Dance With Me (12 page)

Laurie hovered, looking suspicious. “You hit your head so hard. Are you sure you're okay?”

No, but not for the reason you think
. Ed felt so strange, so exposed. Like he was naked in the high school hallway with everyone giggling. “I think I should just go home and rest.”

The crestfallen look on Laurie's face soothed him a little. “We have ice in the fridge. And I have some Tylenol in my bag.”

Ed wanted to say no and just get the hell out, but actually, icing now wouldn't be a bad idea. “Sure. Thanks.”

“I'll be right back,” Laurie promised and hurried from the room.

Ed paced idly as he waited, trying to talk some sense into himself. He wasn't falling for Laurie. It was probably something that happened to all dancers. Like the Florence Nightingale syndrome with nurses and patients. They probably covered this in first-year dance or something. Laurie would laugh, probably.

It didn't have anything to do with the fact that just thinking about Laurie made him happy. And the fact that he hadn't so much as considered hitting a bar for a hookup in weeks was just coincidence.

Oh
fuck.

“Here.” Laurie was back in the room, coming toward him with a cold pack in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He handed the latter to Ed and held out his palm to reveal two white tablets tucked inside. As Ed swallowed them, he dragged over a stool and made Ed sit on it. “Where do you need the ice?”

“I can do it,” Ed insisted.

Laurie wouldn't budge. “Where?”

Ed pointed at the center of his neck. “There, but—”

Grabbing a towel from the barre, Laurie wrapped up the pack and pressed it gently against Ed's neck. “You can't hold it well on your own. Just relax and let me do it.”

Ed felt himself blushing again. “Sorry I was so clumsy.”

Laurie laughed. “This? This was nothing. Once I injured three ballerinas, brought down two backdrops and gave myself a concussion, all by lunging left instead of right because I was so nervous.”

In the mirror, Ed watched their reflections. Laurie stood straight and tall while Ed slumped in his seat. Reflexively, he straightened, but he still looked like a hulking beast next to a beauty.

Laurie's reflection stared down at his reflection's head. “You're such a natural at dancing, Ed. You have such strength in your form. It's so easy to dance with you. Which is hard to admit, because you're destroying all my stereotypes about football players.”

“That was the plan. I learned how to dance to make you mad,” Ed quipped. But it was halfhearted. He couldn't look at Laurie now without part of him whispering, “You like Laurie. You want him.”

Still smiling, Laurie shook his head. “Sorry, didn't work. I'm not mad.”

But he's not smitten either.

The thought was like a knife in Ed's chest. He watched Laurie's face, studied it, and what he saw drove the blade deeper. Laurie looked friendly. Concerned. Relaxed. But not turned on.

Because he didn't like Ed, not like that. As Laurie held the cold pack to Ed's neck, he chatted idly about the dance, giving Ed gentle feedback about how he could improve, praising what he'd done well, and it might as well have been him giving feedback to Duon about his weight training. Whatever euphoria Ed had felt, whatever emotions had come in revelation, none of it was reciprocated. Not like that.

Which didn't matter, Ed scolded himself. It didn't matter because he wasn't going to fuck this up, wasn't going to lose dancing by being stupid and making a pass. It was probably just what he'd initially thought. Some kind of puppy love for his dance partner. His
teacher
. Which was why Laurie looked at him like he was Duon. Because to Laurie, he was.

So why did he feel like somebody had kicked him?

Clearing his throat, Ed rose. “Thanks, but I should head out. It's getting late.”

Laurie frowned. “We've only been working for half an hour.”

“Yeah, well, I got—I forgot. This meeting. In the morning. Remembered it while I sat here. Gotta go home and get to bed.”

The lie probably sounded as bald as it felt, but he didn't care. Well, he did, but he had to get out of there. He had a lot worse problems just now than his neck. He needed to stick his head in a toilet and flush until he had some sense.

He cleared his throat again and offered Laurie a weak smile. “Thanks again.”

“Okay.” Laurie looked bewildered. “So—next week, I guess?”

“Yeah,” Ed agreed, heading for the door. “See you then.”

“It's the last class.”

Ed stopped and turned around, ignoring the twinge in his neck. “What?”

“It's the last class.” Laurie looked slightly awkward, but Ed couldn't read him. “I just—thought you should know. Beginning Ballroom ends after next Tuesday.” He smiled wanly. “I won't need you after that, sadly.”

Slash, slash, slash
. Ed swallowed against a dry throat. “A relief for you, I guess.”

“We can still do private lessons, if you want,” Laurie said.

But Ed could not for the life of him tell what
Laurie
wanted. Except that he didn't want Ed that way.

“You're probably busy,” Ed said.
Tell me you're not that busy.

“Well.” Laurie laced his hands in front of himself and gave Ed a polite smile. “We'll just see, then, I guess. Let me know next week.” He paused, his smile fading to concern again. “Do you need me to drive you home?”

The pity in his voice grated on Ed almost worse than the politeness. “I'm fine. Thanks.” He tossed a salute. “See you next week, boss.”

For what might be our last dance
, the voice in his head whispered as he grabbed his coat and shrugged into it, and Ed slumped forward and stuck his hands in his pockets, huddling against the wind as he hurried out to his car.

The following Monday there was another staff cut at work.

Ed was lucky yet again and wasn't cut, but he felt lousy for it, especially when the woman with three kids in the cubicle across the hall turned out to be one on the list. He could tell she was trying not to cry as she packed up her desk under the watchful eye of security. He felt horrible, felt like he should offer to have his position cut instead. Except technically they were different departments, so even if he'd have found the guts to offer, it wouldn't have worked.

He felt empty and morose all the way home, so much so that he stayed in his apartment only long enough to find some workout clothes and head down to the center. He couldn't bear the thought of sitting in his apartment alone, thinking about how much he hated work, how much he needed work, how bad he felt for Mary. Of course, heading to the center made him think of Laurie, of how they were about to maybe have their last dance, about how even if they weren't, he had a crush on him he couldn't seem to shake and that Laurie absolutely didn't return. Fuck. He needed to work his body and shut off his mind. So he went to the weight room, put Britney in his headphones, and pumped iron like he hadn't for weeks. He ran on the treadmill, did squats until his calves were on fire, and worked for an hour on the Smith press. When he finally got back to his apartment, he was dripping with sweat, his body was aching, and after a hot shower, he fell into bed, physically and mentally exhausted.

He woke in the middle of the night with his neck on fire.

Ibuprofen worked this time, sort of, with help from some ice, but he was up half the night, and when his alarm went off at five, he felt like someone had hit him in the head with a hammer. His body ached all over, but his neck was the worst, throbbing at him in a very worrying way. By the time he pulled into his parking spot at work, he was cranky and perfectly positioned to have a complete fuck of a day in an environment already rife with tension. As the day wore on past noon, it didn't improve.

He wished to God the supervisors would figure out that when you cut the staff in half and upped the workload, it did
not
get done faster just because you yelled a lot and threatened to cut the coffee budget. The thought of slogging through to the end of the day was bad enough, but the thought of doing this until he was sixty-five was even worse.

He couldn't let himself think about seven o'clock.

When Liam called him at four thirty, meeting the guys at Matt's Bar after work for a few pitchers and a couple of Jucy Lucys sounded so good he agreed. It was a long way from Eden Prairie, but kicking back a little, hanging with the guys before he headed back to dance class with Laurie was probably the best thing for him. Tease, laugh, have a drink or two before he headed over—perfect.

Big. Fucking. Mistake.

Why the hell he'd thought for two minutes that it would be a good idea to sit and listen to his former teammates brag about how far they'd gotten in their training, he couldn't say. He hadn't been thinking about that when Liam had called. He'd just thought about seeing the guys again, about sitting in the corner booth in the back eating greasy burgers stuffed with cheese, about baskets of fries you could drown in, and about chugging cheap beer while the guys made dirty jokes. He'd told himself it didn't matter, that he'd made his peace about football and being with the guys at a bar wouldn't bother him. But one hour and one pitcher later, he realized he'd been completely wrong. He was not over football. Not at all.

It hurt. It hurt a lot to listen to them plan, to know he wasn't going to be a part of it, not just this year but ever again. It hurt to watch them cram down as much fattening food as they wanted, knowing they would burn it off in training and on the field, knowing he had to back off unless he planned on spending the entirety of his Saturday on the treadmill. It hurt like somebody had cut him.

It hurt most of all when he realized he couldn't tell them how much it hurt, that he couldn't ever let them see.

So he drank. He drank until he was a fucking mess and had to lean on Liam just to hold himself upright. When Liam made a joke about how he wasn't going to bed with him no matter how he groped his thigh, Ed laughed along with the rest of them, then slurred something about Laurie in his tights, which no one would have understood the meaning of even if he had used consonants.

But then he remembered. Laurie. Dance class. The
last
dance class.

Last dance with Laurie.

He pulled out his phone, squinted at it, then finally asked Liam to tell him what the fuck time it was. It turned out to be a quarter to eight.

Ed stared down at his phone as if it had betrayed him and not the pitcher of beer. He'd missed it. Even if he was sober enough to drive to Eden Prairie—which he so was not—he'd never make it in time even to catch Laurie for a tango after. And he realized he didn't even have Laurie's number to call him and apologize.

His depression, already voluminous, became so acute he thought for a minute he was having a heart attack.

Excusing himself, he pushed back from the table and went to the jukebox at the window by the door, where he had a prayer of getting reception, though it was still even odds if he'd be able to hear. At first he just stood there staring at the album selection in front of him, sad and lost and drunk, and then he pulled out his phone again, stabbing at buttons until somehow he managed to pull up the number he wanted.

“Vic,” he said when she answered. “Vic.
Vic
. I need
help
. Please. Help.”

“Ed? Is this—Ed, what happened?” she asked.

The floor was listing like a ship, making it hard for Ed to stand up on it. He gripped the jukebox for support and focused on a Steely Dan album cover. “Need favor, Vic. Need Laurie's number.” That was what he tried to say, anyway.

“You need lumber? What?”

“LAUR-EES NUM-BER,” Ed said, forcing his tongue into compliance with consonants.

“Ed, are you drunk?”

“Fuck yes!” Ed shut his eyes to try to stop the jukebox from moving on him, but that only made things worse. “Missed class. Need to call him. Say sorry.” His chest began to hurt again. “Real sorry.”

“You want to call
Laurie
?” Vicky repeated. She sounded highly suspicious. “Why?”

Hadn't he just said? “Need to say sorry!”

“Ed, I'm not giving you Laurie's number so you can harass him under normal circumstances, but I'm absolutely not going to let you call him when you're hammered!”

Ed gripped the phone tightly with his fingers. “I'm not gonna harass him! Told you I missed
dance class
. Wanted to say
sorry
!”

“Ed, you aren't making any sense.”

Vicky sounded exasperated, and Ed empathized. Obviously this wasn't going to work. And really, it wouldn't work even if he had Laurie's number. He'd just sound like an idiot. Again. And right now he felt like one. What, like Laurie was going to make him feel better?

Yes.

Ed reached up with his free hand and pinched his nose. “Never mind,” he said, giving up.

“Ed, are you okay?”

No. He wasn't okay. He'd thought he was, but he was just kidding himself, wasn't he? Fucking around with weight classes and dancing with Laurie like it mattered. Nothing mattered. He'd never feel that high again, never feel the rush like he had in a game. It was just monotony from now until the day he keeled over dead. A half life.

Fuck.

Ed didn't even say good-bye. He just hung up, shoved his phone back into his pocket, and pressed his head against the wall.

He stood there until a waitress came by and asked him, with suspicion, if he was all right. She looked like she was going to kick him out, but then Liam came over, and she smiled.

“Oh, if you're with the Lumberjacks, that's different,” she said.

Her words creating a heaviness like lead in his chest, Ed followed Liam back to the table and vowed to himself that he would keep drinking until he didn't know what football was anymore.

But he wasn't halfway through his next beer before his phone rang again. Ed tried to ignore it, but Butch, who was sitting next to him, hollered at him to make the thing shut up, so he pulled it out to turn it off. He glanced at the caller ID out of habit, though, paused, and drew it closer to his face. Then he pulled it even closer, squinting against his beer-blurred vision. He didn't know the number.