Lead & Follow

en arriére

Part 2: Follow

Fourth Movement, en arriére

en arriére

[ah na-RYEHR]

Backward. Used to indicate that a step is executed moving away from the audience. As, for example, in glissade en arriére.

🤍🖤

The car is moving forward, but you feel like everything else has taken a backward slide. 

In the bakery, you'd almost been fooled by Baxter's sudden drop in formality. He'd gone as far as to acknowledge your shared past for the first time in five years, and what's more–he'd done so without provocation. 

"Jude and Scott should be pleased to hear they will have a lovely wedding cake," Baxter remarks as his car turns into the highway. It's a harmless comment, but the sheer prospect of him breaking the awkward tension feels bizarre.

Even though he'd been the one to bring up Sunset Bird and your previous baking endeavors to Xavier, he'd seemed keenly uninterested in divulging any further than that. It left your brain fried to even attempt to understand how he could go from reserved to nostalgic to downright glacial in the span of one short errand. Why had he even bothered to talk about the past if he was going to immediately revert to his impersonal facade? 

"Baxter," you sigh, and cross your arms over your chest. "You have to talk to me."

For better or worse, the universe had brought you together again–even if only for a short while. 

There's a part of you that wants to follow Baxter's act–a part of you that yearns to abandon ship and run back into the comforting arms of your hometown. You were only picked as a part of the wedding party because of your familiarity and proximity to the Eckert family, but truthfully, did it have to be you?

Then, there's a much larger part of your tumultuous heart which wants to corner this runaway bad boy–this gentleman who had the audacity to suggest you'd never meet again only to move fairly close to your turf–and demand all the answers to every question his absence had saddled you with. 

You want to know why he left; you want to know why your time together which had been so whirlwind and so very fairytale to you had registered as little more than a notch in a seasonal itinerary to him. You want to ask him why he still places distance between himself and anyone who dares try to scale the wall he's so carefully placed around his heart. You want to ask him why 'goodbye' had to mean 'forever, and in every possible way.'

And, of course, there are some things you'd like to tell him too–the way you felt, the way you hurt, the way you still miss him after all this time.

But, the most important concept which spurs you on in this moment is that you have to corner him now to attempt obtaining even one of these wishes before the week is up and he's out of your life for good again.

"It's almost over, [Name]," Baxter murmurs with a flat expression. His voice is pinched, barely above a whisper, "I'm merely an employee of your friends. Please feel free to ignore me."