“What’s the best that could happen?”
His question was the exact contrast to the one I’d been living under all year — maybe all my life. For so long, I’d only been asking myself what was theworstthat could happen.
What if I lost my job?
What if I failed my family?
What if loving Emily cost too much?
But somewhere along the way, I’d stopped asking the only question that actually mattered.
What if she was worth fighting for anyway?
What if the life I wanted wasn’t on the other side of sacrifice, but courage?
My heart was thundering in my chest now, beating a steady rhythm that had me leaning dangerously into hope.
I looked at Ginny, who blinked with the slightest nod of her head to tell me what I already knew.
I had to make this right.
I bent to kiss her on the forehead. “Thank you for talking some sense into me.”
Thank you for loving me so fiercely.
I smiled, squeezing her shoulder before I wrapped Mom and Dad each in a hug, too.
And then I was out the door without a word. I didn’t need to tell them for them to know.
I was going to get my girl.
Emily
The stadium was quiet on Tuesday.
Until my phone rang.
I was alone in the dance studio, running bits of the choreography that I’d been a little sloppy on during the game Sunday. I’d tried to take the day off like everyone else, but it was impossible.
I couldn’t sit still.
I couldn’t live in the cyclone of my thoughts any longer.
Dance had always been a sanctuary for me in times like this, when my world felt unstable and I wasn’t sure where the next day would lead. When I realized a job wasn’t for me and I’d have to start over again, I’d dance. When I found myself with the itch to move again, knowing a city I’d been in wasn’t home, I’d dance. When my parents’ expectation weighed on me and I didn’t know how to deal — I’d dance.
Maybe that was why my stomach bottomed out a bit when I dug my phone out of my duffle bag and saw my dad’s face on the screen.
It was a selfie we’d taken when I went to visit him and Mom in London one year. Dad’s rich brown complexion was warm against my lighter one, our smiles one and the same. He’d taken me to Oxford that day to tell me all about his glory days, to show me around the school he’d hoped I’d choose for myself.
Instead, I’d gone to a private university in Arizona, earning one degree in dance and the other in communications.
Every time he called me, that photo reminded me of just one of many ways I’d let my father down.
“Hey, Dad,” I answered, breath puffing out of me after running choreo. I hung my hand on a hip, staring at myself in the mirror.
“Hi, honey. Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
