Dare you

“I dare you to dance with me,” he extended one shaky hand out in the dark gymnasium to the girl seated on the bleacher. 

His friends all said she wouldn’t agree. He was crazy to think she would say yes. He had seen her staring at him all night. But he had heard the rumors that she maybe thought he was all right. He had tried to talk to her when she wasn’t surrounded by so many girl friends. He tried to weave his way into their circle on the floor but it was such a tight circle, he wasn’t able to break in. He had seen her. This was the night. This was his chance and he was going to take it. 

This was years in the making. They had known each other already for a long time. Friends since grade school. They had homerooms and homework shared. They had exams and projects completed together. They had field trips to museums and performances with one another. They had all these shared experiences, and all these times spent together, but apart. They were somehow always aware of each other, but never together. Tonight, at this dance, he was going to ask her. He was going to do it. This was it. Now was the time.

So when she sat down on the bleachers to take a breather between songs. He saw his chance. He walked across the hardwood floor, wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and held one hand out. He looked her straight in the eye. He tried to maintain a sense of bravery that he had only read about in books or seen on TV. Dogs sense fear, oddly enough the phrase ran through his head. Show no fear. 

“Do you accept this dare?” 

She laughed and took his hand in hers to step down onto the dance floor. The band, as if on cue, started to play a slow song, so he wrapped his arms around her waist and she tentatively set her arms on his shoulders. His eyes held a flicker of amusement and barely contained glee. She looked up at him bashfully, questioningly, but didn’t say a word. The gym was much too loud anyway, the song too beautiful, and the moment too perfect to interrupt with words. They just stared at each other and softly smiled. They slowly started to sway gently left and right, back and forth, around and around. The rest of the room melted away. 

The gym was blistering hot, but they didn’t stop dancing the rest of that night. The songs may have changed from slow to fast to slow again, but they never stopped holding on to one another. 

His friends said, “Come sit with us for a little while!”

Her friends called, “Don’t you want to dance with us too?”

They didn’t want to stop for fear of breaking the spell. 

Then it was one high school dance that led to more high school dances. There were Homecoming dances, and Winter Formal Dances, and Dinner Ball Dances. He asked to dance with her at the prom. Live bands, karaoke bands, sound systems; it didn't matter to them who was making the music. They were happy just to be together. They were happy just to be in one another’s arms. They were happy just to be dancing with her arms on his shoulders and his arms wrapped around her waist. 

Finally, he asked her to dance with him at their wedding. 

Together they danced through life. They danced when they found jobs. They danced when they bought their first home. They danced when they learned they would become parents. They danced when they learned they would become grandparents. They danced through life together. The years melted away just as quickly as that room once melted. Days into years, like an ice cream cone on a hot summer’s day. Soft and sweet and good to the last drop. Drop.

It was the proverbial shoe drop. Or the stomach drop. Or an old drop in a bucket? She was so beautiful, even after the double mastectomy took her breasts, and the radiation stole her hair, and the chemotherapy ravaged her radiance. She was still drop dead gorgeous. Ha, drop dead gorgeous. She always loved his punny sense of humor. He loved to hear her laugh. 

He decided it was time for this old man to take himself out for a walk in the woods before he lost his nerve. She would have wanted him to go now. He grabbed his jacket and headed to their favorite trail.

***

“It’s a busted old box,” a voice shouted.

“Look at it!” a slightly younger, higher pitched voice yelled.  He seemed to think his friends were deaf.

A third voice,  “It’s the inside of a music box.  The part that used to be inside a box.”

The young voice chimed, “You mean the part that made the music?  You know tiddle tiddle leedle leedle diddle da?”

“You dorks.  You don’t know anything.  Just leave it be.”  It was the first voice again.  He led the boys up the hill and away from the old man. 

Further in the woods, the old man heard the boys and shook his head.  He silently agreed.  They didn’t know anything.  The box itself was tucked in his hands.  

The music was in the trees.  The bird song.  Frogs, leaves rustling.  Wet dank mold scented mud making muck muck sucking sounds under his feet until he sat heavily on the fallen log.   A chipmunk chirps from under a pile of crusty brown and yellow and red leaves.  Birds swoop and sing their cheerful songs from branches.  From somewhere a shhhhhing slide of a small creature gliding along the earth.  Barely, just barely the waves could be heard distantly touching the shore and then rushing back to the other side again.  A constant race against itself to settle but never able to break even and be at peace.  

Inside the box was an inscription.  The words long ago memorized.  He could no longer see them without his glasses, which were forgotten or misplaced more often than worn.  But he knew what they said anyway.

The music isn’t important.  The dance is life.  Dare you to dance with me.  Forever yours, always.

Tears glided down his cheeks as steady as rain.  He couldn’t think about opening the box one last time.  He knew her wish, but didn’t know if he had the strength.  How long ago had he been here to throw away that music mechanism anyway?  How had the boys found it?  Why didn’t he put it in his pocket and take it home?  He must have not been thinking straight.  Did he leave it here?  Or did she in the planning stage?  They did share a lot of dances together for sure.  It was so hard to tell when they were duets and when they were solo.  The thirty years of  marriage seemed to have flown by on all high notes.  It seemed they were an inseparable pair. 

Sighing, with a soft breeze and a squirrel gently chiding him for sitting too long upon his log, he found the courage to open the box.  The ashes poured out.  He was ready to start his final solo.