“There are cameras,” I said quietly.
He wasn’t looking at me. He had lowered his head into his hands and his fingers were gripping his hair with tension. I could see the agitation straining his broad shoulders, but I couldn’t soothe him because of the no-touching rule. Then again, that rule seemed to only go one way; it seemed like the dancers were allowed to touch as much or as little as they wanted. I stepped up to the small stage and stood there awkwardly, contemplating the pole. I should have observed the other dancers while I had the chance, because I now had absolutely no idea what to do.
“I don’t think I can take another hour of this,” Cabe admitted softly. “Let alone however many nights it’s going to take to get Silas’s attention. If you bring another guy into one of these rooms I’m going to bury him. I don’t care about the no-touching rule. I’ll bury him just for looking at you.”
I had been standing inactive for too long. I needed to comfort him in some way, so I moved from the stage to where he sat, pulling his hands away from his face and planting a knee on the bench beside him. He stared at it as I gripped his shoulders, using him for balance as I lifted my other knee, and then he dropped his head back to stare up at me. It didn’t escape me that he avoided looking at anything between my knees and face.
“I don’t know how to dance on the pole,” I explained, smoothing a hand over his shoulder. “Can you tell me what to do?”
He closed his eyes, his forehead lined with tension. “Just dance.” His voice was so low I almost didn’t catch the words. “Listen to the music.”
He wasn’t even going to watch. I found that oddly comforting, though if I had been a different girl, I supposed it might have offended me. Instead, I knew that he had closed his eyes out of respect and restraint. I smoothed my hands over his shoulders again, trying to thank him and console him at the same time. The music was loud and thumping, a song I didn’t recognise. I wondered if they turned the music as loud as they did so that people didn’t have to speak to each other. I had no idea how many ‘15-minute dances’ Cabe was permitted to monopolize, but I figured that it didn’t matter as long as he paid for the time accurately.
Closing my eyes, I tried to block it all out, everything but the smooth vibration of music and the assurance of Cabe’s body so close to mine. It was in those moments that I realised something astounding.
I had never danced before.
It seemed preposterous, but if I had ever danced before, all memory of the event was wiped from my mind. The slight movement of my body as I tried to follow the flow of the music was completely alien. I began to even block out Cabe’s worry and my own fear. I forgot about the plan in pursuit of a new task—a skill that my body was attempting to master. My mind emptied of all emotion and the familiar urge to strain my muscles, to challenge myself, flooded through me. I followed every shift in the music, every change of the singer’s tone, and as one song rolled into another, my body relaxed into something fluid and eager. This was different to gymnastics. It wasn’t the same as learning the piano, though I had also enjoyed that. This called to something inside me, it clawed its way into my chest and made itself at home as though it had always belonged to me. I had so rarely ever pursued anything for my own enjoyment in life, and I was beginning to understand all that I had been missing. I had been missing my own taste for experience, my own hunger for an activity that sparked joy inside me. Other teenagers had picked up instruments or pursued sports, but I had been so busy trying to stay invisible, trying to stay sane, and trying to stay safe that I had completely neglected any normal pursuits of simple pleasure.
“Little dancer,” Cabe whispered, drawing me slowly back to the real world.
Someone was knocking against the wall beside the curtain blocking us off from the rest of the club.
“Everything okay in there?” It was a deep male voice, probably a security guard.
“U-um, yes!” I called back.
The man grunted in reply and walked away, and that was when I realised… Cabe was touching me. His hands were on my hips; completely visible to the cameras in the corners of the room. I supposed that they were going to allow the touching as long as I allowed it, as nobody burst into the room after the guard walked away. Maybe I would get into trouble later, but I didn’t really care.