Page 48 of Tendu: Dancing in the Castle

I stared at him. Speaking was not a possibility. He was completely unapologetic.

“You are jealous?” he asked in response to my silence. “So watch, and see the truth.” His voice softened. “It is all just nonsense, my love. But I will leave you to your sulking, if this is what you wish.”

My hands shook a little as they shut the door behind him. I wanted to shout after him, ‘No, you’re just nonsense!’ But that wouldn’t have made sense. So I stayed quiet. All desire to eat cake had gone. A small sad cupcake sat forlornly on a plate, anti-social and alone.

Aleks’s speech replayed. Words whirled, evil dervishes in my head, making less and less sense with repetition. Exhausted but unable to sleep, I wondered if he was passing the night in a friendly and social way, and cried.

The next two days were, indeed, full of nonsense, if that’s what it was. Simone and Aleks were delighted with each other. They laughed and chatted their way through mealtimes.

He was professional when teaching, though, even there, changed. “Eyes up, Amalphia,” he said, lifting my chin. “Whatever is go on around you, never be let it interfere with your dancing. Learn this, and you will be a stronger artiste.”

I looked directly into his eyes, incredulous that he was presenting his bad behaviour as a teaching device. It was almost as if Aleks had become someone else. His face was alive with wicked humour, his cheekbones more angular. Even his eyes had lost their poetic dark hue. He swaggered and strutted and flirted it up in the great hall.

“Read,” said Justin at dinner, handing me his phone and a story of nonsense-filled Aleks.

The blog author looked like an older version of Simone. She wrote about how he would do things to deliberately annoy her, and described the way he would look over to check she had noticed.

I glanced up to find him looking at me. He quickly turned back to his conversation with Simone. I kept my face blank, empty of all emotion, and tried to do the same with my heart.

“I can’t help feeling this is still all about you,” said Justin.

I shook my head. “I don’t match him in social ways. Simone does. Why he didn’t start a relationship with her to begin with is the only mystery.”

“Bastard deserves her, of course. But, see, when you go out of the room, he calms right down and leaves her alone. He does boring things: has a cup of tea at the staff table, talks to Michelle.”

“Yes, well. She’s his type too.”

“Maybe he’s used that UT music-note thing so much that he is actually entirely without shame now,” mused Justin, as we watched Aleks pour a cup of tea for Simone and smile over at me. He accidentally spilled tea on his own hand. Justin laughed. I did not.

I left the hall in search of my new evening solace: sitting in the small television room with Will. He watched football. I read books from the old bookcase in there. Mysteries. Thrillers. Not romances. Those, I avoided. The others went swimming, the pool still a much-loved novelty. What Aleks did in the evenings, I tried not to imagine.

Chapter 15

Saturdaymorningfeltbrightand happy, and I reached for Aleks, wanting him, needing him, and was momentarily confused by his absence. Betrayed by body and mind yet again, I walked into the bathroom for a splash of cold reality.

Someone entered the bedroom without knocking. There was only one person who would assume he was welcome to do that.

“Ah, my angry little sprite. It has gone on long enough now, no?” Of course it was Aleks.

“What?”

“The game,” he said from the ensuite doorway. “Is being over. I think is better.”

“Game,” I repeated slowly. “You’re playing a game with me.”

He smiled in response, rueful, a naughty little boy awaiting forgiveness.

“I said those words after the amalgamation,” I remembered. “That first time we did it back in college. So it was true.” Dreadful comprehension dawned, and the pent up emotions of the week released in a fury as the air reddened all about me. “It was a game from the start. But, why?” I asked, looking directly at him, right into his eyes. “Why would you bother to spend all that time with me, tell all those lies about love, and keep up the act for so long? For some final act of cruelty? Is that it? Or was it just fun to mess with the autistic girl? What sort of monster are you, Aleks?”

“Malphia, no! You have this all wrong.”

I pushed past him and paced into the bedroom. “Well, maybe that’s just my lack of sophistication showing.”

He shook his head. “You are just not used to… Your last boyfriend, he is like brute, no?”

I stared at him.

“He is never being friendly with anyone,” he continued. “I’m sorry. This I should not say. I am just—”

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