X looks at me, laughter dancing in his eyes. I slap my hand over my mouth so I don’t have a giggling fit.

“My first tango instructor say he would spend his last three minutes on earth dancing the tango. When you two feel like that, then you know you are ready.”

“Damn, Fi, that’s a lot of pressure,” X says.

“That is tango,” she says. She stomps her foot. “Now, we get started.”

She positions us in the center of the studio a few feet away from the front mirror. “First thing to know is that hold is closed,” she says, and adjusts our arms. Once she’s satisfied with that, she circles and corrects us until our spines are straight but tilted slightly toward each other. “Now you put chests together.”

My heart takes off at full speed. I’m not sure where it’s going.

Next she moves us on to the tango walk, which is more a dramatic glide than a walk. In a normal walk, your heel touches first, then the middle, then your toes. In the tango walk, it’s the opposite.

“Other thing to know is that tango is dance of improvisation. I will teach you steps and techniques, but you have to put them together when you dance. You have to feel.”

She faces the mirror and begins swaying to a song in her head. “X, when you dance you must lead her into her passion. You must seduce her mind with your body so that she is yours for the taking. And Evie, you must give yourself to him—”

“That’s totally sexist,” I say.

She waves me off. “Yes, of course. That is tango,” she says again.

We practice for two hours. Fifi alternates between praising my technical skills and lamenting my inability to “give in to passion of music.”

“Tango is dance of desire. For the three minutes of tango, there is nothing else but him. While you are dancing, you belong to him.”

“Once again, totally sexist,” I say.

“To be desired is also powerful, no?” she says.

I don’t know about that.

But the truth is, I understand what she’s saying. I am holding myself back. I am afraid to give in completely to how I feel about X.

“Not to worry,” she says to me as we’re leaving. “Tango comes for everyone. You will learn to let go eventually.”

CHAPTER 40

Declarations

“YOU GUYS WERE way better than I thought you’d be!” Cassidy shouts to X, Jamal and Kevin after their show.

X laughs. “I’ll take that,” he says, grabbing extra chairs for the table.

Kevin and Jamal give Cassidy a who the hell are you, white girl? look that she shrugs off.

“Don’t listen to Cassidy,” Sophie says. “You guys were great.”

“This was my first rock and roll show,” says Martin, sounding like someone’s great-great-great-grandparent from another planet. “It was incredible.”

X does the introductions and makes his way around the table to me. His eyes are doing that electric, glittering thing I noticed the first time I saw him play. He tugs me to my feet and then picks me up and twirls me around. I yelp and hold on tight while he laughs into my hair.

“We do okay?” he asks.

“Amazing,” I say.

He smiles against my neck, and his dreads are softly scratchy against my cheek.

I press myself closer. There’s a feeling inside me like a balloon that’s one breath away from bursting. We’ve spent so much time together lately, just the two of us: dancing, texting, talking until way too late into the night. It feels good to be out with our friends, but it feels like a big step too. Like we’re making a public declaration to his friends and mine.

I feel like I’m making a declaration to myself. Despite what the visions have taught me, I’m still doing this thing with X.

X sits down in my chair and I sit on his lap. He wraps his arms around my waist. Everyone’s talking and laughing, but I’m barely listening. The club is even darker and smaller and smellier than I remember. I think maybe their cleaning products are actually made from stale beer and pee. The main act is getting set up onstage, and the club fills with even more people. X laughs at something, and I feel the rumble of it against my back. I love the way he laughs, free and open and with all of himself.

After a while Jamal and Kevin take off. They have dates with some “lovely concertgoers,” as Jamal puts it. X fist-bumps them both goodbye. I watch the two of them disappear into the arms of a group of outrageously hip people.

None of us wants the night to end, so we end up back at Cassidy’s house. As usual, her parents are away, on location for a movie shoot. She takes us out to their “outdoor entertaining area.” It’s more like a miniature country club than a backyard, and it’s beautiful. My favorite part is the blue-green lazy river that bubbles and meanders up and through the sloping lawn. Café lights flicker overhead, strung between tall, wide palm trees. There’s a full bar, couches, love seats and even a gas fireplace filled with bright-blue glass and lava rocks.

Cassidy turns on the fireplace and gets us all drinks from the bar. Something about a fire makes you want to stare into it. For a few minutes we sit there watching the flames while listening to the bubbling of the pool and the rush of the Santa Ana winds through the palm trees.

“My parents never, ever come out here,” Cassidy confesses into our silence.

Sophie tips her head onto Cassidy’s shoulder, and Cassidy takes a sip of whatever she’s drinking.

“Thanks for inviting us,” X says. “Hands down the nicest damn house party I’ve ever been to.”

She laughs. “It is fabulous, right? I’m glad you guys came.”

Martin’s sitting in the single armchair across from me and X. He nudges me with his foot. “Did you really write that ‘Black Box’ song?” he asks.

Right before the band launched into it at the show earlier, X told the audience that I’d written the lyrics.

“That one was my favorite,” Sophie says.

“I only helped a little,” I say.

X shakes his head. “She means a lot.”

Everyone’s eyes are on us, and I’m more than a little self-conscious.

Cassidy gets a mischievous gleam in her eye that tells me she’s going to embarrass me. “Aww, you guys are so cute,” she teases.

“Aren’t we, though?” X says back, refusing to be embarrassed.