He knew better than to insist and so Ransom just stayed on the other side of my door. His shadow moved on the stairway, standing like some sort of vapor against the street light.

When I came closer, that shadow had lowered as though Ransom leaned against the door and because I couldn’t stop myself, because having only a thin, wood door separating us was as close as I would get to him, I leaned against it too.

“I don’t want to be this way,” he said through the door, as though I hadn’t heard it from him before. “This weight, Aly, it chains me to the past and I know what you think about me, but it’s not true…I don’t want to be there. I just can’t seem to break away from it. I’ve…I haven’t ever had the nerve to tell that man I’m sorry for killing her. Sometimes I…well. I guess it doesn’t matter, does it? I’m a coward.”

My eyes squeezed tight, I fought with that voice in my head, the one that sounded like the Logical side of my brain. Love wanted me to open the door, but Logic stood blocking it. Instead, I moved my palm to the door imagining the feel of his shoulders, that warm strength he poured into my skin anytime I touched him.

“I’m a selfish bastard. Especially when it comes to you. I don’t want to push you away but I’m petrified I’m gonna hurt you and the last damn thing I want is to hurt you, sweetheart.”

On the other side of the door the wood planks on the steps shifted and when Ransom spoke again, he sounded closer, his voice deeper. “You make everything quiet, give me such peace. You make me want to protect you because you fill my heart up, even though I know you can cover your own ass. You’re stronger than me, braver and I envy you. I wish to God I could be like that.” He got quiet again, voice coming out a little gruffer. “You’re my Fred, baby. Even though I know you can do better. Even though I know you should. But…I want to kiss you.” His fingers slid down the wood, that’s what I guessed that noise was, like he needed to touch something. “I want to sink inside you, get lost, let you get lost in me. Over and over again, until we’re both numb. Until that ache stays in our bones. I want you to feel me so bad that when you walk away from the bed, when you wake up the next day, you still feel me in your hips, in that sweet, sweet pussy.”

I closed my eyes, letting my mind illustrate all the things Ransom said he wanted. They matched what my instinct pushed me toward, what Logic told me I didn’t need.

“I shouldn’t want that. I should just leave you alone and keep out of your head, but fuck I don’t want that. I just…my head tells me it’s the right thing to do. My head tells me that you don’t need the heartache I bring, but fuck, sweetheart, I don’t know if I can stay away. I told you, I’m a fucking coward.”

I couldn’t listen anymore. Ransom had me so twisted, so caught up in the need to help him, to hold him. But what shouted louder, overtook the eager need to heal him was that loud urge of self-preservation. I didn’t know which call made more sense. So I didn’t listen to either. My body did ache, but it was from the frustration of loving someone who’d forgotten how to love themselves. And so I crawled back to my bed weary and a little more broken by the anger at the man on the other side of the door and that constant need I felt to let him inside. And despite everything, I fell asleep.

She was free, uninhibited, a burst of sunlight that broke through the dark. Aly danced like the stage was nothing, like the crowd held no power over how she moved or the spell she spun on every person that followed her movements. I would burn to feel her light just for a second.

I hated that she was a hundred feet away, dancing center stage with the other instructors, some lyrical number that hid her, just slightly, in its banality. There was no pumping bass, no sultry weave of her hips, her body moving like I’d seen it so often—that wild, free abandon, that swirl and shake that could tempt even the most faithful man. She moved on that stage and I stared down, manning the lights, only because Leann needed my help.

I couldn’t make my gaze move from the stretch of her body. She was light and dark, leading the others, body bending, arching, stretching toward the silks that came down from the rafters like petals from crepe myrtles in summer. Just as soft, just as constant.

Aly and the other three instructors shifted into position, wrapping around the brightly colored silks like they were appendages. The transition was amazing—four solid, graceful bodies twirling in the air, following the music and the low strum of chords, feet from the stage. I tried not to remember the first time I had seen this kind of dance up close. I tried to think about something else, something boring and beige so that the memory of Aly in that mask, that long blonde wig, spinning around the small Summerland’s stage would not catch me off guard. I didn’t need a reminder of that dancer, not when the woman she’d been, the real person I cared about spun and twisted, swayed and flew right below me on the stage.

It had been days since I told her to cut me loose. More hours than I thought I’d be able to manage without seeing her. More time that I spent ignoring the voice when it came.

“Light cue 24, and—go” I heard over the headset from Billy, the stage manager, and I punched the button to bring up a patterned gobo effect on the stage, adding the illuminated outline of shapes to enhance the effect of the music and the silks. It reminded me of something out of a fairytale, something that could not be anything but supernatural. Like Aly.

I stretched back in my chair, sliding into the darkest corner of the booth so Billy would not see me watching her. I knew the routine, had seen the rehearsal at least half a dozen times. But the performance was different. The lights, the crowd, the bustle in the auditorium spun some kind of magic and at the center, like she controlled the rush of energy, held tight the attention of the crowd in her small palms, Aly danced, spun in her silks, then twisted onto her ass to slide toward the edge of the stage.

“Cue 25, and—go.”

I nodded at Billy’s instruction, and the lights dimmed in anticipation of the Acro transition, that strange combination of dance and gymnastics—all the explanations I’d heard Leann and Aly discussing for a month.

The women fell together in line then, when a burst of drums and the clash of strings brought in the crescendo, they separated, fell away from each other, in a mirror of movements, then quickly spun off on their own—one maneuvering her body into a Valdez—back walkover, one in a one-handed front walkover, one in a walking handstand, but Aly topped them all, lifting from the floor and straight into a front aerial that pulled gasps and a wave of applause from the audience.

And then, she took that applause, the thrill it gave her poured from the glow on her skin and that pretty flush streaking up her neck, and her brilliant smile. She looked beautiful. She always did but never more than when she was happy.

Without thinking about how I’d walked away from her that night in Tremé, without really questioning why she hadn’t called me or opened even one of my pathetic texts, a decision came to me, one that was selfish and stupid. I moved before I gave myself a chance to stop and think about it. My legs carried me around the booth, down the stairs while the dancers left the stage. I got held up backstage by the throng of girls excitedly moving in line toward the stage for the next routine. Then, I stopped, retreated beyond the dressing rooms when Aly rushed past me, shoving on her high heels and Leann zipping up her way-too-short flowy skirt.