Page 97 of At First Dance
She smiles like I awarded her a small trophy. “It does. Tell me something else.”
“I put my number on the school volunteer list,” I admit. “In ink.”
She gasps like I told her I bought plane tickets. “Rowan.”
“Don’t make it a parade,” I warn, but I’m smiling too.
“Fine,” she whispers. “Stoic fist bump.”
We talk until we don’t. We fall asleep on video like teenagers but with our bills paid. I wake first, and I watch her breathe for thirty seconds, and then feel like a creep and hang up because I want to keep being the man who does what he says. She texts the second she wakes.
Ivy:
I felt you there anyway.
The next two days are a swing between work and small moments of sweetness. She sends a photo of her boots tucked under a chair with duct tape on the sole.
Ivy:
Not stage ready. Don’t care.
I send a picture of the creek and a single word.
Me:
Home.
She replies with three.
Ivy:
I know where.
Bailey:
Reader headcount up to 22 tomorrow.
I adjust the shade tents again and set up a water station in a safe location, making a big show of labeling the “quiet corner” so the child who needs it doesn’t have to ask. I’m still a guy who grunts sometimes when the words clog. I’m also a guy who can learn.
That night, I stand at the sink shaving. My phone is on the sill so I can hear if it pings. I watch myself in the mirror and don’t hate what I see—a man who looks like he works hard, maybe even for the right reasons.
The phone pings with a link from Ivy. It’s a clip from some interview from months ago, her face in studio lighting, the host asking about pressure. She answers in the most polished way you could ask for. I remember watching it when it aired and thinking she looked like a deer deciding which way to run.
Ivy:
I never want to sound like this again.
Me:
Then don’t.
I type back.
Sound like you. I’ll be the one in the back row not clapping too loud.
She sends a heart. I pretend it doesn’t blow a hole in my chest and let light in I didn’t know I was still keeping out.
She’s due back on Sunday night if the meetings hold. We’re both doubtful, though. Nashville doesn’t love letting people go on schedule. I decide not to borrow trouble and decide again when the group thread pings—Celeste’s name shows up as a calendar color on the screen Ivy shares from the hotel, and my teeth grind on instinct. “She’s playing nice,” Ivy voice-messages, so gentle it makes me mad at myself for the reflex. “Nice like a cat by a fishbowl, but nice.”
