There was Tuesday: sitting in the locker room with ice on my ankle and heat everywhere else, as you gently explored the territory under my thin cotton tank, your mouth on my neck. Things were moving fast, but then again we weren’t exactly starting from the beginning; it felt all of a sudden like we’d been dating for years and had only just realized we were allowed to touch.
On the uptown train ride I asked you, vaguely, if you’d ever had sex. I didn’t really get the words out, but you could tell where I was going and saved me from having to get too detailed about the most intimate act two humans could share while we were squished next to an enormous sleeping construction worker.
“A few times,” you said. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait. I didn’t know if—”
“No, I’m relieved,” I said, leaning over to whisper the next part: “One of us should know what we’re doing.” Your ears turned red.
“Girl,” you murmured, “Stop it. You’re going to kill me.”
We had dinner at your house, crowded around the tiny dining table with your mom and little brothers, eating pork and plantains while the Yankees game played on the radio. “I’ve given up,” your mom laughed. “I’ve surrendered to chaos!” But I loved how noisy and homey it felt, and how playful and loving the fighting was (except for Miggy and Emilio, who seemed resolved to do each other serious bodily harm through a series of post-meal couch-wrestling matches). In my family, I was used to silence, passive-aggressiveness, or the classical station on NPR. Deep belly laughter was not a Rogers-Wilson household specialty.
There was no chance I’d be staying over—a triple threat of Catholicism, a shared bedroom, and my parents’ curfew policy made that abundantly clear—but your mom pulled me aside before I left, both to send me home with extra food and to tell me how happy she was about us.
“This just fills my heart,” she said. When she smiled, she looked like you—or, maybe, you looked like her—all dimples and bright, dancing chestnut-colored eyes. “Between my job and his rehearsals I barely see him, and it’s hard not to worry. But now that he has you . . .” She laughed and waved at her face, blinking back tears. “You lift him up, that’s all.”
“Actually,” you said, coming up and giving her a half sincere, half shut up now hug, “I lift her up. If we’re being technical.”
“We’re not,” I said dryly, and your mom burst out laughing.
“Don’t let this one go,” she told you.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” you said, just as Emilio beaned you in the face with a throw pillow.
? ? ?
And then there was Wednesday: Mr. D emailed us to say that he was sick, but you quickly texted that we should rehearse anyway, since we had security clearance to be at school and the whole stage to ourselves, so I dragged myself out of bed (oh, who am I kidding, I leapt. Leapt! Despite the lightning rod of pain in my leg), showered, and threw on my warm-up clothes, skipping coffee since I was already running strong on what felt like a battalion of butterflies madly flapping their wings inside my chest.
The first clue that something was up was Coach, who greeted me at the back entrance with a big smile and an envelope.
“I always told you,” he said. “I said from the beginning, Joy, you need to give this boy a chance. Can’t you see he loves you?”
“I don’t remember it exactly like that,” I laughed. “I remember it more like you wandering the halls, awkwardly forcing people into pretend arranged marriages.”
“You are welcome,” he said with an affectionate wink, handing me the note.
STEP UP . . . to your locker, it read in your small, slanted printing. (But actually take the elevator so you don’t break your foot).
Inside the elevator, stuck to the second-floor button, was a Post-it that read, You give me SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (without the depressing ending). I grinned stupidly at it as the doors closed.
Sticking out of the side of my locker was a second envelope. There’s some GREASE waiting for you in Studio 2, HONEY. On the floor, you’d laid out a little picnic blanket with a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, coffee, and another note: SAVE THE LAST DANCE for me. I’ll be waiting CENTER STAGE.
I couldn’t wait. I grabbed the food and made a beeline for the auditorium as fast as I could, swinging open the heavy door and practically spilling the coffee in my excitement to see you. But no one was there.
“Hello?” I called as I made my way down the aisle. The stage lights were on, but I didn’t see any evidence of you—no dance bag, no jacket. But as I got closer, I saw that there was something out of place. Sitting on the edge of the stage, surrounded by the little pieces of gaffe tape Ethan used to mark the blocking for his play . . . was a boombox.
MAKE YOUR MOVE, read a Post-it taped to the play button.