Chapter 14 – Dean
Life was full of moments you experienced and let go. A class. A book. A commute. A conversation you could no longer recall. Poof. Gone. And then there were the sticky moments. I had exactly one vivid memory of the fourth grade. I was throwing a football with my friend Paul, and I accidentally hit a girl in the head when she walked between us. She thought I did it on purpose. As if I had that kind of skill. I’d actually been aiming several feet to her left. That was the moment I realized my NFL dreams might not actually happen.
Standing in the doorway of Piper’s room and watching her eyelids grow heavy while Grace sang “You Are My Sunshine,” I knew this would be a memory that stuck. I was tempted to sing along, but I was an interloper here. The last thing I wanted was to make myself more conspicuous than I already felt.
After the song ended, Grace stroked Piper’s arm for a minute until her breathing evened out. Then she kissed Piper’s head and slowly stood up. As stealthy as a cat, she leaned over, turned off the lamp on the side table, crept across the room, flipped on the plug-in nightlight, turned on her sound machine, and gave me a gentle push out into the hallway before shutting the door almost all the way, leaving it open just a crack.
“That is quite the routine,” I whispered.
Grace raised one eyebrow. “Someday you’ll understand what it means to do anything and everything for a good night’s sleep.”
“I believe you.” I held her gaze, resisting the urge to put my arm up and rest it on the wall behind her. It was a good thing she couldn’t see inside my head right now. My mind was two steps ahead of a wall lean-in. Grace was grabbing the front of my shirt; I was pressing her against the wall. The bun was falling out of her hair. We were kissing. There was lots of kissing going on. If wishes were fishes, I’d own a whole sea.
It was an outrageous wish, but I wanted to belong here. Not a guest. Not a witness. They’d belong to me, and I’d belong to them. I’d be the one tiptoeing around to turn on a sound machine before heading into the kitchen to tackle the dishes. Grace would sneak up on me, but I’d be the one capturing her in my arms and carrying her to the couch. She’d know exactly what I thought of her in yoga pants, because I’d tell her every time she wore them, and she’d make fun of me for being so easily seduced.
I took a step back from her in the dark hallway and walked towards the kitchen. I should probably leave. My lonely childhood was in league with my raging attraction to her, and together they had plans to conquer the world. Or at least, this world.
“You never got dinner,” Grace said, coming up behind me. I glanced back, taking in her wringing hands.
Her nervousness was the wake up call I needed. Because being here wasn’t about me and what I wanted. What did Grace need from me? This was her downtime, and she’d chosen to share it with me for whatever reason. She didn’t seem like she was hoping I’d leave, but she didn’t know what to do with me either. One thing I knew, I was not about to have her serve me and then watch me eat .
“Protein shakes might be filled with sadness, but they’re filled with calories too. I’m fine. Piper gave me a handful of cheese crackers before we ate the chocolate puddings.”
Grace smiled. “You’re her pantry-raiding buddy now. You should feel special.”
“I do.” I leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed my arms. “Grace, what’s something fun you haven’t done in a while?”
She looked at me like she was waiting for the punchline, but I was dead serious.
“I mean, like socially. The sky’s the limit. Or, this house is the limit, I guess. What do you like to do that’s not Chutes and Ladders?”
“I don’t know. Draw?”
“Draw?”
Grace quickly put up her hands up in a scrubbing motion. “I… I meant Pictionary. I really like that game. But never mind. You’re not talking about board games.” She glanced around and sighed. “We could watch TV.”
I gave her a thumbs down. “The sky’s the limit, Grace.”
She sat down at the kitchen table and rested her head on her arms, keeping her eyes on me. “I’m assuming you have an idea you’re hoping to lead me to.”
I grinned. “Maybe.” An idea had been forming but I doubted she’d go for it. “You and Jessica used to go country dancing on the weekends.”
“You remember that?”
“Of course. You took me and Isaac with you one time.”
“That’s right.” She gave a slow smile. “You two had to wear yellow wristbands showing you were underage. And Isaac’s was itching him, and he took it off and got us kicked out.”
“That’s the part you remember?”
“Well, yeah. You weren’t allowed to be inside without a wristband. It was their one rule. Stinking Isaac.”
“What I remember is you teaching me to country dance.”
“You weren’t very good at it. ”
“Ouch.” She wasn’t wrong. What she didn’t know was how much I’d improved in the past few years. Or maybe she did know if she’d watched me at all at the dance the other night. I’d tried not to watch her. Even with a few stolen glances it was pretty obvious Grace still loved music, and she loved to dance.
But that wasn’t the only reason I’d brought up country dancing or this particular memory. Back then, I was just the annoying friend of her younger brother. I was a placeholder in every sense of the word. There had been a guy at the bar that night she’d had her eye on. Someone much better at dancing than me. Grace had taken me out on the dance floor, hoping he’d see she was open to being asked to dance. And it worked. She came back after dancing with him and gave me a stealthy high five. And then we got kicked out. Thanks to Isaac.
“What do you say, partner?” I straightened from the counter and walked over to her, putting my hand out. This was for old times’ sake. Tonight, I would once again be a non-threatening stand-in for whoever she wished she was dancing with instead of me. “How good is that sound machine in Piper’s room?”
“She sleeps like the dead. But even if she woke up, she’d just join us.” Grace’s lips twisted for a moment before she reached out and let me pull her to her feet.
I released her immediately, channeling my inner chill. I would pretend Grace was just like every other woman I’d ever asked to dance. I’d picture that nice old lady I’d danced with at Isaac and Carmen’s wedding reception. The one who wanted to set me up with a girl from her matchmaking book. I’d turn on my platonic charm and not think about having Grace close to me, or the steady blue of her eyes on mine right now, or even that strand of hair that kept falling across her face, gracing the curve of her cheek. As if aware of my attention on it, she swept it back and tucked it behind her ear.
“Do you want me to pick a song?” I asked .
“Nah, I got this.” Grace pulled out her phone and started scrolling through song lists. “You still allergic to nineties country?”
“I love it. I listen to it all the time. Old country songs are my favorite.”
“Liar.”
From her phone came the opening notes of “I’m From the Country,” by Tracy Byrd. Super honky-tonk twangy. Not romantic at all. Perfect. She grabbed a little speaker from out of a cupboard and paired it with her phone, starting the song over before taking my outstretched hands. “I don’t know if we have room for this.”
I let her go and jogged away to tuck in a couple of kitchen chairs, being careful not to let them loudly scrape across the tile, before coming back to her. “We’ll get creative.”
It took me a minute to get my bearings. I hadn’t done this in a while. I’d had one girlfriend a few years ago who loved country swing and wanted to go out dancing a lot. I’d learned to lead with confidence and not step so far away that I’d have to yank on her arms to bring her back to me.
I kept us in the same star pattern for several turns, lifting our joined hands and crossing the space, occasionally giving Grace a more complicated twirl where she had to run her hand lightly across my back before coming around to the front of me. We were both laughing at the ridiculousness of doing this together after all these years, and I did my best to avoid prolonged eye contact with her. Grace was on the edge of having fun, but she wasn’t quite there yet. I wasn’t either. My fear of messing up or making too much of this wouldn’t let me.
The next song was “Watermelon Crawl” and I felt her loosen up as we got used to each other. Her hips swayed a little more. Her sassy face came out, and so did her full smile. It took me by surprise, it was so bright. I’d be scheming ways to make her smile like that all the time from now on. Grumpy Grace was fiercely beautiful. Happy Grace? Oh, man, I was done for.
“Ready to really move?” I asked .
“What?”
She squealed as I pulled her to me and tucked my arm around her back, launching us out of the kitchen in a waltz of sorts. We’d get no points for technique, but she followed my lead, laughing as we leapt over an ottoman in the living room and kept going. The layout of her house was circular, with one arched doorway leading into the kitchen, and one arched doorway leading back out. We made the rounds a couple times and then Grace tugged on my hand, bringing us to a halt.
“Okay, try this,” she said, taking a step back from me and adjusting our hands. “In, out, in, out, side, side, cross, kick, cross, kick.” She led me through steps which I epically butchered, but she nodded at the end like I’d mastered it. “Good. Let’s do it again. Just don’t kick my shins this time.”
“Did I really kick you?” I was mortified.
She swung into me so her back was against my chest and glanced over her shoulder. “It was more like a nudge of your toe. Ready?”
“I guess I’ll have to be.”
My second attempt was worse, and her laughing didn’t help. I made her show me again slower. Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine” came on, and we sang along while we tried a third time at what was basically a line dance mixed with a partner pretzel twist of hands and arms. “I think you made this up to torture me, Grace.”
“Someone made it up. Not me. That was better.”
“Define ‘better.’”
“Your kicks were in the right direction, and you didn’t step on my feet.” She made me do it again, and I should have hated every second of it, but I didn’t hate being barely good enough at something she was great at. An accomplishment was only an accomplishment if not everyone could do it.
A George Strait classic ballad came on, and I took us back to a regular dance position, with my hand lightly on the small of her back, her hand on my shoulder, and our other hands clasped together at our sides. We stepped back in the beginning of a box step, moving fluidly without having to plan it out.
“When did you learn to dance?” she asked, letting her forehead rest on my shoulder. Her breath was warm on my skin through the thin material of my shirt. I could live in this moment forever, but I was trying not to. Stand-in. Stand-in. Stand-in. I let the words echo in my mind. Placeholder. Placeholder. Grace didn’t want me, but she wanted this. This moment. This night. And I could give it to her.
“I’m definitely better at dancing like this than I am at that other thing you tried to teach me.” I ran my thumb down the line of her spine and immediately checked myself, putting my hand back into position and willing it not to touch her in anything but a platonic way. I’d done it unconsciously, but while she didn’t seem to have any reaction to it, I knew I couldn’t do it again.
“That’s because you’re better when you lead. Don’t let this go to your head, but you have skills most guys don’t.”
“I have skills,” I mused. “I’ll be quoting you on that forever.”
She lightly squeezed my shoulder. “You better not. Now answer my question.”
“I had a girlfriend who loved to go dancing. Very Type A. She never saw a problem that didn’t have a solution, so she took me to a dance studio and made me level up.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Two years ago, I think.”
“What happened? Was she too intense for you?”
“No. She took a career move to Washington D.C.”
Grace looked up at me. “And you were okay with that?”
I didn’t know how to answer without sounding like a heartless monster. I hadn’t loved her. And looking at Grace, I knew with frightening clarity that I hadn’t even come close. “We’d only been dating a few months. I was okay with her going off to find what she needed. It wasn’t me.”
“And now you can dance. ”
“And now I can dance. It’s a useful skill.”
Grace looked away from me. “I’ll bet. I feel like I’ve been tricked, but it’s kind of hard to care. I haven’t danced like this in… forever.”
“Rob wasn’t a dancer?” I hated bringing up her ex, but he was a big part of her history.
“No. Not at all.” She cleared her throat. “Dean, I’ve been keeping you at arms-length for a long time. You’ve been Isaac’s friend and Piper’s friend, but not really mine. And I don’t know what changing that would look like. I just want you to know I’m sorry if I’ve been… I don’t know. Cold, I guess.”
Her gaze was fixed on the far wall, and there was a tension running through her body that hadn’t been there a moment ago. This was a big admission for her. I was tempted to delve deeper, to see if I could find out why she chose to shut me out for so long, but treading lightly was the better option.
“Our friendship can look like whatever you want it to, Grace. Maybe it can start with hiking together tomorrow?”
She turned to meet my eyes. “I’m planning on it.”
The song ended, and we both held still, waiting for the next one. I could live with a few more slow songs if it meant holding her a little longer.
Alas, Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” started up, making us both laugh.
“Spotify’s gone rogue. Piper and I listen to this song a lot.”
She ran off to stop the music, leaving me with a chance to run my hands through my hair and not be okay for a minute. No, I didn’t know what Grace wanted from me. I hadn’t the faintest idea. And yet, all I wanted was more time with her until I figured it out.