“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Annoyingly well.”
I grin, positioning us so we’re facing each other. The song is in full swing now, the beat infectious, and I start moving. Nothing fancy, just the basic twist that the song demands. Hips swiveling, shoulders loose, feet planted but mobile.
Ryan watches me for a moment, then attempts to mirror my movements. His twist is stiff at first. But then the singer instructs everyone to lean up again, and Ryan follows, and something in his posture shifts.
“Lean back!” the singer calls, and we both do, and Ryan’s laugh catches me completely off guard.
It’s not the quiet, restrained sound I’ve heard from him before. This is fuller, brighter, surprised out of him by his own enjoyment. His body loosens incrementally, the twist becoming less calculated and more natural.
“See?” I have to raise my voice over the music. “Not so bad!”
“I feel ridiculous!”
“You look great!”
And he does. The flush spreading across his cheeks, the way his button-down has come slightly untucked from his khakis, the smile that’s creeping across his face despite his best efforts to suppress it. He’s alive in a way I haven’t seen in a very long time.
The singer calls for the Watusi, and Gerard interprets this as permission to do something that comes off as a cross between a seizure and a mating ritual. Elliot catches my eye across the dance floor and slowly shakes his head, the universal gesture for “I cannot believe this is my life.”
Ryan attempts his own version of the Watusi, which is considerably more restrained than Gerard’s but still makes me want to gather him up and never let go. His movements are gettingsmoother now, his body finding the rhythm, and that smile…God, that smile is going to be the death of me.
“Now twist!” the singer commands, and we twist, and Ryan is laughing again. I’m laughing too, and somewhere in the frenzy of music and movement, I realize I’m happier than I’ve been in months.
“Okay,” Ryan says, slightly breathless, still twisting. “How are you this good?”
“At what?”
“Dancing!” He gestures at my general person while trying to maintain his own rhythm. “You’re moving like you’ve been doing this your whole life. Meanwhile, I look like a marionette with tangled strings.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Oliver.”
“Fine, maybe a little marionette-ish. But a charming marionette.”
He rolls his eyes, but the smile doesn’t fade. If anything, it grows. “Seriously, though. Where did you learn to move like that?”
I shift into a more complex pattern—feet crossing, hips rolling, arms finding the beat—and Ryan’s eyebrows climb toward his hairline.
“Hockey,” I tell him.
“Hockey.”
“Yeah. Think about it.” I demonstrate as I explain, my body moving through the motions. “Skating is all about balance, right? Core stability, weight distribution, being able to shift direction on a dime. You spend years training your body to move in precise ways, to respond to rhythm. Because hockey has a rhythm, even if people don’t think about it that way.”
Ryan’s twist falters slightly as he processes this.
“Most people see hockey as aggressive and full of speed. But there’s finesse too. The way you angle your body for a shot, the timing of a pass, reading the flow of the play andpositioning yourself to intercept.” I spin once, simply to show off a little, and catch his eye on the rotation. “All of that translates. Different context, same principles.”
“So you’re telling me that every hockey player can dance?”
I glance over at Nathan, who has somehow gotten worse despite the song being halfway through. He’s now moving like he’s shaking a bug off each foot alternately.
“Okay, not every hockey player. But the good ones? The ones who really understand how their bodies work?” I shrug, falling back into the basic twist. “Yeah. We’ve got an advantage.”
The singer launches into another verse, and Ryan’s movements have found a groove. He’s not going to win any competitions, but he’s present, engaged, and enjoying himself.
