Instructions for Dancing(26)

“Too bad there aren’t any of those around,” I say.



Then I remind myself that he’s probably had no less than ten thousand girlfriends. I wonder if he’s ever loved any of them, if he’s ever had his heart broken. I know for sure he broke Jess’s heart while cycling my bike around studio five.

Like I should’ve done several sentences ago, I change the subject. “What was that last song you played? The one that’s not finished yet?”

Before he can answer, the waitress drops off our food. Chicken and waffles for him. Waffle with berries for me.

He bites into his chicken. “Damn, that’s good.” He devours it in about two minutes flat. “Sorry,” he says, leaning back and wiping his hands. “Being onstage makes me hungry.” He watches me construct the perfect forkful of waffle, strawberry syrup and whipped cream.

I pull my plate in closer. “Don’t even look at my food,” I warn him.

“Don’t worry, I’m good now,” he says, leaning back. “The last song was ‘Black Box.’?”

“What’s it about?”

“A lot of things. But mostly my pops. We used to be close, but things have been messed up with us since Clay died. I don’t see the world the same way I used to, and now it’s like we can’t understand each other anymore.” His voice is a mixture of regret and confusion and anger.

“What happened?”

“We don’t agree on the direction of my future,” he says, using a deep, imperious voice, like a judge pronouncing a verdict.

I take a guess. “He doesn’t want you to be a musician.”



“He says it’s fine for a hobby.” He picks up his fork, drags it across his plate and then puts it back down. “The messed-up thing is, he’s the one who got me my first guitar. He gave me my first lessons. We even had our own band when I was little.”

“You did?” I picture a younger version of X, which is basically the same as this version of X except shorter and rounder and with smaller hands.

“We called ourselves the WoodsMen. Get it? Because my last name is—”

I interrupt him. “Xavier Woods, I’m not an idiot.”

“My middle name is Darius,” he says, grinning. “I’m telling you so you can yell my full name when you’re yelling at me.”

“Thanks, that’s very thoughtful of you, Xavier Darius Woods,” I say, laughing.

“Anyway, me and Pops would do these little concerts for the rest of the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas and stuff.”

“What kind of music?”

“I like to think we defied genre labels,” he says.

“That means you were terrible, doesn’t it?”

He laughs. “Worse than terrible.”

A waitress comes over and refills our water glasses.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to bring us down with all that about my pops,” he says after she leaves.

“No, it’s okay. I know how you feel. I used to be close to my dad too.”

“Yeah? What happened with you guys?”

I hesitate. The only other people who know about this are Martin, Sophie and Cassidy.

“No worries if you don’t want to get into it with me,” he says. But I do want to talk about it with him. He knows what it’s like to miss the way things used to be.



“He cheated on my mom and I caught him doing it.”

He sits up straight. “Jesus, Evie.”

I tell him the whole story. It’s hard to look at him and talk about it, so I look down at my plate instead. “Anyway, it’s been around six months since I last saw him.”

“Does your mom know?”

“Yeah, but my sister doesn’t.”

“Jesus,” he says again, but quietly.

“The weirdest thing is, Mom and Danica both seem fine. It’s like this big bomb went off in our lives and I’m the only one who got hurt.”

I make myself look up at him. His eyes are full of understanding. “Well,” he says, “I still think I win the sad story contest.”

At first I’m too shocked to react. That is not what I expected him to say. I expected sympathy and comforting. I didn’t expect him to judge how sad my story was against his.

He busts out laughing, and then I do too.

After a while we stop laughing, but our eyes meet and the moment lingers until I realize what’s happening and look away. “Why don’t you sing the song for me?” I ask.

He looks confused for a second but then pulls out his phone and plays the backing music track.

He starts singing. “Everything burns Everything crashes And something something some-other-thing.” He stops with a laugh. “I don’t know that third line yet,” he says.



“You’re very good at mumble-singing, though,” I say. “You just need something to rhyme with crashes.” I twirl my braids around my finger and think until a line comes to me. “And our love just turns to ashes,” I say.

“Oh, that’s good.” He types it into his phone and looks back up at me. “All right, the next line slows the tempo way down, but I only have half of it. “You’re the black box, something, some-other-thing—”