Chapter 36
Grace
As the introductory measures played, I mentally checked my dance position, making sure my shoulders pressed down and my neck was long, that I was standing just off center from Luke with my back just slightly arched.
Florian counted off the final beats—five, six, seven, eight—and everyone stepped off to the rhythm of the castanets.
“Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow,” Florian chanted as we moved across the floor, performing two basic tango steps, then a progressive link to point us in the right direction before we transitioned into our promenade step.
“Better,” Florian said when we got to the end of the combination. “But remember, tango is about attitude, and power, and passion,” he said, pronouncing the s with a dramatic hiss. “Let’s try it again.”
Good ballroom dancers make dancing look as easy and instinctive as taking a walk. If you’re doing it right, that’s how it looks. That’s not how it is.
We practiced the combination over and over. I knew the steps perfectly well, but I was stiff and awkward executing them. Florian kept saying, “Relax, Grace. Quit thinking so much. You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself.” But the more he said it, the more I did the opposite.
On the next attempt, when I tried to make an inside turn instead of an outside, we got so tangled up that it’s a miracle we didn’t fall. It was embarrassing. I was sure everyone was staring.
Florian called a five-minute break. I grabbed my water bottle and stood by the wall, feeling disgusted with myself. Luke came over and leaned against the wall, standing next to me but staring straight ahead.
“Do you know what ballroom dance really is?” he asked.
“Something I suck at?”
I was trying to be funny, sort of. But Luke wasn’t in the mood for banter.
“It’s a conversation,” he said. “A dialogue between a man and a woman. Dancing lets you use your body to express all the thoughts and feelings that you can’t, or won’t, or shouldn’t, or don’t know how to say. It’s one of the earliest, honest, most universal forms of communication. If you can see it, you can understand it. Here,” he said, pressing his fist to his chest. “But only if you trust your partner.”
At last he turned toward me.
“Grace, forget about everybody else. Forget about what you think you’re supposed to feel or be. This is a conversation between you and me, nobody else. Okay?”
I looked up at him, finally meeting his eyes.
“Okay.”
“Good,” he said. “Let’s dance.”
When Luke’s fingers closed around mine, I felt a shudder run the length of my spine, through my arms, and all the way to the end of my fingertips, a sensation that seemed to connect us at every point of contact, like an electrical current. And this time, when the castanets rattled and the accordion trilled, I didn’t need to count anymore, or to think about which steps came next, or which direction to turn. I saw it in Luke’s eyes, felt it through the skin of his hand.
Our bodies only connected within the space of a palm print, but it felt like there was only one pulse between us, and one set of intentions. We led each other, followed each other, moved and breathed in perfect sync, like two sides of a mirror, the reflection and the reflected, at once the same, yet utterly opposite. We pivoted into the promenade position and the look in Luke’s eyes stole my breath. I saw in them all the things he had been trying to say and that I had been trying to deny, to him and to myself.
He lifted his arm and touched my waist, sent me spinning into one, two, three circles as he strode alongside. We hadn’t rehearsed that, but we didn’t have to. I knew what Luke wanted me to do because it was what I wanted as well.
On the third turn Luke lowered his arm and swept it sharply to one side. I responded, spinning across the floor and flinging my arm out wide for just a breath before spinning back into his embrace.
He pulled me close, our bodies meeting from breast to hip, as our steps rocked back, and forward, and back again as the music began to slow. I lifted my arm and arched my back, bowing my spine so fully that I could feel my hair brushing against the floor. Surely I would have fallen if Luke hadn’t been holding me.
But he was holding me.
At that moment, that’s what I wanted, that’s all I wanted—for Luke to hold me up, hold me close, and never let go. I wanted it more than anything in the world, more than what was good, more than what was right. And I let him see that. I hid nothing.
The music ended and we stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, struggling to fill our taxed lungs with necessary air and our brains and bodies with the truth of our separateness, fighting and losing the battle to remain in the wordless world, remembering who we were.
We stepped back from each other at the same moment and dropped our hands. The room burst into applause and we remembered there were other people in the room. They were staring at us. I didn’t care.
Florian walked toward us, beaming and clapping, then placing a hand on each of our shoulders. “That is what I was talking about, ladies and gentlemen. That is the tango—attitude, power, and passion!”
It was our fourth and final class.
We thanked Florian and Victoria and said goodbye to our fellow students. As always, the hour being late and the neighborhood a little sketchy, Luke walked me to my car. But when I turned the key in the ignition, the engine wouldn’t turn over. Luke got out of his car to investigate.
“Dead battery,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ve got jumper cables in my trunk.”
As he reached for the door handle, I touched him, curving my palm over the spot where his wrist became his arm.
“Leave it here,” I said. “Take me home.”