Emilia
I stoodin front of the huge building in front of me. It wasn’t tall by any means, but it was wide, leaving plenty of room for what I wanted it for.
I realized renting out this property didn’t exactly help with other people’s perception of me—that I wasn’t my mother, but my own person, but this project had been the only thing I had been excited for in three long years.
I walked slowly to the front entrance.
It had been a particularly cold day this morning, and I was experiencing phantom pain in the worst way possible. It was so much easier to say this was all in my head, but this shooting pain I was feeling in a limb that no longer existed in my body was hard to ignore.
I was walking slower than I usually did, and I was glad Ethan flew back home to Boston last night. No doubt he would have turned into a fussy mother hen at the sight of even the slightest discomfort on my part.
I didn’t usually experience phantom limb pain like this. Not for the past year. About six months after the amputation was when the experience was the worst, and it was even more frustrating that I didn’t even know this was a real thing experienced by other people who had gone through limb amputation as well.
I had thought I was going crazy.
Things got better when I finally worked up the courage to tell Dr. Gonzalez, my former physician back in Boston, about it, and she had suggested I see a therapist, not because she thought I was going crazy, but because this was so common.
I was introduced to Dr. Kimathi, who came up with therapy practices for me that had helped reduce the pain.
But I still sometimes experienced it. Especially when the weather turned cold, like today.
“I’m not crazy,” I muttered to myself while I rubbed the socket of the prosthetic leg, where most of the pain seemed to be coming from.
I unlocked the front door and walked into the building, my heart pounding fiercely in my chest. This was different from my mom’s studio, though most of the interior decorations here were inspired by what her studio had once been, before we were forced to sell it.
It almost felt like déjàvu.
I felt like I was four again, holding onto my mom’s hand as she brought me to her studio for the first time. She had smiled proudly, and though I didn’t understand the concept of being proud of someone at the time, I did remember admiring her.
I wanted to be just like her.
The door opening and closing brought me out of the memory, and I looked over at the first employee I had ever hired.
Mary was a young girl, studying kinesiology and mechanical engineering at Columbia University. She had been dancing since she was eight, though she never wanted to pursue a dancing career. Instead, she was fascinated with the human body and movements.
She said something about wanting to work in designing robotics to help people who needed it with their everyday life.
Sometimes I envied her. She’d known what she wanted to do since she was a little girl. And though she was a damn good dancer, she wasn’t defined by that one role.
“Hey, boss. You’re here early,” she greeted me with a cheerful smile on her face.
I shot her a small smile, trying not to let the fact that I was in pain show through. Obviously not very well, because she frowned at me. “Are you feeling okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Just the cold weather. It’s not doing my old injury any good.” Not a lot of people knew about the amputation, but the employees I’d hired here—a total of five instructors and two administrative ladies to work the front—knew I used to be a dancer, and that I could no longer dance. Though they never asked, and I didn’t feel like sharing.
Mary nodded, her eyes shrouded in sympathy. “Why don’t you go to your office and do whatever it is that bosses do, and I’ll man the front? I don’t think we’ll be too busy this morning.”
I nodded, shooting her a grateful smile, before moving into my office.
Étoiles Dance Studiowas a long time coming. It was while I was recovering in the hospital that I had the idea of opening my own dance studio—just like my mother.
Nadir’s reputation definitely preceded her, and she didn’t keep quiet about her protégé opening up a dance studio in New York. She had pulled out her old contacts to get me more business than I would have gotten on my own.
I had more than a handful of parents signing up their little ones three months before the studio even opened.
Now I had a total of forty students, which wasn’t bad for a first-time business owner.
Though I would be leaving the training to the instructors themselves, they were all following my teaching methods, all of which I had learned from Nadir.