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“Yes! Exactly. I mean, dance is very different from math, but there’s still that moment of ‘getting it’ when their face lights up and you know you’ve reached this kid, and … it just makes you feel like you actually did something good in the world, you know?”
“I do,” Luke says.
I’m about to go on when the bartender returns. “You fellas want another?”
We both look at our beers, which somehow emptied in the course of this conversation. I open my mouth to refuse, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I know this was only supposed to be one drink, but I don’t want to leave this conversation. And when I look up at Luke, he’s hesitating as well.
“We’ll get another round,” he says.
It is all I can do to keep myself from leaping up onto the bar and cheering.
Luke ends up being engaging and smart and fascinating once you break through that heavily guarded exterior. Talking about teaching cracks him open like a walnut. He starts discussing his school, his students, his fellow teachers. He’s thirty. He’s worked there since he got his teaching degree. He wouldn’t change it for the world. Then he starts poking at my life, asking questions, listening attentively when I answer. He finds my dancing incredible and brave.Brave.
“I don’t really think of it as brave,” I say. “Dancing issomething I’ve always done. I don’t know what my life would be like without it.”
“I could never do it. The thought of being on a stage in front of people is terrifying.”
“A stage in a dark nightclub where I’m nothing but a scantily clad body on a pedestal in front of wasted people is not as intimidating as you might imagine.”
The faintest edge of color creeps into his cheeks. “Still,” he mutters at his second beer.
I don’t push. I’m too scared to break the spell hanging over this night. Suddenly, my taciturn giant is forthcoming and chatty. It turns out you just have to hit his interests and he opens up pretty easily, revealing a soft and sweet interior.
It really sucks that he’s so straight.
The thought crosses my mind more than once as Luke talks animatedly about one of his students and his whole face lights up, his green eyes as bright as moss in sunlight. He’s heart-breakingly handsome when he loosens up even a little, and I catch myself watching his lips move as he talks. Maybe it’s the mild buzz from the beer, but my hands are tingling with the desire to curl my fingers in his beard or brush his hair back from his face. A lock of it dusts his forehead, the only thing out of place anywhere on him. It would be so easy to reach up and tuck it back.
“What?” Luke says, snapping me from my fantasies.
“Hm? Sorry?” Shit, I wasn’t listening at the end there.
“You’re looking at me funny. Do I have ink on my face or something?”
“No, it’s just…”
Fuck it. I’ve come this far, haven’t I? Luke has turned his body more toward mine in the course of the conversation, our knees nearly meeting under the bar. He ordered that second drink. Some part of him doesn’t hate this, straight or not. So I take my chance and reach up, setting that lock of hair back in place, fingertips grazing his forehead as I do.
Luke is frozen when I lower my hand.
“It was out of place,” I say.
“Oh.”
I don’t know if I’ve made a horrible mistake or not, but my fingertips are buzzing with the memory of his skin, and it’s really, really hard for me to care right now.
Luke clears his throat. “You know, um, the school, they want me to take the kids to the café. Because of what happened. We’re going to see each other again.”
My stomach does a happy little flip. Chloe hasn’t mentioned anything like that to us yet, but I’m not quite sure what Luke is implying here.
“I guess that makes us temporary co-workers,” I say.
“Yeah. So we…”
He’s looking at me, his face hard and closed off again. Was touching him really such a big deal? Or is there something more going on here? What is he trying to say?
Luke looks past me toward the front of the bar.
“It’s late,” he says. “I should close my tab.”
