Instructions for Dancing(40)

Dad steps closer, like he might need to protect me from X’s good looks.

“Hey, X,” I say, and do a little wave.

Dad clears his throat.

Right. Introductions. “Dad,” I say, “this is X. X, this is my dad.”



Dad guffaws. “Your name is X? Like the unknown variable x?”

“Your daughter already let me have it about my name, Mr. Thomas,” X says, holding out his hand for a shake.

“I should hope so,” says Dad. He points at X’s hair. “Are those dreads religious or just fashionable?”

“Purely for fashion, Mr. T.”

“Go the distance with my name, son. It’s Mr. Thomas,” Dad says. “What about the guitar? That only for fashion too?”

X laughs. “No sir, Mr. Thomas. The guitar is real.”

Dad proceeds to quiz X on his past and future history. X conveniently leaves out the dropping-out-of-high-school part.

I guess Dad is satisfied with X’s answers, because eventually he says: “Am I okay to leave you two alone together?”

“Yes, of course,” I say.

Dad turns to me. “One more joke before I go,” he says.

“All right,” I say, already shaking my head in anticipation of how awful it will be.

“Have you heard the one about the quesadilla?” he asks.

I play along. “Why, no, I haven’t heard it.”

He waves me off dramatically. “Never mind, it’s too cheesy.”

X laughs with his fist over his mouth. “Good one, Mr. Thomas.”

Pleased as punch is an expression Dad uses often. Right now he is. “I like you, despite the ridiculous name,” he says to X.

“Thanks, Mr. T,” X says. Then, “I’m just messing with you, sir,” to Dad’s glare.

“Please think about what I said about the wedding,” Dad says to me.



“Okay,” I say, and I really mean it. Probably tomorrow I’ll be angry again, but right now my tummy is full of delicious food and my face is still smiling at his bad jokes and he feels just like he used to feel, like my very first best friend forever. He pulls me in for a hug and squeezes me tight and I squeeze him right back, wishing in that same small stubborn place that this feeling would last forever.





CHAPTER 33





The Time We Get



X AND I stand on the sidewalk and watch Dad drive away. Once his car disappears around a bend, I turn to X.

“Aren’t you guys supposed to be rehearsing tonight?” I ask.

“We did, but we stopped early.” He tugs on his guitar strap. There’s something sad in his voice that makes me look at him more closely, but he doesn’t say anything else about why they stopped. “We finished up the music for ‘Black Box.’ Thought I’d come by and surprise you with it. That okay?”

I nod. I know we’re supposed to be taking it slow, but it’s more than okay with me that he spontaneously showed up at my door.

Once he’s inside, I offer him some water, which he drinks down in one gulp. I give him another, and he gulps that one too. The third one he just sips. We leave the kitchen and hover in the area between the dining and living rooms. He unstraps his guitar and leans it against the wall next to the sliding glass doors.

“So you and your dad went out?”

I explain to him about our Taco Night tradition, and how Dad surprised me.



“How was it?” he asks.

“It was…nice, actually,” I say.

“Kind of pissed you had a good time, right?”

“How’d you know that?”

“For a while after Clay died, I used to get mad at myself for having fun playing music without him.”

“When did you stop?”

“Haven’t yet,” he says.

I ask him if he wants a tour of the apartment, before realizing that a tour will include my room. Does showing him my bedroom count as taking it slow? It does not.

He follows me upstairs. I point out our lone bathroom and both Mom’s and Danica’s rooms.

“When do I get to meet your sister?” he asks.

“She has a boyfriend,” I blurt out, answering a question he didn’t ask. Why did I do that?

He watches me for a second. “And I can’t meet her because he keeps her locked up in a fairy-tale tower?” The small smile at the corner of his lips says he’s teasing me.

“No, I just mean she’s out tonight. With her boyfriend. So you can’t meet her.”

He nods, but his smile stays where it is. “Your mom?”

“Also on a date. And this is my room,” I say when we get to the end of the hallway. The door is closed. I stop a couple of feet away and stare at it.

He looks back and forth between the door and me. “You going to open it with your mind, or…?”

“What? No. Telekinesis isn’t my superpower. I was just thinking about something else.”



“Okay,” he says. We go back to door-staring.

“Lemme just check there’s nothing weird in there,” I say. I open the door just enough to squeeze my body through and then close it in his face.

By “nothing weird,” I mean no errant underwear or anything else embarrassing. I shove two bras into my chest of drawers.