Page 108 of Worth the Trouble

“Eating.” I take a bite and try to ignore the deep frown that forms wrinkles on her face.

“Just because you’re recovering doesn’t mean you can let yourself go.” She stops in front of me and places her purse on the table. “If you can’t train or practice, you need to be following a stricter diet to make sure—”

“What?” I set the burger down. “That I can perform again eventually?”

“Well… yes.” She nods her head.

I laugh really hard because I can’t stand this anymore. “My leg is broken, Mom. Snapped. I won’t be performing for a very long time, so whatever ideas you have in your head, you might as well cancel them.”

“The doctor said—”

“I know what they said.” I cut her off for the second time in this conversation, and she looks surprised by it. Surprised is something Mom never looks. “They also said the reason my leg broke so easily from a simple fall is because I’m malnourished. Years of starvation will do that to you.”

I pick up the burger again and take another bite, even if it’s small. Breaking a lifetime of disordered patterns isn’t as easy as I wish it was. And as much as I want to fill myself up, there’s a voice in my head fighting me.

Still, I chew and swallow, letting it fill the holes and hoping over time I won’t look at food and do a calorie count in my head.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Mom says as she begins straightening up the mess in the room. “You’re not malnourished. You watch what you eat. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve been on a diet.”

“Since I was seven.”

“It comes with the business.”

“And what if I’m done with it?”

She pauses with her hand a fraction away from grabbing a glass. Her eyes drift to me, and instead of anger, I’m met with confusion.

“Done with what, exactly?”

“All of it.” I sigh, setting the burger on my plate.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been feeling this way, but it wasn’t until I met Rome that I realized it. Something about the way he loved music like it wasn’t his job made me realize how dance had become something I dreaded.

Mom walks back over to the table and sits in the chair directly across from me, folding her hands in front of her.

“You don’t want to dance anymore?” she asks, with a pinched expression, like she can’t fathom the words coming out of my mouth.

If she thought I actually enjoyed this, I should have been an actress. Because every performance has eaten a piece of me for years, and I don’t know how many bites of me there are left.

“I lovedance,” I tell her, and it’s the truth. “But this job has taken the joy out of it for me. And now I just feel tired.”

As painful as it was breaking my leg, once I left the hospital, I was flooded with a surprising amount of relief. It was over. The excuse couldn’t be argued. There would be no show or plans in the foreseeable future.

I was free.

I’d cut a tie I didn’t realize was holding me back.

“Does this have anything to do with Rome?” she asks, and I’m surprised she’s able to say his name without frowning.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The mention of him sends me straight back to the only good thing I regret destroying.

“Yes and no.” There’s no point lying to her if I’m laying all of this out there. “I stopped loving this long before I met him; he’s just the one who helped me realize it.”

And I pushed him away.

I broke his heart.

I broke my own.

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