All Lined Up
“Fantastic. What is he telling people now?”
“Nothing.”
“Yes, I’m sure Levi just casually dropped into conversation that we dated over two years ago with no ulterior motive. Sounds just like him.”
I let my arm slip off her knee, wrap it around her legs, and give her a squeeze. “I heard you’d dated. I didn’t bother listening beyond that because, frankly, I didn’t want to. He’s a dick, and I don’t like him. I sure as hell don’t like thinking about you and him even in the same sentence.”
“Welcome to the club,” she mutters.
“Okay. Enough of that. Someone promised me I could ask personal questions.”
“What? My love life wasn’t personal enough for you?”
My jaw tenses when she says love life. Of all the words she could choose to describe her past with Abrams, that one is way, way down the list of what I prefer to hear.
And since I don’t have any right to feel territorial, over Abrams or that hipster outside that party or anyone, I choose a very different subject.
“Why dance?”
“Why football?”
“Because it’s the only thing in my life I haven’t dreaded or hated or failed miserably at. It’s what I’m good at, in comparison to everything else anyway.”
Her head tilts to the side, and she sits up, leaning toward me. Her stomach grazes the arm I have wrapped around her legs, and that brief touch is all I can think about.
“Do you love it?” she asks.
“Cole, you’re the one griping at me for working out too much. What do you think?”
She doesn’t miss that I haven’t answered the question, but she sits back against the armrest anyway, taking away any chance that she’ll brush up against me again.
“Your turn,” I say. “You love to dance?”
“Yes,” she answers firmly. She arches her brow like a challenge and continues. “I have fun when I’m dancing, but I also, I don’t know, feel more intensely there, too. When I dance, it’s like I finally have everything figured out, like I’ve crossed over from the ordinary and am on the verge of discovering something wonderful. Inspiration, I guess. But it’s bigger than that. I am bigger when I dance, like my heart fills my whole chest, and it’s leaking out of me with every step and every breath.”
Her green eyes are lit with such passion, and the smile playing about her lips is the most gorgeous one I’ve seen yet. I think I feel more exuberance and life just radiating off of her than I’ve ever felt about something myself.
The way she talks about dance is a little like how I feel when I look at her. Overwhelmed and fulfilled and falling apart all at the same time.
I climb off the couch and pull her to her feet, suddenly desperate to see it.
“Show me.”
She’s still in a bit of a trance, caught up in her thoughts and emotions, and it takes her a few seconds to say, “What?”
“Show me. I want to see you dance.”
Her eyes widen, and she chokes on a laugh.
“I can’t just show you in your living room, Carson. I’m in jeans and boots and there’s no room and no music and—”
I grip her arm and tug her away from the couch and out into the open space where I occasionally work out at home.
“To quote your dad: don’t give me excuses, Cole. Give me results.”
Irritation blooms across her face. “Ugh. Why did you say that? I hate when he says that.”
I laugh, and move my hand in gesture that tells her to get to it.
“I’m waiting, Daredevil.” I stick out my arm, closing my hand in a fist. I throw her a playful smile and add, “You can use me as your bar thing, if you want.”
“You are not seriously making me do this, are you?”
“Come on. What are you afraid of?”
“Making a fool of myself, twisting an ankle, splitting these ridiculously tight pants, giving you material to mock me for the next century . . . should I keep going?”
I shake my head, unable to contain my wide smile.
She sucks in a deep breath and starts in again. “Falling on my face, disgracing dancers everywhere, failing to impress you—”
I cut her off, getting right in her face.
“Hey.” I take hold of her chin for extra emphasis. “You don’t ever have to worry about impressing me.”
“Just because you tell me not to worry about something doesn’t mean I can stop. It’s not a switch I can turn on and off.”
“Then teach me something. I’ll do it with you, and I promise I’ll be the only one disgracing dancers everywhere.”
She hesitates, and I can see her weighing her own dislike for the situation against the desire to watch me make a fool of myself.
Finally, she huffs, “Okay. I’ll show you the basics. But I’m not dancing for real for you in your apartment. That’s just weird.”
She squares her shoulders and shakes her hair out of her face and begins. “So, there are basic positions for your feet and arms and then basic orientations, and everything else in ballet sort of works off of those.”
“And that’s what you do? Ballet?”
She sighs. “Yes and no. I do ballet. I love it. But I don’t really have the training to be as good as I would need to be to do it professionally, and I’m not going to get it here. So mostly I do lyrical or contemporary, which is a little less rigid and more about the movement as a whole rather than body positioning and technique. But most people learn the basics of ballet first. And that’s what I teach, too.”