Instructions for Dancing(41)

I make my bed.

Finally, I open the door. “Come on in,” I say, trying for blasé, but it’s hard to be blasé when you’ve just been hiding your underwear.

He stops inside the threshold and does a slow perusal of my room. He starts on the left with my closet, travels past that to my desk under the window, then to my bookshelf and chest of drawers before winding up on my bed.

I feel (metaphorically) naked.

He heads for my bookshelf. I can’t blame him. It’s what I would do too. He scans my books, and I try to guess what he’s learning about me.

“You label your shelves,” he says, turning to look at me.

“Is that good or bad?”

“Not sure yet,” he says with a laugh. “What happened to all these books, though?” he asks, waving his hand over the Contemporary Romance section.

“Just not into them anymore.”

He nods like he understands, because he does understand. He knows what it’s like to have a “before” and “after” period in your life. There’s a pre-divorce Evie and a post-divorce Evie. They look the same but aren’t.



He touches the empty shelf. “Did you have a favorite?”

I don’t even have to think about it. “Cupcakes and Kisses,” I say. The scene with the two chefs making out while making dessert flashes in my head. I decide it’s time to leave my bedroom. X is starting to look edible.

“Okay, well, that’s my room,” I say. “There’s nothing else to see here. Why don’t we go back downstairs now?” That sounded much more casual in my head.

“Yes, indeed, shall we?” he says, mock-formal, totally making fun of me.

We go downstairs and he grabs his guitar before we head out to the patio.

It’s late, almost nine. Lights are on in most of the other apartments. Everyone’s patios are splashed with little pools of orange-yellow light. Someone, probably Mrs. Chabra, is cooking. The night air smells delicious, like turmeric and onions.

We both sit, me in the armchair and him across from me on the sofa. He gives me a small smile and stares off into the courtyard.

Something’s definitely bothering him. “Are you okay?” I ask.

He covers his eyes with his hands. “It’s the anniversary of when Clay…I mean, it was a year ago today. I didn’t think it would be so hard. Tonight at practice we were all trying to act like everything was normal.” He stares up at the sky for a few seconds.

“Want to talk about it?” I say after a little while.

At first, I’m not sure he’s going to answer. He strums his guitar, changes chords a couple of times and strums some more.



“The thing that gets me is how stupid it was. He was crossing the street. Some guy was driving and sending a text. It’s just so fucking preventable. It’s the law. Don’t text and drive.”

He strums just once, loud and angry. “And it wasn’t a kid. Not one of us irresponsible teenagers. It was a fucking adult. Who was supposed to know better. Isn’t that the one good thing about being a grown-up? You know better?” He scoffs. “They don’t know shit. They’re just better at pretending.”

He strums again, but quieter this time. “We had a show. End-of-summer concert series at Barrington Park. He was late, but he was always late, so I didn’t know—” He shakes his head, like he did something wrong by not knowing. “His sister called. She’s the one who told us what happened. By the time me and Jamal and Kevin got there, he was already gone. He died in the street.”

He leans forward, hunches over the guitar so it looks like he’s cradling it. His locs waterfall his face, so I can’t see if he’s crying or not. I don’t know what to do or what to say to help him, but I have to help him.

I stand up and take the guitar from his hands and put it off to the side.

Without it, he slumps over even farther and covers his face with his hands. I sit down next to him and put my arm around his shoulder. He leans into me and I wrap my other arm around him.

I don’t tell him everything is all right, because it’s not. His best friend died a stupid, completely avoidable death, and it sucks, and it doesn’t make sense, and everything isn’t all right.



I don’t know how much time passes, but after a while, he straightens up. I let him go. He wipes his eyes with the heels of his hands and gives a smile somewhere between embarrassment and gratitude.

“I’ll get you some water,” I say, not because I think he needs more to drink, but to give him time to pull himself together. It’s what I’d want.

“Nah, I’m good,” he says.

“I’m trying to give you a minute alone,” I tell him.

His eyes are damp and red around the rims. “I get what you’re doing, Evie,” he says. “And I appreciate it, but I’d like it if you stayed with me. If that’s okay.”

I don’t know how he manages to let himself be so vulnerable. I sit back down next to him, and we watch the sky get darker together.

I ask him to tell me about Clay and he does. They met in a music store when they were kids. Both of them were just starting guitar lessons, and their dads had taken them to the store to get sheet music.

“He was in the guitar section holding a bass that was about fifteen sizes too big for him. We were friends as soon as I sat down next to him.”