by Eli Lang
“Hey,” he said at the end of the conversation, “Bellamy and I are working on some tracks. Is your old kit still in your parents’ basement? I can send the songs to you and maybe you can work out some ideas for them. If you want to.” He sounded hopeful and a little bit like he was goading me.
I had no idea if the kit was in the basement, or what state it was in if it was. But I didn’t need a drum set to work on really early ideas—at least some of it could be done in my head, with my hands tapping out the patterns on my knees. And the idea of playing sent a zing of electricity through me.
“Yeah, send them. I’ll see what I can do.”
He agreed to, and we hung up. I found myself smiling after, with the idea of new music and playing drums bouncing around in my head.
It wasn’t quite dark out yet. The sun had been sinking lower and lower over the lake, only half of it visible when I’d gotten here. It was just a sliver now, and stars were starting to come out in the dark-blue sky. It was pretty, the type of pretty I forgot to notice all the time. The last red light of the sun on the lake, and the phone call with Tuck, and the whole day before it, had me feeling tired and worn and somewhat nostalgic. I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t the kind of person who got mushy over stuff, or was even that sentimental. I just knew it was as if, ever since I’d gotten here, something inside me had been off.
I still had my phone in my hand, and before I could think too much about it, I sent a reply to Cara, asking her something silly about her day. It only took her a second to write back. I hesitated, then pressed down on her number until it dialed. I held the phone to my ear and waited, my heart a tight lump in my throat.
“You know you’re never supposed to do that, right?” she asked after we’d said hello. “Respond to a text with a call.”
“I don’t!” I said quickly, and I heard her laugh on the other end of the line. “I mean, I usually don’t.” I laughed too, buoyed by how happy she sounded. I wondered if she was always like that, at least part of her happy all the time. “I . . .” I sighed and trailed off.
“What?” She sounded more serious.
“Nothing. Just wanted to talk.”
“Okay.” It was hesitant, but it didn’t seem like she didn’t want to talk. “Well, I’m glad you called. Even if it is against the rules.”
I laughed. It felt good to talk to her, lighter and easier than talking to Tuck had been. “I solemnly promise not to do it again. What are you up to? Am I interrupting something?”
“No.” She sounded like she was walking somewhere outside. I could hear the breeze blowing past the phone, and the slight rush of traffic. “I got out of work a few minutes ago.”
“At the dance studio?” I was still fascinated by that. I used my body to make music—drumming was like a full-body sport and mind exercise, all rolled into one. But I didn’t make art out of the shapes I took. I didn’t bend my body into music. It was different, and thinking about Cara and the way she moved, the long lines she formed, made me want to see her dance. I wanted to know what she looked like under stage lights, wanted to see her body moved by music. I could almost picture it, from her pointed toes to her head held high, but I hadn’t watched enough dance to make it real. I’d need to see it for myself.
“Yeah. About to get some dinner.” She paused, and I waited. “Do you want to grab something to eat with me? Just casual,” she added quickly.
“So, not a date?” I was teasing, but I did want to know too. Fishing had its uses. At least it could sometimes get you the truth.
There was another pause, and I stared out over the lake and watched the last tiny piece of the sun sink behind the water.
“It could be a date,” she said, soft and slow, like she was afraid I might refuse her if she put it like that. “If you want.”
I took a deep breath. I’d been joking, kind of, but now I was tense all over, nervous in that way that was so good but so awful too. “I’d like that.”
We settled on a place we both knew, and hung up. It only took me a minute to drive there, but by the time I found a place to park and was standing in front of the tiny restaurant, my hands were shaking. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t get nervous when I hooked up after a show. But I never had much time to think about those before they happened, either. It was only want or don’t want, and that was pretty much it. This was . . . more. More than simply attraction on a physical level. I liked Cara.
I wiped my palms on my jeans and pulled the door open. Cara had walked over from her studio, and she was already sitting in one of the worn vinyl booths with the torn upholstery. She saw me right away, and half raised her hand, like she wanted to wave but wasn’t sure if she should. I grinned back, probably too wide and too eager, but I couldn’t help myself, and some of my nervousness fell away.
It came back almost as soon as I sat down. I didn’t know where to put my hands, where to look, whether I should lean forward or back in my seat. Everything I did felt wrong. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so out of control of my body. So completely without confidence. I was the confident one. I was the girl who got what she wanted because I worked hard for it. I’d left those parts of my life that made me uncomfortable and insecure and unsure of myself behind when I’d left for the West Coast.
Except now I was back here, so I hadn’t really left them as much as I’d thought. And there was a beautiful girl sitting across from me, and I didn’t know what to say to her to make her like me as much as I seemed to like her.
She was as gorgeous tonight as she had been the first time I saw her. She was wearing a dark-green hoodie, fleece lined, so it looked extra soft. She had a stretchy tank top on underneath, like something I might wear when I went running. Her mascara had smudged a little around her eyes, and her hair was messy, like she’d washed it and dried it in a hurry without a hairdryer. If she’d been anyone else, I might only have said she was pretty, or cute. But I liked how not-quite perfect she was, how she was real and I could tell that she’d been working. I liked the pink in her cheeks and the way she smiled and how she tapped her fingers against the edge of the table. She wasn’t simply cute. She was elegant and strong, and every time I looked at her, I thought again about how beautiful she was.
“You haven’t been waiting long, have you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I ordered our pizza.” She’d asked me on the phone what I wanted. I nodded and she nodded back, and I wondered if that was the most conversation we’d be able to come up with. Maybe we weren’t any good together unless we were bumping into each other in odd places.
She played with her straw wrapper on the table, twisting the tiny scrap of paper with her fingers. Her knuckles stood out. I wanted to put my hand over hers, not to still her—I was the queen of fidgeting—but to feel some of her energy run into me.
She glanced up at me, not quite through her eyelashes, but almost, so she appeared more shy than coy. “Did you finally get some sleep?”
I nodded, wondering if I still looked tired anyway. I was grimy from working at Gran’s all day, and then from my run at the beach, and I wished I’d had time to stop and clean up before I came to meet her.
“Good.”
Another nod. My head was going to fall off at this point, and I wasn’t sure if we’d ever actually make eye contact. I didn’t remember how to do this. The last time I’d been on a date, an actual date that involved conversation more than the prospect of going to bed, I’d been in college, here. It had been before the band and Tuck and Bellamy had started taking up all of my time. And I’d never minded my time going to them. Time for dating later, when I had my own life under control. But now I was wishing I’d at least gotten some practice in, somewhere. Kept my skills in shape, if I’d even had any to begin with.
If it were Tuck or Bellamy or Quinn sitting with me here, this would be different. Easier. I could talk about anything with Tuck, or we could talk about nothing, and it was still comfortable. That’s what Tuck always was for
me. Comfortable.
“I told my brother you were there last night,” Cara said, after the silence had stretched enough that it was starting to get weird. “He was really thrilled.” She glanced up again, and there it was, the eye contact. I’d never been much of an eye person, but Cara’s were pretty, clear and blue.
“I don’t have any sway,” I said quickly, holding up a hand. “I don’t have an in with record companies or anything.”
She shook her head. “I know. He knows. It’s just . . . having someone who matters think you’re good, you know? I think that’s what he wanted to feel. That they were good.”
I laughed, but I got that. I remembered when bands I liked had started showing up at our gigs. It had been surreal, and it had meant more than any recording contract I’d ever signed. “He didn’t need me to tell him that,” I said, though, because I didn’t think I was nearly that important.
She smiled, and I realized that she hadn’t glanced away since she’d looked up, and neither had I. “Maybe not. But it mattered. Thank you.”
When she stared at me like that, it felt like the tiny moment at the start of the show, when there was this drum fill I did that was so small, but there was a pause after it for a few beats. And the whole crowd was waiting for that next beat, when the band came in together and the song really started. That electric anticipation, that feeling of being right on the edge of something amazing. That was what being with Cara was like. I didn’t know why. It didn’t make sense. But it was good, and I wanted more of it. And in that moment, it didn’t seem to matter nearly as much that I couldn’t remember how this whole flirting dance went. I let myself forget that I wasn’t even sure if I should be here to begin with, taking up her mind. Let myself forget that this was probably selfish. I’d stay and muddle my way through pretty much anything if she was going to look at me like that.
Our pizza arrived, and the sorting out of plates and forks and pizza pieces briefly interrupted us. After that, the conversation wasn’t exactly as easy as it would have been if I’d been with Tuck, or even Zevi, but it wasn’t quite as stilted as it had been earlier, either. We talked about music and dance, in general ways that we could both relate to. It was odd to see all the ways the two things intersected. I knew dance used music, but I’d never realized how similar they were. We both told stories. We just did it in slightly different ways—me with my drum set and her with her body.
Cara asked about my family, because I’d told her I was coming back here to see them, and I told her about Gran, but only a little bit. It seemed too depressing for a date, and I was still holding it a little too close, anyway. She didn’t need to hear about that. I only wanted to tell her good things, for right now.
When we finally paid and stood up to go, I realized that we’d been sitting here for almost two hours. It was late, late enough that we were both yawning, but neither of us had made a move to leave before now.
My car was parked a few spaces down from the front door, but Cara’s was over by her studio, and I offered to walk her. She frowned when I did, pausing outside the door of the restaurant.
“You’ll have to walk back alone.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t exactly a bad neighborhood. And even if it had been, I didn’t think I was necessarily in any position to protect Cara more than she could herself. But I wanted to. I wished I could say I was doing it to be chivalrous, but really, I just wanted to be with her for a while longer, even if it was only a few minutes.
She lifted her shoulders, then dropped them. Her hands slipped into the pockets of her hoodie. With the sun down, it was chilly enough to want a jacket, and I wished I were wearing something warmer than my T-shirt.
“Okay.” She turned, slowly, toward her car. We ambled along, not in much of a rush, but it still seemed too soon when we stopped outside the glass front of her studio.
“There it is.” She lifted her elbow toward the window, the sign painted on the front with the name of the studio and the styles they offered.
We’d talked about the studio—Cara always called it hers, although she’d said she didn’t own any of it. She was one of the lead dancers in their performance end of things, though, and she taught classes too.
“Do you have classes tomorrow?” I asked, more to have something else to say than anything.
“Yeah.”
“Kids?”
She rocked her head back and forth. “Some. Anyone who wants to come, really. It started as an LGBT+ studio. Dance is a lot more open for that than most professions.” She snuck a glance at me, and I wondered if she was actually shy about it. It was the first time either of us had brought up our sexualities, but we were on a date. We’d both been pretty clear about that. I didn’t think we could really fly the Not Straight flag any higher than that.
Cara shook herself and looked back at the window. “Now we . . . take anyone who needs a safe space to dance, you know? LGBT, people who wouldn’t get a chance somewhere else, people who are disabled. Everyone should be able to dance if they want to.”
That was a pretty incredible thing to say so simply, and it did something inside my heart, made it jump in a funny way. But I just nodded. If I said anything, I was going to make a fool of myself.
She turned to face me, her expression serious, more serious than I’d seen it all night. “How was it for you? In the band? In the music world? Was it hard?”
“What?” I almost wanted to take a step back. The questions had been so sudden, and no one had ever asked me anything like that before. Not so direct. It had never really . . . been necessary. I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t even know where to start.
She gave another twitch of her shoulders, and it looked almost uncomfortable. “Being . . . um . . . a lesbian?”
I blinked. I’d known what she was asking. My response had been rhetorical. I hadn’t expected her to actually explain. Now I was more flustered than before. And I still didn’t know what to say.
“Well,” I started, and she stared at me and waited. “I’m not a lesbian, for starters,” I said, but gently, because she had phrased it as a question. I’d come across way too many people who thought being bi or pan was a myth, that I was only waiting to pick a side. Cara at least seemed to be open-minded about it. You could never really tell until . . . you were in the middle of it, though. “I’m bi.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually said it out loud like that, so straightforward. With Zevi, I’d hedged around it, finally telling him that sometimes I liked girls too, and that had been enough of an explanation for both of us.
Cara nodded. The movement was tiny, as if she was too focused on me to notice what she herself was doing. I took a deep breath.
“Our lead singer’s gay. You probably know that? He doesn’t hide it. Had a really messy, public breakup with his previous boyfriend.” I stared down at the ground, at the cracked cement of the sidewalk. All the tiny sand grains in it were catching the orange of the streetlights, sparkling and splintering in my vision. “And Tuck . . .” I laughed, but I couldn’t tell if it was a happy sound or not. “I think Tuck will love me no matter what I do.”
“Oh.” Her voice was a breath, a whisper of sound. “You think?”
I didn’t know how to tell her that Tuck was one more person who I’d never actually had to say anything to. I thought he knew. I didn’t think he’d missed those times when I’d taken girls home. But nothing had ever been specifically said about it, either. The fact was, I realized, that I didn’t know what he knew, or what he thought. Or what he’d think. He did love me, though. I knew that. “We’ve never really talked about it.”
“Why not? Would he . . . would he be uncomfortable with it?” She took a tiny step closer, enough that the soft fuzz of her hoodie brushed my bare arm.
I shook my head. “No.” He wouldn’t be uncomfortable. He loved Bellamy, hadn’t even blinked when Bellamy announced at his first audition that he was gay and had anxiety and we’d have to deal with both of those things if we wanted him. Tuck wasn’t the ty
pe of person who would judge someone like that, and I wanted to tell Cara that.
But I didn’t want to have to tell her that the reason we’d never really talked about it was because it had never seemed that important, in the face of the feelings I had for Tuck himself. All those nameless people I took home (or didn’t take home, but took to back corners of the bus, or dressing rooms, or side alleys) didn’t mean anything to me except a few minutes of pleasure and stress release. And Tuck meant everything. And that was why I’d never talked about it with him—because I wasn’t searching for someone to love. I’d already found him.
I realized that I’d been quiet for way longer than it should take to come up with an answer. “He knows me,” I said. “Better than anyone.”
It wasn’t an answer, not really, but she didn’t press it.
“You skirted my original question,” she said instead. “But you don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”
I had to think back to what it had been. If I’d had a hard time being bi in the band. Right. “Oh. No. I mean . . . it’s probably like dance. Better than most places, but not perfect.” That was what I’d seen, at least. It wasn’t like I was exactly out. I wasn’t a singer, or a guitar player, and we weren’t famous enough, either, that paparazzi were following me around trying to determine who I slept with. Like always, it wasn’t as if I tried to hide it. But I didn’t make a big deal out of it. And it had been . . . fine. “Music’s the place I can always be myself,” I added, because it felt like the truth. It was the truth. I’d just never quite put it to the test so specifically.
She smiled, slow and sincere. “Good. I’m glad.”
“And dance is like that for you?” She was still standing so close, and I wanted to lean that inch further, take a tiny step, so that we touched and stayed pressed together, instead of glancing off each other.
“Yeah.” She was still smiling, and she looked almost wistful, or like she was remembering something that had happened a long time ago. “I want to make a space like that for other people, you know?” She sounded shy. I was surprised, honestly, that she’d said it at all. I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have had the courage to admit out loud that I wanted something like that, because it seemed so . . . important. I’d probably have wanted to keep it close, keep all of it close, so it wouldn’t hurt as much if it didn’t work out. I liked that she wanted to tell me, though, at the same time.