One String Attached

5.

.Riley.

I was at the studio on Monday morning with James.
Being February, it meant the kids had half-term and so a relative number of them were away on holiday with their families. However, we still had to stay open as other groups of children attended the studio to dance recreationally and so we had decided to run a summer camp instead. 

We'd split the children into two separate groups: one for kids below the age of ten and the other for children between the ages of eleven and eighteen. 
That way, we could also scout for new potential dancers to make up the A-Troupe and J-Troupe who would be competing at several dance competitions, including Regionals, for the next dance season.

Emily was currently studio at TNS and that studio had become an awfully lot more advanced than it was back when we were on A-Troupe - hence the reason why she had different head choreographers for each dance style.
Our studio, FWDS, had competed at Regionals once last season and got through to the final, only to be defeated by Em's A-Troupe. It's almost funny how in this current moment, TNS are our biggest rivals, yet we both tend to help each other out as much as possible. 
FWDS is pretty much a newer branch of The Next Step, thinking about it.

As I'm sat on my desk chair in the office, scrolling through a bunch of e-mails I had been spammed with from the baby ballet and J-Troupe parents, I roll my eyes in annoyance.

There were several parents complaining about the fact I had left the children unattended for one minute just to go and check on the J-Troupers, but three of the little ones had managed to injure themselves, God knows how.
Then there was a recent catfight between a few of the girls in J-Troupe who had been extremely bitchy to one another lately and had each complained to their overbearing mothers about it. Now I was the one who happened to be to blame. 

"Hey, darling," I hear James's recognisable voice say as he entered the office to find me slumped in my seat as I continued to read and respond to the parents' complaints.
"Hey," I say, smiling at him briefly. 

He smiles back at me, heading over and kissing me on the lips softly as he places a cup of coffee down in front of me.
"Thought you might need it," he tells me, moving his finger towards a strand of my hair where he begins to curl the end of it around his finger. 

I chuckle lightly but then it goes silent as he reads over my screen, contemplating over what I was doing before I hear him sigh.
"Those parents really don't give you the time of day, do they?" he asks, looking down at me. I bite my lip, turning my head around to look up at him before shrugging. 

He shakes his head, thinking for a moment as he continued to play with my hair before he places his hand down over the top of mine where it hovered over the mouse of my laptop.
"I'll deal with them, okay. You can go and help Pipes with the younger ones-"
"No, James, this is my job. You don't have to worry about it, okay," I tell him gently, turning my hand upside down to hold his properly.

"I might not have to worry about that but I do have to worry about you, babe," he says, causing my breathing to hitch as he lets go of the loose strand of my hair to turn to stroking the back of my palm as an alternative.  "You've got enough on your plate as it is. Just let me take over for once, okay," he tells me, but it only makes me hesitate.
He continues to look into my eyes whilst I look into his. Did he know? Who told him?

He sighs when I don't respond to him and then he takes one step closer towards me before crouching down slightly to reach my height, and then he takes my other hand into his own as well.
"You're my wife, Ri," he whispers, causing me to bite my lip. What sort of wife was I right now? "We're in this together, okay." He reaches in to peck my forehead lightly before pulling back and pouting at me. "If anything was bothering you, you would make sure to tell me, right?"
"Mhm," I hum, not even daring to look him in the eyes. I just couldn't.

He scans me for a moment, examining my facial expression and body language, before sighing once again. It was clear he knew something was up. James was the one person I couldn't sneak a single darn detail past but I wasn't about to tell him all of this. I'll make sure he knows soon but I just have to figure everything out myself first.