Thread: [KylarStern & Tortoise] Dancing With Myself;;

??Dee?? Resonated the familiar whisper, a single word shattering the young woman??s premarital bliss, if there had ever been one. For a split second the entire world seemed to freeze, the remaining papers pausing mid-air, every other being ceasing to exist. The dancer??s first instinct was to lower her eyes to avoid meeting his. The way he addressed her was so reminiscent of their past. No formal, reserved ??Desiree??, no, he just had to bring back the waterfall of memories, crushing down onto her shoulders. There were so many thoughts in her mind that it took her a few seconds to reach out and take the papers from his hand, the large bright eyes moving up to remain fixated on his ones for a while. It wasn??t until she realized that she looked like a deer in front of headlights that she offered him a meek, awkward smile, brushing her hair out of her eyes nervously. It was one of the few tics of hers, none of which she managed to get rid of following the divorce. ??Nate,? she nodded slowly, her voice a whisper matching his own. Things seemed to slow down even after the world began to turn again. She studied him in a stunned silence, trying to figure things out. What was he doing here? Why was he here? She bit on her lower lip, dragging her teeth along it slowly. He was a professor. Clearly she wasn??t the only one to change. The time did him good, however. He seemed to be in a better shape than ever. With scorn she thought to herself that his new girlfriend was not feeding him well enough, although clearly more muscular, he also seemed a lot thinner. The thought of him being single never even brushed her mind, how could a man like him ever be alone? One of the reasons she was drawn to him was the certain vulnerability his lack of ambition gave him. She had felt as though she had to protect him, make sure he remembered to hand in his work and cook his dinner. Those were subtle things, yet in the past they reassured her somehow, since on a larger scale he was the one protecting her from herself and the rest of the world. Despite her ambition, she was by no means infallible. She put all of her being into everything ?? failure, whether it was her own or that of a sports team she loved, or the suffering of people she saw in the news or movies drained the life out of her. At times, seeing someone in pain made her distraught for a week and he always managed to pull her back onto her feet. It took her five minutes to fall in love with a squirrel. After the divorce, she had to struggle to get rid of that habit since there was no longer a man beside her to help her up when she fell. The reality of such things struck her after he was gone from her life, and many a times she regretted her decision. Dozens of times she dialed his number yet never pressed the ??call?? button. However, as time went by, she too felt her wounds steadily heal, or perhaps she simply was so overwhelmed with the fame, overtime practices and the attentions from her manager that she never realized how much she missed Nathan. In a sense, she never found closure, just as she never offered him any. It was perhaps for that reason that their encounter was so awfully awkward. She had no idea what to tell him ?? was he angry, or did he miss her? She didn??t know where he was in life, what changed since their divorce she figured that there was a possibility that he was a father, or that he was divorced once again, possibilities were quite endless. She wondered if he knew about all the things that happened in her life. It was odd, yet so many people knew the most intimate details from her life ?? such as the fact that her ring was worth a fortune, that she was getting married in two months, that her father passed away. It was that very ring that she twisted in her hand at the moment. A beautiful thing made of silver with a large diamond incrusted into it. Her fianc went all out with it, yet somehow it wasn??t as beautiful as the one Nathan gave her one day. Not because of the value, the new ring was definitely more expensive, but because of the meaning attached to it. Nate could have given her a plastic thing worth two dollars in a distributor, and it still would have been the most beautiful thing in the world to her. For years, when she believed in such things, he was The One. She often thought of the way they met. He seemed so different from every other guy at that party. She could see the lust in most eyes, the preparedness to say anything to get her in bed. He, to her, seemed like he was having fun dancing in that silly way. It was then that she knew that she would never meet anyone like him. And now, when she expected to never see him again, she ran into him in the silliest of ways. When she finally broke the silence it was in a way she never intended to. All of a sudden, she heard herself laugh in the very same way as years earlier when they first met. ??I-I??m so sorry,? she sat back onto the ground, trying not to laugh. ??This is just so ridiculous,? she shook her head, wiping the tears that formed from laughing too hard. She felt awful for laughing ?? after all the years they finally met and the only thing she could do was scoff? Calming down, she exhaled slowly, her gaze traveling over him. ??Help me up?? She offered, outstretching her hand. On one hand it was because she wanted to touch his hand, to see if he was still furious with her while on the other she didn??t want to be humiliated when she would stumble from putting too much pressure on her legs.