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I don’t make it to the kitchen.
Voices from downstairs stop me. I hear Billy asking Tanner where his ma keeps the brown sugar, then the noise of drawers and cupboards opening and shutting. I didn’t check the time, but surely it has to be after midnight. Despite being sleepy, I figure it couldn’t hurt to be a little social and see if I can help.
Until I hear the words: “But I don’t think it should be Bobby.”
I stop halfway down the stairs, my hand on the railing, a foot reaching for the next step, now frozen in place.
The words came from Billy.
“Why not?” asks Tanner. “He’s been rehearsin’ every damned day with my brother.”
“Yeah, but …” Billy lets out a sigh. Some container is set down I can’t see, the kitchen (and both its occupants) not fully in view. “You’ve gotta think about presentation here. The McPhersons—”
“Billy, do you even hear yourself?”
“I do! But think about how it’ll look when your brother—who is a real dancer—does a little ‘for fun’ jig with his best friend. Now imagine that you’re an investor, or one of the McPhersons’ rich friends, or a couple of snobs from Fairview or Brookfield who are coming. Are you going to donate a bunch of money on account of two dudes—one a dancer, one not—doing some awkward show?”
“Well …”
“I just think Jimmy should be doing his big number with an actual dancer. An actual trained dancer. Camille Randall should be his partner. She still dances, Tanner, and she’s still in town.”
Tanner lets out a sigh. “Maybe that is the whole point. We’re raising money to keep the arts in the schools, right? What better way to showcase the effect of studying the arts than to have a choreographed number by a dancer and a non-dancer? It gives it style! Flair! Character!”
“I don’t agree. I know these snobs, even more so than your ma knows them,” Billy argues, “and they will want top-notch. If they don’t get it, they’re gonna think, ‘Why do I want to support some medium-caliber school?’ They’re snobs, Tanner. They don’t think like you and I do.”
After a cold silence passes, I hear Tanner take two slow steps toward him. “Billy, I love you. But the only person who sounds like a snob right now is you.”
A scoff hisses its way out of the kitchen. “Tanner …”
I listen to the side door open, then close. Billy’s feet shuffle on the kitchen tiles as he paces. A cupboard is shut, then I hear Billy mumble, “This should be enough brown sugar for a proper apple crumble,” before the side door opens and shuts once more.
Silence finds my ears, thick and empty. I slowly lower my ass on that step halfway down the staircase and stare at my feet.
Is Billy right?
Am I just kidding myself with this whole Jimmy dance number …?
What if I’m not all that great? What if Jimmy is just indulging me? What if I’m hurting the cause by keeping this up with Jimmy, and he’s just too nice (or excited to be dancing with me) that he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings?
I return to Jimmy’s room without a drink, then lie back down on the bed, feeling defeated and unsure. Jimmy continues to softly snore at my side, blissfully unaware of my emotional state. I stare up at the ceiling, my eyes unfocused, lost.
It’s a bad night to get no sleep.
Especially considering that I work an early shift at the theater tomorrow.
Before I know it, I open my eyes to sunlight. I slowly blink the sleep out of my eyes, then notice Jimmy’s arm over my chest. He’s turned over in his sleep and now half-cuddles me in a lazy sort of sprawled-out-across-the-bed way. After a deep yawn, I take a look at my phone on the nightstand.
My shift starts in eleven minutes.
“Fuck!” I shout out, thrown into a sudden panic as I toss Jimmy’s arm off my body and hop out of bed to get dressed. “Wake up, Jimmy! I need to get to work in ten minutes! Fuck, where did I put my suspenders??”
I’m searching under different piles of crap in his big room as he slowly starts to stir from his sleep, groaning and grunting and sniffing loudly. “The fuck …?” he moans. “What time …? Mmph …”
“Jimmy, I’m gonna be late!”
This performance of panic and freaking-out continues for well over ten minutes. Twenty, in fact. It isn’t until nearly a half hour after my shift has started that Jimmy finally pulls up to the theater in his truck with a sweaty, frantic-faced me in the passenger seat.
“I’ll be back to pick you up at—” Jimmy starts.
I slam the door halfway through his sentence, rushing into the theater to clock in as quickly as I can.
Of course, Anthony Myers is working today, and he is all too eager to taunt me from behind his wide concession stand fortress. “Ooh, boy. You’re late. Mr. Lemon is not happy. Not one bit.”
