One Day at Practice

“I’m worried! What if I’m too heavy? What if I fall? What if you fall?” I complain. Usually, I won’t be this way, but I can’t help being slightly worried about this dance move. You see, our whole class is going to perform in some sort of event for our school. And since I’m in the dance club, they put me in the dance group.

Problem is, I do hip hop. Not this ballet, ballroom, contemporary, whatever you call it sort of dance. Well, I did do ballet when I was young. But only went to classes sometimes until I realized I didn’t really like ballet.

 As of now, I’m trying to do a move wherein the girl lets herself fall and her partner catches her. While falling, the girl should extend both arms sideward, does this complicated movement with their hands and raise her right leg as high as she can while pointing her foot. It’s hard. For me, that is.  All of them do it perfectly and gracefully… Except me.

My dance partner, Travis Rogers, is my best boy friend. As in, my best friend that’s a boy. He’s currently trying to encourage me to do the move. “Come on, it’ll be alright. Just let yourself fall and I’ll catch you,” he pauses when I give him an amused look, “Oh, haha. That sounded wrong, didn’t it?” He chuckles.

“Yes, yes it did,” I laugh. Although, when he said it, I felt a little… weird. Different. “Okay. Let’s get this move right.”

Travis positions himself behind me and I lean back, trying to do the move. “Did I do it right?” I ask, hoping I did do it right.

“No, Melanie. You did not,” Travis laughs and then mocks me, “In fact, that was terrible.”

“Yay. Not.” I groan and tell Travis to get back to the last position. I have to get this move right.

“Whoa. Relax. I’m sure you’ll get this move right, but in the mean time, let’s have a break. Everyone else already went home and we’ve been practicing for three hours straight.” He says tiredly. He looked exhausted. I couldn’t blame him. For the first two hours of our practice, everyone else in the group was with us. (We stayed at my house for practice.) We practiced all the different moves, with me not getting most of them right. At one point, we had a dance showdown, which was completely off topic. After the first two hours, everyone else went home while I let Travis stay with me because I wanted him to help me with the stupid move that I couldn’t get right.

Anyway, the showdown was probably the main reason why Travis is tired. And the fact that we’re practicing outside right under the sun explains why we’re both sweating a lot.

“Sure, but can we try the move just one last time?” I plead with puppy dog eyes. And a pout. Travis always falls for that.

He tries to resist it, but he just can’t. He laughs and pinches my cheek, “All right, but only because you’re too cute.” He pinches my cheeks harder.

“Ow!” I exclaim as I rub my cheek, “That hurt.” I mock punch him on his arm.  He mock punches me back as I laugh.

Travis moves back behind me and I move to place myself in front of him. I have to get this right. Positioning myself, I think of Travis catching me and I let myself fall. I trust him. Travis. I close my eyes.

Travis.

Before I know it, I feel a familiar pair of arms wrap around my waist and I feel hot breaths tickling the skin on my neck. My heart’s beating fast when I open my eyes and straighten up. As I did so, Travis’ arms do not move away from my waist and we just stand there, staring at each other.

In that moment, I can’t think of anything else. All I can see is Travis. All I can think of is him.

He snaps out of it first. “Yes! Melanie Greene, you have officially perfected that move.” He happily announces.

It takes me a few seconds before I realize what he said. I did the move perfectly! FINALLY!!!

I free myself from his arms and jump around in happiness. “I did it. Uh-huh. Who’s the boss? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” I chant while running around like a moron.

After some time of running like the weird person that I am, I run back to Travis and hug him tight. “So let me ask you this—what exactly came into you that made you perfect that move that you couldn’t get for such a long time?” He jokingly asks as he rests his chin on my head.

“Haha. Very funny.” I say. Honestly, I don’t really want to tell him. What will I say? ‘I thought of you. Duh.’

Yeah. Not gonna happen.

“Seriously though. What did you do?” He persistently asks.

“Nothing. I just concentrated a lot… So… yeah.” I pull away from the embrace and bite my lip.

“You’re biting your lip. You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not!”

“Well, you leave me no choice.”

I was going to respond, but Travis moves fast. I squeal as Travis grabs my waist and twists. I am now currently being carried on Travis’ shoulders.

“No! Put me down!” I repeatedly say while hitting any part of his body I could reach.

“No.” He grins wickedly and before I know it, he jumps into the pool in our backyard with me falling with him.

I fall into the cold water, look around for a second and brake through the surface of the water. “Don’t d-do that again.” I gasp out, trying to breathe in as much air as I could. Seeing him leaning on the wall of the pool, I move closer to him. His white shirt is wet, which makes his torso quite visible. And damn, he has a pretty hot body.

Trav grins, reaches for my hand and pulls me closer to him. “You’re shivering.”

“Y-yeah. It’s a miracle h-how the water could still b-be this cold in this w-weather.” I joke. Travis laughs and puts his arm around my waist. We just stay there, leaning on the side of the pool, content with just staying like this. My heart is beating fast and there’s this weird feeling in my stomach.

And in this moment, I realize that I like Travis. I like him a lot. I like him. Okay, so maybe I have liked him this way for a long time, but I didn’t just want to accept it. I accept it now.

“Mel.” He whispers softly, “Do you ever get that ‘butterflies in your stomach’ feeling when you’re around someone? That feeling when you feel satisfied, just because someone you like is near?”

The question takes me by surprise, but I answer anyway. “Y-yeah.” I feel those feelings now.

“When do you feel those feelings?” He looks at me with an expression I don’t quite understand.

When I didn’t answer, he spoke with a frustrated tone. “I knew it. I knew it.”

“Knew what?” I ask quietly.

He shakes his head and replies, “You don’t like me like that.”

What he just said is in fact, extremely shocking. “What? Why do you say so?”

“I just know. I should’ve never mentioned it.” He turns on his heel and starts to walk away.

“But you’re wrong.” I suddenly say. Trav stops and slowly turns back around to face me.

“How so?”

“I do like you.”

“But not like how I like you.”

“Yeah, about that. The problem is, well, haha.” I look down and shyly scratch the back of my head and continue, “I do.”

He lifts my head with his hand and whispers, “Really?”

I smile. “Really.”

“I was actually kidding about liking you.” He confidently jokes. My jaw drops as he runs for the inside of my house. I could hear him laughing as I shout and chase after him.

“TRAVIS! YOU JERK! COME BACK HERE!”