Take a Chance on Me

by Alexa Land

  *****

  As we were leaving Nana’s house a couple of hours later, I turned to Duke and said, “I have one more thing to do before dinner, and it should take about an hour. Dare, the guy who runs my dance troupe, called a few of us and asked if we could meet him at the warehouse. We usually take Sundays off, but he’s thinking about changing the ending of the routine we’re performing in a few weeks. I know it’ll probably be deathly boring for you, but maybe you can read or something while we try out the new choreography.”

  “Actually, that sounds interesting. I’d love to see you dance, as long as the other guys don’t mind me hanging around.”

  “Oh they definitely won’t mind,” I told him with a grin, as we walked down the street to his truck. “The whole troupe is gay or bi, and you’re smoking hot, so they’ll love the eye candy.”

  “You think I’m hot?”

  “Of course!”

  “I know I’m in shape, but aside from that, I’ve always thought of myself as plain.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Well, yeah. With this big nose and square jaw, I’m basically Shrek. All that’s missing is a green complexion.”

  “Here’s a newsflash, Duke: you’re a handsome guy. People must tell you that all the time.”

  “I just get comments on my height and my body, because I’m so big.”

  We’d reached the truck, and he opened the passenger door for me. I climbed up on the doorframe so I was close to eye level with him and said, “You’re not plain, Duke. Far from it. I hope someday, you find someone who makes you feel as gorgeous as you are.” I smiled at him and climbed into the truck, as the color rose in his cheeks and he looked at anything but me.

  *****

  When we got to the warehouse, I found the gym bag I kept stashed there, stripped down to just my briefs, and pulled on a pair of stretchy shorts. Then Duke followed me up a creaky, metal staircase at the back of the building. We used the roof of the warehouse to practice, since the interior was taken up by Dare’s husband Skye’s massive sculptures.

  When we stepped through the door at the top of the stairs, Duke murmured, “Oh wow.” The roof looked like a dreamscape. Skye had built tall, metal supports around the edge of the roof that looked like undulating tentacles, because he was an artist and couldn’t just make a boring framework. Dare had stretched several cream-colored Army surplus parachutes between them as a light, airy canopy, to keep the sun off us as we practiced. What had started as a practical idea ended up whimsical and beautiful in Skye and Dare’s hands.

  Three other dancers were already stretching, and I said, “Guys, this is my roommate, Duke. He’s going to hang out while we practice.” They waved and called out greetings, and I turned to Duke and pointed around the roof as I said, “The tall, muscular brunet dressed all in black is Dare, and the guy with blue hair and overalls on the lounge chair in the corner is his husband Skye. Haley is the African-American guy with short dreads and tatts, and Cleveland is the pale redhead in 1970s-style short-shorts, who looks like he might burst into flames if he ventures into direct sunlight.”

  Cleveland flipped me off good-naturedly as he bent at the waist and stretched his hamstrings, and Dare said, “Welcome, Duke. Pull up a seat next to Skye if you want to, and make yourself comfortable.” To the rest of us, he said, “Thanks for coming in on a Sunday, guys. I know it’s crazy to keep changing things this far into the process, but we all agreed we need to rev up the ending, so Haley helped me choreograph a new combination.”

  I sat on the rooftop and stretched as Dare and Haley demonstrated what they had in mind. Both of them were big guys and couldn’t lift each other safely, so they talked us through that part. The new sequence involved Cleveland and me crossing the stage diagonally in opposite directions, then being lifted by our partners and thrown into the air. Dare said, “We know we want to do something fresh with this production, and I keep feeling like we’re not pushing the envelope enough. I don’t know, maybe I’m just second-guessing myself.”

  “You’re right that we need to go bigger,” Haley said, “and this might get the crowd on its feet. Let’s give it a shot and see how it feels.”

  Haley and I practiced the toss and catch a few times while the other two dancers did the same. Then Cleveland and I took our positions as Dare started counting in place of the music. I extended one arm above my head, then bent at the waist and brushed my fingertips across the ground as I swept my torso in a wide arc. Across the rooftop, Cleveland mirrored my every move. We both spun in unison, then took off running. We crossed within inches of each other in mid-air as we both executed a grand jeté, and when my feet hit the ground, I ran at Haley. He grabbed my waist and tossed me in the air, and I spun three times, moving my body from a vertical to a horizontal position. Haley stooped and caught me about twelve inches from the ground, and I arched my body with my arms stretched overhead. We held that pose for a moment before he returned me to my feet.

  Dare said, “That was totally a cheerleader move, wasn’t it? All that was missing were the pompoms.” He turned to his husband and asked, “Did that look like cheerleading to you?”

  Skye called, “I thought it looked hot! Quinn got so much air that he almost grazed the canopy. It was epic!”

  Dare wasn’t convinced, and we spent the next forty minutes or so trying out different lifts, spins, and catches. Cleveland and I had the relatively easy part, while Dare and Haley had to repeatedly toss and catch a hundred-and-twenty-pound person. Finally, Dare said, “Let’s stop here. I’m just not feeling it. Haley, can you stay for a while so we can try to iron this out?”

  Haley said, “Absolutely,” as he pulled off his tank top and wiped his face with it.

  “Thanks for coming in on your day off, guys. I really appreciate it,” Dare said, as Skye came up to him, handed him a towel, and slipped an arm around his waist. “Hopefully by rehearsal tomorrow, we’ll have something worked out. But if not, we’ll keep trying. We still have five weeks to get this right.”

  After we said goodbye to everyone, Duke followed me back downstairs, and I asked him, “What did you think?”

  “You’re a fantastic dancer. I was worried Haley was going to drop you though, so that was stressful.”

  “He’d never do that. Haley would break himself in half trying to catch me, rather than letting me hit the ground.”

  “You really trust him that much?”

  “Absolutely. I trust all the guys, especially Dare.”

  “He seems nice.”

  “He is. When I moved back here from New York, Dare was one of the first people I met, and he took me under his wing. He not only brought me on as the lead dancer in his company, he also got me a job at the club where he used to work and found me an apartment with his brother-in-law River. He didn’t have to do any of that, but it’s just the type of person he is.”

  “It’s good to know he’s looking out for you.” We’d reached Dare’s office, where I’d left my clothes and gym bag, and as I wiped myself down with a towel, Duke asked, “How does your ankle feel?”

  I flexed it in its black, neoprene brace and said, “Not bad. I’ll be curious to see how it holds up tomorrow. It’ll be my first full rehearsal since the sprain.”

  When I was dressed again, we cut through the warehouse, pausing to admire some of Skye’s massive sculptures before leaving by the back door. The alley was wonderfully overgrown with purple bougainvillea vines, and as we walked to his truck, Duke asked, “Out of curiosity, what do you call that flying leap, the one where you take a running start, then do the splits in midair?”

  “A grand jeté.”

  “How can you do that and make it look so effortless?”

  “Nearly two decades of practice.”

  He said, “I could try to do that for twenty years and I’d never get there.”

  “Sure you would. You’re an athletic guy.”

  “I’m built like a tank, and I move like one, too. Forget about the extraordinary
stuff you do. I can’t even manage the most basic dance moves.”

  I stopped walking and pulled up a song on my phone, and as Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ started to play, I said, “Challenge accepted!” I put the phone on some cement steps beside us and held out my hand. “Dance with me, Duke.”

  “I can’t. I wasn’t kidding about that.”

  “Sure you can.”

  Even though he looked like he wanted to argue, Duke reluctantly curled his fingers around mine. I raised our joined hands and circled under them, smiling at him as I slipped my other hand around his waist. Duke’s attention was focused on what his feet were doing, so I said, “Look me in the eye and let me guide you.”

  He did as I asked. After a moment, he relaxed a bit and moved with the music, but he still looked worried. “This is an odd song choice,” he said. “It’s not exactly dance music.”

  “It’s slow and steady, so all you have to do is sway. But if you want to spice it up a bit, we can do that, too.” I pulled back as far as our joined hands would reach and did a quick, exaggerated jitterbug, and Duke laughed. He didn’t do that nearly enough.

  Then he surprised me by picking me up and spinning us around. Now it was my turn to laugh. I threw my arms around his neck and leaned back, watching the purple vines and bright blue sky and all the buildings swirl around us.

  A moment before the song ended, Duke exclaimed, “Big finish!” He dipped both of us deeply, and I whooped with delight.

  His face was just inches from mine, and his sea blue eyes sparkled with happiness. I’d meant it when I told him he was handsome, but when he smiled at me, he was so stunningly beautiful that my breath caught. We held each other’s gaze for a long moment as something unfamiliar and exhilarating crackled between us.

  After a minute, Duke straightened up and put me down. We just stood there for a beat, as if neither of us knew what to do with the new, unspoken but unmistakable something between us. I finally broke the spell by picking up my phone and saying, “I guess we should get going. My parents are expecting us.” Duke nodded, and we headed to the truck side-by-side.

  Chapter Five

  Duke murmured, “Oh wow,” when we pulled up in front of my parents’ house.

  I turned to look at the elegant, modern structure. Its center was a square, two story atrium with glass walls front and back, so you could look right through it and see the stunning view of San Francisco across the bay. The atrium was flanked by two symmetrical wings, paneled in dark wood and set off by flawless, minimalistic landscaping, including a rock garden and an artfully designed dry riverbed, interspersed with a few drought-tolerant shrubs and small trees.

  Most people who saw the house for the first time reacted just like Duke. All they saw were dollar signs. And yes, my parents had done well for themselves. But they’d also bought the land and built the house in the 1960s, before housing prices in the Bay Area totally spiraled out of control. I always felt the need to explain that to people, almost as a way of downplaying the fact that my family had money. I didn’t know why I was so self-conscious about it.

  I absolutely loved the house though, not because it was an architectural gem, but because it was home. It represented safety and security, and it also held so many wonderful memories, as did the land around it. We were high up in the hills above Oakland, at the very end of a residential area, where manicured lawns and grand houses gave way to open space. It had always seemed to me like the ideal place to grow up, a country oasis in an urban environment. I’d been able to explore and have little adventures as a child, climbing trees, building forts, enjoying nature, the sorts of things city kids usually missed out on.

  Duke asked, “You grew up here?” When I nodded, he said, “I can’t even imagine. It’s like something out of a movie.”

  “I often wonder why I got so lucky,” I murmured, as he and I both studied the house. “I doubt I’ll ever understand why they decided to open their home to a random, skinny, little stranger. In my dad’s line of work, he often encountered children without families, and he didn’t feel the need to adopt all of them. Why me?”

  “Did you ever ask him?”

  “No. I always thought I might not like the answer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I suspect he took me in because I was so much more damaged than the rest, so broken and pathetic that he just couldn’t trust the foster care system with me,” I said. “I guess I never wanted to hear him describe just how pitiful I was.”

  “Or maybe he just felt a connection to you.”

  I shrugged and said, “Either way, it’s always felt like this huge debt I can never repay. All my life, I’ve wanted to make my parents proud and show them they made the right choice by taking me in. They always say they love me no matter what, but I guess I still have this need to prove myself worthy of them. The problem with that is pretty obvious, though. Look at that place! And wait until you meet my family and see how wonderful they are. How on earth could anyone ever be worthy of all of that?”

  “Of course you’re worthy, Quinn.”

  When I turned to Duke, there was so much sympathy in his eyes that I wished I hadn’t said anything. I tried to keep my tone cheerful as I said, “Come on, let’s go inside. My parents are looking forward to meeting you.”

  “I’d wondered if you told them I was coming.”

  “Yeah, just as a courtesy. Guests are always welcome, and my dad tends to cook enough food for ten people,” I said as I opened the passenger door.

  Duke stuck close to me as we walked up the flagstone path, and when I let us in with my key, he wandered into the atrium and murmured, “This is so beautiful.”

  That part of the house was pure show. Dark, rich stone lined the floor and the central, boxy fountain, which filled the space with the melodic sound of trickling water. The walls to either side of us were dark wood, similar to the outside, with large, open doorways that led to the rest of the house. It was all very posh, but also understated, so it didn’t compete with the view on the other side of the two-story wall of glass.

  The hill sloped sharply just past the edge of a wide deck, giving way to a breathtaking panorama of Oakland, the bay, and San Francisco. We’d arrived at sunset, and the sky was lit up in gorgeous, gaudy swaths of pink and orange. It was almost too much, too ostentatious. The view on its own was already ridiculously fantastic, and the sunset on top of that seemed over-the-top somehow. I felt like apologizing, which of course made no sense whatsoever.

  Duke seemed stunned as he followed me through the doorway to the left, which led to the huge, dark wood and black granite kitchen. My dad was stirring a pot of something disappointingly healthy-looking on the stove, while another family member snuck in behind him and tossed in some spices. As I stepped around the long kitchen island, I said, “Please tell me that’s not your infamous quinoa surprise again.”

  “You loved that dish!” My dad stopped what he was doing to give me a hug. I jokingly referred to him as Straight George Takei, because there was a definite resemblance, especially as both men got older. He had a slight build and thinning hair that was more white than black these days, and a wide, genuine smile that lit up his eyes.

  He felt skinnier than ever in my arms, and I said, “Hi Dad,” as he gave me a big squeeze.

  “Hi, kiddo. How’s your weekend going?”

  “It’s been great.” When we let go of each other, I said, “This is my friend and roommate, Duke Blumenthal. Don’t feel like you need to tell him every embarrassing story from my childhood over dinner.”

  My dad and Duke shook hands and exchanged greetings while I hugged the other person in the kitchen. When I let go of him, I said, “Duke, this is Max, my brother Shigeo’s son.”

  Max grinned broadly. The half-dozen piercings in his ears and lip sparkled in the orangey light streaming in through the enormous kitchen windows. He told Duke, “In other words, I’m his nephew. Quinn always feels weird about introducing me that way, becaus
e I’m actually a year older and two inches taller than him.” He tossed his long, black hair over his shoulder and shook Duke’s hand. “Speaking of height, I think you’re the tallest person I’ve ever met! What are you, like six-six?”

  “Dude, nice social skills,” I said as I rolled my eyes. “He’s six-foot-eight, not that you really needed to know that.” Duke colored slightly. That was probably because of my clumsy attempt to keep Max from embarrassing him, more than anything else. I changed the subject by asking, “Is Mom in her studio?”

  My dad nodded. “When you go back to say hello, please tell her dinner will be ready in half an hour. And by the way, no, it’s not quinoa surprise again. It’s a new recipe I’m trying out.”

  “Surprise,” Max said with a smile, “it also contains quinoa.”

  “Of course it does,” I said. “Good luck with whatever that turns into. After we say hi to Mom, I want to show Duke my room. We’ll be back in time to throw that out and order pizza.”

  My dad grinned at me and said, just like always, “Don’t knock it until you try it.” He was used to my ongoing complaints about the health food kick he’d been on for the last year or so.

  We left the house and walked along the deck before reaching what we’d always inaccurately called the backyard. It was actually to the left of the house instead of behind it, since the only thing on the other side of the deck was a steep slope. “There used to be a lawn out here, along with a great swing set,” I said as I gestured at the rock garden. “It’s silly, but I wish they hadn’t taken out the swings. I know I grew up and moved out, but still.”

  As we followed the meandering path to my mom’s studio, Duke asked, “Does Max live here?”