Oliver pursed his lips. “The dancer I'd hired cancelled on me last week. I've lined up a few replacements, but none of them are as good, and all of them want more money than they deserve plus travel. The Sugarplum Fairy is Arietta Poychna, and her going rate makes me sweat just thinking about it.” He looked slightly abashed as he added, “I admit, I asked your mother if she could convince you to do it as a favor to me. The trust is hurting this year. Your mother suggested that perhaps your performance could be a donation?” He winced before Laurie could even frame a response. “Which I hate to even bring up. But I won't lie to you, Laurence. It would be a real boon if you did this. You'd bring in more ticket revenue, and of course, not having to pay either a salary or the travel fees would help a great deal.”
Laurie picked up his wineglass again and took another drink. Exquisitely done, Mother. There was no graceful way out of this. Even if he didn't owe Oliver more than he could ever repay for introducing him to practically everyone who had been the start of his dancing career, he'd look like a heel for not helping the trust when they were in trouble. And there was no question that they were, if it was Oliver asking him.
But to get back on stage after five years. His hand shook a little, and he set the glass back down. Yes, it was just a local performance with Twin Cities children, but even that was a higher profile than Laurie wanted.
He lifted his eyes and saw a man watching him from farther down the table. He was young, early twenties at best. A dancer, surely, and from the way he was looking at Laurie, he'd heard the stories.
Ran off to Toronto and tried to foist same-sex dancing on the international championships. Huge scandal. Didn't perform for six months, but when he did, it was a disaster. Fell apart right there in the middle of the stage. No one could believe it. Such a bright future ahead of him, and now it's over. Such a shame.
But whoever this dancer was, he'd decided it was worth risking the crazy to ride on Laurie's reputation, because he winked and smiled. When Laurie didn't turn away, he inclined his head to the french doors leading to the back patio and raised his eyebrows in both question and invitation.
Laurie very pointedly turned away from him and back to Oliver.
“I'll do it,” he said, “but only because it's you and because it's the trust. Please make it clear to everyone, however, that it's a one-time thing.” He sighed. “Please tell my mother that too.”
He'd work out later how he was going to get himself onstage without falling into a panic.
Oliver chuckled. “I'll leave that one to you, son.” He reached over and gave a fatherly squeeze to Laurie's shoulder. “Thank you, Laurie. I'm more grateful than I can say. Let me know if there's ever a way I can repay you.”
He wanted to tell Oliver he could repay him by never asking him anything like this again, but that would be rude, so he simply smiled, toasted Oliver's glass with his own, and drank again, trying to drown the realization of what he'd just agreed to.
Laurie never did manage to call Ed and cancel, which only made the fact that he stood Laurie up an all the more bitter pill to swallow.
He hadn't even considered that possibility either, but now that he had, it chafed him more than he wanted to admit. Granted, it was only six forty-seven, but it didn't matter. He knew Ed wasn't coming, knew he'd been a fool to ever think he would. Even more foolish was that he'd let it get this far.
He hadn't had a chance to call him on Saturday night, as by the time he got back to his apartment he'd been good for nothing but sitting in front of the television with a pint of Chubby Hubby and What's Up, Doc? On Sunday he'd tried to work up the courage to call—twice—but each time he'd thought about facing the class alone and found he just couldn't call. He told himself he'd call on Monday, but he managed once again not to, and in a fit of extreme stupidity, he deleted the text from Vicky so he couldn't call.
And now here he was, so strung out he was ready to run across the street to the convenience store and buy a package of cigarettes, and Ed was nowhere to be seen.
A soft hand fell on his shoulder, startling him. He relaxed when he saw it was only Maggie. “Sorry,” he told her. “I'm a bit keyed up tonight.”
Maggie's hand squeezed gently. “You're making such a big deal out of this, sweetie. It's just ballroom.” When Laurie started to object, she gave the weary sigh of one about to cover old ground once again. “It's grandmas and grandpas from First Baptist wanting to learn a little rumba. Don't make it into a federal case, because it isn't one.” She smiled. “I hear you're going to dance in The Nutcracker! It's going to be such good publicity for the studio.”
Yes, and such personal hell for me. Laurie glanced back at the clock again, deciding to change the subject. “I was supposed to have an assistant tonight, but it looks like he's going to stand me up, unfortunately.”
“Assistant?” Maggie sounded amused, but then her smile fell. “Wait—he? You don't mean you planned to dance with—” She read the truth on his face, and he watched the distaste form. “Oh, Laurie. What's gotten into you? You're bent out of shape because of what happened in the past, so you're going to have your assistant be a man? With a bunch of Baptists?”
Laurie felt his ears heat, but he kept his chin high. “It doesn't matter, because he isn't going to show. Though if you must know, yes, I'd planned to dance with him. I'm more comfortable following than leading in ballroom.”
Maggie's sigh was full of exasperation. “Yes, but if you wanted to avoid scandal—” She broke off, unwilling to finish the rest, and Laurie didn't finish it for her.
Why would he? The part that had scandalized everyone else hadn't been what had upset him, after all.
She was working up to a new attempt at arguing why that had been a foolish thing to do when the door to the studio burst open and Ed Maurer came breezing in with a wide grin on his face.
“Hey,” he said, nodding at Maggie as he peeled out of his jacket. Then he nodded again at Laurie. “Here I am, boss.” He tossed the jacket over a chair on the side of the room, then rubbed his hands together and came toward Laurie. “Where do you want me?”
Maggie's mouth fell open briefly as she took in Ed—big, lunky, disheveled-even-in-dress-pants-Ed—a reaction which Laurie enjoyed, he had to admit. Not what you were expecting, sweetie? But he wasn't in the mood for any more nonsense, so he said, “Your class is likely waiting, Maggie.”
She gave him a pointed look but headed for the door all the same. “We'll talk later.”
Laurie waved blithely at her and smiled as she left. But once the door to the studio closed, he turned to Ed and glared. “You're late.”
Ed looked at the clock and rolled his eyes. “Fine. I'm three minutes late by your clock, which is five minutes fast by the one in my car. I'll give you three minutes past eight to make up for it. You happy now?”
No, Laurie wanted to shoot back, but he bit his tongue and inspected his assistant's dancing attire instead. Ed was wearing khakis and a T-shirt, a black one that hugged his muscled body and made his shoulders bulge. His pants, though slightly wrinkled, gathered loosely at the waist and tapered all the way to his ankles. As Laurie moved around to Ed's backside, he noticed they were also nicely snug in the seat.
He had to admit, Ed had done well. Pursing his lips, Laurie pointed at Ed's feet. “Show me your shoes.”
Ed arched an eyebrow and picked up his left foot like a flamingo, revealing his inch-high-heeled black loafers. “This do, boss?”
Laurie gave him a withering look. “Do not call me ‘boss.'”
“This do, Laurence?”
“Yes. It's just fine, in fact.” He came back around to face Ed, took a breath, and thought, Here goes nothing.
“This is a beginning ballroom dancing class,” he began, “for husbands and wives. It's not going well, and they only have five weeks left. The men in particular are struggling. Their wives try to compensate for them, which makes everything worse. I show them the part by dancing with their partner, but they just aren't getti
ng it. And they're all from a very conservative Baptist church, so when I try to dance with the men, they act like I'm trying to stick my tongue down their throat, and everything just deteriorates from there.”
Ed frowned. “So you want me to dance with them?”
“No.” Laurie pursed his lips. “You'll dance with me, to demonstrate.”
“But how is that going to help? And why ask me instead of some woman?”
Because the real problem isn't them, it's me. Because I keep having panic attacks, and I can't let any other dancer see that. Because the only women I know well enough to ask who aren't dancers are my mother, who is out of the question, and Vicky, who is too busy. Because, frankly, I dance the following part much better than lead and always have, and right now I need every leg up I can get. He could say none of this, of course, and he could think of no suitable lie. Panic, always banked and ready, began to encroach.
He turned away and crossed to the barre. “Forget it. I should have called you and canceled, but I didn't have your number. Go ahead and leave.”
Laurie saw Ed coming toward him in the mirror and turned around to brace himself against the barre as Ed bore down on him, glaring. “Listen, buddy, I just came all the way across town for this. You wanted an assistant, and now you've got one.”
“This is a mistake,” Laurie shot back. “I don't know why I even asked you. You can't even dance.”
This time both Ed's eyebrows came up. “Is that so?”
Oh God, Laurie wished he could hit him. “I'm not talking about jiggling around with some bimbo at Club Drunk. I'm talking about the waltz. The fox-trot. The tango. Ballroom dancing.”
He braced for Ed's rejoinder, but all he said was, “How about you just give me some instructions and we see what happens?”
Laurie wanted to keep arguing, to try to get rid of him, but he was honestly getting nervous now, much worse than usual. He pulled the towel off his neck and dabbed at the beads of sweat on his forehead before crossing the room to get the bottle of water he kept on the shelf beside the sound system. “Fine. Stay. Go. Whatever you want.”
Ed tucked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “How'd it go the other night? With the speakers?”
It had been a mess. Laurie had ended up just canceling class and telling them he'd add another twenty minutes to their next session. “It went fine.”
Ed nodded. “Good.” He rocked on his heels again. “Never danced ballroom with a guy before. This will be interesting.”
Laurie reached for his towel to wipe sweat from his brow. “You don't have to. I just told you that.”
He watched Ed carefully, searching for signs of his discomfort, but Ed just shrugged. “Didn't say I minded. Just said I hadn't.” He rocked on his heels again, but he gave Laurie a critical look, suddenly seeing too much. “You okay, boss?”
“I'm fine.” Laurie cleared his throat and looked away, making a production of recapping the bottle of water. He didn't feel as sick now, which was good, but the butterflies were still going wild in his stomach. These, however, he knew he could attribute fully to Ed. He hadn't known being alone in a room with him would make him feel so uncomfortable. And now you're going to dance with him. He cleared his throat again. “What do you do, Ed? When you aren't lifting weights and terrorizing my aerobics class, of course.”
“I work at Best Buy headquarters. Corporate drone.”
Laurie blinked. “Really?” When Ed nodded, he thought, Huh. “I would have pegged you for something a bit more...active.”
“Oh, I used to play semipro football for the Minnesota Lumberjacks,” he said.
Football. That made more sense. “Where did you play? Somewhere up north?”
Ed laughed. “No. Here, in the Twin Cities. Semipro isn't a paying gig. Just a summer football league.”
Laurie nodded, trying to act like he knew that. “You say you used to. Why aren't you playing semifootball now?”
“Semipro. And I'm not playing because I hurt my neck.” He made a vicious wrenching motion with both his hands in the area just beneath his chin and the back of his skull. “Damn near twisted my head off and got a concussion to boot. Doctors said if I get hit there again, it'd be the end of not just football but maybe walking too, and maybe even feeding myself. So football's done.”
“Oh.” Laurie winced. Then he glanced at the dance floor. “Are you—I mean, can you—”
This had clearly been the wrong thing to say, because Ed's perpetually sunny disposition soured. “Oh, I'm all healed up now. Little bouts of irritation every now and again, but that's it.”
Laurie'd had no idea about any of this. He felt a little bad for Ed, not because Laurie gave a damn about football, but because he knew about leaving a career you loved, and he couldn't help his empathy. “Did the class go well the other night?” he asked.
Ed gave him another smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Laurie blushed and turned away in relief when the door opened again. “The students are arriving. Just hang out at the barre, and I'll call you over when I'm ready for you.”
“Okay.” Ed went back to stand by the mirrors.
The couples entered in clusters as they usually did; Laurie suspected the first ones lingered in the parking lot until they found a buddy couple to enter with. He didn't dislike this class, not exactly, but even if it hadn't been ballroom, these couples wouldn't be his favorite students. They were just so aggravating. They said they wanted to dance, but they fussed over every detail, laughing when they had to get too close to one another, acting as if they were teenagers being told to hold hands on a dance floor. Allegedly they were going on some cruise ship where they all planned to dance. From the evidence of their collective girth, Laurie personally doubted they would venture much farther than the buffet, but he didn't voice that thought out loud. He squelched the snarky voice that wanted to tear down his clients inside his head and smiled, holding the gesture in place as he waited for the hands of the clock to edge their way to the top of the hour.
There seemed to be some benefit to having Ed in the room, because even though he was still and silent at the back, Laurie was highly aware of his presence, and instead of having irrational upset over explaining the steps of a waltz, he was obsessed with wondering what Ed was thinking, wondering why he stayed, wondering if he was going to make some snide comment and undermine him in front of his students. But Ed said nothing and did nothing, and the next thing Laurie knew, it was seven: time to begin his class.
He started them off with the rumba.
“Slow, quick, quick,” he called, over and over and over again. “Mr. Gerisher—slow, quick, quick. You turn her on slow. Not quick.”
It was the turning box that was throwing them. They could organize their legs well enough to move backward and forward, and they could do the turns when they did them on their own, but if he made them face each other, they did nothing but stumble. Laurie had tried it with music and without music, and he'd tried counting down so slowly turtles would have looked dapper attempting the maneuvers. He stood beside them, ghosting the steps they should take. He guided them one by one, gentling his tone until he was so calm and quiet they had to be straining to hear him. No matter what he did, they still couldn't get it.
This was just the rumba.
And all the while he taught them, as usual, the past kept creeping up on him. He thought about Paul, thought about the last time he'd done ballroom, thought about that ridiculous horrible night, reliving it as if it were his own personal foxhole, which in a way it was. The panic filled him, and as had become his custom, now he was fighting not just their bad skill but his own ghosts—
—and then, out of nowhere, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Ed was standing there, looking expectant.
“What do you want?” Laurie snapped.
“As your assistant, I thought I should offer to assist.” Ed looked Laurie up and down. “Anyway, you looked kind of pale. I was worried you'd fall over.”
Finding out
he looked as unhinged as he felt did nothing to help Laurie. He shoved a hand through his hair and pursed his lips. “I don't think—”
Ed stepped in front of him and held up his arms, inviting Laurie into his space. Then he lifted an eyebrow and switched, holding his right up instead of his left. “Unless you wanted to lead?” When Laurie tried again to protest, Ed grinned again. “Come on. You seriously gave up your sound system to have me stand at the back of the room and watch you be overtired and frustrated?”
“Who is this?” Mrs. Anderson asked, looking at Ed with suspicion.
“The assistant,” Ed answered her and gave her a winsome grin. Mrs. Anderson blushed and smiled back, and Ed turned to Laurie once again. “So, boss? You ready?”
God, no! But Laurie felt so unsteady now he didn't know how to protest. He raised his right hand but stopped short of putting it in Ed's left, and his left hand hesitated over his partner's bicep. “Do you have any idea what you're doing?”
“Slow, quick, quick.” Ed winked and captured Laurie's raised hand, settling his other along Laurie's shoulder. “Piece of cake.”
“Oh God,” Laurie murmured.
But to his surprise, he found himself confidently steered across the floor, perfectly executing the turning box that his students had utterly failed to so much as grasp, let alone master.
Ed, clearly enjoying Laurie's shock, winked, then said, “Underarm turn?”
And then, before Laurie could recover from the box turn, he found himself being spun expertly beneath Ed's arm and out.
Memory, always ready with daggers on these nights, sent him briefly five years into the past to that fateful night in Toronto, and for a moment, he saw the crowd, the lights, the judges, felt the strong, steady grip of Paul's hand—
—and then he was coming back, finishing the turn not in his former lover's embrace, but Ed Maurer's. He stumbled briefly, and then with a deep breath and iron will, he brought himself back to the beat.
“So,” Laurie said when he was recovered enough to speak. “You know how to dance.”
Dance With Me Page 4
