Chapter Six

Dance for Me

 

~CHAPTER SIX~

“Do you mind if I turn on some music?” Jay asked, breaking the silence that was sitting heavily over Andrea and him as he drove her home. Jay could feel Andrea’s dissatisfaction in the current situation, and as much as Jay wanted to help her, her hostility towards him was becoming overwhelming. Jay had helped her get to the Urgent Care, sat through the appointment with her, and was now driving her home, but Andrea had sulked most of the time.

“Whatever,” Andrea sighed. That had become her choice answer for Jay, both because she wanted him to know that she didn’t like him and because she was just too distracted by her own thoughts to come up with a witty response to his questions.

He asked if she had a doctor she had wanted to see. She replied with “Whatever.”

He asked if she was comfortable. She replied with “Whatever.”

Andrea had to give him props for continuing to try though.

Sighing because of her lack of interest, Jay the car stereo. “Usually I’d plug in my iPod, but this is a rental, and couldn’t afford that kind of luxury,” he said, apologizing slightly for his use of the CD player. It was silent for a second as the CD started up, and as soon as the music started, Andrea recognized it.

“You like Chris Brown?” she asked automatically, momentarily forgetting that he was her sworn enemy and she had promised herself that she wouldn’t talk to him.

“I like his music,” Jay said quickly, jumping on the opportunity to have a conversation with her. He didn’t know what had made her not like him, but Jay was stubborn, and liked a challenge. Every time she shot him down, that only made him more determined to break down whatever walls she had put up as a defense against him. He wanted to see her happy. She had been fine at their initial meeting. What had changed? “But he seems like a really bad guy though,” Jay continued. “And not the good kind of bad, if you know what I mean.”

Andrea scoffed. “You think? He’s essentially forever screwed up his image. If you had told me a few years ago that Chris Brown would be releasing songs like this or had done half the things he has done, I would have laughed.” She looked at Jay for the first time since getting in the car at the hospital. He was smiling lightly as he kept his eyes on the road. It was the first time since the dance competition that Andrea would have called him attractive. She looked quickly back at the stereo, trying to force any good thoughts about Jay out of her head. “But the beats to his songs are crazy good.”

“Agreed!” Jay cried, slapping the steering wheel.

Andrea felt a smile tug at her lips. He was so excitable.

She let the smile fade, then quietly said, “Why do all the good beats end up in the hands of such bad people? Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, TI…” She was talking mostly to herself, but in a small car, it was impossible to keep things to yourself.

“Because the bad guys have more money than us good guys could ever dream of having,” jay chuckled.

The atmosphere in the car changed immediately. It had begun to lighten a little when he and Andrea had started talking, but as soon as Jay had spoken, it felt even worse than it had on the first car ride to the doctor. It almost felt physically cold, and Jay knew it wasn’t the air conditioning, but Andrea. Was it what he said? Was it the fact that he laughed? Was it something he did—maybe an unexpected movement—that freaked her out? Jay wanted to ask her about it, but he already knew that doing that would just put him deeper into the hole he seemed to have unknowingly dug for himself.

Andrea, on the other side of the car, put her mental and emotional walls back up. Good guys like us? Andrea thought, making her almost scoff out loud. She considered Jay one of the worst people that she had ever met, and she would have told anyone that before she actually met him, but here he was, calling himself good? Andrea couldn’t grasp how he could consider himself good at all after what he had done to her. Unless…

“How did you meet your crew?” Andrea asked suddenly. She had decided, in that one moment, that she wanted to know his side of the story; before he figured out who she was, as apparently, he didn’t know her connection to the members of his crew, if he knew that there was one at all.

Jay didn’t answer at first, shocked that she had initiated a conversation.

“How’d you find out I had a crew?” he asked, instead of answering Andrea’s question. “When I met you at the battle, you asked me to come audition for yours.”

Andrea cringed mentally as he brought up that night. Not only was she still angry about it, but now she was embarrassed. She couldn’t believe that she had not only indirectly offered him a place in her crew, but she had obviously flirted with him that night. “I stayed to watch some of the groups,” Andrea answered. “And I saw you.”

Jay nodded, a slight smile on his face. “We haven’t been together very long,” he told her. Andrea, of course, already knew that.

But Jay didn’t know she knew.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crew assemble that fast, really,” Jay said slowly. “One minute, I was talking to one, the next, all six of them were there, ready to go.” Andrea, though angry with what he was saying, couldn’t help but notice that Jay sounded genuinely shocked that a group could come together so quickly. This solidified the conclusion that Andrea had already come to: Jay was so absolutely, completely clueless, it was almost funny.

She shifted towards him, her curiosity raised. “Who did the choreography for your dance?” she asked, trying to sound as objective as she could.

“They came with that too,” Jay said, so deep in his thoughts that he didn’t have a chance to think of Andrea’s question as strange. “It’s still a little rough, though,” he continued. “The group parts are actually really fantastic, actually…”

Andrea couldn’t help but smirk. He was praising her without even knowing he was doing so.

“But the solo bits definitely need some work.”

Andrea’s smirk slid off her face. She had worked for weeks trying to get those solos worked out. She had fallen on her face she didn’t know how many times, iced countless bruises, and lost precious hours of sleep as she worked on the parts. How could he say that they were bad?

“They have a good foundation,” Jay continued, unaware of Andrea’s internal struggle. “but there’s too much classical dance moves. It seems…girly.”

Oh, how Andrea wanted to hit him right then. She wanted to hit him so hard that he lost his ability to choreograph his own dances. But they were in a moving car, and he was driving, and could therefore do some serious damage to a lot of people on the LA freeway if he was distracted by a violent outburst by his lone passenger.

So instead, Andrea said curtly, “Well, classical dance is the basis for a lot of the breakdancing moves you use. Really, there wouldn’t be breakdancing at all if classical dancers didn’t branch out and try new things.” She tried to sound disinterested, but it was difficult. Her emotions had minds of their owns.

“I know,” Jay said with a shrug. “I just don’t understand how anyone can like classical dance enough to do it for a living.”

The urge to hit him spiked, but again. Andrea managed to resist. Unfortunately though, the effort it took to keep herself from throwing a punch also kept her from replying. So instead, she just remained silent, letting her quietness be the punishment for Jay’s comment.

They didn’t talk for the rest of the drive, and Andrea was seething so much that it wasn’t until the car pulled to a stop in front of a house that she realized that she had never given Jay an address to drive her to.

Suddenly alarmed, she looked around at her surroundings, trying to figure out where she was.

It didn’t take long.

“,” she breathed. Whipping around to face Jay, she cried, “Why did you bring me here?” completely forgetting that she wasn’t talking to him.

“Isn’t this where you live?” Jay asked, pointing to the house outside Andrea’s window. “Nice place, by the way.”

It was a nice place, Andrea had to admit. It sat on a few acres of land, it was nearly five thousand square feet, six bedrooms, and a dance practice room in the basement. Andrea knew that. She grew up in that house.

“No,” Andrea said.

“You don’t live here?” Jay asked. “This is the address you put on the form at the hospital…”

“You were reading that?!” Andrea cried.

“I just saw it,” Jay defended himself, putting his hands up. “And remembered it.”

“And Mapquested it?”

Jay shrugged, answering her question affirmatively.

Andrea groaned. “This is my dad’s place.”

“Oh, good,” Jay said, relieved that he had found the right place.

“No!” Andrea cried, her voice shrill now. “Not good. I’m not—”

“Who’s that?” Jay interrupted her, pointing towards the house.

Andrea stopped screaming and turned to look out the window. “Oh, ,” she sighed, seeing who Jay had seen. A woman was walking across the expansive front yard and towards the car, an obvious look of distaste on her face. “Stay in the car,” Andrea ordered, unbuckling her seatbelt and getting out of the car. Her knee was still hurting, but there was no way she was going to let that stop her from facing the woman standing up.

“What are you doing here?” the woman demanded as Andrea slid out of the car. She stopped walking towards the car, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Good to see you too, Judy,” Andrea sighed, shutting the car door and walking the rest of the way towards her stepmother. She hadn’t even been talking to the lady for very long, and she was already tired.

“What are you doing here?” the petite blonde asked again.

“Driving mistake,” Andrea answered as shortly as possible. “We didn’t mean to come here, believe me.”

Judy, hearing the “we,” looked past Andrea and into the car, trying to see the driver. Andrea tried to shift a little to hide Jay from view, but her injury made it difficult to move quickly. “Who is he?” she asked. “Your boyfriend?”

“No.”

There was no use trying to explain who Jay was to Andrea to Judy.

“I bet you two live together,” Judy said, a look of distaste on her face. She wasn’t even listening to her stepdaughter. “Oh!” Judy said, coming to a realization. “I know! You’re pregnant, right? Certainly wouldn’t put it past you.”

Judy looked smug, happy about her insult. Andrea, however, simply rolled her eyes. “You’re so annoying,” the younger woman sighed. “Just because you’re married to my dad doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want to me.”

Judy just smirked.

Sighing again, Andrea said, “Is there anything you want to say to me that you haven’t already?”

Still smiling, Judy opened , most likely to unleash another round of insults that Andrea would consider pathetic, but stopped before making a sound, distracted by something behind Andrea.

Curious, Andrea turned around, only to see Jay standing behind her.

“Who are you?” Judy asked of Jay, her voice changing from the hostility she used with Andrea to one of general curiosity.

“Jay Park,” he answered. “Is there a problem?” he asked, looking between the two women.

Andrea felt better with Jay facing her stepmom with her. Even though she didn’t like him, she knew Jay was on her side.

In this situation at least.

“You drove her here?” Judy asked.

Jay nodded. “Mhmm.”

“Well, that’s a problem,” Judy said, her voice going hard. “She isn’t welcome here.” She looked back at Andrea, venom in her eyes.

Andrea felt Jay stiffen, and almost felt bad for him. No matter what he had done to her, he shouldn’t have to witness this meltdown of a family Andrea called her own. “But doesn’t her dad live here?” Jay asked.

It was Judy’s turn to nod.

“Then why isn’t she welcome?” Jay demanded, taking a step forward, and making Judy take a step back, that Andrea did notice. Apparently, her stepmother wasn’t so stupid as to think she had a chance if she got physically embattled with a young, fit, angry guy. “Shouldn’t her dad know that his daughter had to go to a hospital today?” Jay continued, his voice getting angrier. “Doesn’t he care?”

Jay was nearly screaming, but Judy wasn’t listening anymore. Her fear forgotten, she turned to Andrea. “You went to the hospital?!” she screamed. “Don’t you know that that costs money?! Did you use your father’s money?!”

Now she was screaming, and Andrea was reverting back to how she had dealt with Judy before: she shut down. Andrea turned away from the woman and started walking away and down the street. She knew there was a bus station a few blocks outside of the gated community the house was in. She had been there plenty of times before, her only concern was that her injured knee would give out before she got there. But she was willing to take that chance. She just couldn’t deal with the screwed up dynamics of her family right now.

If she had been healthy, Andrea would have run to the bus station, but because of her injury, she was limited to walking, and even that was difficult.

She got out of the neighborhood before she heard a car approaching, and she automatically knew that it was Jay.

“Dre!” he called out the driver’s side window as he pulled up next to her. “Hey, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine,” Andrea said, too tired and too hurt to really care about what she was saying. “Just go.”

“No, come on,” Jay said keeping the car next to Andrea as she walked. “You’re hurt. Walking on your knee won’t help it.”

“I’m going to take the bus. It can rest then.”

“I’ll drive you,” Jay insisted. “Just tell me where you want to go.”

Andrea growled quietly to herself. She was hurt, embarrassed and angry. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? “I’ll be fine. Just go,” she repeated.

“Come on, Andrea,” Jay said, and Andrea could hear him losing his patience. “Let me be nice to you. What did I do to make you so angry?” he demanded.

Wrong question.

Spinning to face the car, all Andrea could feel was anger towards the man. She bent over to face Jay clearly. “You don’t know anything,” she spat. “Not about me, not about my family, and most importantly, you know nothing about my dance!” She was so angry, she shoved the car, as though it would do any damage.

It didn’t of course, but it did give Andrea enough courage and adrenaline to leave Jay, still sitting in his idling car, as she ran, with a slight limp, down a side street and to the bus stop.



 

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samazing
#1
Update pleaseee~ Still waiting for an update author-nim!
Nyaikou
#2
I have added your fanfic to a list of recommended fics, hope you check it out onn my blog: http://nynyonlinex.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/2pm-jay-park-fanfiction-recommendations/
kindie
#3
nice fic~! update pwease!! ^^
shoutoutt
#4
realised I haven't read the last 5 chapters but you updated like last year omg ;~;

update when you're free okay, /waits patiently ^^
Nyaikou
#5
Finally caught up and im subscribing now! Omg I would love to see Taec seeing Andrea with Jay and I want to know how he would react to it. Please update soon cause I really enjoyed it ^^ if you have time, I am writing a 2pmxOCxJay Park fanfic that I would like you to read when you are free
AbriMathos #6
Took me 2 days to read all of this. Soooo good! I was so upset when it stopped XD Please update when you find enough time!
risingfire
#7
oooooohhhhhhhhh~! go go go! I'm torn between the two XD Taec and Jay...but i guess Jay is better =)))
andrea-yah #8
The truth will come out soon~ update as soon as you can <3