Page 60 of Harbor in the Tempest

“Oh my God.” She drops the bundle in her arms lower. “You love her.”

I stand before the woman I once loved, as I slide on my leather jacket and say it for the first time out loud clearly, “Yes. I love her.”

My bike is the quickest mode of transport I can get to. I abandon Tori to shower, change, and close the door behind her. I ask my building security to lock the apartment after they see her leave. I am on a singular focus. I need to get to Dylan.

There’s so much damn traffic for a Sunday morning. The sound system in my helmet is giving me a string of beats that’s only making me more impatient. I weave from lane to lane,hoping to gain a few seconds. If only I hadn’t gone on my run, I would have been there to open that door. If only I’d just driven Tori home last night instead.

I pound on Dylan’s door for a couple of minutes before I run over the other places she could possibly be in my mind. There was only one sure bet. The performance hall. I race across campus and violate several laws doing so. I ride up the wrong way on a one-way because it’s faster. I park on the sidewalk because I don’t want to waste time looking for a space.

The side door is propped open with a rock. No one would notice unless you really looked. Quietly, I pull the door open. The music is loud, louder than she ever plays it. She likes it loud enough to feel it in her soul but not shake it to the ground.

I recognize the artist immediately. It’s Sara Bareilles. She’s not an artist Dylan usually picks. She loves music that rides the border between playful and angst or a hard driving beat. This song feasts in the middle of sadness. It’s minor chord after minor chord.

The side door leads to the right stage wing. I slide my sunglasses into the front of my T-shirt while I undo the chinstrap of my helmet. Finding an opening between the curtains, I peel back the heavy velvet while never taking my eyes off her. Her movement is pensive and broken. I’ve never seen her move without a slickness to it. She’s usually smooth, like a hot knife through butter.

This is very different. Her hair is even more wild than usual as she slices through the air with her fists. She growls and starts the music over. The beginning of the song haunts with several chords before Sara’s voice cuts through. The first lyric talks about the pull of the woman to another. It’s about how it happens again and again. It’s eventual. Like gravity.

She pushes herself from standing center stage off the soles of her feet, into the air with simple points of her toes. Dylanagain doesn’t land with the subtlety I’m used to seeing in her movement. It’s heavy, like she has an anchor attached to her. She wraps her arms around herself but claws at her skin to move that touch away.

She’s following the lyrics with her movement. Drowning in love is captured with a deep bend to her back that allows her hair to graze the floor. She trickles her fingers over her neck then takes a hold of her ripped crop top and pulls on it like the imaginary water is eating at her skin.

Dylan rotates in the air in a couple of leaping circles, landing in a deep knee bend. She clutches over her heart and her belly like she’s in clear physical pain. I slide along the wall and down the stairs off the stage, so I can see her from the front. I need to see her eyes.

She turns quickly. I think she hears me. She doesn’t. Dylan stands tall. Her hair shielding her face, she raises both arms over her head and accents the beat with fists to the sky. She shakes them to the lyric, defying the notion that she could be tamed and under someone’s power.

I’ve never wanted to tame her. She is exactly who she should be. I wouldn’t want her any other way. The same chorus echoes again. The sentiment of being set free is what echoes for me. What does she want to be set free from? The image of Tori? Expectation? The clear conflict and pain she’s in? Me?

The music begins to build like a geyser just below the surface. She leaps so effortlessly into the air, before crashing to the ground in a calculated roll to her back, then to her knees. Her musicality and stature are nearly as captivating as her unequivocal raw emotion. She’s dancing a diary entry. I shouldn’t even be watching, but I can’t tear my eyes from her. In fact, I lean in by wrapping my hands over the orchestra pit rail.

She pounds the floor of the stage from her knees with the side of her fist as well as the flat of her hand. Finally, Dylan flips herhair back, and I can see her eyes for the first time. The tears are flowing down her face. Her chin rises, and that’s when she sees me watching her. The tension in her jaw grows infinitely at the sight of me. The pure anguish she’s been pouring out across the stage is now mixed with a fiery anger.

She keeps pounding the floor on her knees while she locks into me. Dylan is in a battle. She’s fighting feelings. She’s fighting herself. I think she’s fighting me. Her finger points straight at me before her disjointed movement carries her in calculated kicks around the stage.

The higher Sara’s voice soars, the deeper in despair Dylan appears. The words “keeping me down” roll like a wave from the stage, through me, and into the back of the auditorium. Is that what she thinks of me? The last lines repeat the first. It’s about the pull of the woman to another. It’s about how it happens again and again. It’s eventual. Like gravity.

The last chord rings into silence. Her chest keeps heaving. She leans heavy on her right hand. I’d like to run to her. I don’t think she wants me to. I want to say something. I don’t know what the right thing is. I lead with the first thing that comes to mind, right or wrong. “Viper?”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I went to your apartment. When you didn’t answer, this was the next logical place.”

“I needed to think. I needed to escape.” She finally flips her hair back off her face with her forearm. Her fingers slowly wipe away the tears still falling from her eyes.

“That was… intense.”

“It’s how I feel.”

I don’t want this figurative and literal distance between us. I walk back across the rows and up onto the stage. Dylan has since moved forward so her legs are dangling over the edge into the pit. Getting close enough, I want to touch her, hold her. I don’tthink I can take the sting of her rejecting me so I get as close as I can.

“Tell me with your words how you feel.”

“Reality hit me hard today. The dance was about me swallowing the pill and acknowledging what is.”

“What’s the reality as you see it?” I ask.

“I’m a distraction for you, just as you are for me. I don’t fit in your world. You don’t fit in mine. You have your wife back. I know you struggled without her for so long. I’m happy for you that you can get your life back.”

That knife she wields that’s usually smooth just got jagged in a hurry. “What do you mean you’re a distraction? Fuck that you don’t fit. As far as Tori, nothing happened with her. She was drunk as hell. This is what I tried to explain, wanted to explain. She threatened to ruin everything for you, for us. She couldn’t make it home in that condition. After you left, I had no choice for her safety. She slept on the couch. That was the end of it.”

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