“Come Away with Me” by Norah Jones played through the speakers after everyone got warmed up and paired off.
“Think this is the one?” Delly asked from beside me with her signature bright smile.
“Could be,” I replied. “Though they seem to favor the classics more.”
“Pssh. This is basically a classic.” She sighed dramatically. “Oh, how it makes me yearn, Miss Indy.”
I snorted and took a sip of water, hiding my smile.
We were trying to pick one perfect song for the biggest fundraising portion of the gala—the “dance card.” It had been Miss Lenny’s idea to create dance cards foreveryone attending the gala, and it’d been Liem’s idea to ask his brother Vinh, who happened to be a software engineer and very into all things computers, to create a website where people could reserve dance card spots by providing a donation to the greenhouse project.
It was the first Saturday of June, and this was our fourth ballroom dance class. May had passed in blurry strokes of planning for the gala, my phone calls, emails, and meetings with Ari so frequent that it felt like one long conversation that never ended.
The same went for the notes between me and Adair. We hadn’t gone a day without writing or answering a new note for each other. Even after so many weeks, my heart still jumped in excitement when I saw one. And when I saw him.
He was part of most of those moments. The crystal-clear ones that punctuated the blur of productivity. The ones I replayed in my mind so often that they had a real chance at becoming core memories, and the slightest thing could make me fall into a reminiscence of them.
The faintest whiff of coffee, and I heard Adair’s knock on my bedroom door. He’d started that routine after he’d somehow found out that my drink was lukewarm by the time I’d gotten to it. So now, a single knock told me it was ready. I’d tried to tell him it wasn’t necessary, that it was too much trouble, too much expense, and the next morning he hadn’t gotten one. The disappointment had been unexpected and visceral, but I’d shoved it down nicely, like the pro that I was at such things.
My eyes flicked to the studio door as I remembered finding a sweet tea waiting for me right outside it that day, with a little ballerina duck waiting beside it.
Wednesday nights, I cooked dinner. On the weekends, the Jacks siblings took turns with breakfast.
I remembered every meal, every moment of shared laughter, like when Delly marched to her room with her new blackout curtains and hung them as aggressively as a person could hang curtains.
At each meal I had in the cafeteria, I colored on a napkin beside Dad and remembered his easy smile as he shared inside jokes with Wilbur.
At night, when anxiety lay beside me and I couldn’t sleep, I’d take my stack of notes from my bedside drawer and lay them across my comforter. Then I’d weigh the things I’d learned from them about Adair against what I’d observed myself.
I didn’t have braces until I was twenty.
I pictured his smile.
Yes, the orthodontist tried to file my canine down. I stopped him.
I imagined not seeing that sharp tooth when he played card games with Delly at night, biting his lip as he tried to keep a poker face, and was glad he’d campaigned to keep it.
Our parents aren’t worth mentioning.
He never mentioned them.
Once I was relaxed enough to get under the covers and try to sleep again, I’d imagine him lying underneath that gorgeous quilt just a few feet away, and that usually soothed me to sleep.
Among other things.
“You’ve got it!” Delly encouraged, bringing me back to the room as she guided a mom-and-daughter pair with a happy giggle. She’d caught onto it all so fast that she’d become my assistant of sorts, breezing around the room and helping students remember their steps in that easy way of hers.
Like Mrs. Hammond, who had better technique than any of us but tired easily and sometimes lost interest tenminutes into class. But she still showed up every week with her husband, who helped her navigate the highs and lows.
So far, I’d kept things simple, sticking to a rotation of songs in 3/4 time, but today I encouraged the class to start improvising, following their partner’s lead.
It was going… not great, exactly, but Delly carried the morale of the class on her shoulders, helping everyone laugh through their missteps.
Delly met my eyes across the room, an automatic smile coming to her face, her resemblance to Adair making it almost hard to look at her.
But it did make me remember thelooks.The glances across the kitchen table that lasted longer and longer. The unmistakable feel of having his dark-framed hazel eyes on me when he thought I wasn’t looking.
Miss Lenny squeezed my shoulder, and my heart skipped.
