Page 28 of Hypothetical Heart
I cringe at how soon that seems. “Is there any way we could bump up the amount of practice we do?”
I pull into my driveway, parking my car in the garage. Winnie follows me inside. “I tried, but there are no more open hours at the studio. But you do have a gym in your house. We could always practice by ourselves there.”
“Let’s go.” I unbuckle both of our seatbelts, motioning for her to follow me inside. “We’re going to be so good by Wednesday, Madame Bitch isn’t going to know what hit her.”
Madame Bacri may have kicked my ass today and made me sore in places I didn’t even know could be sore, but I’m not goingto let it happen again.
“Logan, I’m tired,” Winnie sighs as we enter the house. I kick off my shoes and give her a pointed look.
“We can sleep once we nail this dance,” she groans because we both know what that means. This could take a while.
We head downstairs, where my house’s gym and basketball court are located. Winnie gripes the entire way, and when I hook my phone up to the surround-sound system and start playing our ballroom music, she rolls her eyes.
“The less you complain, the faster we’ll get this done,” I repeat the phrase Bacri said over and over to us today, placing a light kiss on the top of Winnie’s head.
Her cheeks flush when I pull back, grabbing her hand and dragging her towards the center of the gym floor.
“You’re going to be in heels, aren’t you?” I ask, and she nods and then stands on her tiptoes.
The music blares through the gym as we try to get the steps right. Winnie is obviously much better than I am at dancing, but my inaccuracy is causing her to slip up. We’re stepping all over each other and missing our marks.
Frankly, it’s a mess at the moment.
“You need to go faster,” Winnie tells me.
“No, you need to go slower,” I argue.
She swats my arm right as the music starts over and we get back to our starting position. “Either way, one of us is off and I’m the one going on beat, so you keep up with me.”
We spend the next hour like this, going over our four-minute routine again and again until we are somewhat on time, no longer stepping all over each other.
It’s definitely not the best display of talent, and Winnie says I need to have better technique—whatever that means—but it’s much better than when we first started.
“Okay, I’m done for the night,” Winnie says as she lies on the floor of the gym.
I lay down next to her, both of us staring at the ceiling as our stomachs rise and fall with each breath we take.
“Remember when we used to play with those little rolling scooters in here?” Winnie asks, laughing at the memory.
“Yeah, and we’d have to stop as soon as you got your fingers ran over every. Single. Time,” I joke. “Gosh, you would cry like we chopped your fingers clean off.”
“Hey! With the way you and Luke used to ride those scooters, I’m surprised we all still have all our fingers!”
“Win, you can admit it, you were a crybaby.” It’s a well-known fact among our friend group. If something unfortunate happened, Winnie was always the first to be crying.
A loud noise? Winnie was crying. Someone got hurt? Winnie was crying, even if it wasn’t her. But she never cried to get her way. They were never bratty, miserable tears; they were either provoked by fear or sympathy.
Or pain, in the case where she used to get her fingers run over.
It reminds me of all the times Eloise would try to have Nerf gun fights in the backyards of my and Winnie’s houses. When Winnie didn’t know how to shoot the gun, let alone aim toward the enemies, the game always ended with her crying and running to me, begging for protection. I was always happy to oblige, letting her stand behind me, and use my body asher own human shield. In fact, I’d do it a million times over, even now.
She stands. “And so what if I was? That doesn’t take away from the fact the two of you somehow always managed to run over my fingers!”
“You’re right.” I stand alongside her, cupping her jawwith one of my hands. “We were reckless. It was one hundred percent our fault.”
“Exactly.”
We walk back upstairs, and right before Winnie walks out the door, I grab her arm to stop her. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I say.
