Page 13 of Double Dared
I’d meant to play something on my wireless speaker, something that we both could enjoy. I didn’t know if there were many genres we could agree on. Then again, Taylor kept surprising me with these little moments of quiet understanding, clever humor, and pieces of information he simply possessed for no clear reason. It was like he knew what I knew, like he was certain I would get it, and he just put it out there for me to enjoy.
“Is this Baccara?” He laughed excitedly. “I can boogie.” He lifted the lid of the record player and narrowed his eyes, focusing on the task and muttering, “How do we get this to spin? Let’s see.”
I put my glass on the table and walked over to Taylor, reaching for the switch just as his hand went there. His fingers fell on the switch half a heartbeat before mine touched his hand.
I pulled my hand back, closing it.
“I got it,” he assured me. “All it takes is time anderrors. If you give an infinite number of monkeys typewriters and give them an infinite amount of time, you’ll eventually get Hamlet.”
“We are an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite amount of time, and we did get Hamlet.”
He ogled me as the pieces came together. “Well, fuck. That’s absolutely true.” He put the record in and pressed the button that brought the arm over and lowered the needle into the spinning vinyl.
That typical mix of melancholy and dance beats poured out of the speakers and filled the room.
Taylor bit his lower lip on the left side and shot me a challenging look. “Let’s give this a try,” he murmured, lowering his head a little while keeping his gaze locked to my face. He took a couple of steps back and let his hips catch the rhythm first, shoulders following, then his arms, his feet, and finally, his head.
I crossed my arms and moved closer to the balcony door, barely holding back my smile.
He could boogie-woogie. And when the song reached the dreamy, humming chords, Taylor lifted his head high and spun around with his arms stretched wide, nearly knocking down my DVD collection, but the sight was such that I forgot to breathe for a few long seconds.
His movement was equally funny as it was elegant, transporting me straight to the post-disco era of energetic clubs, sexual liberation, and the optimism of feminism that stormed the culture with everything that was good in this world.
The lyrics spun around my head as I watched Taylor surrender himself to the unbothered expression of joy I hadn’t seen anywhere outside a theater stage in years, if I’d ever seen it at all.
And as the song ended, he looked at me again, his face aglow, olive skin warm and shiny with perspiration, hair loose and messy, a smile punching dimples into his cheeks. “You didn’t join me.”
“You looked like you were having a moment,” I said, no longer able to not smile at him.
“I don’t feel very much like talking,” he said as he moved to the record player and pressed another button that lifted the needle from the record.
“Are you quoting the song?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said, doing it again. It was more endearing than he realized, and part of me resented him for that. He wasn’t aware of his aura at all, and if he was aware of it, he was cruel. “Let’s try this again, properly.”
The needle lowered, scratching the record with that invigoratingzip, and the music began again.
Taylor hummed the vocals from the start ever so softly as he stepped away from me, one arm stretched out in invitation. When the lyrics began in earnest, Taylor’s body moved in the true, energetic rhythm of the ode to an era, and I fell into it like I was born for this exact moment.
My hand slapped into his, his grip tight as he pulled me in and broke into a dance with me. His other hand reached for the small of my back, spinning mearound with total, unbreakable trust that I would stick to the rhythm, and I did. Show me a theater kid who wouldn’t.
The four and a half minutes that the song lasted stretched into an immeasurable period of time in which I saw flashes of wild and sweaty nights and unrestrained happiness. In one moment, when Taylor and I swirled away from one another, his hand still holding mine, he reached for the top button of his shirt, popping it expertly and letting it spread out, his muscular chest coming into focus and dimming the rest of the room in my vision as he pulled us close together again. His hair was matted with sweat, and his face a little red underneath its warm and vibrant hue.
Taylor pressed against me for the briefest of moments, his grin revealing his teeth so freely that I almost tripped over my own feet.
As the song began to fade, I pulled my hand out of his.
No, he didn’t understand his own aura. He didn’t understand what it meant that I was bisexual, and I hadn’t understood what it meant to fake-date a guy who not only looked like he was carved rather than born, but who also had a clever sense of humor and a childish curiosity that drove him everywhere all at once.
“You, uh, dance,” I said.What?“That’s missing an adjective.”
“Mm, I’ll take it,” he said. “You also dance.”
I nodded. The shirt he wore was already tight, and the way it revealed the smooth skin of his chest and the place where his pronounced collarbones met was more than a little distracting. Unbothered, he undid his cuffs and rolled his sleeves up, doing so messily and revealing an elegant tattoo down on his right forearm. It was flowing and floral in a way, though it had no meaning I could make out. It was purely decorative, I was sure. “Mind if we open the balcony a little? I’m soaked.”
To be fair, he had danced for ten minutes straight. I opened the balcony door, and a gust of cool wind moved the thin curtain into the room before I swept it aside.
Taylor lifted his glass and carried it to the balcony, leaning against the railing and drinking a little. “You have such a beautiful place. If I had a place like this, I’d never leave.”
