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After a little more subtle banter, I win. I wasn’t going to lose this one. There’s too much at stake. The car ride this time of day is about ten minutes. It is damn near impossible to hide thenerves I have coursing through my veins. She has no idea what I have waiting for her.
Our cab driver drops us off at Dylan’s loft. It feels like a lifetime since I was here last. I asked her to get her dance bag, but she seems intent on leaving it behind. I’m going to have to take matters into my own hands. Tape. Her favorite rehearsal costume. Hair tie. Music.
I walk along the ballet bar in her home studio and have another one of those memory flashes of our waltz here. My left hand reaches up to touch the patch of peach fuzz on my head where my hair is growing back in slowly.
“Is your head hurting?” When I look up, the panic on her face is real.
“No, Viper. I’m fine. Do you have everything you need?”
“You’re alive. Yes, I’m good.”
Setting the dance bag strap on her shoulder, I seal it with a kiss. “I’m not leaving you alone. I promised.”
She pulls the door open with a level of irritation. “People break promises all the time, Eli.”
“That’s very cynical, even for you.”
Dylan is very quiet as we cross campus. There’s a damp chill in the air that I can’t ignore. I pull her closer to me as we walk. Her head goes on a swivel to see if anyone is around.
“Beautiful, we’re not hiding anymore. I refuse. I thought you were gone. You thought I was gone. There’s a lesson in there about wasted time. Don’t you think? Dylan, I want you to come with me somewhere right now. No questions. No arguments.”
“You expect me to not have questions?” She cackles. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Fair enough. The answer to where we're going is the auditorium. The answer to why is because I want you to dance for me.”
We march up the steps to the performance hall and enter from the side door, not the back of the house. The lights are fully up over the stage, so the audience is completely obscured. I ask her to get changed and meet me center stage as soon as she is. That should give me just enough time.
I hook up her music to the wireless system and hold her MP3 player in my pocket. Just as I get to the top of the stairs, stage left, she appears. She looks just as she did the first time I saw her dance on this stage. “Damn, you’re stunning.”
“Eli, you’ve seen me in this outfit a thousand times.”
“Each time is better than the last. Are you warmed up?”
“I mean, as much as I’m going to be I guess. I’m not going to really go hard.”
“Yes, you are. You haven’t danced in nearly a month. I’m not alright with that. We made promises, Viper. You and me. You once told me any relationship you were to be in wouldn’t allow the other person to sacrifice their dreams or compromise your own. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing? Sacrificing yourself?”
“You could have died because I was selfish.”
“No!” I shout. “I had an accident. Besides the lovely side effects, I’m glad it happened.”
She shoves my chest. “Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that to me again.”
“That’s it. Get passionate. Feel. That’s what I want. I want to feel your spirit and fire inside me.” I cue up Sara Bareilles. It’s the same song she was fighting her way through the day of my accident.
“Shut it off.”
“No, Viper. This is what I want to see you dance to. I’m not the gravity. Dance is. Move. Move through it. Move for me.” I turn the volume up, so it rings and pings from every single corner of this vast space. “Move, Dylan!”
I start the music again. The first chords, she’s frozen. As soon as the lyric starts, she faces me. She reaches out for me with open extended fingers in both hands. The more they reach, the more they shake. Just when she can’t reach anymore, all the tension leaves them, and they fall in defeat at her sides.
Her head bows and rolls to the left as her body follows in a canon. Her hands wrap across her chest in a sheer statement of pain. She’s clawing at the dance top she has on, and I can hear the fabric snap back on her skin as she lets go.
The cut of this music has a quick build. She takes the three steps in time with it and launches her body into the air. She lies completely out in midair before she tucks and rolls to her side. She ends on her knees; her toes are in full point behind her. Dylan arches her right side to the floor, extending her right leg to the sky. As she does, she pounds her fist into the floor over and over again.
She pushes off the floor through her feet, winding her body to spin and spot one, two, three, four, five quick times before she allows her body to go limp like she’s injured. I know how much pain she’s in. She’s been in pain since the gala.
We haven’t spoken about it. We haven’t addressed it. She doesn’t want to upset me. What she doesn’t understand is I’ve felt it all. If I had the ability, I’d stand next to her and do what she’s doing. I’d put it out there. Get it out there just like that. It’s moments like these when I’m truly jealous of the instrument that is her body.
