just pretended I didn’t understand what he was saying as Anna Marie came and sat next to me.  I scooted closer to her as Beatriz and
Acacio
started the combination.

It should have made me feel better that other men were interested in me.  It wasn’t only Lucas that asked me out after Will and I broke up. Two other guys from the Academy and one dancer from the company wanted to go out with me.  But their invitations actually made me feel worse.  They reminded me that Will was the only boy I’d ever dated. He was the first boy to ever ask me out.  Bridgeton boys were never interested in me.  They thought I was weird because all I ever did was talk about dance, think about dance, read about dance, and well … dance. 

Here at
DiRisio
, that wasn’t weird, it was expected.  So, suddenly, with Will out of the picture, I was the ‘It’ girl. But, I was so depressed the week after Will left me that I couldn’t enjoy the attention.  I walked around in a fog.  I tried to block out the world around me and just hoped and prayed that people, especially the tabloids, would forget about me.

I guess I was getting what I deserved.  I never appreciated Will enough.  Ultimately, he went and found what he was looking for in the arms of another woman.  Could I really blame him?  He proposed 28 times before I said yes.  And then every time he turns around he finds me in the arms of Damian, a man he hates. I was surprised Will stuck around for as long as he did.

Anna Marie tried her best to lift my spirits during the few free moments she had from
Raffaele
, but nothing really worked.  As soon as I was done dancing, I would go back to my room, collapse into my bed and cry.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Anna Marie said nervously as she sat in my dressing room before my performance with Damian.  I actually had my own dressing room for this show.  I should have been ecstatic that I didn’t have to share with fourteen other girls.  I was the star.  I had arrived, but I didn’t care.  Without Will, I didn’t care.  “There’s someone in the audience that means a lot to you.  But I don’t want it to freak you out.”

“Is it Will?  It better not be Sasha.”
          “No, no, nothing
like
that.”  She sat me down and held my hand like she was about to let me know my beloved pet was hit by a car.  “Natalia
Karleskaya
.”

“What?”

“Natalia
Karleskaya
is in the audience. She was in town and I think Alejandro’s publicity paid off because she heard about you and she wanted to see you perform.”

At this point, I think I must have started to hyperventilate because Anna Marie found me a paper bag and made me breathe into it. When I got control of myself again she also handed me a glass of water.

“Are you okay?” 
she
asked.

“Am I okay?  Am I okay?  No, I’m not okay.  Natalia
Karleskaya
is in the audience.  She’s possibly the greatest living ballerina in the world and she’s in the audience.  I can’t dance in front of her.  I’ll look ridiculous.  I’m not good enough. I’m nothing.  I’m a loser.”

“Yes, you are good enough.  You are spectacular.  It doesn’t matter what
Will
does or what your sister does.  They don’t reflect you.  You are the best dancer in this company and before the end of the night even Natalia
Karleskaya
is going to be jealous of your talent.”

Anna Marie left me to warm up only after I promised that I wouldn’t think about Will or Sasha while I was on stage.  Five minutes before curtain, I heard a knock on my door.  I thought it was Anna Marie coming to check on me but it wasn’t.

Damian Karl entered my dressing room closing the door gently behind him. He stood against the door and just stared at me with his haunting eyes.  His light brown locks had been straightened into a flowing mane that hung just below his shoulders blades.  He looked like a wild lion that had been strangely subdued by some inner demon.  Silently he approached me.  He was being so bizarre I probably should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. 

He stood so close to me I could see the thirty shades of blue that clouded his eyes.  He reached out and started to undo the bun I had just put into my hair.  Then he ran his fingers through my hair while he continued to stare into my eyes wistfully.  Then he kissed me.  Not a normal Damian kiss in which he forcefully crammed his tongue down my throat, but a kiss that was almost … sweet. He kissed me the way he did while we were on stage.

It was slow and sensual. I didn’t know why I let him do it.  Was I still trying to get even with Will? My mind was so hazy.  I couldn’t think straight.  Suddenly, I wanted Damian, but I didn’t know if I just wanted him because of Will. I returned his kiss and his embrace, but just to gauge my own emotions.  Before I could make up my mind, he pulled away from me.  He left just as suddenly, strangely, and silently as he had entered, leaving me confused and breathless.

As if Natalia
Karleskaya’s
presence and Damian Karl’s kiss wasn’t enough to make me crazy, Will showed up backstage.

“What are you doing here?” I snapped in a hushed whisper. 

“We have to talk,” he pleaded as he trailed after me while I made my way through the backstage corridors.  He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.  It was a familiar appearance.  I saw it every time I looked in the mirror.  For the past week, I’d barely slept at all even though I was completely exhausted. Every free moment I had I watched Will on TV or I read those stupid tabloid magazines trying to find out the latest information on him and Veronica.

“I don’t want to talk to you. I have to be on stage in like 60 seconds,” I said quickening my pace trying to lose him.  “How did you get in here anyway?”  Will grabbed my arm and pulled me to him.  My squirming out of his grasp caught the attention of two security guards who immediately came to my aid.  When he wouldn’t leave willingly the police were called. The show had to be delayed twenty minutes as Will was arrested and escorted off the premises. 

It turned into a completely horrific and embarrassing ordeal as Will yelled at the top of his lungs that he wasn’t leaving until he talked to me.  I spent the entire time locked in my dressing room crying my eyes out. Finally, the show was able to start, but my nerves were shot.  I was literally shaking as I tried to tie my hair back into a bun while I stood in the wings.  Damian came behind me and touched my hands.

“Leave it down,” he said softly.

“Why?”

“Because you are beautiful.”
  I spun around.

“What is the matter with you?  Why are you being so weird?”  Suddenly he changed.  His signature sinister look returned in his eyes.  He smiled and said,

“Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“Yes!”

“Maybe that’s because you want me.  We should just have sex and get it over with.”  He was just trying to hit on me again.  I was convinced this guy was a psycho. I rolled my eyes and got into position.

For some reason, Damian’s inappropriate comments got my mind off of the fact that my boyfriend, well, former boyfriend, was a lying cheat and that Natalia
Karleskaya
, my idol, was in the audience watching me.  As I started my solo, all I could think about was what a jerk Damian was and how much I wanted to show him up on stage.  How could he reject me one second then try to seduce me the next? Was he some sort of schizophrenic?