Caught in the friend zone

Salsa

DAPHNE

I come out of the restroom and I spot a poster about a salsa competition. I’ve always loved dancing. I bet if I never became a lawyer, I’ll be a dancer. Lately I don’t dance a lot, because I’m busy with work and I don’t have anyone to dance with, I like it when I dance with someone. It feels like we are speaking a different language that only we understand and that we are in a different world altogether. I took ballet till when I was 12, but I never stopped practising.

Dancing was and has always been a way for me to release stress and it makes me smile, sometimes for no reason at all.

The salsa completion is in like an hour and I think it will be a big deal, I see people coming in already. I walk to the table and find Jordan with his eyes closed and his head leaning backward against the chair... I hope he is not asleep!

“Jordan!” I whisper shout beside his ear. He opens his eyes slowly and a smile from nowhere appears on my face. I stare at him a bit longer and he also stares at me. I still don’t know what it is with Jordan’s eyes but I think they change shade. Right now, they are dark blue and beautiful...

Oh my God, what am I doing! I blink immediately and start thinking about a reasonable excuse to why I was staring at him.

“Argh! I can’t believe I blinked; I let you win the staring contest!” Whew, that was close. I pray he bought that lame excuse.

“Yeah, I won; I never knew we were having a staring contest. Hey, but it does feel good to win.” Thank God, I think he semi bought it.

“So what are we going to do now, I’ve decided to live a little before this night ends.”

“Live a little, please, spare me that, you always live a lot.” I say laughing at him.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. So what do we do next?” He says sitting upright.

“Well... I saw a poster about a salsa contest. I kinda want to join but I have no idea how to salsa.” I say as if I have given up on it, but I really want to go and salsa even if I suck at it.

“Luckily for you my dear Daph, I know how to salsa. How long to we have before the contest?”

“About 45 minutes...”

“Well, that’s a whole lot of time. Let’s sign up and then I’ll teach you some basic salsa."

You should see me smiling like Christmas came early, I grab Jordan’s hand amidst his protests that he can walk fine alone and ran to go sign up.

We sign up and hed to an empty balcony to practice, the place is quite packed now. We go through the basic steps and add a little stuff to our routine.

“You can still do a split right?” Jordan asks.

“Yeah, I think, let me stretch first.” I do some stretches and when I feel that I’ve done enough I get up and twist my neck a bit. “I’m ready”

“If you say so Daph...This should be fun right?” He asks with nervousness dripping through his voice.

“Jordan, are you nervous or it is the ‘Blood on the tracks’ talking?” I say with an eyebrow raised.

“It’s definitely the blood on the tracks.” He saying with a smile.

“May I ask, how do you know how to salsa, I don’t remember you knowing how.

“During the first year we got married, Shan wanted so badly to go for dancing lessons, so being the gentleman that I am, I decided to go for them with her. Come to think of it, that was one of the good memories I had with her before the accident.”

O Jordan, it hurts so much that you are going through this, you don’t deserve this one bit. “If it makes you sad talking about it, you don’t have to.”

“It’s alright, I’m okay.” He says with a reassuring smile.

By the time we realise it’s time for the competition. We go back inside and the host begins to talk. He’s stating some rules which I don’t deem so important, I mean, I’m here to have fun, why would I push someone off the dancefloor.

The music starts and Jordan and I start our routine. We are actually doing great, I thought we would suck but the couple next to us have got that covered.

Soon it’s left with just five couples including Jordan and I. Now the completion is getting tougher.

“Jordan we have to amp our game, our competitors look really good.”

“I know, that couple over there looks like they have been dancing their whole lives. But don’t worry, I’ve got this covered, follow my lead.”

“Yes sir!” I say as I mock-salute.

The music plays on, it has a strong beat to it that kind of compels you to dance. So I’m moving round the dancefloor with Jordan’s directions. It’s quite easy until we really have to impress the judges and the people watching.

“Okay Daphne, so now you are going to do a split, I’ll be lifting you up so this one will be easy, okay…” I nod my head in agreement.

“Now split.” I do as told, I do a graceful split, I feel proud of myself and even show off a big smile, what no one knows is that I really felt that split, I probably should have stretched more.

“That was a very good split.” Jordan says as he pulls me back up to face him directly, my face is like about two inches away from him.

“I try…”I say with a wide smile plastered on my face I can’t let it show that that split hurt.

“Now, you’ll do a mid-air split whiles I hold you up and make like two turns. You ready?”

“Yeah…” Oh God, here comes another one.

I do the split but this one is alright, Jordan makes like five turns and he stops when I complain that I feel like puking. I didn’t anyway.

We do some more moves including shimming quite a few times. At a point I’m not sure we were still doing salsa, Jordan did some flips whiles I was trying to pull off a decent pirouette. We just went along with it and enjoyed the night.

We placed third and I couldn’t even believe it because we were almost disqualified for doing other dances but salsa, but Jordan told them, that he is a part time dance instructor and that was his version of modern salsa. Somehow they bought it and now I’m holding our reward a gift card to a spa.

“That was amazing Jordan, thank you so much. Only God knows how long I’ve been waiting to do that.” I say as I give him a hug.

“It was my pleasure, I needed to get things of my mind, and in fact I should be thanking you.” He says he returns my hug.

“So what is next on our live a little list.” I’m grabbing my purse now.

“Let’s do something crazy.” I can sense the mischief in his voice.

“With you what isn’t crazy. What do you want to do?”

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