The Rom-Commers(60)

Right there, for a second, it felt like the music disappeared, and Lorenzo disappeared, and all the other dancers did, too, as Charlie held my gaze and I held his right back, and something happened in my chest that was the opposite of all the thumping and thrashing my heart had been doing lately.

Something, instead, that was like … a sigh.

Like my heart itself might be letting out a five-point-five-second breath.

Something that was absolutely, undeniably romantic.

Even though what he was doing was completely obvious, I said, “What are you doing?”

I expected some brush-off response, like, “Tying your shoes, dummy.” But instead, he said, “I’m apologizing.”

“For what?”

He tilted his head back in the direction of his house. “For being a dick before.”

“You’re apologizing? In a honky-tonk bar?”

This was the moment we’d come here to find. This was the real moment that would bring the fictional one to life. This was the difference between imaginary things and real ones.

Case closed: we’d have to put this in the screenplay.

Just as soon as I could figure out how to explain that to Charlie without completely confessing what he’d just done to me.

As Lorenzo moved on to the next waiting female who wanted help, Charlie stood back up, shook his head at me, and said, “Double knots—not just bunny ears.” As if he gave me shoe-tying tips all the time—but I never listened.

He bent at the waist and pulled up his pant legs to show me his own laces, with their own double knots, as examples to strive for.

I peered down, and that’s when I realized we were both wearing the same shoes. Black Converse low-tops. “We match!” I said.

“You’re not very observant,” Charlie said. “We’ve been matching this whole time.”

“Have we?” I asked, feeling absurdly charmed by that fact—like it was some kind of fate.

But then a woman in a fringe pearl-snap blouse leaned in and pointed at our feet. “You can’t spin in those,” she said.

We both looked up.

“The rubber soles,” she explained. “It’ll twist your knees.”

“Do we need different shoes?” I asked her, strangely dismayed at the prospect of no longer matching.

But the woman shook her head. “Just cut up some old socks,” she said, “and stretch them over the balls of your feet like leg warmers.”

I turned to Charlie, like Brilliant. “Shoe leg warmers!” I said, holding up my hand for a high five.

But no high five from Charlie. He just shook his head.

“I’ll do this research,” he said then, “and I’ll let you slam into me a hundred times, and I’ll watch you ogle that Italian guy, and I’ll double-knot your laces all night long…”

Just then, someone behind jostled us into each other, and Charlie’s eyes roamed my face for a minute, adjusting to the closer distance, before he finished: “But I will never”—he paused for emphasis—“ever put leg warmers on my sneakers.”



* * *



HALFWAY THROUGH THE lesson, Lorenzo gave us a break, and Charlie and I found ourselves at the bar.

“So what’s the verdict?” Charlie asked. “Is it?”

“Is it what?” I asked.

“Is line dancing romantic? Now that we’re actually doing it. Is it?”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I know what that word means.”

“You don’t know what romantic means?” I asked. “Be serious.”

“I think I am being serious. It’s like I can’t quite remember it.”

“You can’t remember the feeling of love?”

“You know how you can have a sense memory? Like if you try to imagine what it feels like to put a spoonful of ice cream in your mouth, you can summon up a mental experience of that feeling?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you do that for love?”

“Of course you can!”

“But—how?”

Was this a real question? “Just…” How did you do it? “Just think of someone you love, and you … feel it.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Are you asking me what love feels like?”

“I’m just wondering if it’s the same for you as it is for me.”

He looked earnest—like it was a real question. I could have shamed him for even attempting to write a romantic comedy if he couldn’t remember what love felt like.

But I decided to be earnest back.

I imagined my dad and Sylvie and Salvador sitting at our dinette table, and then I just took in the sight in my head. “It feels warm,” I said, eyes closed. “It feels hopeful and kind. Sunshiny. And soothing.” And then, knowing there was a chance he’d scoff at me for talking about “the heart” and call it a cliché, I went ahead and said: “It feels like your heart is glowing.”

Because that’s true. That is what it feels like.

Sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason.

I waited to hear something cynical from him.

But when I opened my eyes, Charlie was shaking his head. “I can’t feel my heart.”