“Try holding your breath for two days and tell me it’s nothing.”
He leaned forward and reached into my closet.“What are these?”He pulled out my K360s, turned them over, and looked at the soles.“Tap shoes?”
“They’re not just tap shoes.Those are K360s.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is: do I pay the rent this month or buy myself a pair of custom K360s?”
“Why would you spend that much on tap shoes?”
“I used to dance professionally.”
“Really?”He sounded impressed, and I was massively flattered, because not much impressed him.
“Really.Why are you smiling?”
“I thought I knew you.”
“You did.You do.”
“Could you dance for me?”
“Sure, if you want.”I let him go and stood up.My tap board was leaning against the back wall of my closet, and I had to move a bunch of stuff to get it out.
I went to the living room and pushed the coffee table out of the way so there’d be room for the board.He handed me my shoes.I blew the dust off them, and I polished them with the bottom of my T-shirt till the leather shone, and they looked like they’d been dipped in gold.I felt bad for neglecting them.I slipped them on and tied them.Wearing them felt like coming home.Plus, I was five-nine in them, which was what I usually told people I was, because in my head, I was always wearing my K360s.
“I warn you I’m gonna be rusty,” I told him.“I haven’t done this in a while.”
I felt self-conscious, so I closed my eyes and started my warm-up routine: shuffle front, side, back.I had a sloppy left sideanda sloppy right side.But I hadn’t lost my knack.It was just taking its sweet time coming back to me.
And what was really weird, as I hadn’t gone this long without tapping since I’d put on my first pair of taps when I was four, was that even with my eyes closed, I could feel him nearby.His presence steadied me, like the bottom of a river when you put your foot down, and you realize it’s not as deep as you thought.You’re on solid ground.
I practiced pick ups and wings and toe stands, to see how long I could hold them, and I improvised acapella, like I hadn’t for ages, and the rhythms caught and circled around him and me.
I opened my eyes to see him looking at me like he could see right into the center of me, and it was blowing his mind.No one had ever looked at me like that.Not my parents, not my girlfriends, not Ben, not Bex.
“Jesus.You could do that this whole time?”
“This is substandard work, Eddie.I’m out of practice.”
“Do you have any videos of you performing?”
“I’ve got a showreel my old agent put together.You want to see it?”
“Yeah.”
I found the DVD in my bedroom closet and put it in the machine, then I sat beside him on the couch and pressed play.
He slipped his arm around my back, and I talked him through the clips.Most were from small competitions.I had a lot of explaining to do about my stupid outfits and bad haircuts.The final clip was a professionally shot piece from the last company I’d danced with.He didn’t say anything the whole time the DVD played, just watched it like it was the Stanley Cup playoffs.
When the reel ended, he said, “Why did you quit?”
“I was on a full scholarship at university, and dance took time away from school.”
Except that wasn’t the whole reason.In high school, I’d done a ton of extracurriculars including tap, and I’d still graduated at the top of my class.University wasn’t that much harder, and I could have done both and kept my scholarship.What made me quit was what my girlfriend Jasmine said to me when she saw me practicing, “You look gay in those gold shoes, Craig.”We’d slept together twice by then, so presumably she wasn’t callingmegay, but I stopped tapping after that.I fucked Jasmine one more time, maybe to prove to her that I wasn’t gay.Then I ghosted her, and I felt really gross about it afterward.I hadn’t told Bex about that.I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Eddie.
“Don’t you miss it?”he said.
