Read Online Waltz This Way (v1.1) by Dakota Cassidy - Free Book Online

teaching classes at the rec center. But if you at least give them a look, I think Jasmine and Frankie can tell you from personal experience, they work.”
    Frankie nodded, twisting a strand of her hair around her finger in thoughtful contemplation. “I hated Maxine’s hokey advice— at first. But she taught me to suck it up. She made me shower. She helped me get a job. She encouraged me to come to the meetings here at Trophy where I met Jasmine, where I learned how to stand on my own two feet. I had no job skills other than being Mitch’s bitch. No one in the industry would hire me because Mitch blackballed me. If it wasn’t for Maxine, I’d still be at my Aunt Gail’s, buried under the covers.”
    “And you’d really smell,” Max said on a chuckle.
    Frankie nodded. “Yeah. There’s that.”
    “Is your aunt Gail Lumley?” Mel asked. She remembered Gail backing up her dad when he talked about the kind of help Maxine offered, but she’d blown her off because she wasn’t receptive to anything but a bag of salt-and-pepper kettle chips at the time.
    “That’s her.”
    Mel felt a smile lift her lips. “I like her. She’s pretty feisty.”
    “Indeed, she is,” Frankie confirmed. “She’s also who called Max to intervene. Just like your dad called us. He wants to help, Mel. So do we. So there’s really only one question, Mel— are you ready to suck it up and take back your life by learning all the things you would have if you’d lived on your own and found out exactly who Melina Cherkasov was before you devoted your life to that jerk?”
    Without warning, tears, hot and stinging welled in her eyes again.
    She made a frustrated swipe at them. “Maybe.”
    “Well, it’s time you figure it out, Mel,” Max said, only this time it was without the cajoling warmth in her tone, which was replaced with a sharper edge.
    “But it’s only been six months …” Which was a perfectly good excuse. Drowning your pain in junk food because you were divorced surely had a longer grace period.
    Jasmine sighed, shifting on the couch. “It’s not like we’re asking you to hurry up and sleep with someone. We’re asking you to get off your ass and get back in the game. We don’t just mean earning a living either. Do you know what you like to do aside from dance? Maybe you like to spelunk, and you wouldn’t know it because you never took the time to figure it out. Those six months you’ve been mourning that dick are six months you can’t get back. I don’t know about you, but Stan the Dancing Man wasn’t worth six minutes of your life let alone half a year.”
    Yeah. A small crack in Mel’s reluctance rippled inside her. “So what do I have to do? Is there a ritual ex-princess hazing?”
    Max shot Mel a sympathetic look. “Your hazing began when you went to your studio and found out it was locked because Stan didn’t want you to have it anymore, honey. When he took you from the kids who so obviously loved you. You’ve been hazed enough, in my opinion, and of all of us, you at least began to try and get it together more quickly than we did. You might be filling the gaping hole of your depression with junk food, but you multitasked and did it while you looked for a job. At least it wasn’t booze and cheap sex. Those are messy interventions.”
    She and booze had never worked well together. Too much to drink made her either cry or sing. Both of which no one wanted to endure. “Is there some type of award or maybe a merit badge for my chaste nature and sober state?”
    Max’s laughter tinkled. “No awards. Your reward is you haven’t slid all the way down the slope. I thank God at the very least I didn’t have to drag you out of bed like I did Frankie. So here’s the score. Take this.” She held out a manila envelope in Mel’s direction. “Look at it. Mock. Look at it again when you’re past rolling on the floor in fits of laughter. In the meantime, I have good news for you.”
    Mel took the envelope with