Brick By Brick (Sequel)

Can I Have This Dance?

The next day, we went to Central Park. I took my sketchbook and he brought his guitar, as planned. We sat at the fountain just because we thought it was pretty, but the population of NYC thought we were street performers. People stopped to listen and watch. A few threw money in Foster's guitar case. One girl offered me $30 for one of my sketches. I didn't say no.

A few days later, we pretended to be tourists and rode on the top of a double decker tour bus. We bought food from sketchy street vendors and wandered times central square for hours. The next week, he insisted on going shopping. I'm still not sure why. We picked obnoxious outfits and forced the other to try them on. I even made Foster wear a dress. He strutted like a Victoria's Secret model and I swear I haven't laughed so hard in my life. It was a feeling my body didn't know how to handle, because it's a feeling that has never existed inside of me.

The more time I spent with him, the less anxious and guarded I remembered to be. I feel like a person again. Not just a hollow shell, but a creative, active mind. Not just a human, but a soul. A being. I think I'm discovering a new side of myself through him. Through friendship. Just friendship.

...

I grabbed my art bag and skipped down the stairs, swinging on the railing to reach the front door.

"Where are you off to?" Kate asked from the kitchen bar.

I jumped just slightly, not having seen her on my way down. I turned around and leaned against the railing. "Out," I shrugged.

"Sketching at the park?"

"Yeah."

But apparently my answer wasn't satisfactory. It wasn't the same as usual. She squinted at me, trying to unveil something that I didn't know I was hiding. "By yourself?"

I pushed myself off of the railing as confusion like a scarf settled delicately around my neck.  As life has been tiptoeing along, my motivations and emotions have become such a puzzle that I've just pretended the jagged pieces weren't there instead of trying to fit them together. She stopped me. She made me think about them. And now I have no clue what I'm doing.

"No," I finally answered.

"May I ask with who?" She was genuinely asking permission to know, opening a conversation, not an interrogation. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," she assured me, but for some reason I was already walking toward the kitchen.

"I'm hanging out with Foster again."

"Again?"

"Yeah," I shrugged. "You're just not usually out here when I leave."

She observed me gently. "Is there something happening between you two?" she asked, completely unassuming. Untargeting.

"No," I answered too quickly. She kept her eyes on mine, wide open. I spun toward the counter to avoid her gaze, afraid that if I looked at her she'd see something in me that I didn't know was there. I didn't realize my hands were gripping the back of the barstool, the pressure bleaching my knuckles. "No, it's...no. He's just...he's re-teaching me what friendship is like."

Seven years flashed through her eyes as a lifetime flashed through mine. I knew what she was thinking, so she didn't even need to speak.