Loves Me, Loves Me Not

“I’m a little drunk, sorry,” you say, when she opens the door.

You feel stupid the minute you say it, when she smiles in that patronizing way. You’d fantasized about making some grand entrance, imagined holding up your phone in the doorway like a boombox from an ’80s romcom, playing her favorite song, “Closer,” the bridge thrumming whispered yearnings.

You had hoped to choreograph a piece with her next semester, set to this song. It would have been playful, flirtatious, fleet-footed. It would have been a story piece centered around a simple park bench prop. Push and pull. Extended, taut limbs that almost touch then spin away. Synchronized precision beside each other, facing the audience, refusing to look at each other, then spin away. A dance-off, facing each other, sassy peacocking, big billowy gestures, then spin away. Away away away and back together again again again, over and over again. Her lying under the bench, you on top of it, peeking down, with that coy second-verse fantasy of you underneath me. Frozen looks and then leaps and twirls, the spark bursting to life.