Chapter Five
Drop It Like It’s Hot
Sydney
It starts with Lily finding my speaker.
I’m in the kitchen cleaning up from lunch, and she appears in the doorway holding my Bluetooth speaker above her head like a trophy. “What’s THIS?”
“That’s mine. Where did you find it?”
“Your bag,” she announces with zero guilt. “Can we play music?”
“You went through my bag?”
“I was looking for snacks.” She holds the speaker out. “PLEASE.”
Luke is on the couch with a book about hammerhead sharks. He looks up long enough to assess the situation—his sister holding stolen property, me standing at the sink with soapy hands—and goes back to reading. Luke picks his battles. I respect that.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m picking the song.”
I dry my hands and connect my phone. I scroll through my playlists. My thumb hovers over the ballet warm-up mix I’ve used for years—Chopin, Debussy, the soft classical stuff that used to center me before class.
I keep scrolling.
I land on Snoop Dogg. “Drop It Like It’s Hot.”
The beat hits, and Lily’s whole body reacts before her brain catches up—her hips start moving, her arms swing out, and she yells, “I LIKE THIS.”
“Stand over here,” I tell Lily, and she plants herself in the middle of the floor. Luke watches from the couch with his shark book open on his lap.
I show Lily a basic step—just a bounce, a body roll, something she can feel. She throws herself into it with the grace of a baby giraffe on a trampoline and the confidence of someone who has never once doubted herself. Three year olds are the best.
“Luke, come dance!” she yells.
“No thank you.”
“LUKE.”
“I’m reading about hammerheads.”
“You can read later!”
He looks at me. I shrug. “You can watch if you want.”
He closes his book, sets it carefully on the couch, and stands. He doesn’t dance. He sways. Slightly. In his own time, on his own terms, with a subtle head nod that’s actually perfectly on beat, and I realize this kid has rhythm; he’s just not interested in showing off.
I switch to Beyoncé. Then “Yeah!” by Usher because Lily demands “a fast one,” and I take a guess.
She screams, “YES THIS ONE,” and I’m laughing now, really laughing, and I’m moving—not ballet, not the careful controlled movement I’ve spent my life perfecting, but the other kind.
The kind where your body does what it wants and your brain gets out of the way.
I haven’t danced like this in years. Maybe longer.
At the studio, it was always about form, about the students, about making sure an eight-year-old’s mom didn’t email me about her daughter’s placement in the recital.
Here it’s just noise and movement and Lily spinning in circles until she’s dizzy and Luke doing his little sway and me in the middle of it, arms up, hips loose, remembering what my body was built for.
I teach Lily a four-count: step, step, bounce, freeze. She gets the first three and replaces the freeze with a spin every single time, and I let her because her version is better.
I’m mid-routine—showing Lily how to hit a body roll, which she interprets as a full-body seizure and commits to entirely—when I feel it. That prickle at the back of my neck. The awareness of being watched.
I turn around.
Archer is in the doorway. Leaning against the frame, arms crossed, still in his workout clothes from practice. His bag is on the floor next to him like he dropped it and didn’t keep walking. How long has he been standing there?
The look on his face makes my stomach drop.
I can’t name it. I’ve known this man for fifteen years, and I can’t name the expression he’s wearing right now. His jaw is relaxed, his eyes are soft, and he’s looking at me like—
Like I’m someone he’s seeing for the first time. Which doesn’t make sense because he’s seen me a thousand times, but the way his eyes move over me right now makes my skin warm and I forget the dance step I was on.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he says, voice low.
“DADDY!” Lily runs at him. “Syd taught me a DANCE.”
“I saw.” His eyes haven’t left mine. “Show me.”
Lily launches into her version, which is ninety percent enthusiasm and ten percent choreography.
Luke resumes his sway. I stand in the middle of the living room with my heart hammering and turn back to the speaker because I need to do something with my hands that isn’t staring at Archer Lockwood’s face.
That night, he suggests dinner out. “I don’t feel like cooking tonight. Let me take you guys somewhere.”
We end up at an Italian place three blocks from the house.
Red booths, checkered tablecloths, a votive candle on each table.
Lily insists on sitting next to me. Luke sits beside Arch and reads the menu with the intensity of a food critic, even though he can’t read yet and will order buttered noodles regardless.
Archer orders a beer. I order wine. The twins share a basket of bread.
It’s nice. It’s really nice, actually—the kind of dinner I used to imagine when I was twenty-two and stupid enough to think about what my life would look like if Archer and I had ended up together.
The kids, the restaurant, the easy back-and-forth of two people who’ve known each other long enough that silence is comfortable. Nice.
Except we’re not together. I’m his friend. I’m here to help. This is a one-time dinner, not a life.
“Tell me about Coach Davis,” I say because I need the conversation to go somewhere safe. “Is he still making the freshmen do ballet?”
Archer grins. “He retired two years ago. But yeah, the ballet requirement is still going. His replacement kept it last I heard.”
“Good. Those boys needed it.”
He scoffs. “We did not need it.”
“You absolutely needed it. You couldn’t touch your toes when you walked into that studio.”
“I could touch my toes.”
“Archer, you could barely touch your knees. You were the least flexible human I’d ever met.”
“I was fifteen and six feet tall. My body was ninety percent limbs.”
“And I fixed you.”
He lifts one dark brow. “You tortured me.”
“I improved you. There’s a difference.”
He’s smiling now, really smiling, and I’m smiling back, and Lily is trying to stack sugar packets into a tower between us, and Luke has folded his napkin into a rectangle, and this feels like—
“Excuse me.”
A woman stops at our table. Mid-fifties, warm face, holding a glass of red wine and beaming at us.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I just wanted to say—you have a beautiful family.”
The air leaves my lungs.
Archer looks at me. I look at him. Lily knocks over her sugar tower.
“Oh,” I say. “We’re not—”
“Thank you,” Archer says at the same time.
The woman smiles and walks away, and I’m staring at the tablecloth because my face is on fire and Archer is looking at his beer, and neither of us corrected her.
Neither of us said we’re not together or we’re not a family. We should have.
I take a sip of wine. Then a bigger sip.
The thing is—I’ve imagined this. Not this restaurant, not this city, but this.
A table with Archer. Kids between us. Someone looking at us and seeing what I’ve wanted since I was seventeen years old.
I had to watch him marry Bree. I stood at the altar in a dress she picked out and read a poem I don’t remember and smiled until my face ached.
I held his babies in the hospital—both of them, one in each arm, still wrinkled and pink—and I looked at them and thought this could have been mine and hated myself for thinking it because that’s not what good friends think.
Good friends are happy. Good friends don’t leave and cry in their cars in the hospital parking lot.
And now some woman in an Italian restaurant just looked at us and saw a family, and instead of correcting her, he said thank you, and I don’t know what to do with that.
“Syd.” His voice is low. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.” I straighten up. Smile. “Fine.” I take another gulp of wine.
He watches me for a second longer than necessary, then lets it go. He’s good at letting things go. He’s been letting things go his entire life—me included.
“So, uh—” He clears his throat. “The season kicks off soon. Things are going to get crazy. Road trips, late games. I’ve, uh—I’ve thought about whether I should hire a nanny. An actual one. In case this is too much, and uh—”
“Archer.”
“—I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck here. This wasn’t supposed to be a permanent thing, and if you—”
“Archer.”
He stops.
“The kids are not going with a stranger. They’re going to be with their Auntie Syd.” I lean forward. “I’m here. I want to be here. Okay?”
“You’re sure? It’s not an imposition?”
“It’s not an imposition. I’m positive.”
He holds my gaze across the table, and his eyes are doing that thing again—steady, warm, full of everything he’s not saying—and Lily chooses this moment to announce very loudly that she needs to go potty RIGHT NOW, and the moment breaks.
I take her to the bathroom. She asks me why my face is red. I tell her it’s the wine.
We get the kids to bed. Or rather, Archer gets the kids to bed, and I sit on the couch and listen to his low voice through the walls reading a book about a bear who can’t sleep.
There’s something about a man putting his children to bed—his quiet voice, the patience of it.
It’s endearing in a way I didn’t expect.
I call Lauren.
“How was your day?” she asks.
“Good. Really good. I, uh—I taught the twins to dance.”
“To dance?”
I smile at the memory. “Snoop Dogg in the living room. Lily has zero technique and all the confidence in the world, and Luke does this little head-nod sway that’s actually perfectly on beat.”
Lauren laughs. “That sounds amazing.”
“It was. It really was. I haven’t danced like that in… I don’t know. A long time.”
“Are you happy there, Syd?”
The question catches me off guard, even though it shouldn’t. Lauren is more perceptive than a psychic.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I am. I think this might be the reset I needed.”
“Good.” She’s quiet for a beat. “I’m glad,” she says. “Just be careful, okay?”
“I’m always careful.”
“You’re never careful. That’s what worries me.”
We hang up. I sit in the quiet living room and think about the woman at the restaurant.
I hear Archer’s footsteps in the hallway. He pauses at the bottom of the stairs.
“Kids are down,” he says. “Luke requested that I tell you goodnight from him. Exact words: ‘Tell Syd goodnight. And tell her sharks sleep with one eye open.’”
I laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He leans against the wall, hands in his pockets. “I want to pay you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Syd.”
“No. You’re not paying me to hang out with your kids.”
“You’re not hanging out with them. You’re raising them while I’m on the road. That’s a job. I’m paying you.”
“I don’t want your money, Archer.”
“This isn’t up for negotiation.”
We stare at each other. He’s got that jaw tick thing going, the one that means he’s already decided and the conversation is just a formality. I’ve seen this face a hundred times. It’s the face he makes when he’s in the crease and someone’s winding up for a shot and he’s already picked his angle.
He names a number.
I open my mouth. Close it. “That’s too much.”
“It’s what a nanny in this city costs.”
“I’m not a nanny.”
“You’re right. You’re better. So take the money and stop arguing with me.”
I want to fight him on this but the truth is my savings account looks like a cry for help right now, and he knows it, because Archer has always known when I’m struggling even when I don’t say it out loud.
“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it, even though the word feels too small.
“Thanks for today, Syd. For the dancing and, uh—for staying. For wanting to stay.”
“Always.”
The word comes out before I can catch it. Too honest. Too much. I see it register on his face—a slight shift, his eyes holding mine for a beat longer than normal.
“Goodnight, Syd.”
“Night, Arch.”
He heads upstairs. I stay on the couch and think about the woman at the restaurant.
You have a beautiful family.
I pull the blanket over my legs, and the house settles around me—his footsteps above, the fridge humming, and I sit in the middle of all of it, in this life that isn’t mine, wondering how long I can keep pretending I don’t want it to be.