Page 37 of Lovesick
Pardon me?
“For looking out for my daughter.”
No, no, no. He shouldn’t be thanking me. I’m the miscreant who banged his daughter. I’m the miscreant who wants tocontinuebanging his daughter.
I halt in my tracks. All the anxiety pressure-cooking inside of me since Merit’s and my sexscapade comes close to boiling over. “Oh, uh, it’s no problem,” I mumble, scratching the back of my nape, then deciding to tack on for good measure, “I would’ve done it for anyone.”
Yes, Crew! Nice save.
Glasses reequipped, Coach chuckles like he doesn’t believe me. “Well, Merit’s on campus if you want to give her the good news. I’m sure she’d appreciate it.”
Fuck. I think I just dug my own grave.
MERIT
“You’re not spotting,your foot is sickled, and you need to engage your core more,” my dance teacher, Ms. Carmine, harps, circling me with a stern look written on her face.
I fall out of my octuple fouetté with pinched breath, blinking away the dizziness that thuds my head in like a kick drum. I don’t know why I’m so off today. I asked Ms. Carmine for a private dance lesson since we don’t get a lot of one-on-one time during class, and I’m wondering if I made the wrong decision. Not to mention that it’s Sunday and I still have a full lab report to finish for Biology.
“I can do it,” I pant, trying to shake off the migraine skewering my brain. “Let me try again.”
Ms. Carmine puts her hand on my shoulder, sighing out her frustration. Even though she can be scary with her slicked-back bun and drill sergeant voice, she’s a huge softie underneath.
“Sweetheart, you need to let your body rest. You’ve been at this for an hour now.”
Indignation wars inside me. “If I can just land?—”
“Take a break and hydrate. We can continue this next week,” she decides firmly.
My overtaxed muscles cry in relief, but I’m so hyperfixated on getting the sequence perfect that I want to keep practicing despite her warning. It’s like I can never be happy with any sort of improvement because I’m always trying to be better. I’m always comparing myself to the other girls in my class, as if it’s some sort of competition.
I didn’t used to be this competitive, but after my incident, I think I’m convinced that I need to prove myself to people who don’t matter. I’m not open about my heart condition. The limited few that I have told looked at me strange when I disclosed I was a dancer, like they couldn’t believe I was capable because I had a disability. I don’t want people to pity me. I just want to…exist.
Turns have never been my strong suit, but I thought I was getting better.
Defeated, I amble over to my duffel bag, pulling out my water bottle and taking a long drag. The coolness extinguishes both the physical and figurative fire inside me as my heart slows to a metronomic pace. For the first time in an hour, I let go of the control tightly hugged against my chest.
I just need to be kind to myself. It’s such a ridiculous reminder. I don’t even realize I’m being so cruel until the tears well on my lash line.
Ms. Carmine slugs her bag over her shoulder. “I have to run and pick up my daughter. You can lock up after me, right?”
I nod and wave goodbye, watching as she fumbles for her car keys and sprints out of the studio. Ms. Carmine is a single mother. I have no idea how she does it, but there’s something comforting in knowing that she’s managed to balance her love for dance and her family.
Just one more time, I think to myself.Get the choreography right, and you can go home.
It’s not our dance class’s choreography that I’m practicing. It’s the one from UDA Nationals.
The one I was in the middle of before my whole life fell apart.
With a centering exhale, I unlock my phone and scroll to my music, hitting play on “flatline” by Sam Short.
Just let go, Merit. Stop trying to meet impossible expectations. Dance because you want to, not because you have something to prove.
The song starts out slow, coupled with the singer’s harmonious voice and the light strum of an acoustic guitar in the background. I let the music dictate my movement; I let all my suppressed emotions trickle out of me, diluted of the poison that’s given me nothing but hell these past few days.
I start in a plié, rolling my head in time with the rhythm,contorting my limbs in sharp, jagged shapes. And when the bridge starts to build, I pretend to clutch my chest, propelling off my feet to jump in place before running into a switch leap across the floor. The chorus echoes in the empty studio, and I arabesque for a moment, still, a direct contrast to the frenetic movements I executed before.
A facsimile of perfection, suspended in time.
