#scenebreak
After a week with the new girlfriend and lots of stellar bonding, reality called and it was time to get back in the game. Tango called dance practice and everyone planned to attend. Yep, everyone. I was officially co-coaching with Tango, and Farmer-C was on the crew again. His nickname had not been officially approved yet, but it was all I had.
“Hey, look who’s here!” I shouted when he arrived. He was the last one there, and I strongly suspected he’d sat out in the parking lot a good long time before making his entrance. I wanted to make sure it was grand, so he knew he was well and truly welcome. “Everyone tell Farmer-C how glad we are to see him.”
Of course, they’d been prepped. Everyone cheered and hugged him, and fist bumps were had by all. Tango kissed his cheek and he smiled and thanked her, but the look that hijacked his face when she turned away made my heart bleed. When he saw me watching, he wedged his trademark grin in place, but his eyes begged me for help.
I nodded once. I’d do what I could.
“Okay, chicos, party’s over.” Tango dove directly into professional mode. “We have work to do.” She played with her cell. “Foxtrot has some secret moves for us to throw down. He’ll show us the choreo, and I’ll teach it to you.”
The music played and I threw down the new moves. The backbend at the beginning was the only part that really hurt, but as I danced the sequence, the body rolls and ribcage isolations were a bit of a bitch for my not-quite-back-to-normal body. My pain pills didn’t seem to be working so well.
I hadn’t shown any of it to Tango because I’d wanted to impress her with my ability to help out with the teaching part. She’d learn the material quickly and would happily take the lead.
I finished the run through and looked up for my applause.
Crickets chirped in the silence.
Ten pairs of eyes stared at me, wide and afraid.
Well, nine pairs. Juicy stood off to one side with her arms crossed and one eyebrow cocked in an expression that could only mean, “I told you this was going to kick their asses.”
Okay, eight pairs. Tango had her head cocked in an expression that told me some of that stuff was going to kick her ass, too. The look intensified as she walked to my side, letting me know I’d better be ready to take the lead on this one for a while. Then she turned to the crew with a big fakey smile and slung an arm around my neck, hauling me closer for a kiss. “What did I tell y’all? This is going to be fun!” She emphasized the word with another pointed glance.
I made the mistake of looking up to see how Farmer-C was handling the PDA.
Tango reeled me in for another kiss. “He’s going to have to get used to it,” she whispered.
“Well, yeah,” I replied, “but does it have to be today?”
She muttered something under her breath about “bromances” and “missing the twentieth century,” which was dumb since she was alive for, like, hardly any of it. I’d take her out for coffee afterward and make out with her in front of the Starbucks.
Farmer-C grabbed me in a bear hug and lifted me completely off the floor. “Is this guy great or what?”
Ow! My ribs creaked and a spasm of white hot pain forced a curse from my lips. “Fuck, dude. Gently.”
He lowered me to the floor. “I’m sorry.” The pissed-in-his-master’s-shoes face made a return appearance. “Bro, I forgot.” I could tell he was trying to make up for the silence that had greeted my performance, much the same way I’d pumped everyone up when he’d arrived.
I plastered a smile on my face. “No worries, bro,” I stretched the side that was seriously on fire. “Just a twinge.” Since it was my first time as co-coach, I wanted to impress everyone. Hard to do as Señor Gimpy, so I sucked it up best I could. The whole goal for this practice was to prove we could all get along without hideous, unflinching awkwardness.
So I ignored the pain. You don’t compete as long as I had without spending the occasional weekend in front of a huge crowd with a sprained ankle or a broken wrist. Injuries were there to be ignored. Right?
I snuck a couple of extra pain pills while Tango arranged the crew. She split them down the middle with each side acting as a mirror image for the other. I needed about ten minutes to show the stage left group their first couple of moves, and they sorta got it. Sorta.
In front of the stage right group I had to think for a minute. Okay, on the left I was facing the corner of the bar, so on the right. . . I’d be. . . facing the seating area. Crap. When Juicy taught me the moves, I learned it mostly on the left and not the right, so flipping it on the spot was a challenge. Normally not a problem, but the pain from Farmer-C’s hug and the gentle fog from the pain meds made thinking harder than usual.
That made me nervous. Pain meds, good. Hard to think, bad.
I launched into the first rib cage isolation/body roll combo. . . which hurt like hell. The pain-filled gasp that escaped my lips despite my years of control brought a low “ouch” from the crowd. I shrugged it off. “Okay folks, follow along.” What was wrong with the damn meds?
When I was in front of the stage right group, they could do it with me but the stage left folks floundered. When I switched sides, the stage left people could follow me but the stage right folks messed up. And it hurt. Every time I had to demo the moves, it hurt more.
Not sure what Farmer-C’s hug had done, but it wasn’t good.
Tango couldn’t help much because I was an idiot and hadn’t shown her the sequence ahead of time, so she was struggling, too. Well, of course. The moves kicked my ass the first time I saw them. So much for impressing Tango with how much I was learning as a teacher. Pretty much didn’t work because we really needed two people up front to demonstrate both sides at the same time.
Crap. I sipped water and watched the crew completely unable to do the new moves. I mean, they could do the body rolls. . . kinda. But everything was out of sequence. Taco was getting frustrated with himself. Even K-pop was scowling.
Double crap. They could get this. I knew they could, but me trying to work double duty while getting dizzy from the old ribcage was not going to cut it.
Well, duh. Juicy was better at the moves than me, right? She showed them to me. I couldn’t keep doing them much longer anyway because of the pain. “Juicy, just come down front and take the other side, all right?”
Brief silence.
Tango elbowed me and shook her head, letting me know it was just plain mean to tease Juicy like that.
Oops. Everyone else thought Juicy sucked. Stupid fog.
“But Foxtrot, why would you ask me to help you out?” Juicy asked. Okay, there aren’t enough adverbs on the planet to describe just how pathetically phony that sounded. It was so bad everyone did another Glee whiplash and stared at her.
She turned bright red and shot horribly violent lasers of death at me from her eyes.
No. I mean that literally. I ducked so they’d miss. What the hell was wrong with me? I tried to cover. “Wow. I’m an asshole.” I wrapped an arm around my ribs and grimaced. “Meds must be making me stupid.”
“Stupider,” Tango muttered. She turned to Juicy. “What the hell is going on?”
“Nothing,” Juicy insisted. “Nothing is going on. Let’s just dance, okay?”
Tango crossed her arms and cocked that hip. It didn’t look so sexy aimed at someone else. “I have known you your entire life. What the hell did Ethan do to you?”
“What?”
Blame it on what had just happened with Monika, but apparently Tango had a few trust issues. “What did he do? Why are you pissed at him?”
Juicy opened her mouth.
Tango stopped her. “And don’t tell me it’s just ‘cause he forgot that you’re. . .” Oh-fuck-don’t-let-her-say-it! “. . .dance-challenged.”
Fuck. She’d said it.
The temperature in the room dropped about three hundred degrees. Blue frost covered everyone. I shook my head and the room reverted to n
ormal. What. the. hell?
Juicy pulled up to the best dance posture I had seen on her. She gave me another blast of her death rays, then stared Tango directly in the eyes as she started the sequence. She eased the backbend all the way to the floor and popped up without any effort whatsoever.
Yeah. . . everything about her radiated how sick she was of taking Tango’s shit. Anger flowed off her in red, fiery waves. Wow, what were those pain meds doing to me?
She danced the entire sequence, popping the isolations and adding triples to every spin. She hit it better than any of us could have. She spun to a halt in front of me after nailing six fouettés in a row. “‘Asshole’ is right.” She turned to Tango, and if you google the word “confrontational,” you’ll see a photo of Juicy in that exact pose.
There was light applause and a few whistles of appreciation.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Tango demanded.
Juicy settled her hands on her hips. “Ten years of the cheer camps you make fun of all the time.” She looked Tango up and down. “Maybe you should’ve gone, too.”
Which started a fight. A loud fight. Most of it in Spanish.
From what I could tell, Juicy’s dance secret came out completely and Tango was livid. Hard to decide the biggest issue. After all, her best friend, whom she’d known her whole life, had lied to her for years and she’d been holding back to keep Tango from getting jealous.
Which meant, you know, that she needed to do that. To keep Tango from getting jealous. Which meant Tango was the type to get jealous.
And suddenly we all knew that Tango wasn’t the best dancer in town, after all.
That couldn’t feel good either.
Sides formed up.
I stepped out of it, knowing that if I said a word or, even, like, breathed, they’d both turn on me. Since it was my fault. My ribs throbbed in pain and every object in the room gave off a faint golden glow. Something was seriously wrong, but I was so foggy. What should I do about it?
Farmer-C wandered over, to “sympathize” with me I’m sure, obviously stoked that he was no longer at the absolute bottom of the Christmas list. He looked about to throw an arm around my shoulders but stopped when I glared at him. Really? He was happy to benefit from my mistake? Dick.
“You look like shit, bro.”
Fuck, my ribs hurt. I didn’t want him to feel guilty about it, but. . . yeah, I kinda did. “Thanks for that, bro.”
Back to the water bottles for a little alone time. Maybe I was dehydrated.
What could fix this fight? Something had to be possible. Didn’t it? The argument grew louder and louder. I sucked down water. More meds? Bad idea. I was already half-baked from however many I’d taken.
Spanish rioted away behind me. I shook my head. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if I’d let it slip Juicy was a lesbian?
Go into slow motion.
A hand grabbed my arm.
K-pop stood there with an expression of ultimate shock on his face.
Had I said that last bit out loud?
K-pop opened his mouth.
Shit, I must have.
At that exact moment, a lull in the argument meant that whatever K-pop was about to say would be thrown out into a really unfortunate silence.
“Juicy’s a lesbian?!”
Please note my use of an exclamation mark.
Normal time resumed with a painful popping sound.
“Oh, fuck me.” K-pop whipped around to a wall of staring faces.
I am not qualified as a writer to adequately describe the chaos that ensued.
Juicy barreled into K-pop, shoving him.
He pointed at me to let her know I’d started it. Like a little fucking kid.
I blasted him for not being able to keep his mouth shut.
Juicy blasted me for not keeping my mouth shut.
K-pop blasted me for dropping something like that on him without warning, making him look like a total prick.
Tango blasted me, too. “How could you know something like this and not tell me?”
“Why does it matter anyway?” Juicy demanded. “Is my being a lesbian a problem for you?”
“Don’t be all politically correct, Juicy,” Tango shot back. “You’ve been lying to us for years. I mean all those—” She didn’t elaborate, but I’d seen this argument before. If she was like most folks, she was reeling through all the sleepovers, locker rooms and other intimate moments that suddenly may have meant something completely different.
“Come on, Tango,” Cosita said. “It’s not like she has a crush on you or anything, right, Juicy?” She turned to Juicy for corroboration.
Juicy turned a pathetic shade of red.
“No manches!” Cosita’s hands flew to her mouth as she realized the truth. She shot K-pop a dark, hateful glance.
K-pop glared at me as if he’d caught me bludgeoning baby seals.
Okay, I’d pulled a total bonehead maneuver, but I wasn’t the one keeping secrets for years. And he’d shot his mouth off like an idiot.
The pain from my ribs ripped at my insides. My stomach filled with acid. I took a deep breath to say something, but my side cramped hard and a slice of fire shot across my chest. Christ, it hurt.
My new friends shouted at each other, and it was my fault. Sooner or later they’d all realize it and turn their anger on me. An amazing week of friendship crashed down around my ears, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to prevent it.
Farmer-C was the only one near me anymore. “Damn,” he muttered. “I look like a freakin’ saint, now, don’t I?”
Could he be more fucking selfish? My ribs slashed at me again when I breathed, forcing me to gulp a few times. The shouting in the background was deafening. Farmer-C stood there smirking and oblivious, content that everyone’s anger was pointed elsewhere. What a fucking jerk!
“Am I right?” he added.
Pain, anger and guilt blinded me. “Jesus Christ, how selfish can you be, you fucking retard?”
His smile cracked and died. All the color drained from his skin.
True, horrified silence filled the studio.
“Dude,” someone muttered.
My stomach twisted hard. I covered my mouth with my hand.
Anger. Guilt. Frustration. Embarrassment.
All of the above.
Any sort of apology would’ve been hollow and lame.
Fuck.
I rushed out of the studio before anyone could speak. When you’re used to seeing the world 360 degrees at a time, it’s hard to cross a dance floor without looking in the mirrors, but I managed it.
I made it around the corner to a garbage can before puking everything I’d eaten in the last week as well as my lower intestine. My stomach convulsed over and over again, and, once it was empty, the spasms continued for a few minutes, until I was an exhausted sweating mess. Every twitch sliced my ribs with searing hot pain.
Good. I deserved it.
After an entire week of playing nursemaid to me, my new friends had just enjoyed the pleasure of me chopping off their heads and shitting down their throats. After everything I’d learned, I was still a douchebag.
What I’d said to Farmer-C wasn’t something you said to anyone, but saying it to someone like Farmer-C, who knows he’s not the brightest bulb on the tree, is the lowest form of evil imaginable.
I was worse than a douchebag. I was a supervillain.