I stand frozen in place as the hurt I’d felt that day swells.
Since we broke up, I’d focused on dance, my friends, our nights out. I tried seeing other people, but no one could fill the gap he’d left.
I can hear my sister’s voice as though she’s standing right next to me—He’s not good for you, you deserve more—and I know she’s right. But that’s the thing about love, isn’t it? When you find someone who sees you in a way no one else does, who understands you and makes you feel like you can’t be whole without them, it wraps you in a vise and makes you forget how to live life without them.
I blink tears from my eyes and, unable to locate my shirt, grab Liam’s instead and throw it on. It smells like him, damn it.
“Hey.” He props himself up on an elbow and watches me. “Where are you going?”
“I have dance.”
“Naomi. Last night—”
“Don’t. It’s fine.” I don’t need him to explain that it meant nothing to him. That I mean nothing to him. “I have to go.” On my way out, I hide my face so he can’t see my tears.
—
I take offacross campus at a jog and don’t stop until I arrive at Dillon Gym, where BAC, the Black Arts Company, is rehearsing. Sweating and out of breath, I try to slip in unnoticed.
“What the hell, Naomi?” It’s Zalikah, my roommate. We met freshman year in the BlackBox basement nightclub in line for free Red Bull and have been best friends ever since. Zee choreographed today’s piece and is pissed I’m late because she’ll have to teach it again just for me.
I square my shoulders and take my place in the formation. “Sorry I’m late! Keep going, I got it.”
She rolls her eyes and finishes teaching the eight-count. I match her movement as she runs it again slowly, watching me.
“Okay, at tempo, from the top. Let’s go!” Zee yells.
She starts the music, and the room shakes with bass and the rhythmic steps of the dancers. I dance in the middle, flowing through the moves, blood pumping through my veins.
Dance studios are where I feel most at home. My mom died when I was eight, and I never knew my dad, so home became the friends that kept showing up, the spaces that welcomed me.
When I was eleven, after living in San Jose with my aunt Ella and having a close call with child protective services, Maya sent me to stay with the St. Clairs, a family she’d met through friends at Princeton. I moved from San Jose to Greenwich, Connecticut, from a futon to a bed fit for a princess.
Margaret and John’s house was enormous, marble-floored and high-ceilinged, with gilt-framed landscapes and antiques from their travels. It had a unique smell too, like a museum or an old library. People were everywhere—cooks and cleaners and drivers—and they had more books than a person could read in a lifetime.
Their friends would come over for dinner parties and stare at me like I was a new pet, speaking in high, careful tones, or commenting on mybeautifulskin andwildhair. But Margaret would tell them off without missing a beat. She was an odd, quirky woman, and my eleven-year-old self had never met anyone like her before. She was obsessed with tennis, gardening, and the Brontës. Grew up in SouthLondon and lost both of her parents when she was a kid too. Over time I realized how much she cared about me, and I grew to love her in return. She and John gave me everything, even though I didn’t have many friends or feel fully at home at the new private school. But when I was fifteen, I finally found a place where I belonged.
It was at the dance studio—in those humid, sweaty, overcrowded rooms with their blown-out speakers and mirrored walls—that I found space to breathe. I met other kids like me, a bunch of misfits who wanted to escape their hometowns as much as I did. By sixteen, to the horror of my ballet teacher, I’d gotten several piercings and started wearing my hair in an Afro. He told me not to come to class like that, but I didn’t care. I was in heaven—working at the studio with my friends, eating take-out Thai in the splits on the dance floor, taking hip-hop, contemporary, West African, and jazz funk classes. And when I was too tired to dance, I read. I read so much that I got myself into Princeton, just like my sister had.
“Here we go. Full out this time!” Zee resets the music and counts us in. She bends to the left, long ombré twists flying over one shoulder as she dips her head and winds her hips to the beat. “More attitude, ladies. Come on!” She moves so fast that all I see is a blur, then points to a girl on my left. “Ayyyeee. I see you, Chichi!”
After another eight-count, Zee cuts the music. “Naomi, I know you can give me more than that.”
I bend over, catching my breath. She’s right. I’m hungover but I’m also distracted, stuck on Liam. “I’m working on it.”
—
After rehearsal, Igrab my gym bag and head for the door, eager to get to class.
“Hey, wait up.” Behind me, Zee waves, running to catch up as I exit the dance studio. “I didn’t mean to call you out back there…”
I shrug. “It’s okay. I’m just tired.”
“I bet you are,” she teases. “What’d you get into last night? You disappeared.”
Outside, the air is brisk. Students study on the lawn, surrounded by autumn leaves and Gothic towers, trying to squeeze everything out of the last warm days before the brutal winter months ahead.
I don’t feel like admitting I’d lost all self-control and slept with my ex, so I change the subject. “Did you grab some mixers for tonight?” We’re throwing a surprise birthday party for our roommate, Amy, and Zee volunteered to handle the setup.
