Lonely Hearts & Broken Parts (LBSC #1.2) | Complete

Chapter 5

Triple step, triple step--

"What happened to your eye?" asked Edith, my elderly dance partner as she squinted up at me.

Her poorly timed question threw off my counting and I struggled to get back in time with the rockabilly music blaring from speakers on the far side of the room.

"Trampoline dodgeball," I said while watching my uncoordinated feet.

"Dodgeball on a trampoline? Why I never," Edith said. "How does that work?"

My tongue poked out the corner of my mouth as I focused on leading her through an outside turn.

Edith and I were in the main conference room of the Wyndlake Public Library for a two-hour beginners' swing dance class two days later after my spectacular failure at trampoline dodgeball had resulted in a black eye and broken glasses. I'd decided to cool it with the extreme sports and try something I'd always wanted to do: swing dance classes. I figured not only would it be fun, but based on my experience in tap dancing classes when I was younger, I knew there were bound to be more women than men.

What I didn't count on was that there'd only be eight of us in class, and that all the women would be over the age of fifty. I was the youngest person in the room, with the exception of the dance instructors, by at least twenty years.

"You jump on trampolines and throw foam balls at people on the other team," I said.

Edith peered at me over the glasses perched on her nose skeptically. "Foam balls did that?"

Self-consciously, I dropped her papery hand and pushed my own glasses higher up on my nose, wincing as they grazed the bruise under my eye. When the middle school kid lobbed the ball at me, it hit me square in the face, slamming my glasses into my face and breaking them. Though I hadn't been badly hurt, my ego sure was. Needless to say, I wouldn't be showing my face again at the trampoline park.

"Alright, let's switch it up," Paul, the male dance instructor said. "Leaders, thank your partners and move to your right. We're going to practice the basic followed by an outside turn a couple more times."

"Thank you," I said with a nod to Edith.

Before I could approach my new partner, two girls around my age appeared in the doorway of the conference room.

My breath caught in my throat. One girl had a wavy, platinum blonde bob and a large septum ring that I could see from across the room. But it wasn't her who kept me frozen in place, drooling on the floor—it was her companion.

Her fiery red curls spilled over her shoulders, the top part of her hair pulled back with a yellow ribbon. Even though the temperature was only in the fifties, she wore a sleeveless, short navy dress covered with white polka dots. A yellow shawl twined around her upper arms, and on her feet she sported simple, yellow and white tennis shoes. A cluster of star outlines were tattooed along the tops of each shoulder.

Her presence filled up the entire room.

"Girls, come on in," Paul said. "You haven't missed much. We're just practicing the basic steps."

The girls left the doorway and dropped their purses onto chairs before approaching our semi-circle with caution.

"We don't have any other men, but if one of you takes the leader role everyone will be perfectly matched up," Paul said.