It was hot. And not just "take your sweater off, you'll be fine once you sit down for a minute" hot, either. It was sweltering, boiling; sweat was pouring off both of us as we urged our bodies to continue on to new extremes.
The two of us were moving together in ways that would've seemed impossible, in more ways than one, a few months ago. His hands wrapped around my waist, lingering there for a moment before I arched my back and spun out of the soft grip, stretching my leg out as far as I could.
The world had disappeared, and my vision had tunneled until all I could see was him and flashes of the room as the two of us moved as one. The majority of our clothing had been abandoned on the floor a while ago, and I wished in my head that it would be acceptable for more to be taken off. I could hear his heavy breathing, and I was sure he could hear mine as we continued.
We had made it past the bridge, and were settling into a final chorus. We collapsed into each other for the finale, and then we were finished.
The music had stopped, and the dance was over.
I turned to Derek, gave him a much-deserved high five, and walked across the studio to where my water bottle had been suffocated by my leg warmers, hoodie, tee shirt, and sweat pants. Allison gave a long applause as we both gulped from our respective water bottles.
"I'm impressed," she told us, a wide smile stretching across her cheeks. "Progress isn't the right word for the two of you. It's more like a miracle."
We both smiled and bowed dramatically. I laughed. "I wouldn't exactly call it a miracle. It's more of an extreme breakthrough."
"So what's the difference between a miracle and an 'extreme breakthrough'?" Derek asked me, using his fingers to create air quotes around the words.
"Miracles don't have an explanation, but breakthroughs can have an explanation, even if it doesn't really make sense," I explained after a pause of thought.
"Well said, Eliza." Allison nodded her approval of my description. "If your dancing career falls through, which I'll be damned if it does, you could have some great success as a writer or public speaker."
I laughed in response.
What had occurred in the dance studio with Derek and me was nothing short of an extreme breakthrough, something that both of us, as well as everyone else thought would need a miracle to fix. When I came back to school after winter break, I didn't know what to expect or do. The first few weeks were terrible. We hated each other, and could hardly stand to be in the same school with each other, let alone the same dance studio, let alone dance together. Classes usually ended in screaming matches, after I had been dropped by what I thought was on purpose or I kicked him by what he thought was on purpose.
And our dance suffered from it. There was no emotion in our duets except hatred, and Allison tried to work with that, choreographing heavy metal hate dances, but when it came down to it, us wanting to kill each other was something that no one wanted to see on stage.
Gradually, though, things got better. We both accepted the fact that neither of us were going to change who we were with or our opinions on certain things, but that didn't have to mean that our dance scores suffered at competition. We agreed to respect each other, put the past in the past, and essentially stop acting like four year-olds. We forgave, compromised, and essentially agreed to fake it until we made it. We still have a long way until we're best buds eating lunch together and getting coffee after rehearsal, but so far, things have been going a lot more smoothly, and friendship is making its way to the both of us.
It's all about balance, balancing the good with the bad, the better with the crappy.
As we collected our things and I relayered myself for the coldness of early April in Connecticut, Allison asked the two of us, "You guys got any big weekend plans?"
"Just the opposite," I said, getting excited just talking about it. "This is a no-plan weekend. I'm staying in and enjoying it."
"Which is code for 'I'm having a lot of sex this weekend'." Derek interjected, an attempt at a joke that wasn't quite a joke.
I had no better response than an eye roll. I was anticipating spending the weekend with a certain someone, but I wasn't sure how far things would go. And, per the no-plan weekend rules, I had agreed to not micro-manage or plan, even though I hardly ever did anything without it being pre-planned down to the minute.
"What about you, Derek?" Allison asked.
"I'm having a lot of sex this weekend, and I'm not ashamed to say it."
This got him double eye rolls.
"What about you, Allison?" I asked my dance instructor-turned friend. "Any big plans?"
"I have a date," she announced. "No sex; just the date."
"Hey, never say never," Derek said, pointing his finger at Allison and winking, cocky grin plastered on his face.
"This seems to be getting pretty serious, Allison. Your time is supposed to be spent making sure the two of us win competitions, and nothing else," I told her jokingly.
"Any more time I spend thinking about the two of you dancing, and the med students will be all over studying the dance instructor living vicariously through her students, and we can't have that."
I laughed.
Just then, there was a knock on the studio door. Without waiting for a response, the door opened. My eyes drunk in the sight of Luke, had even though I had just seen him at lunch, it felt like it had been years. Six foot two, intense green eyes, dirty blond hair, and a smile that could melt an iceberg were almost too much for me to handle. The beautiful words, kind heart, and wonderful mind behind it all was overwhelming. "I heard the music stop, so I assumed it was safe to come in."
My relationship with Luke just seemed to be getting better and better. Looking at him right then seemed to reinforce that idea. He walked across the room and gave me a quick peck on the lips.
"Ready to go?" he asked me.
"Not particularly. It's cold outside," I told him.
"But the longer you stay in here, the colder it gets outside."
"Valid point." I slung my bags over my shoulder. "Let's go."
We said our respective goodbyes before walking out the door arm-in-arm.
"You two kids have fun," Derek yelled to us as the door closed. "And remember to use protection!" he added.
The door to the studio room closed and we made our way out of the main building and into the cold wind. I shivered. Luke tightened his arm around me.
"Have I mentioned how much I hate cold weather?"
"You might've mentioned it. Once or twice." Luke responded with his own sarcasm as we made our way back to the dorm buildings. "So what was Derek screaming about when we left?"
"He seems to believe that our no-plan weekend equals a ton of sexual relations." I explained as casually and non-chalant as possible.
"That's what Austin and Katheryn's idea of it is. It better not be my sister and Josh's idea of it though."
"Crap. Who's dorm room are they most likely to be in tonight?"
"Well. . . Since Austin hasn't cleaned his dorm since he started going to school here, I would assume Katheryn's."
"Great," I murmured sarcastically under my breath.
I made the mistake of not having anywhere to be one Friday night when everyone was staying in, and having a single wall separating Katheryn's room from mine turned out to not be the most pleasant experience. Let's just say that Katheryn and Austin aren't exactly the quietest couple around.
"Who's going to be blasting music on full volume in her headphones tonight? This girl," I said as we made our way into my dorm building.
"You could just stay at my room tonight," Luke suggested, somewhat cautiously. "I mean, not the whole night, just until our friends finish their. . . stuff."
"Um, sure," I nodded, feeling the awkwardness of unventured territory wrapping itself around the two of us. "Problem solved."
"Good." He gave me one of his heart-warming grins.
"Is this considered planning? On our no-plan weekend?" I asked in mock-horror.
"Shh, no one has to know." He ran his index finger across my lips.
We had managed to make it to my dorm building, and I sighed with relief as a rush of warm air wrapped itself around me. I was much too adapted to the nearly constantly warm Georgia weather for the cold.
I laughed. "Okay, well I don't understand how you've managed to stay this close to me for this long. I know I'm nasty and smell like the inside of a pointe shoe, so I am going to go to my room, shower, randomly throw some movies into a bag without looking, and meet you at your room in a little while. I'm not going to give you an exact time, because that would suggest planning, and we just can't have any more of that tonight."
He smiled. Oh, that smile. "Sounds great." He pulled me closer to him. I could feel lean muscle through my layered, very tattered dance clothes. "And you smell wonderful, by the way."
"Don't lie to me," I murmured right before he brought his mouth to mine, and the world melted away for a few sweet moments.
___
I always took the seven flights of stairs to my room at the end of the day as a final workout hurrah before I collapsed on my bed for essentially the rest of the night to do schoolwork, laundry, and the like. As soon as I reached my floor, I could tell that there was a no-plan weekend crisis.
A good bit of the time, I felt genuinely sorry for the students that had to share a floor, and sometimes even a building, with Katheryn Bailey.
Both rooms belonging to Taylor and Katheryn were open, as well as the bathroom that I shared with the two of them. You could hear Katheryn's meltdown throughout the entire hall.
I reached Katheryn's room in record time. "Eliza!" Katheryn exclaimed. "You're later than you usually are. I need help."
"Allison held us a little late this afternoon. You sound like you need more than help, maybe like you need resuscitation," I told her.
She was sitting in the middle of her room, surrounded by what looked like the contents of her underwear drawer, still wearing a dark blue leotard and tights that had a long run along the length of her thigh. Taylor was siting cross-legged on Katheryn's unmade bed, a spoonful of peanut butter in one hand.
"Which one of these looks sexier?" Katheryn asked me, holding up two different bras.
"What does it matter? Not like it's gonna be on for long anyways," I told her in a joking tone.
"That's what I told her," Taylor added as Katheryn grabbed the closest thing to her, a pair of panties, and threw them at me.
"You guys are no help!" the most dramatic of us exclaimed, collapsing on the floor on top of her extensive lingerie collection.
"Can I get a shower now? Has the crisis been adverted?" I asked.
"I guess. Since you guys won't help me, it'll be your fault if my sex life is ruined tonight." Katheryn sighed. "I'm going with the black one."
Taylor and I gave each other a knowing look. "I seriously doubt that a bra will be a deciding factor in the quality of your sex life," Taylor told Katheryn, holding back a giggle. "But if it's that important to you, I think the black one is sexier."
"I agree," I chipped in.
"Finally. Thank you. Eliza, you're dismissed to take a shower," Katheryn said, still lying on the floor and pointing her finger up to the ceiling in what she thought was a very authoritative way.
"Thank you, your highness." I bowed my way out of the room.
I took care to make sure that everything about me was scrubbed clean and soft, shaved, and smelled nice while I was in the shower, and I made sure to wash and double condition my hair.
I made my way to my room wrapped in a towel. Before I went searching for clothes that weren't dance or workout clothes, I grabbed a tablespoonful of peanut butter from the jar on my nightstand. What body fat I had when I started school at the Academy in the fall had completely disappeared, and I was on the diet of a professional athlete. My body couldn't seem to get enough protein or carbs, and I was going through a family sized jar of Jif a week. I had just recently had a closet clean-out with Katheryn and Taylor and gotten rid of a ton of stuff that just didn't fit me right anymore. I hadn't necessarily changed sizes; my body type had just changed, the most shocking difference being that I had dropped an entire cup size in bras.
I assume hearing me get out of the shower, Katheryn and Taylor, both in different stages of getting ready, made their way into my room carrying makeup bags and hair products. We had made it tradition to get ready together whenever we all had something to do that required more effort than a messy bun and sweatpants. We got a lot of much-needed girl talk in this way. My room got used a lot because the mirrored wall meant that we wouldn't have to fight to see our reflection.
"So what are you guys' plans tonight?" Taylor asked, plugging a flat iron into an outlet.
Katheryn pulled away from her eyeliner pencil. "You know what I'm doing," she said, winking at Taylor.
Taylor rolled her eyes, eyes that were nearly identical to her brother's. "What about you, Eliza? Luke said something about not having any plans tonight?"
I paused from my digging through clothes, ready to explain. "We agreed to not have any set plans and to just hang out. Maybe watch a couple movies, cuddle. . ." I trailed off.
"So you're gonna have sex tonight?" Katheryn asked.
Taylors eyebrows shot so far up on her forehead that they almost disappeared. I stuttered. Katheryn laughed at both of our reactions.
By this time, Katheryn had turned completely away from her reflection and the flat iron of Taylor's had nearly been forgotten. "You didn't answer my question, Eliza," Katheryn said, sly grin slowly making its way across her face.
"I seriously do not know," I told them. "We've been really serious for a while now, and Luke is the first guy that I've felt so safe and just generally great with. But. . . I just. . . It's hard, you know? I don't want the next time I have sex to be as meaningless and awkward and stupid as the first time," I told them, trying to explain my hesitations to them.
"I know Luke. He would never put you in a situation that would make you unhappy our uncomfortable if it were up to him," Taylor said.
"I know," I said. "He is, in all seriousness, the best guy I've ever been with. He's great." I sat down on the floor, still wearing nothing but a towel, next to my two best friends.
"But you're still cautious, and I would be too if I had been through what you had been through," Katheryn said. "It's completely understandable."
"So what do I do?" I asked.
"What exactly did Luke say to you?" Katheryn asked. "Because us girls have a tendency to look too far into things sometimes."
I relayed the conversation I had with Luke on the way to the dorm building. "He seemed really cautious about what he said after he said it, you know? Like, maybe he didn't mean for it to come out like that," I added.
Katheryn nodded. "Yeah, but he wouldn't have said it all if he weren't suggesting something."
I nodded. "Which brings me back to my original question."
"If you're ready to sleep with someone again, and you, maybe not love-that's a really strong word, but more than like Luke, which I think you do, then screw his brains out tonight if that's what you want to do." I laughed. "But if you're not ready yet, then trust that he'll respect your decision, and if he doesn't, then you're not in a very healthy relationship."
"That's really good advice," I told Katheryn, smiling. "Thanks"
"No problem." She winked at me.
"No offense, but I really don't need the visuals that come with my brother's name and the words 'screw his brains out' in the same sentence," Taylor said.
Katheryn and I laughed.
"What are you and Josh doing tonight?" I asked Taylor.
"Something a lot less stressful. Seeing a movie."
"Just a movie?" Katheryn prodded.
"We might find a nearly empty parking lot somewhere," she said, a blush rising in her cheeks.
"Classy," I said laughing.
"Shh, you'll make her stop talking," Katheryn said. "I hardly ever get to hear the juice on Taylor's love life. I want details!"
Taylor shrugged. "It's not like that. . ."
"Uh huh," Katheryn said, the sarcasm and disbelief in her voice.
"Well, where else is safe for us? It seems like everywhere else we go, there's the threat of my brother finding us, and I'm not really ready to open that can of worms." Taylor described the dilemma with her hands, looking flustered.
Katheryn and I laughed. "Taylor, if you and Josh want to upgrade from his car, I'm more than happy to make sure Luke stays out of your way."
"It's not that simple," she said. "If we hang out in the lobby of our dorm building, then Austin could see us when he's here with Katheryn. He'd bring it up with Luke around just because he could, and the lobby of his dorm room is obviously out of the question."
"Is it really that big of a deal that your brother knows that his seventeen year-old sister, God forbid, makes out with people of the opposite sex?" Katheryn asked. "I mean, he knows you guys are dating. What does he think you two do alone?"
"Hold hands, probably. You guys don't have older brothers. I'm almost positive he thinks I'm still ten and pre-pubescent."
"If you guys want some privacy tonight, then go to your room. Luke will be with me, and Austin and Katheryn will obviously be busy. Problem solved," I said, standing up to commence my search for clothing.
"But that means Josh'll be in my bedroom," Taylor added, face once again turning red.
"So this isn't just about your brother," Katheryn concluded.
"I'm not like you two, I guess. I grew up in a household that pretty much banned being alone with a guy at all, and now I'm here and I've got all of this freedom, and it scares the crap out of me," Taylor said. "I hadn't even kissed a guy when I started school here, and now I've got this really amazing boyfriend that's this really amazing kisser, and I might want to go a little further than first base. But I don't know how to handle a room with a bed in it." She laughed a little. "It's kind of funny, actually. I can do fouette turns en pointe all day, but ask me to spend a night with a guy I like, and all heck breaks loose."
"Trust me, Josh is just as awkward and unsure, if not more, than you are. Obviously, you're not ready to have sex, and that's not a bad thing. You guys could talk about it and set some boundaries, but you don't have to. Just do what's comfortable and good for the two of you, and quit worrying about your brother, dammit. Okay?" Katheryn asked Taylor.
Taylor nodded and began working on flat-ironing her already straight hair.
"You're just full of advice tonight, aren't you, Katheryn?" I asked, digging through my jeans.
She nodded. "So today we're educating Taylor on guys and sex. Tomorrow we're working on her vocab. It's okay to say hell around us," Katheryn said between laughs, looking pointedly at the shyest of the three of us.
"Okay, new issue," I announced. "What the hell is proper attire for a possible sex, but possible not, watching movies, but not in a theatre, hanging out, but not actually planning anything, date?"