Slow Dancing In The Dark

"How can you not know how to slow dance?"

"I never learned."

"So you never...I don't know...danced with a girl you liked or anything?"

"Um...no?"

"Like...never?"

"Nope, never. How do you know how anyway?"

"Tao taught me how in...like...seventh year. Just in case there was a boy I liked or something."

"Wait, Tao knows how to dance and I don't?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Well, that's just...sad."

"Come on then," Charlie said reaching his hand out toward me.

I laughed and took it, letting him pull me to my feet.

"Ok, so you put your hand here," Charlie said, moving my right hand onto his left side, "And then you put your other hand underneath mine here."

He grabbed my free hand to place it underneath his right one. 

"Okay, so...now what do I do then? I'm supposed to just rock back and forth like this?"

"Yeah, pretty much."

"That's...," Charlie looked up at me and it made something clutch in my chest, "...really easy."

"Yeah," he said, "It's easy."

His bedroom was still dark as we swayed music-less. I'd spent the night at his house before once when a thunderstorm hit, but it felt different how swaying in the dark with my hand on his waist. Charlie had left the curtains open and the dim streetlight cast muted shadows along the posters on the walls. Charlie swaying next to me felt...easy. 

He made everything feel easy. 

Those squiggly curls that always fell down his forehead only made the contrast of his eyes against the darkness brighter. Without thinking about it, I pushed one of the tendrils back into the nest of hair it had come from. And for only the briefest of an instant, Charlie seemed to press up into my touch.

"So?" 

The word cut through the web-like silence that had collected around us. My heart clenched again when I met Charlie's eye. 

"So...what?" I asked.

"Who do you want to dance with?"

"Oh, um...I don't know yet."

"Come on, you must have someone in mind."

Who did he have in mind? Nick knew he wanted it; to feel that electric pull with someone as the lights flashed overhead. He wanted to feel her pull in close in the circle of his arms and brush her nose up against the side of his throat. He wanted to smell the sweet-scented shampoo that girls always seemed to use. He tried to see a face, to picture some of the Higgs girls pulled close under his arm. He tried to feel a soft hands and a silky blouse under his palms, but the only thing he could see was Charlie; the callused fingers from always scraping the length of his drumming sticks, the worn fabric of the t-shirt that he had pulled on to sleep in, the straight edge of his side. 

Nick thought back to the Truham-Higgs  dances that happened every couple of months. The Higgs girls and their flowy dresses shining in the dancing lights. He tried to picture dancing with one of them, with any of them, but he could only seem to come back to Charlie and the dimly lit bedroom. He didn't want to be dancing with any of them. He only wanted to dance with Charlie. 

He only wanted to be in this quiet bedroom with his best friend dancing in the dark next to ghostly shadows on old posters. 

"No one really," Nick responded, "I just thought it would be good to know how for next time."