Page 101 of Two to Tango

“Sorry, sorry.” I cross my arms in front of me, making myself smaller as the tears start to slow.

“You’re a shit liar and an unconfident lawyer,” she teases.

I can’t help but laugh, snot in my nose. “You’re an asshole.”

“I know.” She smiles. But she isn’t. And she knows that, too.

“I let him down.”

“You didn’t let him down, Julie. You let yourself down.”

And fuck, if she isn’t right.

“I just thought maybe it could be as easy as doing one thing every day that scares me,” I explain.

“Yes, but it sounds like you took on several days at once.”

I huff out a laugh. “Beginner’s mistake, I guess.”

“You’ll learn,” she says, with a smile.

And then I wrap my arms around her in a truce. “Love you, T.”

She hugs me back, squeezing. “I know.”

Later on, sometime after T leaves and I eat my feelings in the form of an Uncrustable, I grab the empty shoebox that I had stowed away in my closet. I don’t know what makes me do it. Maybe I think about putting the shoes back, hiding them away so I don’t have to look at my failures. As I grab them, I find another pair of shoes in my closet. The ones I wore as I child when we moved here. White Mary Janes with worn soles and a now rusty buckle. My mother held onto them then gave them to me in a box of my baby things when I bought this place. I think about that confused little girl, that scared girl that was taken out of her comfort zone and brought to a new place. I think about how I loved those shoes and wore them out. About the parallels between those and the ones that were gifted to me. Both of them working as a means to a new life.

There must be some sort of symbolism here with all the shoes I’m hoarding.

I grab the empty shoebox, opening it out of habit, and I come face to face with the card she’d left with them. The simple, but direct instruction written on it:Para Julieta.

For me.

The paper is thick cardstock, heavy as I rub it between my fingers, feeling the indent of her handwriting on it. Except as I rub it between my fingers it moves, something that slips and slides. Because this isn’t just a piece of cardstock, I realize, but a card, folded over, that must have, in the years it sat in the closet under the shoes, gotten stuck closed. And when I peel it open, I come face to face with more of her writing:Te mereces laalegría del tango.

You deserve the joy of dancing.

And it takes everything in me to hold it together. But everything in me is not enough, and still, I fall apart.

There was one other time—one of the last times I saw her, one of the last shows she competed in. I was out of lawschool by then, working for another law firm, and I left early to go watch her compete. And at the end of it during an open dance, she’d invited me to dance with her. I celebrated her win, danced my heart out with her. The wild abandon I’d searched for buried deep within me and reaching for the light. Reaching for the music, for her hand. She taught me some moves, but I remembered some basics I’d picked up from watching her for so many years.

“No te olvides de esto, Julieta,” she was almost pleading. Don’t forget about this. “Tango will always be in your heart.”

She saw what I feared: that I loved this dance. That I wanted it to be a part of my life. That I worried about taking the wrong step, upsetting those who made this life possible for me.

How quickly I forgot all of it.

How quickly I continued to keep myself within comfortable parameters.

I gave up my joy for the comfort of others. I can’t do it anymore.

Chapter thirty-four

Julieta

I walk into myparents’ house without knocking as usual, but it feels strange today. It feels nerve wracking. Who knows what awaits me past the door?

I know my mother’s upset with me, but I know, or maybe I hope, I’m still welcome here.

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