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He arched an eyebrow, "What am I good at? Uh, none of it. Which is exactly why I don't dance, I leave that to the pros like you." Luca smiled and shrugged when she mentioned the waltz. Of course she would know that about him, he came from a stuck up, pretentious family. "Okay, okay, yes I can do that, but this isn't that kinda club, doll."
Not that it mattered, she was already making her way to the stage. He took a moment to appreciate the way it looked, her standing in the center. It seemed fitting, but it was about to be very unfitting the moment he made his way up the stairs and to the stage. Luca had always just been behind the piano, not a singer, not a dancer, just the accompaniment. His clothes were not very good for a waltz either, an open button-up, dark jeans and black Converse. Definitely not a fitted tux or dancing shoes.
Luca stood there in front of her, shaking his head back and forth, "Are you sure this is a good idea? I haven't danced in a while, I don't want to step on you or anything."
"Oh, I know." Callie declared quickly. This stage mightn't ever be used again for a dance so formal and so pure. But there she stood, ready to go for it all the same.
She felt the way his eyes were on her. His attention was held with the usual laser focus. Neither of them looked the part; not just for waltzing but for dancing in general, but perhaps that was what made it so perfect.
"You won't. But you're totally leading." She said, taking his hand like no time had passed as she raised it to shoulder level. Eyes locked with his as her other hand fell to his shoulder. All the while, she couldn't help the smile she wore.
It was settled, there was no way he was getting out of this one. Luca narrowed his eyes at her and smiled when she took his hand. Reluctantly, if not automatically, his free hand rested just under her shoulder blade, near the middle of her back. He kept his elbow propped up underneath hers and gave one final shake of his head.
Once he was ready he took the first step. His mind immediately counting for him 1, 2, 3. Quick, quick, slow. It was something that had been ingrained in his mind since he was five or six when he had taken his first lesson. While art had always been his kind of thing, the waltz was something even his father had gotten into. He said that the way a man led in the waltz said a great deal about him. Proper technique, good posture and strong arms meant that he would be successful. Funny how even then he'd been told how to be a real man, just from the way he danced.
Luca twirled her around on the stage and he felt lighter than he had the past few days. The stress of the club opening, finding employees, getting it designed correctly, it all melted away briefly and he just watched Callie. He led her into an underarm turn and smiled, "I can't believe I remember this stuff."
Callie could immediately see the way his mind was working. She could feel the way he counted in his movements, like learning the steps for the first time. She knew she was supposed to look away, but she couldn't. She didn't want to, and surely it wouldn't make that much of a difference if she didn't.
It was easy to follow his direction; the shift in his hands told her about the turn so his words didn't have to. That was the point of it all, and it was a testament to how much he still remembered.
"It's like, ingrained in you forever I think. When you start young, I mean." She replied, in exactly the same boat as he was. She was by no means a highly experienced ballroom dancer. She was as adept as he was; functions for families with their own ballrooms called for the only daughter of her own family to be able to dance and be lead with ease. Already, he didn't seem as stressed. She could tell just by the way he moved, like he was easing into the situation.
"I bet your dad wasn't happy when you got a place like this." Callie mused. Then again, he probably wasn't happy Luca moved away again.
Her words were like they had been plucked from his mind and he nodded, "Pretty much. I mean, I haven't done it in...shit, probably before I manifested." He was twenty-four now and it came as a sort of shock that he couldn't forget something he had learned nearly twenty years ago.
When she mentioned his father's reaction to his decision to not only move back to the States and give up on following the Ivaskov name, but then to also buy a burlesque club, Luca grimaced. He shrugged his shoulders, "He's never been happy with anything I've done, I didn't figure I should give him false hope that I might actually be the son he wanted." That's what Cristian and Darius were for anyway. Nothing had changed on that front, Dmitri had told Luca never to come back, that he wasn't welcome and that he didn't deserve the Ivaskov name. Luca had even gone so far as to think about changing his last name.
If it wasn't for his sisters, for the memory of his mother, he might have gone through with it. Luca lifted the corner of his mouth into an attempt of a smile, "But hey, what can you do? I don't regret my choice...not yet anyway." Not when it brought him to a place where he'd run into her again.
Callie felt the way he shrugged his shoulders beneath her hand as they moved. To an extent, she knew what it was like to have fathers dream the most for their children. It was her oldest brother's job to inherit the family business, but they were lucky that he was happy to do it. He wanted to, even. But her father had never been cruel. He was always kind and generous and giving to his children. Two out of three of them were interested in art over business, and he seemed to love them for following their passions.
"What's to regret? Sure, it'll be stressful." Owning a business would be absolutely make a person want to run themselves into the ground sometimes, "But when it gets off the ground, it'll be awesome. And everyone involved will have you to thank for it."
She couldn't help but smile then. She genuinely had the greatest faith in him. "That's pretty cool." She added instinctively. At the very least, it was a great feat to know what he wanted in life. Most people in this town were completely confused.
Luca's face fell and he cast his eyes away from her, "Unless I fail." When he was young and stupid, he'd made it out like he thought he could never fail. Everyone knew it was a sham because there was no way that he wouldn't fail a few times in life. But now that he was older, it was like all he heard in his mind was his father's words about how if he wasn't going to act like an Ivaskov he would fail at everything he did. At that, Luca let out a humorless laugh, "Turns out something my father said stuck with me after all."
He didn't know what he would do if the club took a dive and he lost all of the money that he'd put into it. All he knew was that he would try as hard as he could to remain in Oregon for Jezebel's sake and his own. Going back to Romania was not an option, no matter how much he was poked and prodded to do exactly that by the rest of his family.
When he finally looked back at her, he made the split decision to offer exactly what he wanted from her, "Work with me. Dance here. I know that if I've got you, there will be no shortage of people coming through that door."
As far as Callie was concerned, there was no room for negativity here. Those kinds of thoughts only dragged an entire situation down to that potential disaster. People always told her she was naïve about these kinds of things; was it really so wrong to look at the world so brightly?
She shook her head instinctively. Families always said things that their children carried, knowingly or not. Years of torment wore on Luca the second his choices came into question. There wasn't much either of them could do about that, but she could always try to build him up. "So prove him wrong. Easy." It was hardly easy, but again, she wore optimism in her tone like it was branded on her sleeve.
When he put it like that, Callie's teeth sunk into her lower lip in contemplation. She watched his eyes with a weary set. Here she was bolstering his ego, and now he was inflating hers. "Are you sure that's a good idea? It's you and me, Luca." She tried a smile, but it quickly faltered; "I know I put you through a lot."
"'Easy' she says," Luca narrowed his eyes at her with a grin. There was nothing easy about proving his father wrong. It was so out of his own control, that thinking about it made him panic. Of course, he had help, he had Rena and Mar, but there was the potential for catastrophe. Was a burlesque club really the smartest thing he could have done in a place like Oregon?
Her hesitation made him feel a sharp twinge of regret, but he stood fast and kept his eyes on hers. He could understand her reservations about the whole thing, he had some of his own, too. But the honest truth, or rather, his honest truth was that he knew she was the best dancer he'd met and she had everything he needed for the show. Luca stopped in their dancing and pulled her hand from his shoulder so that he was holding both of them in his own. "Callie, you know me. Would I ever offer something I didn't think all the way through?"
He squeezed her fingers, "Look, you're right. It is you and me, but I put you through a lot, too. I handled things wrong then, I'm not about to do that again." Luca chewed on the inside of his cheek and released her hands, "I'm not going to force you, you know that. I just think that you'd be good here and I trust you as an employee because you were my best friend. Still sort of are."
Callie was incredibly quick to assume he would understand she was strictly talking about herself. She didn't doubt him, but she knew how much pain she'd put him through, and she didn't want to make his work life difficult. Her feet stopped in time with his, and she allowed her other hand to be taken without delay or hesitation.
She had to trust him, right? He earned that from her a long time ago.
"Listen, I'm not saying I don't want to." She reasoned. He must have known that. After all, she was standing there for a reason they both knew she hadn't been willing to share. Reaching out, she pressed a hand against his chest, feeling the cool undertones of the skin beneath the shirt he wore. Even after all this time, it still wasn't something to shy away from, but maybe her physicality only made matters more difficult.
"What I am saying is that I never want to hear you blame yourself for all that, okay?"
She didn't say she didn't want to. He supposed he should have realized that, but he had grown used to immediate rejection and that wasn't something she could know.
Her hand against his chest was warm, but it didn't make him uncomfortable. It was like he'd grown used to her body temperature a long time ago and it just registered in his body that it wasn't dangerous to him. However, it always made him curious how she could stand it. She said so little, but with such impact that it was hard to shake. Putting the blame on himself rather than on anyone else was just his way of coping. It kept him from lashing out the way he often wanted to. Funny how his ability had very little effect on his temperament.
Luca laughed a little and shook his head, "I've never learned how to not blame myself, but I'll try. So long as you don't carry whatever happened before either. It was a long time ago, neither of us needs to hold onto that."
Callie could guess Luca hadn't changed all that much. Years might have passed, but the fact that he even bothered to speak to her at all spoke volumes about how he handled the tumultuous nature of their break up. Still, she couldn't deny how much he seemed to have matured in their time apart. He wasn't some kid getting tossed around by a girl who didn't care for him correctly. He wasn't anywhere near as cold as everyone used to say he was.
Not under her hands, anyway.
Callie found something generously profound in his words. That he of all people would tell her to let go was astounding. She wished she could genuinely say she could, were it not for the literal figure that reappeared in her life so frequently and reminded her at every turn.
Instead, she tried a smile for him. She had to be a little excited. Or a lot. "Deal." She declared, and she almost believed it; "So when do I start?"
It took a minute before Luca realized that she'd just accepted his offer. He had looked away at some point, but he lifted his eyes when it registered and they widened. "Are you...you're really..." He couldn't put the fragments of the sentence together.
Without much thought, he wrapped his arms around her. After a split second he paused and stepped back, "Sorry, that was a little, uh, I didn't mean to." And he probably shouldn't let it happen again. Especially now that she was his employee. His excitement was a little hard to contain because he could actually see the future of the club now. With Callie, there was no way they couldn't gather a few crowds.
"Immediately. The first meeting is on Tuesday where we're going to go through and figure out acts and such. Get everyone together, meet, greet, discuss schedules and stuff like that. My, uh...my sister will be there. Lorena? I don't know if I've mentioned her much," He said rubbing the back of his neck.
When Callie caught his eyes again, they were wide. He almost seemed confused, like he hadn't expected her to ever say yes. She'd barely managed to open her mouth to agree with him when he was sweeping her up in a glorious embrace. It might have been short, but it was significant all the same. She'd reciprocated it with such ease, but he then seemed so against the movement.
It was destined to be a fast transition from nothing to everything. She nodded along as he explained the details of the upcoming meeting, making a mental note to absolutely be there for him. Luca had always been a person who seemed quite proud of his siblings. Callie was positive she'd heard all their names before, but it was impossible to put a face to every one. "I remember. It'll be nice to finally meet her." She replied.
"But," She started again, a smile catching her mouth with ease; "Does this mean I'm not allowed to hug you anymore? Cause that was definitely not in the job description."
Luca gave a nod, but hoped that his face didn't give way to the minor panic attack he was having over her meeting more of his family. Not just one of the siblings, but his twin. Lorena was basically the other half of him, they were so vastly different and somehow incredibly the same. He'd always wanted Callie to meet her, but that was before they'd parted and things had gotten complicated. Now all he could hope was that Lorena didn't say anything about the past relationship. He didn't want Callie to be uncomfortable around them.
The sudden 'but' caused him to pause and he narrowed his eyes at the way she smiled. Her statement caused him to grin and he shook his head, "I mean, as long as you don't go to HR. One sure fire way to fail a club is a harassment charge against the owner." Especially before it even had a chance to open, not that he actually worried that Callie would do something like that to him.
Luca took a deep breath and hugged her again, this time not pulling away immediately. He gave her a light squeeze, "I missed you so much, Cal."
