The Ballerina and the Rocker

Quinn

Her parents had been absolutely thrilled upon hearing about her acceptance to Juilliard. Her mother insisted they take a long weekend to go out to New York for a proper tour; her father was able to take leave and join his girls on the trip. Quinn had hoped her sister would be able to hop on the train from Boston and meet them, but Audrey was still feeling a little distant from their mother and promised she’d make her way there next time.

While in the city, Quinn and her parents stopped by Juilliard’s facilities in order to get a better idea of where she would be spending the next four years. Jo wanted to continue to explore and find out more information, but Quinn kept on telling her mother there would be time for that at her orientation in August.

In addition to their own personal Juilliard touring, the Hartford’s went to see Aida on Broadway, toured the Intrepid, and walked their way through Central Park. On their final day before heading back to California, Quinn found herself standing in front of the giant fountain of Lincoln Center. She looked around at the buildings and she couldn’t believe this was her future campus and, most importantly, her future home.

“I can’t believe I actually get to go to school here,” she said for the thousandth time that weekend.

“C’mon, kiddo,” her father shouted to her from the street. Quinn snapped out of her trance and turned around to see her parents standing by a yellow cab, waiting to take them to the airport.

After hours of travel, the Hartford’s returned to their home and almost immediately zonked out. As sad as she was to leave New York, she missed sleeping in her own bed.

When she woke up, Quinn looked at her clock and groaned at how early it was. She was hoping to sleep past 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning. With the realization she wouldn’t be falling back asleep anytime soon, she instead went to her window and climbed onto the tree that had quickly become a bridge between the two neighboring bedrooms. Thankfully Zacky’s window, like her own, was consistently unlocked.

She silently stepped into his room and saw Zacky sleeping diagonally on his bed with only half his body under the sheets. His unintentional lazy boy charm never failed to make Quinn giggle.

Not wanting to wake him up, she carefully crawled into the small space beside him and curled up into his side. He stirred and grumbled something incoherent.

“Shh,” Quinn responded. “It’s just me.”

She grabbed the sheets and pulled them over so they covered both she and Zacky completely instead of just Zacky’s left side. She closed her eyes and felt his arm drape over her as she began to fall back to sleep.

It wasn’t her bed she missed.

Zacky

“So, I’ve got a question for you,” Zacky asked Quinn, who had remained curled up by his side for the remainder of the morning.

“What?” she asked back.

This was it. He had been thinking endlessly about what was going to happen to them when they went their separate ways after school ended. Was he being too serious? They had only been dating for three and a half months, after all. But at this moment he honestly couldn’t imagine letting her go.

“What is it?” she asked again when Zacky failed to ask his question.

He felt his heart race from nerves.

“Um, well,” he began. He looked at Quinn and she smiled. “Do- do you wanna grab some lunch today?”

Well, that wasn’t the question he wanted to ask. Quinn raised an eyebrow.

“I’m actually spending the day with my dad today,” she answered, “but something tells me that wasn’t the question you were going to ask.” Quinn situated herself so she was sitting cross-legged across from Zacky and took his hands in hers. “What’s up?”

He looked into her eyes and while everything in his body was telling him he just needed to bring the subject up, Zacky ignored it and shook his head.

“Never mind,” he said. He didn’t realize how difficult this would be.

“Okay. Well, I’ve got a question for you.” Uh oh, he thought, maybe she was going to be the one to bring it up. “Do you want to take me to prom?”

“I thought Ocean View had their prom already?” Quinn rolled her eyes. “Oh, my prom? Isn’t that, like, in a week?”

“We don’t have to,” she said quickly, “It’s just, well, Val asked about it. She and Matt are going and she was wondering if we were going to go. And I honestly don’t really care, but I just thought I’d ask.”

He thought it was cute how easily she got flustered.

“Why didn’t you ask me to yours?”

“Because I didn’t really care about going. It’s just, people always make prom out to be this magical night, right? Like it’s supposed to be the most important night of every high schoolers life. Since we moved a lot and I’ve gone to three different high schools I never gave prom much thought, you know? I also never thought I’d have a boyfriend…”

She blushed as Zacky smirked at her.

“Anyway,” she continued. “I’m rambling and not making a point… I realized I’d maybe want to go not because it’s the ending of every teenage flick or because I get to wear a pretty dress, but because it’d be nice to do something that’s normal, that’s ‘high school,’ because I’ve never really felt that. Until you.”

Zacky didn’t know what to say, which was a good thing because Quinn spoke one last time.

“But I’d be fine with not going, too. I just thought I’d ask. Anyway.”

The only thing Zacky could think of to follow up her speech was to lean over and kiss her.

“You do that a lot, you know?” he said when he pulled his lips away from hers.

“Do what?”

“You have all these profound and important things to say and you don’t say them for the longest time, but when you finally do you vomit them out in one big rant.”

“I do not! Do I really?” Zacky nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

And it was one of the things he most envied about Quinn; if only he could bring up what he wanted to talk about as easy as she did.

Quinn

The sounds of The Beatles’ Rubber Soul filled Quinn’s bedroom. She was getting better at putting on makeup, but it was still nice to have Val there to help with the dos and don’ts. It was prom night and her gal pal had graciously offered to help her get ready.

“You should curl your hair more often,” Val said as she curled another strand of Quinn’s hair. “It looks awesome.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Quinn said. She looked at Val’s reflection in her vanity mirror. “I’ve really only needed to put it up in a bun.”

“You’re now on a strict order to curl it more!” Quinn chuckled.

“Hey Val, can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah, absolutely.”

Ever since she had gotten her acceptance to Juilliard, Quinn had been carrying around a weight in her heart, something she had been too afraid to talk about.

“It’s just that,” she began hesitantly, “when I go out to school and Zacky stays here and starts touring and stuff…”

“Do you stay together?” Val finished the sentence, knowing all too well what Quinn was trying to say.

“I’ve just always had a plan and that was to go to Juilliard, and everything I did revolved around that. But then Zacky came into the picture unexpectedly, and I really really like him, but I just don’t know how it’s going to work.”

She felt her eyes begin to well up with tears. She tried everything she could to hold them back until one pushed its way through and fell silently down her cheek. Val noticed this and put the curling iron down on the dresser and wrapped her arms around her friend’s shoulders.

“It’s been hard enough not seeing my dad as often as I want to,” she continued. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle two long distance relationships.”

“Have you talked to Zacky about this?” Quinn shook her head. “I think he’s the one that needs to hear this, not me.”

“But… what if he hates me for it?”

Val let go of Quinn’s shoulders and turned her around so they were face to face instead of looking at each other’s reflections. She crouched down and placed her hands reassuringly on Quinn’s knees.

“I’ve seen how that boy looks at you,” Val said with a hug grin. “There’s no way he would hate you.” She brought her hand up to Quinn’s cheek to wipe away the tear. “It’s a good thing we didn’t do your make-up yet.”

Zacky

It felt weird ringing the front door instead of just climbing in through the bedroom window. It also felt weird to be wearing a tux.

Quinn’s mother answered the door and ushered Zacky inside where he took a seat on the living room couch. About a minute later, Matt walked through the door.

“Well, aren’t you a fancy son of a bitch,” Matt said as he sat beside his friend.

“You’re just jealous because I can pull this off,” Zacky shot back.

The two boys continued chatting for the next five minutes or so before their attention was stolen by the two girls who had just entered the living room. There was Val looking as stunning as ever in a light pink floor-length strapless dress, with her brown hair curled and pinned back. And next to her was Quinn, who took his breath away.

Her usually wavy dirty blonde hair was now in big, glamorous curls; the left side was pinned up while the right side billowed down and framed her face. Her slender body was covered in a midnight blue spaghetti strap gown that hung straight like a column. His eyes caught hers, which now seemed to match the same blue as her dress, and her dark maroon painted lips curled up into a smile.

“Hi,” she said when he walked over to her.

“Wow,” he said, almost at a whisper. “You look beautiful.”

She smiled her shy smile at him before taking his arm in hers and following their friends out the door.

Quinn

Prom had been exactly as she thought it would be - underwhelming. Michelle and her date were named prom king and queen, so that was pretty fun. And someone had spiked the punch, which Quinn realized only when Val pointed out she was giggling a lot more than usual. She danced some, but mostly she and Zacky just sat at their table and talked.

So maybe it wasn’t that underwhelming.

The night was winding down and the DJ announced the last song of the night. Lonestar’s “Amazed” began playing. Quinn looked over at Zacky, who smiled at her.

“Wanna dance to this country song that is so in right now?” he said with a laugh and a grin. Quinn smiled back and took his hand as he led her to the dance floor.

She placed her arms around his neck while he placed his on his hips as they swayed back and forth with the music.

“Hey, Zacky,” she began nervously. “There’s been something on my mind I’ve been meaning to talk with you about.”

Zacky

Shit. This was it. He knew she was going to bring up what he couldn’t bring himself to.

“What?” he asked, pretending he hadn’t the slightest idea as to what she was going to ask.

Quinn

She felt her heart drop into her stomach. As she looked into his beautiful green eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Instead she said, “do I really giggle a lot when I’m drunk?”

Zacky

It was a beautiful night. When they got home, he and Quinn continued to walk to her backyard instead of saying “goodnight” right away. They walked hand in hand until they got to the pool where Quinn proceeded to take off her silver heels, pull up the bottom of her dress, and sit by the edge. She put her feet in the water and Zacky followed suit, rolling up his pants and sitting beside her. He took her hand in his once more.

And now was his turn to word vomit.

“So, I think it’s safe to say we’ve both been avoiding talking about the same thing,” he began wearily.

“Zacky -” she began.

“I just want you to know,” he continued, cutting her off, “that I’ll do whatever you want, whatever you think is best. If you think we should break up, then we break up.”

“I don’t want to break up.”

“So you want to stay together?”

She didn’t answer.

“You’ve gotta give me something to go on here, Quinn.”

“I don’t know. I’ve always had a plan and I don’t have one for this and it scares me.”

“Well, what do you know?”

“I know that I really like you. And I know that things probably would have been a little easier if we had just stayed friends. But I also know that I would have been a lot more miserable if we had.”

Zacky took his free hand and placed it on her cheek. Her eyes looked so sad even though her face wore a smile.

Quinn

As she looked into Zacky’s eyes, she remembered what Val had said to her when they first met: ”I don’t care if people say you’re too young. When you meet the one, you know.”

Maybe he wasn’t the “one," or maybe he was. Regardless, he was the one right now in this moment and that was reason enough for Quinn to stray off the beaten path.

Zacky

“I really like you too, Quinn,” he said, his hand still on her cheek.

There was a pause before she spoke. A happiness had returned to her eyes.

“Ok.”

“...Ok, what?”

“Ok, let’s try it.”

“Yeah?!”

“Yeah. I’m not ready to get rid of you just yet, Mr. Baker.”

He could have literally leapt for joy at that moment. As he was leaning in to kiss her, he felt a shove against his arm and in the blink of an eye found himself in the pool. He looked up at Quinn who was giggling uncontrollably.

“Have you been drinking, Ms. Hartford?” he teased. He stood up in front of Quinn and placed his chlorine soaked lips on hers before pulling her into the pool with him.

“You jerk!” she laughed, splashing him.

“You started it!” he splashed back.

The water fight lasted until Quinn swam into Zacky’s arms and hugged him tightly. The two held each other as they bobbed up and down in the cool water, the stars watching overhead.