“Ooh, do you hear that?”
“What?” I let my brush hang at the top of the lemur’s right paw.
“The music! It’s a bossa nova. Don’t you love it?”
She sashays backward—some sort of step-touch-step-touch movement that she makes look easy. Of course she knows the steps to this. Of course. If we were to find ourselves at a Self Saint Rage show (against our will, for sure), she would find the perfect way to dance to their cabaret metal. The music upstairs seems to get louder, and its melody changes a little, but Victoria stays right in time. It’s as if the music is fitting itself around her steps. Maybe it is.
“Come on,” she says.
I lay the brush and palette on the floor. “I don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”
“I’ll lead,” she says. “Watch and follow.”
She takes my hand. She grabs my hand and does not seem sure of what to do with it, whether to lace her fingers with mine, or to nudge my fingers at the knuckles to lock with hers, or to envelop my hand in hers. We do the knuckle lock. Her hand is cold and small and I don’t even know when the last time was that I touched it. I think it was accidental, like I was handing her a pen or a spoon and she reached at the same time I reached. Or, no—it was when we both reached toward the stereo of my Pontiac at the same time, me to change the song, her to turn it up. I brushed her hand and she looked at me, and I let her have the control. Sure sure, I was totally going to turn up that song, too.
Step forward, step together, step back, step together. That’s what we’re doing. It’s not that hard.
“You’ve got it!” Vic says.
I think I do.
I slip my fingers between hers without losing the rhythm. Step forward, step together. Maybe I am leading now.
The song flows into a different one with the same beat, and Victoria tilts her head upward, as though the musicians are sending a message down to her. “Yep, I thought I recognized it. I remember my parents listening to this song. It’s called ‘No More Blues.’”
“I like it.” I tighten my grip on her hand, which is getting warmer.
“Does this always happen here?” she says, looking at our hands, and then at my face.
“No. You make everything here better.”
And it is true, isn’t it? It is the truest thing I have said all night. The music is brilliant and I have almost finished the red, and I have new ideas for my work, and I can dance a little bit, and the floors are still and solid and are holding us, and Victoria is my best friend and I love her. Her hair is falling out of its silver clips, and I think it is the first time I have ever seen her dance with a curtain of dark brown alternately hiding and revealing her face. Her eyes are shining, and her mouth is not caught in its usual stage-ready smile, but instead lazy and heart-shaped, so much like it has looked in the morning of all those times I have slept in her bed or she in mine, being and breathing but not touching. And this—this. Her tired satin dress and the step forward and together and back and her falling hair—is this my best chance, my only chance?
Step forward, step together.
Our lips meet.
She is leaning into me, and with the hand that is not holding hers, I touch her side, gently, the way you touch something you weren’t allowed to for a long time. And her lips move against mine. She is kissing me back. She is kissing me back.
I think I could live here.
thirteen
AT SOME UNIDENTIFIED hour of the early morning, there is nothing to do but go home. I was hoping Victoria would sleep in the car on the drive back, but instead she is looking at me sideways from the passenger seat, and not in a way that makes her meaning apparent. She might be thinking, I can’t believe I kissed a girl who paints lemurs. Or she could be thinking, I can’t believe I kissed Mercedes. Or, I can’t believe I only kissed Mercedes once. We should have lain down and made out for hours, and instead I quietly let her go back to painting—God! Or maybe just, I am so tired and weird things are happening and I’m considering telling Mercedes to take me back to my house so that I can sit in my room and listen to Broadway songs until sunrise while trying to sort out everything in my head.
There are a thousand ways this could go. More. I don’t think we know all the possibilities anymore. They are flying at me from all directions—each streetlight I pass, each pair of taillights, they send new possibilities careening my way, some of them almost too much to let in as I drive from the key to the mainland. I let them in, I breathe them out. They’ll fall on her and cover her and maybe she’ll start to know them, too.
Firing Squad plays on the stereo. I open the windows, and the car is filled with cool, salty air. We head on toward the Moreno-McBride residence.
She stands in the dark living room holding the little overnight bag she always brings over, the one that has dedicated pockets for everything and seems to keep her clothes unwrinkled, and she smiles with half her mouth. Sleepy, crooked, unsure. Oh God, I have completely confused her, to the point that she doesn’t even know where we are going to sleep. I lead her to my mother’s room, mostly because that’s still where my toothbrush is, and when I come out of the bathroom she has already made the satin dress disappear, and she is wearing yet another American Ballet Theatre T-shirt and a pair of gray shorts. My head is fuzzy and my eyes burn and my fingers should be paint-stained but they’re clear. We left the door to the studio unlocked and we never did go upstairs to find the music and also I kissed Victoria Caballini.
Light off. Covers. Dark hair and a disproportionate sketch of a ballerina in my face. I want to catch her in that floaty place between wake and sleep.
“Vic.”
“Hmm.”
“I didn’t plan that, okay?”
“Okay.”
As though our trip to the Estate tonight transported us to an alternate universe, I sort of want to call up Connor Hagins and ask him what did he do, how did he get this amazing girl. I feel like I know the answer, know the story, but I’ve stuffed it in the back of the mental folder labeled Caballini, Victoria: romantic life of. And besides, to get a girl seems like she was tricked or trapped somewhere along the way. That’s not what I want. I don’t want Victoria to wake up wondering why she kissed me. I want it to be her truth that this place next to me is the warmest place there is.
I am closer to her. I touch my nose to her hair. She doesn’t move.
I could see if she wants to kiss me again. I could tell her I think she’s perfect, and ask her is this how it begins, is she going to be my girlfriend now? No—that’s too much. I just want to be in this time with her, to live as long as I can in the same night I danced with her. Okay, I think she’s asleep now, but maybe I can make up for her unconsciousness by keeping hold of this moment as long as I can. Holding on, holding on.