Practice

Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

Before Emily met Alison, the word practice was simple.

Practice meant singing to her reflection in the mirror. It meant waking up early on Saturday

mornings and taking swings in the batting cages, meant tossing a ball around with her friends. It

meant dancing in her room until her hips moved the right way. It meant open textbooks on her bed

and stacks of math homework.

But then she met Alison, and practice somehow came to mean bloodshot eyes and tear stained

cheeks and her chest cracking open down the center until her heart spilled out like a wilted rose left

in the sun to rot.

The first time it happened, she was sixteen. She was sitting on her bed, her pajamas bunched up

around her knees while her wet hair dripped onto her phone screen, and Lana Del Rey's voice faded into her left ear when she felt one of her ear buds fall from its place. She looked up to find a pair of blue eyes looking at her expectantly, and she saw Alison's mouth moving, felt her breath on her cheek, but all she could hear was a silky 'it's you it's you, it's all for you' echo into her ears and she felt herself nodding along in agreement to whatever it was that Alison had said.

She still hadn't torn her eyes away from the younger girl's - she couldn't, not with those wide pupils

peering into her like her soul was flittering right behind her eye sockets. Then again, whenever

Alison looked at her, it probably was.

Alison laced their hands together, lifting Emily from her spot on the bed. The other ear bud fell from her ear as she stood, but 'heaven is a place on earth with you' still beat against her ear drum and resonated into her fingertips, still laced with the other girls, as she stood up and followed her to the center of the hotel room.

"Do we need music?" Alison asked, tucking her hair behind her ears nervously. It had fallen flat, all the hairspray and sweat from the day weighing it down. She hadn't showered yet, Emily noticed. She'd been pacing the room since they got back, she even heard Alison's heavy footsteps while the scalding water beat against her skin during her own shower.

Alison had just taken off her dress and thrown on one of Emily's band shirts and a pair of fuzzy socks. Her eye makeup was smudged and her lips had faded to their natural pink and Emily had to look away for a moment because her heart felt like glass behind her ribs and she swore it would've shattered if she looked

any longer.

"Music?" Emily questioned, still unsure of what it was she had agreed to.

"I don't know, Em. You tell me. You're the one that's supposed to be helping me," Alison pouted, and Emily's cheeks flushed at the sight of the other girl's bottom lip falling out of her mouth. She turned back towards her bed for her phone just to keep Alison from seeing the way her cheeks burned.

"What song?"

"I don't know. What kind of songs do they play at school dances?"

"What?"

"Emily," Alison groaned, but she had a smirk playing at the edges of her lips, "you have no idea what's going on right now, do you?"

"Guilty," Emily sighed, shaking her head.

"Why do you always say yes when you don't know what I ask?" Alison laughed, and Emily hated that it happened enough for Alison - Captain oblivious - to catch on, but she couldn't help it.

"I can't say no to you," she admitted, and she hoped the playful tone of her voice was enough to keep Alison from seeing how much she meant it.

"You're cute," Alison giggled, ducking her head and Emily wanted more than anything to believe the blush crawling up to her cheekbones was real, wanted to believe she made Alison's skin do that, but she couldn't let herself.

Hope was a dangerous thing.

"So what is it we're doing then?" Emily asked. Alison tucked her hair behind her ears again, something she did when she was nervous, and Emily felt her eyebrows furrow together. What could Alison be nervous about asking her?

"I asked if you would show me how to, you know...dance."

"Alison, we just spent the last two hours dancing. You know how to dance." She pointed out, and