Surrender

I had no idea what I was supposed to wear to a dance lesson.

On one hand, I could wear something that was flowing and free, something that would dance with me when I moved. But maybe wearing something comfortable, like a pair of leggings and an old 5k t-shirt was better, just so I had no restrictions and the teacher could see what I was doing with my legs to correct me accordingly. But maybe that was too casual for making a good impression with the instructor?

I threw the polka dot dress in my hands behind me on the bed. Although the room I was given was bright, with lace, sheer curtains shoved to the sides of the tall, clean windows, and all white furniture against soft yellow walls, my mood was getting darker by the second. I had no idea why my mother had to sign me up for a dance lesson behind my back or why I had agreed to it to make her happy.

I let out a sigh and brought my eyes back up to the full-length mirror in front of me. I looked a little crazy, my light brown hair slightly frizzy from how many times I’d run my hands through it in frustration, and the apples of my cheeks were so red that I looked like I could have a fever.

I took a deep breath and counted to ten slowly, breathing deeply and evenly between each number. I felt my heart rate slow to a much more manageable level, and when I opened my eyes again, my cheeks were still a little flushed, but I felt a lot calmer. Like I was ready to sacrifice an hour of my time solely to make my mother happy, no matter how torturous that hour was.

“Let’s do this,” I told myself in a soft voice as I gathered all my hair into a ponytail.



Although there were probably one hundred buildings (which was a blind guess, since I would never take the time to count every single one) within the bounds of Pine Hill Resort, there were very few communal ones. There was the main building, which was dead center of the place, everything else spread out like the spokes of a wheel around it, where security, information, and attractions pamphlets were located, and then there were a few others, like restaurants, a museum, and a couple of tourist shops down by the beach. Out of all of them, I had a nagging suspicion that the dance class building was the smallest.

It was a suspicion that was confirmed when I stepped inside: it was only one medium-sized room, surrounded entirely by mirrors, with a bathroom off the far wall. And that was it. Which, although it creeped me out a little bit, at least it made it easy to find my instructor.

He was standing over a CD player, wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a light gray tank top, a pair of dance shoes on his feet. When I shut the door loudly behind me to alert him of my presence, he turned with a friendly smile that quickly dissolved into a look of confusion and shock, complete with wide, warm brown eyes.

“You’re not old,” he stated plainly.

I tugged on the bottom hem of my sweatshirt uncomfortably. “Um, not really, no. I’m eighteen.”

That seemed to snap him out of his state of surprise as he cleared his throat and flushed a little. “I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting someone your age. I don’t even remember the last time I had someone under the age of forty come in for a dance lesson.” His eyes grazed down to my hands, which were wringing together with anxiety. I felt very out-of-place, and I wanted more than anything to get out of there. “But this is good! Because now I get to use a different mix for once. Hold on a second.”

He bent down to rummage through a bin set up on the floor filled with CDs while I started to sweat in the corner.

“I’m really sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable,” he apologized sincerely, although his voice was a little funny from him speaking upside down. “That was unprofessional.”

“It’s okay,” I replied, though my voice was a bit weak. “My mother probably should have warned you.”

“I haven’t asked for a client’s age since I got screamed at by a woman who told me that age is a woman’s business and nobody else’s. There was no opening for your mom to give that information.” He paused for a second before cursing under his breath. “God, where is this stupid CD? It has to be in here somewhere. I wouldn’t even have this problem if this place would just update a little bit and give us an iPod hookup instead of having the same CD player they’ve had since before they took down the Berlin Wall.” After that, his mutter got softer, like he’d remembered that I was in the room and he didn’t want to badmouth the resort in front of me.

Although the room was air-conditioned, I was starting to feel very warm, probably from embarrassment. I couldn’t stop thinking about the shocked look that had taken over his face when I stepped through the door, and while it hadn’t been my fault, I still felt responsible and mortified.

He was still talking to himself as he flipped disc after disc out of his way, so I took his distraction as the perfect time to take off the sweatshirt I regretted including in my outfit. I slipped it over my head and moved as quietly as possible over to the corner of the room while still rushing. When he finally found the mix he was looking for, I wanted us to be able to start dancing immediately so we could get the torturous hour over with.

But in my haste, I completely misjudged how close I had been to him. After my sweatshirt landed in the corner of the room with a soft thud, I turned and started to make my way to the center of the dance floor, but I found that as I went to pass him, I hadn’t allowed enough room between the two of us or enough time for me to swerve out of the way. I felt my hand swipe against his butt. It was barely a graze, but it had definitely happened, and I could feel my entire body burst into flames of sheer humiliation.

He straightened up immediately and turned to face me, probably horrified, though I refused to look at his face.

“I-I-I’m so-” I tried to stutter, but he cut me off with a laugh. It wasn’t a mean-spirited laugh, which made me feel a little more comfortable so I wasn’t about to run out the door and never come back.

“Don’t worry about it,” he assured me, smiling kindly. “Trust me, you are the prettiest thing that’s touched my ass in a long time. Even if it was an accident.” I was about to apologize again, but he started to talk without waiting for me to respond. “I guess I left that other CD in my room, but this one will do.”

The CD player whirred as it went to load the disc the dance instructor inserted into the slot, and then the sound of a modern-sounding song, though I couldn’t place it immediately, started to blare through the speakers. He flipped through the songs until he landed on one he liked, and then he paused it.

“I’m Liam, by the way,” he introduced, shooting me another pretty smile before extending a hand. “Now that you’ve groped my ass, I figure we should have a proper introduction.”

I would have blushed more, but I felt so embarrassed by everything that my face was just permanently hot. “Olivia,” I replied, shaking his hand politely and pulling away before he could think I was lingering.

Not that he seemed to notice or care at all. “I just want to let you know that this is my fourth year working here, so you’re in good hands. Today, I just want to teach you a couple of basic moves, and I’ll gauge the lesson from there. Does that work for you?”

I had no idea what authority I had to disagree with him, since he was the teacher, but I nodded anyway.

“Do you have any dance experience?”

I thought again of kicking the girl in the face at ballet. “Not exactly,” I replied before laughing a little. There was no way, after the terrible start our lesson had, that I was going to share that little tidbit with him.

He gave me an inquisitive look, but he didn’t ask, instead moving across the room to start the song. It was something I didn’t recognize, but it had a cool beat to it, like maybe a hip-hop song that had the words removed. He turned it down so it wasn’t so loud. “We’re not going to dance to this necessarily, but it makes good background noise.”

Then Liam was back in front of me, staring down to make up for the kind of intense height difference between us. “You’re cool if I touch you, right?”

“I already touched you, so I think we’re past that,” I blurted out without thinking. Immediately, my heart started to race, as I usually couldn’t crack jokes with someone I just met, but maybe Liam’s inviting personality was making me feel more comfortable (subconsciously, of course) than I traditionally would.

Thankfully, Liam just chuckled before putting one of his hands on my shoulder blade and taking my right hand in his left. “Now put your left hand on my upper arm, just under my shoulder.”

I did as was asked, ignoring the fact that I could feel the swell of his muscles under my palm because I knew I wasn’t going to listen to a word he said if I was so ridiculously distracted. At least it made the position of his own hand on my back less awkward.

“Okay, now put some tension in your arms. You want to make your frame locked.”

I did the best I could to fulfill his wishes, and he smiled. “Great. Okay, now follow my lead.”

Tuning out how awkward it was to be in such close proximity with someone I just met, I listened to his instructions and learned accordingly. At some point, he switched his modern hip-hop mix to something much older and classical so we could waltz on beat and in time.

What surprised me the most, other than the fact that I only stepped on his feet a couple of times and tripped over my own feet once, I was actually having fun. I liked Liam’s easygoing attitude, and I learned quite a bit in an hour and a half, since he’d dipped into his break time to give me more of a lesson, as the beginning had been so delayed.

“Question,” I started as I was gathering up my sweatshirt from the floor and draping it over my arm. He turned to look, popping the CD from the player, titled “WALTZ #1” into the case. “Why don’t you get younger students?”

He grinned. “Most of the people that come here pretend that this is just Dirty Dancing, and even though I look nothing like him, I’m actually Patrick Swayze’s character. They all just want to live in that kind of nostalgia for the ‘60’s and for when they were teenagers and wanted to be taught by Johnny Castle. That’s the only reason they still have the lessons, really.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. But does it ever get weird?”

“Everything can be weird if you let it be.” He leaned down to put the CD back in the bin before turning to me. “I’ll see you around, Olivia. And make another appointment so we can perfect your waltz.”

I smiled at him and said goodbye before slipping outside. The weather had gotten warmer, but it wasn’t unpleasant, so I decided to go get an iced coffee from one of the kiosks by the beach.

As I walked, I wondered about Liam, about why he was working in a place where he had to dance with middle-aged woman all the time, why he went with the waltz instead of the mamba, which is what my mother had told me I’d be doing, and how he started working at Pine Hill in the first place.

But then I remembered that it was none of my business. We weren’t actually friends, even if we had been friendly during the lesson, and I was certainly just another customer of his. So I started to think of calling Erica instead as I stepped into the café, getting smacked in the face with beautiful air conditioning.