Chapter Eighteen

Friday, 5:30am, New York City

Her knees were pulled up against her chest so tightly that it would have been painful for one less flexible. She leaned back to where window met mirror. From the corner, the studio seemed much larger than it really was. The sun wasn’t quit up yet and the pre-sunrise glow was the only light illuminating the room. Her chin rested on her knees and her eyes fell from the empty studio to inspect her bare toes. They were red and blistered as they had been for years from the tight constraints of hundreds of pair of pink satin toe shoes.

Regan’s eyes slipped shut and she took a long deep breath in an attempt to clear her head as well as her lungs. She knew she would start having second thoughts about her decision. It was inevitable. She just wasn’t prepared for the intense feeling of dread of future regret. There was no guarantee that she would be able to come back to this life if she left it. It could take as long as a year to get back to a hundred percent and at 20, she’d be an old woman compared to the girls she’d be competing against. She was mostly afraid of her technique deteriorating. It would take even longer to get that back if she even could in the first place. Time was not a friend of a ballet dancer.

The shrill ring of her cell phone echoed eerily in the empty room. She didn’t jump but, rather, cast her eyes apathetically towards her overflowing shoulder bag where her phone rested on top of her toe shoes and the clothes she’d changed out of when she arrived twenty minutes earlier. She knew it was Justin. He called her every morning when he was on his way to his own rehearsals.

Normally she would pick up on the first ring, bursting to speak to him, but she didn’t this time. She knew it would worry him but it wasn’t something she was too concerned with at the moment. She knew he would hear in her voice that something was wrong and she really didn’t want to talk to him about it. She knew he wanted her to get out of Boland’s treatment and she wasn’t sure how he would react to her second thoughts.

After the fourth ring, her leaned over and picked the phone up, knowing one more and he would get her voice mail. “Hello?”

“Hey,” his voice assaulted her ears despite it’s gentle, unthreatening tone. “What took you so long to pick up?”

“Oh… I’m already at the studio and I almost didn’t hear the ring over the music,” she lied. Her stomach knotted as the false words left her mouth. It may have been a white lie but it was Justin she was telling it to. She shouldn’t have had to lie to him. She should have been able to pick up on the first ring. She should have been excited to talk to him and she always was.

“Damn, why did they bring you in so early?”

“I just came in on my own. I figure I might as well make use of this room while I still have access to it.”

“Having second thoughts?”

Damn him. Even if he did always see through her, why did he always have to vocalize his little insights? “Justin, I’m not—”

“Don’t try to deny it, angel. I’m surprised it took you this long.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad?” His voice was soothing and a bit hoarse from sleep. “I don’t think you’ve realized this, Regan, but I understand you. Probably better than anyone. I know what it’s like to see your dream slipping away. When we switched labels, I thought the lawsuits would bury us. I thought it was over. But we came out better than ever.”

“Justin, I know you know, kind of, what I’m going through, but it’s different for me. When my ankles are finally healed, I’ll have to work harder than I ever had to get back to the level of dancing that got me where I am. That could take over a year. Hell, that could take as long as two years. I’ll be competing with younger girls who’ve never been injured. As good as I get back to being, I’m still damaged goods. I’m a risk. I know I said I was over this fear but when we were rehearsing at the theater last night, I looked out from that stage and felt alive, truly alive. I’m afraid of loosing that.” She silently damned the solitary tear that trickled down her cheek. She didn’t want to do this. The more she talked about it, the more she doubted herself.

“What are you saying, Regan? You want to stay there and let the mad scientist experiment on you some more?” He was getting worked up. She could tell he was trying not to, but he couldn’t hide it.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, fingering the satin ribbons of her toe shoes.

“Regan, I’m not mad at you. But I have been biting my tongue since that night in the hospital when that guy came in, telling you things that just aren’t possible. You tore your ligaments, Regan. There’s no way you should have been walking so fast. I’ve seen enough dancers do it to know that much.”

“I know!” she cried. “You don’t think I know that, Justin? I’m trying to keep it together, here. I’m trying to be strong. I’m trying to convince myself that I can quit now and come back better than ever. That even if I can’t get back into ABT, I can be happy someplace else. But I’ve worked so hard to get here. That’s my time away from my father on that stage. It’s the prom and graduation I missed because I had to graduate early. It’s Mae’s christening I missed because I couldn’t get out of rehearsal. It’s the normal childhood I can never have back. I know you understand all this because you’ve been through it to. Tell me that if you had a paralyzed vocal cord and a doctor came along who told you, you could be singing in a matter of days, that you wouldn’t jump at the chance to get back on that stage or into that recording studio as soon as you could when you thought you never would see the view from that stage again. Tell me that Justin and I’ll quit my whining.”

Justin was silent on the other end. Regan could only imagine what was going through his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

“See!”

“But I can tell you one thing. You know how you said you looked out from the stage, you felt truly alive? I feel the same way on stage. But I also feel the same way with you. I’m not saying that I should be able to be a substitute for your dream but I am saying that there are other things in life that can make you feel that way. I thought you had realized that.”

His voice sounded so small by the end of his short speech that it made Regan’s heart ache. “I did. And I’m sorry that I’m unloading all of this on you. It’s just hard. I don’t want you to think that you don’t make me feel the same way because you do. I would never have thought of doing this if you didn’t make me see that there were other things out there worth what I had been putting into dancing. I’m just scared.”

“I know, sweetie. I didn’t mean to yell at you before. I just don’t trust that so-called doctor. I don’t want you to get hurt again. I don’t want to ever see you the way I saw you that night in the diner. I’ll never get over your face when you collapsed. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen and I never want to see it again. Most of all, I want you to be happy.”

She never wanted to be near him more than she did at that moment and her arms ached to hold him. She wiped her tears away and leaned her chin down to rest on her knees. “You’re still coming tomorrow, right?”

“I wouldn’t miss it. We’re all coming up, including Cristin, who I’m flying in from Chicago. She’s dying to meet you.”

“Same here,” Regan replied sincerely.

“Anyway, I may not be able to see you before the show, but I’ll be in the audience. Johnny still has us rehearsing tomorrow and we’re flying up afterwards. The performance is at eight, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“I will be there. I’ll even wear a suit, how bout that?”

Regan smiled for the first time that morning. “No glitter? No rhinestones?”

“Nothing sparkling of any kind. I can’t speak for Chris, though.”

“What in the name of all that’s holy is a chicken fry?” Chris sat perplexed, reading a take-out menu in one of the many back rooms of the Harlston Center in Atlanta. “I mean, really. Chicken fingers are misleading enough.”

“Chris, will you just pick something so we can order?” Justin snapped out of nowhere. The heads of the other four exhausted members of Nsync shot up.

“Where did that come from?” JC asked, swatting Justin’s with a rolled up magazine.

“What?” Justin shrugged defensively. “He’s been studying that damn thing for twenty minutes. We don’t exactly have all day here.”

“What crawled up your ass, Timberlake?” Chris shot across the room.

“Cool it, guys,” Lance interjected before Justin could counter. “Something wrong Justin?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled, dragging a hand over his tired features. “I’m just exhausted and I’m worried about Regan.”

“Worried about her meeting the ‘other woman’?” Joey snickered, referring to Sully.

“What? No… no. It’s just that when I talked to her this morning she was pretty upset. Second thoughts about leaving the company,” Justin explained.

“Didn’t you expect that, though?” JC reasoned.

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect her to be on the verge of changing her mind altogether.” Justin was clearly frustrated with the whole situation. He couldn’t very well tell her that if he were in the same situation, he’d feel any differently because it just wouldn’t be true. Yet, being on the outside of it, he couldn’t see why she couldn’t see that there was so much else she could do with her life. She had so much potential. She could do anything she wanted as long as she went after it with the same passion and determination she showed toward dancing. But it was that same passion and determination that was keeping her from doing it. “I’m not really hungry anymore. I’m gonna go take a walk. Give me a ring when Darren’s ready to start again.”

With that, he left the room, but he wouldn’t get off that easily. Chris went back to his menu, Joey back to resting his eyes, while JC and Lance both exchanged worried glances. Justin had been through a lot personally in the past few years. They knew what his attitude meant. He was settling in for a fight. With himself? With Regan? They didn’t know. But they were going to find out.

Early that evening, at the next break the group got after lunch, both JC and Lance discreetly followed Justin outside where they found him sitting pensively, propped up against the wall.

“Can I help you?” he questioned his friends incredulously when he noticed them approaching him.

“Yeah,” JC nodded. “You can start with cutting through all the bullshit and giving us a straight answer for once.”

“I told you what was wrong,” Justin defended himself.

“Yeah, not really, though,” Lance prodded as both he and JC took seats on either side of Justin.

“What happened to Chris and Joey?” Justin snorted. “They didn’t want in on the inquisition?”

“Okay, first, this isn’t an inquisition,” JC defended. “We’re just worried about you. Second, Chris is on the phone with Dani and Joey’s blood sugar was actually reaching normal levels so he went to hit the snack machine.”

Justin snorted again, shaking his head ruefully.

“So c’mon, man,” Lance pushed. “What’s going on with you?”

“I don’t know, guys. I just feel so helpless. She’d not doing or feeling anything I wouldn't be if I were in the same position but at the same time, I want to ring her neck for even thinking about keeping herself in such a risky situation.”

“We figured as much. But you know that’s not all that’s going on here,” JC offered. He knew there was something here much deeper. Something that hadn’t quite healed yet.

Justin took a deep breath and gazed out at the parking lot. His eyes squinted against the late afternoon sun. Bowing his head he began to speak. “I’m so fucking frustrated. We’ve only been really together for what? It hasn’t been a week yet and I’m already feeling it. I hate having to go through this with her on the phone. I hate it. She was crying this morning when I was talking to her. She was all alone in some cold empty studio and she was crying. I couldn’t do a damn thing for her.”

JC and Lance exchanged glances, confirming that they were both thinking the same thing: Cristin Sullivan. JC shifted to look directly at his friend. “Justin, I know what you’re thinking, but Regan is not Sully—”

“I knew I shouldn’t have ever let her under my skin in the first place. Why didn’t I just stick to my intuition and stay away from her?”

“Justin, she is not Sully,” JC asserted again.

“She might as well be,” Justin mumbled. “I couldn’t help Cris and look what happened to—”

“Yeah look what happened to her,” Lance interjected. “She’s supporting herself, putting herself through school, and on top of all that, she’s back in your life. Besides, Regan and Cristin are in completely different circumstances. Cristin completely relied on you throughout her whole childhood. You were her only source of love and friendship. Regan has a family who cares very deeply about her. She’s not going anywhere.”

Justin kept his eyes forward. His breathing looked painful and it finally hit JC. “You think she doesn’t need you.”

“Drop it JC,” Justin warned.

That was it. That was it with Cristin, too. She didn’t need him as much as he thought she did. She leaned on him for everything but when it came down to it, she needed to do it alone. That’s why he felt so abandoned. That’s why he beat himself up over not being there. It made him think he was more crucial to the situation that he actually was. He couldn’t have stopped any of it from happening. He was helpless. And it was happening all over again.

“Oh, Justin,” Lance breathed. “You can’t control everything. Being in a relationship doesn’t mean she has to depend on you for everything. You certainly would never let anyone have that kind of control over your own life. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t need your support. It just means she’s an individual.”

Justin’s head fell back against the concrete wall the three were propped up against. He cast his eyes heavenward before taking a cleansing breath in an attempt to calm his nerves. They were both right. He knew it but it was still hard to negotiate all the information into his mind. “Listen, guys,” he stared, standing up. “I really appreciate all this but I have to sort this out in my head before I can do anything else.”

Lance and JC watched their friend make his way towards the entrance, knowing they should probably get back as well. “Well that was fruitful,” Lance said.

“At least we know what’s going on with him now. And he has something to think about,” JC pointed out. As they stood up to leave, their attention was caught by the ring of a cell phone at their feet. Justin must have left it.

Lance leaned down and scooped up the forgotten item. “Justin’s phone,” he answered as they began to walk toward the entrance.

“Um, hi… who’s this?”

The voice was unfamiliar and definitely not Regan, lacking her tell-tale Irish brogue. “Who’s this?” Lance countered. The last thing he wanted to deal with was some fan who’s stumbled upon Justin’s cell phone number.

“Finn,” the voice spat, obviously irritated. “Who’s this and where’s Justin?”

JC tossed a questioning look at Lance when he saw his perplexed expression. Lance covered the mouth piece with his hand. “Does Justin know a Finn?”

JC’s face broke into a smirk. “Yeah, that’s Mike and Regan’s cousin. We met her at Mike and Bridget’s anniversary party. Good Luck with that one,” he answered and took off down the corridor before Lance could foist the phone off on him.

“Hello?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Lance said, clearing his throat and tossing a dirty look at JC’s back.

“So who is this?”

“Justin’s friend, Lance,” he answered, trying to ignore the massive amounts of attitude being thrown at him over the phone line.

“Well, where’s Justin?”

“I don’t see him, can he call you back?”

“Yeah. Tell him it’s important, about Regan.”

“Okay, well we’ll be in rehearsals until late. How late can he call you?”

“Whenever,” she sighed. “Just make sure he gets the message. Can you handle that, Tex?”

“Tex?”

“Well you sound like you just stepped off the range, so…”

“Whatever,” he shrugged, not realizing his accent was so strong. “It’s Mississippi, for the record.

“Whatever, Tex,” she snorted. “Just give Justin the message.”

With that, the line went dead. Lance shrugged the conversation off, and made his way back toward the stage, Justin’s cell in hand and a message to deliver.

Regan waved goodbye to the last of the dancers as they filed out of the locker room. She was always the first one there and the last one out. That and some natural talent had been what got her where she was. She thought she’d be happier. But she wasn’t. She hadn’t lied when she told Justin that looking out from that stage made her feel truly alive. It was that feeling that she craved most growing up. It was that feeling that she strove for. But it didn’t make her happy. She thought it was happiness, sure. If the past few months taught her anything, it was what real happiness was. It was being with Mike and Bridget and Mae. It was phone calls with her father. It was seeing Justin standing in the doorway of the Irish Gondola.

She finished tying her shoelaces, stretching like a cat when she stood. Idly, she roamed back into the studio, stealing glances of herself in the mirrored walls as she passed through. Though the back door and up the stairs, she made her way back to the stage. Her sneakers squeaked slightly against the hard wood floor as she passed the backstage area and walked onto the darkened stage. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she regarded the house seats as if she’d never see the view again.

She took a deep breath and as she turned to leave she heard noise behind her that she couldn’t identify. She stopped dead in her tracks, knowing that she should just leave but her curiosity getting the better of her. “Hello?” she called out into the darkness. When neither an answer nor any other sound came back she shook it off and made her way back downstairs. Back through the studio, she entered the locker room to collect her things and leave for the day.

“Hello, Regan.”

She whirled around, coming face to face with Kyle. “Kyle,” she said uneasily. “What are you doing here so late?”

“I was working late with Dr. Boland,” he answered. “I saw you up by the stage. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“It’s okay,” she answered, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I was just on my way home.”

“Alright, I just wanted to talk to you for a second about Jack Salinger,” he said. His head was turned down slightly, the manner that had always made Regan wary of him no longer present.

“How do you know Jack?” Regan questioned him, completely confused.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he answered. “You’re not in contact with him anymore, right?”

“No, I’m not,” she answered, his line of questioning starting to unnerve her. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“We grew up in the same neighborhood. He and my little sister dated in high school.”

“Small world,” she snorted. “I think he told me about her. Katie, right?”

“That’s right. Did he ever tell you what happened between them?”

“Yeah, they dated in high school until a couple of months ago when she went to Mississippi to go to law school.”

“No,” Kyle shook his head. “That’s not the whole story.”

“Wait, I’m still not clear on how you knew I was dating him,” Regan said before he could go any further.

“Regan, has he contacted you since you broke up?”

She decided to let her question go for the moment, too curious to see where this was going. “Once,” she said. “The night before last. He showed up here. It was past one in the morning. He scared the shit out of me, if you really want to know.”

“Shit,” Kyle mumbled. Kyle Baxter was no saint. In fact, were it not for this turn in events, he would still be behind Boland a hundred and ten percent. He had spent years in a physical therapy practice that earned him nothing compared what he had dreamed for himself. Boland’s study seemed like the opportunity he was looking for. He saw many of the good doctor’s subjects go down for the count in the name of science… and the doctor’s own immortality. But this was different. Had he known it was Jack Salinger Boland got to calm Regan’s nerves he would have done this a long time ago. No girl deserved to go through what his sister went through.

“What?”

“My sister, Katie, broke up with him almost a year ago. He wouldn’t leave her alone. She tried to move on but every time she turned around he was there. He followed her; picked fights with whoever she tried to start a relationship with until a few months ago it all came to a head. He followed her home from class one night and attacked her in her own room. Things would have gotten a lot worse if her roommate hadn’t come home when she did. I begged her to press charges but she said she just wanted to put things behind her. That’s why she moved down to Mississippi for school; to get away from him. I would have handled him myself if Katie hadn’t made me promise to let it drop… for her.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Regan sighed. By now she had sat back down, her legs too wobbly to support her.

“I hadn’t seen him since. In six months, I never crossed his path until…”

“Until when?” she questioned, finding her voice.

Kyle took a deep breath and sat down beside her, knowing if he told her that it would be the end of his grand opportunity. He had to tell her. It was the least he could do for Katie. “Until I saw him coming out of Boland’s office last week.”

“What!?” A million questions flew through her mind but that was the only one she could grab in time to get out.

“Boland sensed that you weren’t very comfortable with him and what he was trying to do. When I told him I got the same feeling, he told me that he had it covered. That he had someone close to you trying to calm your fears and make you feel better about working with him. I didn’t know who it was until I saw him.”

Regan was speechless. Her intuition had been dead on. “And what did Jack have to gain?”

“I don’t know what Boland offered him, but Regan, when I saw him coming out of that office he didn’t look happy. Boland said that he had come in and told him that you had found someone else. Whatever Boland offered him... it wasn't all he was in it for. That’s why I had to tell you. The guy is dangerous.”

“Which one?” Regan scoffed.

“Regan, Boland is no saint but he is a brilliant doctor. He may be trying to help himself, but in the process he’ll help a lot of people. This study is his life.”

“Kyle, I have to thank you for warning me and because you did, I’m going to tell you something,” Regan said. She didn’t trust Kyle. But it wasn't as though she wasn’t going to tell Boland tomorrow. It didn’t really matter anymore. “I’m leaving Boland’s study. I’m leaving the company. I’m going to get a private physical therapist and do this the old fashioned way. It isn’t because of what you just told me. I decided the same time I decided to send Jack packing.”

“Regan,” Kyle shook his head, “I don’t think you know what your saying.”

“I think I know exactly what I’m saying,” she asserted, standing up. “Kyle, you did me a good turn by telling me about Jack and because of that, I’m going to overlook whatever part you had in all this for the time being. Even if I hadn’t made this decision beforehand, did you really think that after what you just told me I’d keep up with this? I didn’t trust either of you to begin with. It's like a god damned conspiracy with you people. I can’t believe this!”

“Well, believe it,” Kyle spat. “Do you know how many others came before you? Of course you don’t. You never would have agreed if you knew. You have surpassed every other subject Boland’s had. You could be his breakthrough. Do you think he going to just let you walk away from it? Do you think he gives a damn whether you dance or not?”

“Oh and what is he going to do, Kyle, huh? Tie me to a chair?

“He didn’t get to be where he his by playing by the rules. He doesn’t have to tie you to a chair to get you to agree.”

“That’s sounds like a threat, Mr. Baxter.”

“It’s a warning. Do this the easy way, Regan. You don’t want to see him play dirty.”

With that Kyle left the room. Regan’s head was spinning. Between what she’d just been told about Jack to what she’d just been told about Boland, she could barely see straight. What did he mean, “play dirty”? She needed to talk to Mike. She needed to talk to Justin. She needed to know that she had the support she needed. She needed to talk to her father.

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