Dance With Me (43 page)

Confusion warred with hope. “Of course I accept you!” Laurie shot back. “You think I'm going to leave you because you hurt?”

Ed smiled and leaned up to brush a kiss on his forehead. “No. But you do have to accept this. It will probably take us both a while. And you might need to mourn too. And you're right—it might get better. But I need things to change between us, if this is how it's going to be.”

Laurie's throat felt thick. “What—what do you need?” He clutched at Ed's hands. “Whatever you want. I'll do, give you—whatever you want, Ed. I just want to be with you.”

“You have to promise,” Ed said, still holding on to Laurie's hands.

Laurie blinked away the hot tears that threatened to spill out. “Of course I promise!”

“I'm going to need a little more solid promise than that,” Ed said and pulled his right hand away.

Laurie glared at him. “Ed, I
promise
,” he said, and then he saw Ed reach into the pocket of his sweatpants, saw him pull out a small dark box, and his whole world began to spin.

“Will you make this kind of promise?” Ed opened the box and revealed a pair of slim silver wedding bands. “Will you marry me, Laurie?”

The world spun around and around and around, but in the center of it all was Ed, focused and beautiful and strong. Strong no matter what his body was doing to him.

Laurie smiled, half laughed, half sobbed, and took him in his arms. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“I want to make it real,” Ed said, pulling back to look at him. “I want to go down to Iowa, where it's legal. And if we have to, we'll do it again up here when they finally come to their senses in our state. But I need this, Laurie. I don't want to be your roommate. I don't want to be your boyfriend. I don't just want your insurance. I want to be your partner, not for what I can get out of you, but because I want to be with you. I want to be your partner not just in dancing but in life.” He took Laurie's face in his hands. “I want to be your husband.”

Crying openly now, Laurie couldn't speak at all—so he answered his lover with a kiss.

They told their parents at dinner on Tuesday night.

Laurie urged Ed to let him handle this one, and so he had; Laurie cleaned the apartment, made a simple but elegant dinner, and invited both sets of parents to come. They ate and they chatted, somewhat awkwardly, their parents trying to outdo each other with careful politeness, each sure the other set was judging them.

They also, Laurie thought, suspected something was up, and of course, they were right. He and Ed made the announcement over dessert that they were getting married.

Annette and Dick were thrilled, as was his father in his own way. His mother, as he expected, was polite but cool. It was a disappointment, yes. But Laurie didn't let it get him down, choosing to focus on the joy of the moment instead.

The next day his mother called him at the studio and insisted he meet her for coffee that afternoon. Laurie agreed reluctantly. This would be her trying to talk him out of it, he supposed. He thought about skipping it, but he decided to get it over with. He had her meet him at a coffee shop in St. Paul, though, because he was short on time.

But when he slid into the chair across from his mother at the table, she looked at him and said, without preamble, “I want you to perform at my benefit.”

Laurie blinked, then groaned inwardly. “Mother, we've been over this—”

She reached out and put her hand over his. “I want you and your fiance to perform.”

For a moment Laurie could only stare. “It's three days away. You already have a full docket of hired performers.”
You hate the idea of me dancing with my partner onstage in front of your friends.

She waved a hand as if this were all immaterial. “One more act won't be a trouble. And I know for a fact you have something prepared. Something you never got to perform.” She lifted her chin. “I want to see it.”

Laurie shook his head. “Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?”

She gave him a thin smile. “Yes, I'm aware you think I'm a bigoted monster, and I suppose to a point I am bigoted, at least. It
is
odd to see you dance with a man. It's odd to see you hold his hand and ease into his body without realizing you're doing it. And yes, I had a vision of how I thought your life would go, and this wasn't it. But I'm not a monster, and despite what you may think, I do love you, and all I ever wanted was for you to be happy.”

Laurie stared at her for a long moment, and in the end, he could say nothing at all, could only wait for her to continue.

She leaned back in her chair, looking weary. “You were always such a fussy child. Always so exact. You knew what you wanted, and I admit, I admired that. I still do. I tried to help you. Tried to give you what you wanted, tried to support you. Tried to give you the advantages you deserved. Maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I pushed you too hard. Maybe I didn't push you hard enough. Maybe if I had raised you today when being homosexual wasn't so taboo, I would have been more sensitive. I don't know. I honestly thought I was better than most, but I suppose I wasn't, saying that you could be gay but not act on it.

“I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to have the best, to have it all. It upset me when you threw away your career for a man. Except now I'm not sure that's what you did. I think you may have been lost from the moment I took you out east and showed you what the real competition was. You used to have a light in your eyes, Laurie. You used to tell me how amazing a dancer you would be, and I was so proud of you—not at what you would be but at how strong and determined you were. At some point, and I don't know when, you lost that. And despite what you might think, everything I've done has only been to try and help you get that light back.” She sighed, wiped briefly at her eyes with her napkin. “In the end it turns out it wasn't my light to give you. If anyone had that job, it was Ed.”

“Mom,” Laurie whispered, but then he broke off, too overwhelmed to say more.

She reached across the table and took his hand, giving him a small, almost defeated smile. “Dance at the gala with your partner. Dance and show them. Show them all. Show them none of them beat you. Show them, Laurie.” She squeezed his hand. “Show me.”

In a daze, Laurie agreed. The rest of their coffee went by in a sort of daze, and he remained that way even when he was back home. Ed noticed and asked Laurie what was wrong. And so Laurie told him what his mother had asked and that he had agreed.

Ed's eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Holy shit! I mean, that's cool as hell, but Laur, it's in three days!”

“We can do it,” Laurie said, convincing himself as much as Ed. Then he glanced at him. “Unless—”

Ed held up a hand. “No. I'm good. I'm totally good, I swear. This Feldenkrais treatment Tim has me on is weird, but I think it works.” But even as he said this, there was worry in his eye.

“We can always back out if something goes wrong,” Laurie suggested.

Ed kissed his cheek. “Okay.”

They rehearsed that night in the apartment as much as they could, and they spent much of the next day revisiting the routine in full. Laurie made a few adjustments just in case, keeping the impact on Ed as low as possible.

But on Friday night, once Ed had gone to bed, Laurie lay awake, staring at the ceiling. He was excited to perform with Ed. He really was. But something was nagging at him, like there was something more he should do. He went over the routine in his head, trying to see if there was something he was missing, but he couldn't think of anything.

He drifted into sleep, and he dreamed. He dreamed of the routine, rehearsing in his mind. It took on the surreal oddness all dreams did. He and Ed danced on rooftops, on ceilings, across Lake Minnetonka, across the fields beside his parents’ estate. And then as the dream came to a close, Ed faded away, and he danced alone, across the sky, up into the stars, out across the whole universe, dancing until his soul flew free, dancing with a fervor that could take him on until the end of time. Dancing with joy. Dancing with his heart.

Dancing alone.

Dancing.

He woke alone too, in the center of the bed, drenched in sweat, staring at the ceiling. In the other room Ed was banging in the kitchen and humming softly along to the Black Eyed Peas. But part of Laurie was still flying, still lingering in the dream, and in that moment, alone in the bed with Ed humming in the distance, he knew, finally, what he was missing.

Laurie smiled—and laughed.

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Chapter Twenty

resolucion (resolution): the ending of a set of tango steps. Does not necessarily end the dance.

Ed thought there was something funny about Laurie as they got ready for his mother's benefit.

“You okay?” he asked as they headed over to the center for one more rehearsal.

“Never better,” Laurie said, and Ed believed him.

But there
was
something funny about him. For one, he'd disappeared for three hours that morning. And he seemed out of breath when he returned.

“You're up to something,” Ed accused.

Laurie laughed. “Yes.” Then he kissed Ed on the cheek. “Wait and see.”

For the center recital they'd had simple costumes; for the gala, Laurie had given them both an upgrade, though to Ed's delight Laurie was still wearing tights. Something about how he needed freedom of moment. Ed really didn't give a damn, just as long as there were tights. But instead of just the simple white T-shirts they'd picked out before, they were wearing these fancy tops with glitter and sequins in a sassy little dash across the front in colors that complemented one another. They also, because Laurie said so, had glitter streaks across their faces. Ed had thought it would look like war paint, and it kind of did, but it was something else too. It felt kind of magic, and Ed was excited.

He was really glad his neck had decided to cooperate too.

When they got to the venue—a very fancy hotel ballroom with a massive stage constructed at one end—Ed started to get nervous. Could he really do this? In front of all these people? He watched from the wings of the stage as they ate their dinner, waiting for Caroline to come back and tell them it was their turn.

Laurie came up behind him and wrapped his arms around his waist before kissing his neck. “You'll be fine,” he said.

Ed nodded, but he still was nervous. “It's just... That's a lot of people.”

“Two thousand,” Laurie said, not sounding concerned.

Ed turned to him. “You're not nervous at all? You're okay with this?” He admitted to himself he was half hoping Laurie would say no and they could run off into the night before Caroline caught them.

Laurie smiled. “Not at all.” He nodded across the stage. “Ah. Here comes my mother.”

Ed steadied himself. Okay. He could do this. Caroline would introduce them, and then they would go out and take their position, and then the music would start...

Oh God.

Caroline finished introducing them, the room burst into applause, and Ed clutched Laurie's hand, then let go, ready to go onto the stage. But then Laurie was standing in front of him, blocking his path and smiling.

“We'll dance together in a minute,” he said. “But first I'm going to dance on my own.”

Ed blinked at him. “What? What do you mean? We—” Laurie's words sank in, and his jaw fell briefly open. “On your
own
? Like, a
dance
?”

Laurie's smile turned into a grin. “Yes.”

“There are two thousand people out there!”

Laurie laughed. “I've danced for ten thousand. Though that was actually easy, because they couldn't see me very well, I was so far away.” He squeezed Ed's hand. “I want to do this. I need to do this.”

“For your mom?” Laurie shook his head. Ed glared. “Not for me, damn it. I never asked you to do this. Later, eventually, but not like this—”

“For me,” Laurie said. “I need to do this for me.” He kissed Ed on the cheek. “Wait here. Though actually, if you want to go out front and watch, I'd like that very much.”

He stripped out of his shirt, revealing more glitter stripes across his bare chest, and then he strode out onto the stage.

Ed stayed in the wings for a few minutes, still stunned, watching as Laurie took the mic from his mother and explained the switch in programming. The crowd burst into applause, and most of them got to their feet. Laurie shooed his mother away and struck a pose in the center of the stage as the lights went down. He'd already arranged this, Ed realized and hurried out around to the front so he could watch.

The music started. The lights came up again.

Laurie danced.

Ed didn't know the song, but it was no Barbra Streisand. It was some kind of pop music, loud and hard and rich, full of swells and synthesizers. But the music didn't matter. It was just there to fill the air as Laurie danced.

And how he danced. He leaped across the stage. He spun. He danced, in fact, as Ed had never seen him dance before. He saw hints of all the dances he'd ever seen Laurie do—ballet, jazz, and some moves from the tango. He saw the moves he'd taught the kids at the studio. He saw the moves Laurie had done in the dance he'd done for Ed at Christmas. He didn't know most of the names of the moves, but it didn't matter. They were all part of the dance now. And they were beautiful.

Laurie was beautiful. He was lithe and graceful and strong, so strong. His muscles rippled across his naked back and in his tight-clad legs as he moved through the dance as if it were nothing to him, as if his body had been made to move like this. And maybe it had. Even without the glitter, there was something magic about watching Laurie dance—the same magic Ed had felt when he danced with him, but to watch him, to see him perform...

It was more than just seeing into Laurie's soul. It was as if, by watching Laurie dance, he could see into all souls. Into the power of the body. Into the aching beauty and thrill of movement. Into the grace and wonder of the human form. When he watched Laurie dance, he believed. In everything.

When the dance ended, the crowd roared. They rose to their feet as one body, and they shouted and cheered and clapped so loud the din hurt Ed's ears. Ed became aware of movement beside him and saw Caroline standing there, cool and composed as ever, but tears were streaming down her face.