“Your bag,” she announces with zero guilt. “Can we play music?”
“You went through my bag?”
“I was looking for snacks.” She holds the speaker out. “PLEASE.”
Luke is on the couch with a book about hammerhead sharks. He looks up long enough to assess the situation—his sister holding stolen property, me standing at the sink with soapy hands—and goes back to reading. Luke picks his battles. I respect that.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m picking the song.”
I dry my hands and connect my phone. I scroll through my playlists. My thumb hovers over the ballet warm-up mix I’ve used for years—Chopin, Debussy, the soft classical stuff that used to center me before class.
I keep scrolling.
I land on Snoop Dogg. “Drop It Like It’s Hot.”
The beat hits, and Lily’s whole body reacts before her brain catches up—her hips start moving, her arms swing out, and she yells, “I LIKE THIS.”
“Stand over here,” I tell Lily, and she plants herself in the middle of the floor. Luke watches from the couch with his shark book open on his lap.
I show Lily a basic step—just a bounce, a body roll, something she can feel. She throws herself into it with the grace of a baby giraffe on a trampoline and the confidence of someone who has never once doubted herself. Three year olds are the best.
“Luke, come dance!” she yells.
“No thank you.”
“LUKE.”
“I’m reading about hammerheads.”
“You can read later!”
He looks at me. I shrug. “You can watch if you want.”
He closes his book, sets it carefully on the couch, and stands. He doesn’t dance. He sways. Slightly. In his own time, on his own terms, with a subtle head nod that’s actually perfectly on beat, and I realize this kid has rhythm; he’s just not interested in showing off.
I switch to Beyoncé. Then “Yeah!” by Usher because Lily demands “a fast one,” and I take a guess. She screams, “YES THIS ONE,” and I’m laughing now, really laughing, and I’m moving—not ballet, not the careful controlled movement I’ve spent my life perfecting, but the other kind. The kind where your body does what it wants and your brain gets out of the way.
I haven’t danced like this in years. Maybe longer. At the studio, it was always about form, about the students, about making sure an eight-year-old’s mom didn’t email me about her daughter’s placement in the recital. Here it’s just noise andmovement and Lily spinning in circles until she’s dizzy and Luke doing his little sway and me in the middle of it, arms up, hips loose, remembering what my body was built for.
I teach Lily a four-count: step, step, bounce, freeze. She gets the first three and replaces the freeze with a spin every single time, and I let her because her version is better.
I’m mid-routine—showing Lily how to hit a body roll, which she interprets as a full-body seizure and commits to entirely—when I feel it. That prickle at the back of my neck. The awareness of being watched.
I turn around.
Archer is in the doorway. Leaning against the frame, arms crossed, still in his workout clothes from practice. His bag is on the floor next to him like he dropped it and didn’t keep walking.How long has he been standing there?
The look on his face makes my stomach drop.
I can’t name it. I’ve known this man for fifteen years, and I can’t name the expression he’s wearing right now. His jaw is relaxed, his eyes are soft, and he’s looking at me like—
Like I’m someone he’s seeing for the first time. Which doesn’t make sense because he’s seen me a thousand times, but the way his eyes move over me right now makes my skin warm and I forget the dance step I was on.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he says, voice low.
“DADDY!” Lily runs at him. “Syd taught me a DANCE.”
“I saw.” His eyes haven’t left mine. “Show me.”
