Chapter 65 Hips Don’t Lie, But My Heart Does
HIPS DON’T LIE, BUT MY HEART DOES
Holly
“This isn’t about us, it’s about the judges. Obviously.”
Holly held back a sigh as she carted her dance bag through the corridors of the studio lot that led to the rehearsal room.
She hadn’t spoken to Nate since they’d landed three days ago and executed the world’s most emotionally constipated airport goodbye.
No text. No call. Not even a passive-aggressive made it home safe.
And honestly? Fair. She hadn’t exactly followed up with a heartfelt manifesto either.
The bitter shame-and-fury cocktail fizzing inside her had her in a deep spiral of negativity, which wasn’t like her at all.
She was usually a silver-lining girl. A manifest-it, laugh-through-it, cry-later-in-the-shower optimist. But where was the silver lining in being the girl who ran the second things looked like they might last, just so you didn’t get hurt if they didn’t?
She really believed Nate loved her.
But believing in things was expensive, and she was tired of paying for it with pieces of herself.
She slipped back into LA like she’d never left at all.
Crutches gone. Game face on. Emotional walls upgraded to premium reinforced steel.
Her ankle might have been healed enough to start dancing again. Her heart sure as fuck wasn’t.
Holly didn’t hesitate outside the studio door, because hesitation was how you ended up emotionally concussed.
She’d already done enough of that in Copenhagen to qualify for frequent flyer miles.
She pushed the door open like she was storming a battlefield, except the battlefield was hardwood floors and mirrored walls and one extremely unfair Danish man.
Nate was already there, leaning against the barre in a muscle shirt that had absolutely no business existing in a post-breakup scenario.
It was giving Footloose reboot, or a small-town mechanic who secretly reads poetry.
His curls were damp, sweat darkening the fabric at his chest, like he’d been there long enough to work something out of his system.
The faint stubble along his jaw made it clear the last three days hadn’t exactly been spa-level restorative for him either.
He looked up when the door clicked shut, and for one brutal, microscopic second, his face lit up. Not politely or carefully. Lit the fuck right up. Then it dimmed again, like he remembered he wasn’t supposed to want her anymore.
Jesus. That didn’t feel like someone gently squeezing her lungs at all.
“Hey,” he said, voice measured, like he’d rehearsed something in the car and then abandoned the script the second she walked in.
Holly summoned a smile that would pass a casual inspection but fail under forensic analysis.
“Hey.”
Professional. Neutral. Emotionally bankrupt, but thriving.
She moved before her body could betray her.
Sat in her usual chair. Unzipped her bag.
Pulled out her shoes. Didn’t look at him.
Absolutely did not look at him. Which was difficult because her stomach had already performed its patented little flip the second she’d seen him.
As if it was trying desperately to remind her what being human had felt like before she’d panicked.
Nate didn’t fill the silence, so she didn’t either. She did her shoes up slowly, like this moment was totally about correct foot support and not about the fact that if she stopped moving for even a second she might do something catastrophically vulnerable.
Like say his name.
… the way she had that night in the guest room of his parent’s house. Soft and breathless, as though it was the only word she trusted not to disappear.
Holly pushed herself to her feet with more force than she was used to using these days, since hopping around on one foot had become a thing.
She walked to the speaker and plugged in her phone, skimming through her playlist for the song she’d chosen for this week long before they’d reached Heartbreak City, population: 2.
Choreography was safer than conversation. She could absolutely survive three minutes of music.
Right?
She saw Nate shift from the corner of her eye. Just one step closer, as though he was testing the ice.
“So.” He said it carefully, like he didn’t trust gravity anymore because it’d let him down too many times. “What’re we dancing this week?”
She didn’t look at him. Absolutely not. Looking at him right now would be practically volunteering to be emotionally audited. His eyes were built for reading plays, and his body was built for full contact. But the open, hopeful expression he was wearing?
That was the real concussion risk here.
Holly kept her gaze locked on her phone instead, or on the clean lines of the floor. Safer to talk to hardwood than to a man who’d said I love you in a Danish townhouse and meant it.
“Cha Cha,” she said, finally finding the song. She held out her phone like it was a white flag. “This is the track.”
He glanced down at the screen, and his breath hitched. It was subtle, but she heard it.
“Are you going where I think you’re going with this?” he asked, sounding strangled as he looked at her, making it clear he wasn’t looking away any time soon. When she eventually caved and met those icy blue eyes, she saw it there plain as day. The thing she’d been dreading.
Hope.
“Probably,” she said, lifting one shoulder like this was a completely normal creative decision and not a live grenade wrapped in pop-synth.
The track wasn’t casual. It was punchy and current, exactly the song that would make the judges sit up and the audience lose their collective minds.
Which meant it was smart, and that was the point.
She wasn’t picking it because of the lyrics, or the subtext, or whatever he was thinking that put this heartbreaking puppy-dog expression on his face. She was picking it because she needed to win. End of story.
Because nothing said we’re emotionally stable adults like aggressively flirt-dancing while pretending you’re not in love.
The Cha Cha was supposed to be bright and flirty, with infectious wink-at-the-camera energy.
It was sparkle and sass and hips that lied for a living, and Holly knew she’d be safe here. She could do this with her eyes closed.
“You picked this?”
The way he said it unlocked something inside of her brain. He wasn’t mad, or making fun of her. Just… searching. Like he was squinting through the emotional fog lying between them trying to locate Holly Martinez: Certified Menace? behind the professional facade.
She kept her face schooled into something HR-approved.
“Judges love a strong concept,” she said smoothly, like she hadn’t just selected a song that was one metaphor away from publicly airing her emotional tax returns. “It’s fun, current. It’ll play.”
Translation: I’m fine. This is strategic. I’ m a winner who absolutely does not have unresolved feelings marinating in my ribcage like slow-cooked brisket.
But Nate didn’t buy it. She could tell from the way watched her as if she’d handed him a puzzle and then quickly hidden the corner pieces in her bra.
“Okay,” he drawled, like he wasn’t completely sure about this. “Show me.”
Why was that worse than arguing? Why was compliance so hot and also emotionally destabilizing? She turned to the mirror before her face betrayed her.
“Start in hold,” she said briskly. “We sell this from the first eight counts.”
He stepped in front of her, hands settling carefully at her waist as though she was fine china he’d dropped once and was now terrified of chipping again. Holly resisted the urge to clench her teeth, because Cha Cha wasn’t careful. It was 110% risk driving a hundred miles an hour in a school zone.
“Okay, no,” she said before she could stop herself. “That’s… not it.”
His hands stilled instantly, like she’d told him he was standing on a landmine.
She exhaled. “You’re holding me like I’m going to shatter.”
A flicker crossed his face. Guilt? Fear? Both?
“It’s Cha Cha,” she continued, forcing lightness into her tone. “It’s not Victorian courtship. It’s chaos. It’s cocky. It’s—” she snapped her fingers near his chest, “—dangerous.”
She stepped in closer on purpose, letting her thigh brush his with contact lingering a beat too long to be entirely accidental.
“You don’t ask permission in Cha Cha,” she said quietly. “You take space. And you take me with you.”
She reached down, caught his wrist, and physically slid his hand higher on her waist. Firmer. “Here,” she instructed. “Like you actually want to be touching me.”
The second the words left her mouth she realized she’d said the wrong thing, but she was committed to the bit now, and it was too damn late to back down.
“Connect,” she said, softer. “If we’re selling this, you can’t look like you’re afraid of me.”
I’m the one who’s afraid. Holly tilted her chin up, daring her inner saboteur to carry on with that thought.
She held Nate’s gaze this time, refusing to let him hide in politeness no matter what was going on (or not going on) between them.
She had way too much riding on this to let it all fall apart on the floor now.
“Again,” she murmured. “This time, don’t be careful.”
He settled into the hold, his hand firm, his body present in the space. She nodded approvingly, then showed him the first sequence.
It snapped. The footwork was clean, the timing crisp. It had bite already, energy that said we are very hot and definitely not in the middle of an emotional civil war.
Nate’s eyes tracked her in the mirror like she was the only variable in the equation.
He never quite met her gaze, just hovered near it as though eye contact required a permission slip she hadn’t signed.
When she rolled through her hip, his grip tightened for half a second when her thigh brushed his again.
And then he corrected himself and pulled away from her.
She hated how easy it was for her to notice him distancing himself.
Because the Nate who cared? He teased. He made dumb hockey commentary about her ‘aggressive little foot flicks’.
This Nate was giving respectful space, matching the tone she’d set like the emotionally literate king he apparently was now.
JesusfuckingChrist.
She cut the music after the first full run-through, lungs tight for absolutely no athletic reason.
“That gives you an idea of where we’re going,” she said, shoving her heart back down her throat as if she hadn’t just professionally friend-zoned the love of her life. “It has to feel natural.”
Nate huffed a sarcastic laugh under his breath. The first audible cue he’d given that this was affecting him.
“Right,” he said. “Natural.”
He didn’t challenge her. He just accepted the version of them she’d offered like it was the only thing on the menu.
And for reasons Holly couldn’t even begin to fathom, it made something ugly and fragile twist low in her stomach.
Because distance had been her idea. It was supposed to be the safe zone.
But watching him give her exactly what she asked for without protest felt less like control, and more like realizing she’d accidentally returned something she might just want to keep.
“Let’s take a fifteen,” Holly said reining in her slow dawning existential dread.
Take the Floor: Hair & Makeup Group Chat (leaked)
Jules: ok so are we pretending we didn’t all feel that temperature drop when Holly walked in today
Marissa: girl I thought the AC broke
Dev: Nate hasn’t smiled once and that man usually flirts with the craft services table
Jules: whatever happened in Copenhagen brOKE something
Marissa: they’re still doing Cha Cha together though
Dev: professional trauma bonding is still bonding
Anonymous Crew Confessional (submitted to production Slack):
I’ve worked six seasons of Take the Floor and I have NEVER seen Holly Martinez dance around someone emotionally like she did today. She kept it clinical. Polite. Ice cold.
Meanwhile Nate looked like someone told him the dog died but he still had to hit his marks.
If this is fake dating, someone forgot to tell their nervous systems.
TTF Wardrobe Assistant Notes (private Discord):
Holly: hyper-focused, barely talking
Nate: following her lead like a kicked puppy trying to earn back privileges
Chemistry: still insane
Emotional status: catastrophic
Prediction: they either win the season or emotionally destroy each other first