Short and Beautiful

Guileful Smiles

Amidst all the noise and sweaty bodies, I manage to locate her at the same time she locates me. Come find me, her expression says. I lose sight of her during the time we spend navigating through the crowd, each of us making our way towards the other. Out of the sea of people, she emerges. The all-consuming dark accompanied by nanosecond flashes of brilliant light make it nearly impossible to see much of anything, but I don't need to see her face to know that it's her.
After the customary greetings from both sides, she suggests we find somewhere quiter and less crowded than our current location. I agree, and she promptly turns on her heels to walk the other way. Then, just as quick as a flash of the sparse light in this crowded room, she turns back towards me to grasp my hand in her's. "I don't want to lose you," she says.
And just like that, it feels like no time at all has passed since the last time we were in this exact scene together, even though that couldn't be any farther from the truth. It feels like it had two years ago, when we didn't yet have a set past. Instead, we had shared a future so full of possibilities that it seemed it would burst. This moment, almost exactly mirrors the moment that sparked our beginning.
"To all those who are young and in love," said the school disc jockey, "this one's for you."
Then the song started playing. I didn't recognize it, but her eyes lit up the moment she heard the first chord. "Oh my god," I heard her whisper. She brought her hands over her mouth in the way that she so often does, with her fingertips meeting at the base of her nose so that her hands covered the majority of her extraordinary, guileful smile.
"Do you like this song?" I inquired.
"I . . ." She took a breath, deciding what to say. "Do you want to dance?" She asked with her head tilted and one half of her mouth upturned. The question had taken me by surprise, and it swelled inside of me until I was as full of giddiness as our future was with possibilities, and I, too, felt as if I were on the verge of bursting.
         She had asked me to dance.
"I . . . I'm sure I'm no good. I've never danced wi-" But before I could finish speaking, she had grabbed my hand and begun to drag me behind her into the center of the room, where most people were leaving. Then I was the one that had a guileful smile on my face.
She sang every line, from the beginning: "It's not a silly little moment." And indeed, it wasn't. The song had seemed to ignite something inside of her, something spontaneous and beautiful. As we moved in slow circles, I had traced my own circles with my thumb on the small of her back. I could focus on nothing but the tired head laying on my chest, the gentle hands atop my shoulders, and the wonder of a girl in my arms. Nothing else had mattered. The rest of the room, and even the whole world, had seemed to melt away. I realized just how relevant the song was to that moment when I heard her singing along to the chorus:
"We're going down
And you can see it too
We're going down
And you know that we're doomed
My dear,
We're slow dancing in a burning room"
I replay that night in my head as she drags me behind her once again, this time nearly two years later. It seems so long ago. So much has happened in the year since we ended, and even more in the nearly two years it's been since we began. It's almost like reading something out of a history book; everything seems unattainable and almost foreign, like the time between then and now forms a barrier. I will never stop following her, will I?
"So," she says once we reach the slightly less stuffy edge of the commons.
"Enjoying yourself?" I ask.
"Very much," she said, her guileful smile making yet another appearance. "And yourself?"
"A bit. Not exactly the dancing type."
"You're telling me." Her guileful smile is replaced with a smirk that only shows on one side of her face. It was her half-smile. It always makes her look like she knows something that you don't, and she usually does.
"Making fun of me now, are you?" I say, trying to match her.
"Oh, don't act like you haven't told me that yourself."
"To be fair, that was almost two years ago."
"True, but it's my personal belief that you haven't improved." Her tone making it evident she means this as playfully as possible.
"Well, what if I say I have?"
"I'll be the judge of that."
"And how do you suppose we go about that?"
"Simple, next slow song that comes on, you and I dance."
I suppose now would as good a time as any to say that she is beautiful. Every bit as beautiful as when we began and every bit as beautiful as when we ended. She looks different, sure. She's cut her hair so that it no longer cascades down her back, but instead floats about her shoulders. And she's matured. Not just her body, but her face, too. Her features are more defined, even though she still refuses wear makeup. She's never needed it, and I doubt she ever will. The day I stop following behind her, I thought, is the day that she will stop being beautiful
As we talk, my mind keeps wandering back to the fact that I will never know exactly what she is thinking in this moment, only what she's feeling. I know her all too well. I know that right now she's full of excitement, but with an underlying and troublesome caution. She feels it towards me. She's happy that we're friends again, but she knows it's dangerous because of our past. I feel it too, and I know that she knows. None of this is said, of course, we just are entirely too familiar with how these feelings look on one another, thanks to our aforementioned past. We don't truly say anything at all, but then again, we don't need to.
And then we hear it. It comes without any warning or sign. We hear it, and all of a sudden it's the only thing that matters. I stop saying whatever I was saying. It didn't mean anything to begin with. We hear it, and all else ceases to matter. We hear it- the very same song that made her eyes light up and ignited something spontaneous and beautiful and made her smile the first guileful smile and whisper "oh my god." and ask me to dance and drag me behind her for the first time and melt away the rest of the world almost two full years ago. We hear it: the song that was our beginning.
There was a moment of still and silent shock until we remembered our previous agreement to dance. And then she was pulling me behind her again, her hair and dress extending behind her. She holds my hand, just like every other time she's ever lead me. "I don't want to lose you," she had said earlier tonight. As we glide to the center of the room, she looks back at me over her shoulder with the broadest, prettiest, truest, brightest, and most guileful smile. I smile back. "I don't want to lose you either," I whisper once she turns away, knowing she will never hear me.
Quicker than seems humanly possible, we reach the center of the room and she turns towards me. She interlocks her fingers loosely behind my neck, and I place my hands on the curve of her hips. For a second or two, nothing happens. The she just smiles and I smile back and for a fleeting moment, nothing matters except for her guilefully smiling at me and me smiling at her.
Then she lays her head on my chest, just like the first time and every other time after that, and she starts to sing along. "It's not a silly little moment." And this time I sing along, too, because after a year of being with her, I had learned the lyrics. Now we're spinning again and I'm tracing circles with my thumb again and it feels like the first time. Except it doesn't. She's changed, and so have I. We're not the same people we were two years ago.
I close my eyes. We're breathing deeper. Our hearts are beating faster. I feel her. She takes a deep breath. I pull her closer to me. We're both singing every word. She turns her head so she can nestle into my chest again. I don't want to lose her. I open my eyes.
Then she shudders, exhaling a shaky breath. She's crying. "Hey, what's wrong?" I ask. She lifts her head, and I see her face is covered in tears.
"I'm scared," she whispers. "I'm so scared."
"Why?"
"I . . . I can't do this anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Shh. Just let me talk. I can't do this back and forth anymore, this love-hate relationship. We won't talk for weeks, then we're together again for one night and all I want to do is kiss you, even did it once, but that's beside the point." She draws a breath and sighs. "The point is that there's still something between us. I know you feel it too. How could you not? There's still something between us, and I think it's time we stop pretending that it just doesn't exist. We can't just ignore it anymore. I can't just ignore it anymore. I've been trying to hide it for a year, and I just can't anymore. I just . . . can't."
"Hey, you know what?"
"What?"
         "I'm scared too."
         She takes a deep breath, then lays her head on my chest once again.
"Look around us. The rest of the room burned up," she whispers. And she was right. While we were talking, all else ceased to matter, and just like it had two years ago, the rest the room, and even the world, melted away. Burned up.
"My dear, forget the room. I would still dance with you if the whole world were on fire."
I couldn't see her face, but I could feel the guileful smile spreading across it.

[word count: 1,769]
written 10/16/16-10/17/16
published 10/17/16

updated 12/23/16