Page 72 of Triple Play

And I’m so focused on looking at them that I’m almost surprised when I turn back to Blake. He hasn’t budged, though he’s moving vaguely to the music.

“Hey.” My hand is still hovering. I could just rest it by my side. Could claim thirst and retreat back to our table for a glass of water. Could keep my hands to myself—literally—until we get to Florida and have to go back to our real lives.

Blake is studying me, a sweep of a gaze that he averts at just the last second. If I don’t do this now, we might not get another chance. If we don’t do this now, Blake might spend the rest of his life averting his gaze, and the thought alone makes me step toward him.

He doesn’t bolt. His eyes go fractionally wider.

“If anyone asks,” I say, “we can just say I was teaching you to dance.” And then I take his hand in mine. His palm is dry, callused, his pulse racing.

He blinks, once, twice, looking at the join of our hands—the grasp of my fingers on the back of his palm—then he laughs. “You’re teaching me to dance?”

“Yeah, so c’mere.”

Blake folds closer to me. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his other arm, so I slide it around my shoulders. “I haven’t, uh, done this part before,” he says.

This part. It’s unclear if he means dancing or just touching like this. Still, I draw him to me. Closer, I can count the threads of his eyelashes and the tiny sun-created freckles on his cheeks. “How am I doing so far?” I ask.

He has faint lines by his eyes, the same ones I have, the product of a lifetime outdoors. They crease in amusement. “Good. I haven’t danced like this since I was a kid.”

“Yeah?”

“My parents put me in dance classes when I was six because they thought it’d make me a better athlete. Pretty much everything has always been about that—they wanted to set me up for success.” He doesn’t add the obvious: that it worked. Instead he swallows audibly like he’s gearing up to say whatever’s next. “But I guess I liked the classes too much, ’cause they stopped when I was nine.”

It takes me a second to register what’s simmering below what Blake is saying. That his parents didn’t want him in dance classes because they made him seem queer, the same as cooking or a hundred other things that brought him joy. “Jesus.”

“Yeah.” His thumb drifts over the base of my palm unthinkingly before he pauses and looks up at me like he just admitted something he didn’t mean to.

“Before my parents passed, my sister came out to them.” A conversation that took all of ten minutes and was mostly spent on joyously tearful hugs. “Queer siblings must come in sets. ’Cause I mostly date women but…not always.” There, as simple as I can manage.

“Oh.” Blake’s jaw works. He swallows like his tongue is suddenly too big for his mouth. He cranes his neck to where Shira and the girl are now practicing standing on tiptoes together. “I’m in love with Shira,” he adds, like a defense.

“I know.” I tighten my fingers around his. “Anyone can see that.”

He doesn’t drop my hand. Doesn’t step away. We’re dancing, slow, because it’s the only kind of dancing I know how to do. I’ve spent this entire trip so caught up in thinking about what I’ll have to give up if I don’t play that I never really considered what I might gain. Freedom to be who I am, to be with the people I want. Freedom Blake’s been denied all his life.

“What time is your brother coming tomorrow?” I ask.

Blake takes a step back, but I move with him. It could just be dancing, if not for the resignation shuttering his face. “He’s supposed to be here in the morning. Whether he is or not is anyone’s guess.”

I sweep my thumb over Blake’s knuckles. He flicks his gaze around the room—the other diners are in the process of clearing out; the waitstaff have gone back to scrolling through their phones. Still, we’re among people. Witnesses. I tell myself that him pushing me away, however subtly, however politely, won’t hurt.

He presses the pads of his fingers against my palm. Invisible to everyone but us. To them, we’re still two guys stumbling our way through a dance. We are, but not in the way they might think.

“So we have until tomorrow?” I say.

“We have until tomorrow to do what, exactly?” But it comes out breathless, like Blake’s been waiting his whole life for someone to ask. A millisecond later, he frowns. Pauses from nominally dancing to plant his feet firmly on the parquet floor.

Fuck. Did I press too hard? Want too much? His hand slips from mine. He withdraws his buzzing phone from his pocket, then answers it. It’s the mechanic, he mouths a second later. Car’s done.

Nearby, Shira and the girl are practicing their spins, Shira pushing herself skyward on the balls of her feet. She stretches a graceful arm up up up toward the ceiling and turns slowly, like a toy ballerina in a music box, patiently waiting for the little girl to keep up.

A woman comes over—the girl’s mother, presumably—and collects her daughter, who waves her thank-yous to Shira as they go.

“Keep dancing!” Shira calls.

When she catches me looking at her, she grins. Ducks her head like she’s both embarrassed and pleased to be caught.

“You’re a good teacher,” I say. “You should think about giving lessons.”

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