I looked around, peering into the wings with a smile so wide my cheeks hurt. “OK!” I yelled. “I’m about to press play, so you’d better be ready with your Magic Mike striptease! If I don’t hear Ginuwine, I’m walking out!” I set down the coffee and tossed my bag onto a front-row seat. Then I followed instructions.
The sound that filled the auditorium nearly made me weep. I would have known those bouncy beats and claps anywhere. I’d probably listened to them a hundred times, over and over, as I’d twirled around on my rug in stocking feet, my face stoic with focus, imagining I was a very serious prima ballerina who just happened to prefer late-80s pop hits to Tchaikovsky.
By the time Whitney unleashed the effervescent “Whoooo!” that started the music in earnest, you appeared, in a black tank top and dance pants, taking a graceful leap that ended with you sliding across the stage toward me on your knees. You got up grinning and shimmying your hips, beckoning me with one finger. When you started mouthing the words, I threw my head back and laughed.
“What?” you asked, lifting me up onstage and guiding me into a penchée. “You’re not the only one with a mom who hoards her golden oldies.” I spun around and kissed you, but you broke away after a few seconds.
“Later,” you laughed, “This is a rehearsal.”
You meant it. We basically ran through the entire pas de deux, modifying the ankle-busting moves and adjusting the pacing slightly for the pulse-pounding beats of 1987’s #4 Billboard Hot 100 hit. It was exhilarating, all that childhood nostalgia crashing up against the first blush of love in some kind of retro, high-impact cardio fever dream.
“Think we should tell Adair to change the music?” you asked when it was over, catching your breath long enough to deliver a slow, knee-weakening kiss.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “She’ll definitely go for it.”
“This dance, it is love! It is passion! It is synthesizers!” you joked.
“It is lust,” I said, before I could help myself. We looked at each other for one electric minute, and then you asked, “Are your parents home?”
? ? ?
They weren’t, but a thick envelope from Barnard was, propped up under the narrow row of mailboxes it was too wide to fit in.
“That’s good news, right?” you asked, reacting to my crestfallen face.
“It’s good news for my dad,” I said. “It might be good news for me if I wanted to go.”
“That’s the thing,” you said, kissing my neck, “You don’t have to. The great thing about life is that you get to choose what you want to do.”
“Not for us,” I said, squirming out of your grasp. I was more upset than I wanted you to know. I could already hear the dinner table conversation, packed with tense buzzwords like opportunity and privilege. I could practically feel the weight of my father’s elbows on the table as he gesticulated, trying to make me see how foolish I was for taking a chance over a guarantee. “We don’t get to choose a ballet company, they have to choose us.” I swallowed hard, reluctantly picking up the envelope. “What if no one chooses me?”
“I choose you,” you said.
“You know what I mean.” I pressed the elevator button. It was stopped, indefinitely it seemed, on the fourth floor—one more thing that felt close enough to touch but just out of reach.
“I do know, but listen—” You spun me around and made me look at you. “You can’t worry so much about the future. It’s coming, it’s gonna happen, and it’ll be beautiful and terrible but everything will be OK.”
“Beautiful and terrible, huh?” I smiled, impressed with your off-the-cuff poetry. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s from a page on my mom’s 365 Quotes of Faith calendar,” you admitted sheepishly.
“Huh.” I pressed the button again; this time the doors sprang open. “That where you get all your pickup lines?”
“Not all of them. The Book of Job is pretty dark, makes for awkward sexting.”
I shot you a particularly charged side-eye, and you laughed.
“Hey,” you said, “I’m kidding, but I know this is serious for you, so if you want me to go . . .”
“No.” I looked up at your face, marveling for the hundredth time in days how I could have looked at it for so many years and not felt the spine-tingling tremor of longing I was feeling just then. I pulled you in and kissed you as the elevator made its slow ascent, lingering on every floor like it had a mad crush. You finally pulled back, your eyes warm and dark, searching.
“You sure?” you asked.
I nodded, still holding you, dizzy from adrenaline. “I need the distraction.”
When the elevator doors dinged opened again, I led you inside my apartment and tossed the thick Barnard envelope on the dining room table, unopened.
“Are you sure?” you asked again as we paused outside my bedroom door. A breeze was coming in through the open window, and the chimes I’d hung out on the fire escape crashed together, releasing a tumble of notes that washed over me like a sweet fever—like your touch on my skin.