Pointe by Brandy Colbert

ballet.”
    â€œI do?” His words make me feel shy but understood. Happy but nervous. I take a sip of my beer as I process this.
    â€œYou’re so in your own world at that place. Like nothing could ever bother you.”
    â€œOh.” My skin burns again as I think of him watching me dance. I was practically in my underwear in front of him, slick with sweat and stretching my muscles to their limit. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal in the moment, when we’re all in a room together, when he’s there for the strict purpose of musical accompaniment. But now, thinking about it like that . . . I know he’s not playing specifically for
me
but it seems so intimate, dancing to the music he makes.
    â€œI didn’t know that was your . . . I wouldn’t have just shown up like that if I’d known you go there. You looked like you wanted me to get the hell out.”
    â€œMaybe a little,” I say slowly. “But only at first.”
    I sort of laugh and it makes him laugh, too, and there it is again. I could listen to that sound for the rest of the night.
    â€œWhat do you think about?” he asks. “When you’re dancing.” And when I look up, his eyes are already on me. Mine sweep across his face and I wonder why I never noticed how much I
like
his face. Even parts I never thought I could care about. Like his nose. It’s a good nose. A strong nose that fits the rest of his strong features.
    I hesitate, but his voice is softer and I don’t think he’s making fun of me.
    Still, I can’t quite say it. Not yet. I’ve never talked to anyone outside of dance about ballet. Not beyond the basics. No one else understands that when my feet are laced into pointe shoes I feel like I can do damn near anything. And I’m embarrassed to say I have no clue what I’d be doing if I didn’t have dance.
    I clear my throat and take a drag so I can stall some more. Finally, I say, “It’s dumb.”
    He taps his long fingers against his knee, then looks at me with his clear gray eyes. “When I lived in Nebraska, I worked on this Rachmaninoff piece until I could play it with my eyes closed, play it backward, whatever. My piano teacher loved it. She stared at me like a goddamn groupie. And then I played it for my mom and she cried. Through the whole thing.”
    Rachmaninoff. So he knows his shit. I wonder how people would look at Hosea if they knew music is such an important part of his life.
Real
music, not the crap like Donnie Kenealy and his garage band play. It makes
me
look at him differently, now that I know we really have something in common.
    â€œHow old were you?” I ask.
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe eight? But I guess . . . when I play, I wonder what people are thinking. How they’re interpreting the song.” He points his clove toward me. “Your turn.”
    â€œI think about my future . . .” I pretend that Hosea is Ruthie or Josh or Marisa, the people who get how much ballet means to me. If I think about him like everyone else, even like Sara-Kate or Phil, I won’t be able to finish. “Dancing on a real stage in front of a real audience. With a real company. How different it will feel.”
    â€œThat’s what you’ve been working for this whole time?” He stretches his long legs down the steps of the gazebo, his feet pointing toward the enormous, shedding sycamore tree across the yard.
    I nod because I don’t know how to say ballet is the only thing in this world that makes me feel alive, that doesn’t disappoint me.
    â€œThen it’s not dumb.” He gives me a small smile. Similar to the one he flashed us his first day at the studio, but this one lingers.
    And perhaps it is the cool air passing through the night, but deep down I know the shiver travels down my spine because that smile was just for me.
    He taps his clove against the