Two-Step

by Stephanie Fournet

“I’ll get it,” Sally offers, rising. She goes and brings back a bottle of a drink that proudly claims to have ZERO CALORIES!

  Iris unscrews the lid and drinks the pale orange liquid. After several long swallows—during which I find my gaze on the delicate motions of her slender throat—she gives a satisfied sigh, caps the bottle again, and looks up at me.

  “I’m good. You ready?”

  Her question sets me back. “Me? Are you? You were about to pass out ten minutes ago.”

  She shrugs. “It happens.”

  I look at Ramon and Sally.

  “It does,” her PA confirms while Sally nods at his side.

  It shouldn’t happen, I want to say. But what business is it of mine?

  I look back at Iris. “You sure? We could call it quits for today.”

  She gets to her feet, shaking her head. “No quitting. I don’t even know the word.”

  Her determination is something I haven’t seen before. My gut twists a little more. She’s not drunk. Or high. And I’m beginning to accept that she wasn’t last night either.

  Which means I’m a Grade A Dick.

  I clear my throat, not liking the taste this realization leaves in my mouth. “Okay. Back in position.”

  While I unlock my phone, Ramon and Iris face each other, and one of his hands goes to her hip while the other clasps her hand. “You sure you’re okay, boss?”

  Iris rolls her eyes. “I’m fine. And don’t call me that.”

  He scowls down at her. “I only call you boss when I need to remind you to let me do my job,” he mutters low, but I’m close enough to hear every word. “You gotta tell me when you don’t eat.”

  I keep my eyes on my phone screen and scroll through the playlist I’ve made for the class, but I’d be lying if I said I’m actually reading the song titles.

  “I wasn’t hungry,” Iris whispers.

  “Liar,” Ramon hisses. “You’re always hungry.”

  “Can we start dancing now?”

  I look up from my phone to see Iris’s exasperated gaze on me. I tap my screen at random, and the parlor fills with Bonsoir Catin’s “J'aimerais Sentir Comme Ca Chez Moi.” I almost never play the duet in classes because the lyrics are so raw, but when I made the playlist for today, I didn’t think the California transplants would notice.

  Besides, its cadence is great for beginners.

  “One-two-ready-go,” I count, and Ramon starts, but just like before, Iris goes the wrong way.

  “Dammit,” she curses, looking rattled. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

  I stop the music. “It’s no problem. You’ll get it,” I encourage and then reset the song.

  “One-two-ready-and—”

  She starts on the right foot this time, and she and Ramon make it nearly to the end of the first verse before moving out of sync.

  He shakes his head, looking down. “Your steps are still too big.”

  Ramon is right. Her steps are too big. “Think of it as a shuffle-step,” I try to explain. “Your feet barely need to leave the ground.”

  We start over, and Iris’s steps are smaller. A lot smaller.

  “Too small,” Ramon drones.

  “You said go smaller. I went smaller,” she fires at him.

  “Too small,” he repeats. “Look. Just do what I’m doing.” He carries on in time with the music. Iris stares at their feet.

  “I am doing what you’re doing.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He’s right. She’s not, but I don’t think saying so will help.

  “You’re concentrating too hard, Iris,” Ramon tries. “Just go with the music.”

  “Grrrr. I can’t,” she nearly shouts. “I don’t go with music.”

  “Okay. Okay.” I raise my hands. “Ramon, you go practice with Sally while I work with Iris.”

  Ramon speeds away faster than a fish cut from a line. He grabs Sally, and the two waste no time sashaying around the room. Iris watches. I stop in front of her, blocking them from view, and offer her my hand. She looks at it with a combination of frustration and despair.

  “This is impossible,” she mutters, her words are pitched so low they almost tuck themselves under the music.

  I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping she’ll take the hint and do the same. She doesn’t. Her chest rises and falls like a hunted rabbit’s.

  “It’s not impossible,” I say, matching her volume so the others don’t hear.

  She looks up at me, and I’ll be damned if those aren’t tears in her eyes. She ducks her chin to hide them.

  Ah, fuck.

  I teach high school. I see someone cry almost every day. Students—sometimes boys but mostly girls. Teachers—it’s a rough school and burnout is real. And Mom cries at least once a week. I should be used to it.

  I’m not.

  I hate to see someone—anyone—cry.

  It’s not the show of emotion I’m afraid of. It’s the helplessness. I’m ready to crawl out of my skin if there’s nothing I can do to help.

  “You can do this,” I whisper. I’m looking down at the top of her head, so I don’t miss when she shakes it in an emphatic no.

  “You can.” I reach down and catch her under the chin with one knuckle. She lets me lead her gaze to mine. Her lashes are damp, but no tears have fallen. They still swim there, unshed, making the green, gold, and rust of her eyes flicker like flames. “I’ll help you. I promise.”

  The look she gives me is stark and humorless. “If that’s my only hope, I’m doomed,” she says flatly, stepping back from my hand. I let it fall. “You don’t even like me.”

  I wince. Was it that obvious? I think back over our first meeting last night, Nonc on the floor in this very room. The argument at my truck. The hospital. Even this afternoon.

  I’m supposed to be helping her, and I’ve been a total asshole.

  “I might have been unfriendly last night,” I admit.

  She dips her chin and looks at me from beneath her eyebrows. “Unfriendly?” she echoes with heavy skepticism.

  I crack a smile. “Okay, I’ve been a nozzle—”

  Her laughter bubbles between us. After her threatening tears and her near collapse, it feels like fresh air.

  “That’s the last thing I expected you to say.” She laughs, dabbing her eyes.

  I shrug. “Student slang rubs off on you if you’re not careful. They’d call me a nozzle.”

  “Yeah, I won’t argue with that,” she adds, smirking but with a friendly sparkle in her eyes.

  It’s the sparkle that tells me maybe this can be salvaged. Not just the dance lessons, but how we see each other. How we treat each other. I take a deep breath and own my shit.

  “In Cajun French, when we want to apologize, we say mo chagren. My chagrin. In Parisian French it’s Je suis désolé. I am desolate, sad. Either way, it means that offending you hurts me,” I tell her, feeling the truth of it. The shame of it. “Please accept my apology.”

  She blink-blink-blinks, and her lips part. “Oh… Uh… Y-yes,” she stammers. Then she smiles. “Of course.”

  “Good,” I say, meaning it. “Now that I’ve watched you, can we try the dance together?”

  Her smile falters. “I guess so.”

  “We’ll get there,” I assure her. Then I take my phone out of my pocket and stop the music. Ramon and Sally abruptly halt their dancing, looking at us with matching expressions of disappointment.

  “You sure you two don’t need a break?” Iris asks, her brows knit.

  “Nope,” Sally chirps.

  “We’re good,” Ramon adds, tugging Sally just a little closer to him.

  “Hmmph,” Iris grumbles.

  I wonder for a minute if she’s jealous. Of Sally? Of Ramon? Of both? The thought of even one of those scenarios is like the prick of a mosquito on the back of the neck. Small, but unwelcome. And annoying.

  I brush the thought away as though it were one of the tiny bloodsuckers. “Ready?” I ask her.

 
“As I’ll ever be.” The girl’s eyebrows steeple, making her look both pitiful and comical. She has the most expressive face I’ve ever seen. I have to fight not to grin.

  Instead, I clasp her small hand in mine, noting that it’s neither clammy nor shaking anymore, but warm and smooth.

  “Okay. Right foot to start,” I remind her. Then I hit the music and shove my phone into my back pocket. “One-two-ready-go.”

  My hand settles on her waist just in time to nudge her to the left. Then left again. Then right. Then right again, an easy two-step.

  Three measures into the song, she steps wide, outside the span of my left foot. She does the same on the right, as though she’s overstepping the first of the two steps and then going further on the other side just to compensate.

  I drop my hand an inch lower on her side so the pinky of my right hand settles just on the swell of her hip. When she tries to step too far out, I hold her back.

  “Keep your steps tight,” I correct, but pitch my voice low so I don’t embarrass her. Still, beneath my hand, I feel her body tense. “It’s okay. You’re getting it.”

  “Yeah, right,” she mutters.

  “You are.”

  But even with the extra pressure, she’s still overstepping. “Let’s try this,” I whisper, squeezing her left hand. “Put this hand on my shoulder.”

  She obeys, and I drop my left hand to her hip, mirroring my grip with the other, checking her steps this way and that. And it helps.

  Left-left. Right-right. Left-left. Right-right.

  “Good,” I say, smiling.

  She smiles too before looking down. And it’s like a bad cartoon. Instead of going right, she goes left, knocking her knee just below mine. It feels exactly like a reflex test at the doctor’s, and I nearly trip.

  No wonder Nonc went down.

  “Eyes on me, Iris,” I command, righting our rhythm.

  She looks up at me, wincing. “Sorry. Sorry. I just—”

  “It’s okay,” I say, softening my voice. “Maybe looking down makes you think too hard. Just keep looking at me for a while.”

  So she does.

  And I look at her.

  Up close, her skin is flawless, her complexion a smooth, warm olive. Her thick brown hair spills over her shoulders in waves. I wonder if it’s as soft as it looks, and I’m hit with the urge to touch it.

  To distract myself, I lower my gaze, but it falls on her pomegranate lips. I imagine them tasting of the dark, tart juice, and my mouth waters.

  I clear my throat and bring my gaze back to her eyes. She’s still looking at me, and I can’t help but wonder if she has been studying me as closely as I’m studying her.

  I’m unprepared for the realization that I want her eyes on me.

  Jesus Christ, Landry. Get it together. She’s beautiful and famous. Being this close to her has me a little star-struck. That’s all. I tell myself this and convince myself I believe it.

  But with each step, her hips rock under my hands. They are small hips—everything about her is small—but undeniably feminine. And I have to grip them with more pressure than I normally would to keep her steps where they need to be.

  So I feel everything.

  Every sway and sashay. The strength in her muscles—she may be small, but she’s toned. I’d bet money she works out. A lot.

  And I feel her heat.

  As we move together, my hands on her hips, it’s not such a great leap to imagine—

  I pull my mind from that precipice and focus on reinforcing her progress. Because, however small, this is progress. We haven’t tripped. We haven’t stalled. And no one’s broken a bone.

  “Good. Good. You’re getting the hang of it.”

  It’s only when she smiles up at me—a really brilliant, star-studded smile—that I realize I was already smiling at her. And this is her smiling back.

  At me.

  I feel the next several beats of my heart like I’ve just sucked down a Bang. Which I only do to combat jet lag. But that’s what this feels like. Dancing with Iris Adams makes me feel like I’ve crossed the ocean and landed in a new continent, disoriented and raw, but restless to explore.

  Chapter Eleven

  IRIS

  “I need to talk to you about something.”

  Two weeks after my first dance lesson with Beau, Sally surprises me with this announcement. It’s the end of the day, and we sit together on my lazy front porch swing. Mica is lying on his side, resting up after his nighttime walk and his round of Frisbee catching. Sally’s nursing an LA-31 Pale Ale while I’m sipping on a lime Perrier.

  Yeah, not the same thing, but I can at least pretend.

  Ramon usually sits with us at the end of the day, mooning over Sally, but, oddly, he’s gone inside.

  “O-kay. Spill.”

  “Ramon has the weekend off, and he wants to go to New Orleans.”

  I was bummed to find out we’d missed JazzFest by a few weeks, but a day-trip to the Big Easy should still be awesome. My schedule has been brutal the last few weeks. Filming all day. Dance lessons most evenings. And then I lie in bed thinking about how I shouldn’t be thinking about Beau Landry and how it feels to be in his arms.

  “Sure,” I say with a shrug. “Sounds like fun. We could go to the French Quarter and—”

  “No…” My best friend eyes me with alarm and hesitates before continuing. “No, I meant, Ramon wants to take me to New Orleans—”

  Oh.

  “For the night.”

  Oh.

  Well, that explains why Ramon is hiding out. The coward.

  I sigh, weary of going through this conversation again. “Sally, you just don’t get it—”

  “No, Iris.” Sally shakes her head. “I love you, honey, but you don’t get it.”

  I open my mouth and close it again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just that. You keep warning me against Ramon and warning Ramon against me, and it’s getting old.”

  “So you don’t believe me when I say that you two hooking up would end in disaster?”

  Sally’s mouth presses together in an unhappy line. She takes a sip of her beer.

  “What,” I press.

  She looks back at me. “I’m saying it’s none of your business.”

  Wow.

  I feel like I’ve been hit with one of Raven Blackwell’s stunning spells. It’s a shock that lingers in my arms, my legs, my face. Definitely my face, which goes hot and prickly.

  When I can move, I get off the swing.

  “Wait. Where are you going?” Sally asks, a note of alarm in her voice.

  I turn to face her, wounded and embarrassed. “I think I’m going inside.”

  “I-ris.” She says my name the way she would when we would fight over the rules of Monopoly when we were kids. “We have to talk about this.”

  “Fine.” I cross the porch and sink into one of the wicker rockers. I start rocking with record speed. “Let’s talk.”

  She tilts her head to the side, clearly miffed. “Oh, so you can’t sit next to me now?”

  In truth, I can’t. I feel like I have to face her instead of sitting beside her. It feels safer this way. I cross my arms over my chest.

  “It’s easier to talk like this.”

  “I think you’re angry with me.”

  “Well, I think you’re angry with me,” I return, wincing internally because I sound like a ten-year-old.

  I wouldn’t say Sally and I never fight, but it’s rare, even after two weeks on the AT. And our fights are so few and far between, in part, because I hate conflict in the first place. Besides, most preschool teachers just aren’t the fighting type.

  Which should clue me in to the fact that this issue must matter to her, but in the moment, that doesn’t sink in.

  “You know what, Iris,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest in imitation of me. “I am kind of angry.”

  I roll my eyes. “Why? Because I’m telling you what you don’t want to hear?” />
  “No,” she says, her eyes bugging in frustration. “Because you don’t want to hear me.”

  “What?” I throw up my hands. “What do you want me to hear?”

  She clenches her jaw. When she speaks, it’s low and through gritted teeth. “I like him.”

  I scoff. “Yeah, I know, Sal. That’s obvious. And I’m trying to look out for you. You’re going to get yourself—

  “I WANT HIM!”

  She’s so loud Mica jolts up and the dog across the street starts barking. I, on the other hand, am stunned silent. The outburst is so out of character for Sally, I’m waiting for her to shout “April Fools!” Except it’s June, and this isn’t the kind of prank Sally would ever play.

  As the echo of her declaration hangs in the air, Sally’s eyes widen, and she looks at me with horror.

  “Do you think he heard me?” she rasps.

  I nod.

  Oh yeah. The whole neighborhood heard her. Unless Ramon is in the shower with his Bluetooth speaker blasting at full volume, he heard her.

  “Shit.” She covers her face, hanging her head, and I forget all about my frustration. I stand to go to her, but she puts out a hand. “No. You’re right.”

  “About what?”

  She looks up at me. “Maybe this is easier if we’re facing each other.”

  I sit back down, a little heartsore. “Talk to me. I’m listening.”

  She huffs. “Yeah, you and everyone else on the block.”

  I crack a smile, but it feels maimed.

  “Look,” Sally says, “I get that you think you’re looking out for me, but you aren’t respecting me.”

  My eyes widen. “Of course, I respect you—”

  But Sally’s shaking her head before I finish. “No, Iris. You’re treating me like a kid. Like I’m still back in ninth grade, needing my loud, zany, larger-than-life friend to speak up for me and look out for me.” She half-grins at the memory of us as kids. Young girls. I grin too. Things seemed a lot easier then. “I’m not that kid anymore.”

  I give her a long look. “I know that.” I mean it. But I also know that of the two of us, Sally has been the more sheltered. The more idealistic. This is still how I see her.

  Only, maybe that’s the problem.

  She mirrors my long look. “Do you?”