Practically Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  I didn’t say anything, just gave him a noncommittal hum.

  Alec continued without acknowledging my hum. “Also, a tip? When you’re stressed, you become totally unapproachable. I know it and Feebs and Em know it, but if you want a decent lunchtable ecosystem, can you just try, like, deep breathing or meditation or something for the rest of the quarter?”

  I resisted the urge to contradict him. I was always the portrait of calm and common sense at our lunchtable. “You don’t pull punches, do you?”

  “With the others? Yeah. But you’re super logical and it’s stupid to soften the blow with you.” He turned back to his sketch, adding a tiny detail to the page as if he hadn’t paused to do the verbal equivalent of whacking me upside my head.

  “Thanks,” I said, dryly.

  “Good, now, take a look at this and let me know what you think. I need some of your physics genius to help me figure out how to make this actually work.” He pushed his sketch my way, pointing at a series of gears in his design.

  I stared at the paper, trying to visualize his neat drawing in 3-D. So far, it looked good. “I thought you were okay with your project.”

  He tapped his pencil against a worm gear he’d drawn into the interface between two parts. “Yeah, except for making it functional, like Newton wants. Remember, I took this class for the CAD and design part, not the engineering stuff. That’s really your thing.”

  I casually tapped my phone and glanced at the time while trying to look like I wasn’t checking. I’d already lost a half an hour of my planned project work time for this heart-to-heart and couldn’t afford to lose any more time, but I mentally shifted my bedtime up an extra hour after the concert to make up for it. I ran through a mantra, like he had suggested. Alec was a friend, someone who’d dropped everything to help me in the past, too, and sleep was for the weak. “Okay. Show me where you’re stuck.”

  Chapter 30

  Rules were great, but I never understood the school theater’s rule about not allowing people into the auditorium unless it was between numbers, especially if the “number” was just a bunch of intro speeches for the orchestra concert. As soon as the usher gave me the green light, I hurried into the auditorium, making a beeline for the row on my ticket. Alec was already inside and I was positive the buzz I’d felt in my pocket was him texting to see where I was. I checked the little metal plates on the aisles and kept heading down until I reached my row. Phoebe and Em had scored us pretty good seats—not as good as their families, who were up a few rows, but really good ones—and I would have bet my Physics grade that part of it somehow had involved Dev’s and Kris’ influences with the front office.

  I looked down the aisle and my stomach dropped. Sitting next to Alec and right next to my empty seat was Leia. Part of me wanted to jump in front of her and demand why she was there—Em and Phoebe were my friends and I couldn’t understand why she had to invade this part of my world—and part of me just wanted to apologize and make things better. I froze, staring at the empty seat, unsure of which way I wanted to go.

  Alec mouthed “I tried to text you” when Leia wasn’t looking his way.

  Kris, who was sitting on the aisle closest to me, noticed Alec’s expression and how Leia suddenly looked up, then dropped her attention to her program, and followed their eyes to me.

  “Oh,” he said under his breath as he studied my face, glanced out of the side of his eye at Leia, then gracefully stood and shifted over into the empty seat next to Leia as if that was the plan all along, leaving his old seat next to Alec for me. “Hey, Grace,” he whispered, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had fallen on the four of us when I’d shown up, “You haven’t missed anything, Osoba just gave one of her long speeches again. She mentioned Em and Phoebe when she talked about the graduating seniors, but nothing big.” He had leaned in and forward to talk to me and I could tell that was his way of helping me by blocking my view of Leia.

  I hoped my gratitude for what he was trying to do showed in my eyes. Kris was new-ish to our group and he didn’t owe me anything, but he was still doing what he could to protect me. Maybe Em was a little bit right about him.

  “Good, thanks. They wouldn’t let me in the auditorium until her speech was over. I’m surprised to see you here. I thought Em said you didn’t do school concerts.”

  “I say a lot of things, but I didn’t want to miss Em’s last concert.” Kris looked up at the stage and a smile came across his face when the orchestra filed on stage. Em squinted into the audience as she sat down, her face breaking into a wide grin as her eyes reached our section. “And that’s why,” he said, raising his arm to wave at her. “That smile makes even handbells tolerable.”

  My chest grew a little tight and I resisted the urge to look over at Leia. I couldn’t believe I was jealous of Em and Kris.

  “I told you she has really good vision,” Alec said in a whisper that was so loud, it probably didn’t even count as a whisper. “Which means she’ll know if you sneak out during the handbells and don’t come back for the finale.”

  “Says someone who knows from experience,” Leia said, poking him in the arm.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Alec quipped. “I love handbells.”

  It was weird seeing Leia bantering with my friends like nothing had happened between us, or how she studiously didn’t look my way when she responded, or when she did, it was like she was looking through me, like when she turned to Kris and said, “Last year, he tried to tell Em he went to the bathroom and they wouldn’t let him back into the auditorium. She called him out faster than you can say ‘handbell.’”

  “It wasn’t pretty, Em wouldn’t let him live it down for weeks,” I added, trying to stay a part of the conversation. These were my friends and my history first.

  Leia focused on me for half a second, a frown flitting across her features, before she smoothed her expression into something neutral and turned to face the stage again. “They’re starting.” The unspoken “shh” hung in the air and both of the guys looked at each other uncomfortably before Alec gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders and tilted his chin towards the stage.

  The after-concert fries at the diner made the concert look like a giant cuddlefest. Leia and I sat on opposite corners of the table, and the fact that we weren’t really talking to each other cast an awkward cloud on the whole group. Em, Kris, and Dev had managed an overly cheery conversation throughout, laughing a little too loudly at times, and trying to bring us both into the conversation.

  And, all throughout, I felt terrible my personal life had messed up Phoebe’s, Em’s, and Dev’s last post-high-school -concert celebration. I kept throwing apologetic looks their way, and Phoebe kept making ‘it’s okay’ hand gestures between telling Leia about Trixie’s wedding plans and dropping into my conversation with Dev about their trip.

  I literally breathed a sigh of relief when first Em, then Alec, said they needed to go home. I pulled out my wallet and dropped my part of the bill plus a tip onto the plate where everyone else had put their money. “’Night,” I said to her, trying my hardest to keep my tone light.

  Leia put a hand on my arm as I passed by her on my way out. “Hey, stay a minute? We really need to talk.”

  I looked warily at her hand, then slowly sat down, nodding at Phoebe’s worried look to let her know she and the others could go. “Okay.” She’d been the one who had asked for time off, not me. “But I can’t stay long. Homework.”

  “Yeah, me, too. I don’t understand why they put these concerts in the middle of the week.”

  I shifted in my chair, trying to figure out where she was going with this small talk and trying not to let my confusion show. “It’s dance recital season. I bet one of the schools has the auditorium rented for the weekend,” I said, and resisted the urge to pull out my phone and confirm my guess.

  “Good point.” An uncomfortable silence settled between us before Leia cleared her throat and said, “So, um, do you have time to hang out ne
xt Friday? I kind of hoped we could—”

  I cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “I can’t. I’m busy next Friday.” I wasn’t lying—Alec and I had scheduled to meet with Oliver at the university after school to work on our projects and it wasn’t like I could just call him up and reschedule.

  Her expression shifted from uncomfortable to disappointed. “Next Saturday?”

  I shook my head. I’d promised Phoebe that I’d help with her sister’s bridal shower stuff and I had no idea how long she’d need me. “Busy.”

  Leia put her glass down on the table with enough force to rattle the plates, her lips drawing into a tight line. “You don’t want to even try, do you?”

  I took a deep breath and shook my head. “No.” The word burned my tongue and it took every ounce of energy in me to keep from pulling it back. It would be impractical to try to do anything else. “You asked for time off to think, and I took the time to think, too. And, I think…” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, but they correlated so well with my lists and what I’d told Em and Phoebe the other night, “I think maybe we shouldn’t try.”

  Leia looked on the verge of tears, which unfairly also made her eyes a million times more luminous. “Do you realize how much that hurts? That you don’t even care enough to put effort into fixing this? Because you know, Grace, this time I’m not going to be the one who fixes everything.”

  Her soft words hit me so hard, it was like she just twisted a screw into my heart. I forced my expression to stay detached but compassionate. I could fall apart later, but if I softened at all at the moment, I’d be in danger of taking everything back. “I care about you, but you were right, I wasn’t giving you the time you deserved and that’s not going to change. There’s no point in trying to make something work that’s just going to fall apart later, so it’s better to spare ourselves a really long, painful relationship death that would ruin it for both of us. Right now is the most logical time for this to end.”

  “Of course. How practical of you.” She practically hissed out “practical,” like it was some sort of curse.

  “Practical is how I am. You know I’m not changing.” The not even for you was unspoken, but it still hung painfully in the air between us. It took everything in me not to get up and leave. She deserved the right to yell at me or cry or whatever would feel better, no matter how much crappier it would make me feel.

  “Apparently not.” She didn’t do any of those things, though. Instead, she leaned back in the booth and ran a hand over her eyes, before taking a series of deep breaths I recognized from her yoga class. “Okay,” she said softly to herself, before looking straight back at me. “Well, these next few weeks are going to be weird with all of the stuff we already planned with everyone. You can’t expect me to drop our friends because of you. You might have been friends with them first, but they’re my friends, too.” Her voice was firm, counteracting the tears I could see forming in the corner of her eyes.

  “Of course.” I took a deep breath to steady my own voice. “We can totally be adults about this. Relationships end all the time for totally normal reasons.”

  “Right. Adults.” She seemed to mirror my inhale, then nodded solemnly on the exhale. “Agreed. It’s not like we’re kids or anything.”

  I dropped my eyes because it hurt too much to see how she’d rallied herself to come across as strong despite how much she was hurting. “We were friends before this. Plenty of people break up and stay friends.”

  “No need to be dramatic,” she said in a distant tone that matched mine.

  “So… friends?”

  “Friends,” she said, cautiously, but then added, “sort of. Not ‘hang out together by ourselves friends,’ though. I’m sorry, but I don’t want that since you’ve made it clear you aren’t interested in trying.”

  “Yeah, I can see how that would be awkward.” I looked up and tried—and failed—to give her a small, shaky smile.

  She folded her hands on top of the table, her eyes focused on them instead of me. “Okay, so that’s what we’re doing?”

  I nodded. “I think it’s the best solution for everyone.” Leia made an unreadable humming sound, straightened her back, and slid out of the booth. “Great. Now that it’s settled,” she reached into her purse, pulled out a ten, and dropped it on the table next to her untouched sandwich. “I gotta go.”

  I picked up the ten and tried to hand it back to her, “No, I’ll pay. I can—”

  “I can pay for my own stuff, thanks,” she said stiffly, stepping a meter away from the table before I could push the bill back into her hands. “Bye, Grace.”

  The finality in her voice was what hurt the most as I watched her walk away.

  May–June

  WEEK 23 INSPIRATION: “But out of limitations comes creativity.”-Debbie Allen

  Chapter 31

  The music flowed through me, my heart syncing with the slow beat. Even though I was supposed to only listen, my whole body vibrated with the need to become a part of it and my foot snuck out to make tiny circles and tendus while my fingers rolled along the underside of the barre. For the first time in almost a week, I could feel my heart stretching with all the emotions I’d locked away after my conversation with Leia. The rough spot where Natalie and April had cut the music shook me out of my reverie, but I was pulled back in on the next breath until the music faded and I opened my eyes again.

  “What do you think?” Natalie looked confident, like she’d been watching my reaction the whole time and knew what I would say.

  I took an extra second to start really breathing again. “It’s…” I fought to find the right word, “heartbreaking.” The longing and sadness of the song still hadn’t seeped completely out of me and I needed a moment to come back to the now.

  “I know. Isn’t it perfect?” We dancers were unquestionably weird.

  I found myself nodding. “Definitely.” I stepped away from the barre, trying to ignore the need bubbling up in me to get sucked into the song. I hadn’t wanted to do this teacher number thing, but just one listen to the song they’d picked pulled me right in. It fit my mood perfectly. “What do you have so far?”

  Natalie pushed herself up to standing and hit play again on Aunt Drina’s antiquated CD player. “We were right through the bridge, but I’m okay with changing things if any of April’s original choreography doesn’t fit you.” She paced out to the middle of the studio and started to mark a pattern, hands moving quickly to imitate turns or jumps, and I followed her. “It’s about two people who each just lost the people they loved. They’re longing for human contact and lean on each other just to keep going. Their friendship becomes the mirror that lets the other person see who they are so they can pick up the pieces. So, we put in a lot of mirroring, too.”

  That premise sounded…perfect. “Wow.”

  “We mixed a little bit of modern dance into my part. I get to use flexed feet a lot in contrast to your character which is good because,” she pointed to her injured leg with a rueful expression, “you know.”

  “Right.” I rolled my ankle a few times unconsciously before catching myself and firmly planting my foot on the floor, hoping she didn’t notice. “Teach me, Miss Natalie,” I said in imitation of the little rosebud class kids.

  The music looped back to the beginning and she counted off the beats, marking and calling out the steps to my part while I followed. We repeated it a few more times until I was sure I had the choreography down, then she switched to doing her part alongside me. We didn’t touch or partner, though Natalie called out tiny partnered lifts or movements. When my muscles were just starting to hit the edge of exhaustion from the two-minute bursts of movement, she stretched her arms over her head, turned to me, and asked, “Ready to try it full-out?”

  I propped my heel on the floor and stretched my ham-string one more time before nodding, trying to push away the nerves about hurting her leg in any of the lifts or partner work. The song’s first notes hung in
the air and transformed my nerves into anticipation. I moved, hitting each step and turn and jump perfectly on beat, twisting downwards as Natalie rolled over my shoulders and up to standing, pulling me up with her. Everything from the past two weeks disappeared in the music and movement and, for a moment, I was free. Nothing but movement.

  We ran out of choreography and both Natalie and I collapsed in sweaty lumps on the floor. Natalie raised her head the tiniest bit and said, “I think this might work.”

  A little clapping sound came from the back of the studio. I rolled onto my back and looked into the mirror without getting up to see Aunt Drina squatting in the back corner of the classroom. She stood, using the barre to help her up.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt. It’s looking good.” Her feet stopped right next to my head, the short rubber heels of her teaching shoes making soft thunking sounds on the floor. “I just don’t believe you yet, Grace.”

  “Wha?” Language wasn’t exactly working yet. “Mechanically, you’re perfect, but it’s like you turned off your feelings.” The soft leather of her shoe tapped the floor. “Robots are all about perfect steps. Dancers are about emotion. You need to find whatever part of you connects to the story and draw from it.”

  She was right, but still I bit back the reflex to remind her that this was just a recital and I was just a substitute teacher. I nodded silently and used the rest of the moment as an excuse to sit up, rubbing my hamstring again. My muscles were only cooling the littlest bit and it was already starting to get stiff.

  “And I was stellar, as usual, right?” Natalie said teasingly as she got up to turn off the endlessly repeating music.

  “Are we now ignoring the fact that you’ve been working on this for a month and this is the first time Grace danced it?”

  “Yup,” Natalie responded with a bright smile.

  Aunt Drina snorted and patted my arm. “You’ll get it, Grace.” She glanced up at the studio clock and fixed her wrap cardigan. She was way too pulled together for someone up so freakishly early. “Now, I’ve got an hour and a half to prep and brush up on what I actually need before the guy comes to give me a quote on a new air conditioning unit.” She shook her head ruefully. “I never thought I’d be so interested in BTUs, but welcome to life as a business owner.”