How could it not have been, when every moment we spent together, from card games to keeping watch to making meals, was a dance. It would have been an epic Argentine tango—I just knew it in my gut…in my bones.
“But in all seriousness,” Ty continued. “I’m pretty good. Mom and I used to take these dance classes together. That was actually something we did when she was recovering.”
I could tell by the twitches in his expression, the uneasiness as he lingered on the wordrecovering, that there was more to the story than what he’d told me so far.
“From her depression?” I inquired.
He frowned, that pleasant smile usually painted across his face gone in a moment.
“Mom and I never talk about it anymore, but it was more than depression.” He was quiet for a moment. Reminded me of the way I’d gotten before I’d told him more about Ira. “She took some pills when I was fifteen.”
“What?”
“Evidently, she’d been thinking about it a lot longer than that, and she needed more help than anyone realized, even the shrinks she was seeing.”
Tears stirred in his eyes, and I wanted to soothe him, pained to know he’d been this kid struggling with his mother’s depression and then having to deal with her trying to end her own life…with him in it.
I pushed to my feet and took his arm. I should have resisted, but I couldn’t fucking help myself. It cut me to my core to see him hurting. I wanted to make it better. “Ty, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know why I shared that. That’s not something I tell people. Maybe I feel like I owe you one after everything you’ve shared with me.”
“You haven’t talked to anyone about this?”
“A therapist I saw afterward, but not many people in my life, especially not since back then. Something I prefer to forget.”
“I can’t imagine that’s something you can simply forget.”
“You’re sure as fuck right about that,” he said, his words followed by a sort of bitter laugh as his face twitched some more. “I played football in high school, so I was gone a lot, and one of the guys’ mom would swing me by my place since Mom would work during the day. One day I came back and found her lying on the bed…with a note beside her. You know, I didn’t even pick up the note at first. Just crying about my mom, waiting for emergency services. And then I read it on the wait, and it was so clear that she was ready to go. How much pain she was in. And how sorry she was that she couldn’t be there for me, but that she couldn’t do it anymore. Almost made me feel selfish for wanting her to be there with me. For how terrified I was of being alone.”
That feeling of abandonment he’d shared with me that night when we were walking back to his place from the club, now I felt I really understood it. It wasn’t just his mom’s struggle with depression. It was this feeling that she’d been trying to leave him.
As the tears in his eyes continued shifting about, Ty shook his head. “Anyway, my point was that we would take dance classes, and that helped us after. So before you get me crying, you wanna dance with me or what?”
It seemed like an even worse idea now that everything in me just wanted to be there for Ty in whatever way I could, but if a dance would cheer him up, I would give him that.
“Come on, I got some moves that would impress you,” he said, his lips curling into a smile, though I felt it was slightly forced.
There couldn’t have been more warning bells going off in my head, but I set aside better judgment and all those things I’d used to guide my decisions for so long.
“Well, you’re not saying no,” he added, “so I’m going to take that as we’re going to give it a whirl.”
He grabbed his drink off the coffee table and took another sip before retrieving his old phone and pulling up his playlist.
I recognized the song he played from the first few notes. “You are not making us dance to this.”
“What are you talking about? Everybody loves this song.”
It was “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” fromDirty Dancing.
He set his phone on the coffee table before stepping around it and grabbing the side. “Help me move this to the couch. Come on.”
I went to the other side and obeyed.
What am I fucking doing?
Although, between what Ty just shared and the shitty situation I’d gotten him into, the least I could fucking do was dance with him to a dumb song. Anything that would make him feel better.
“Okay, okay, I’m starting it over,” he said as he played with his phone until it began again.
