"If we loved again I swear I'd love you right."

I never thought I’d see the day when loud music booming from the speakers bothered me. The entire dance floor is surrounded by speakers. The only place where you can have a decent conversation is in the middle of the dance floor. Of course I stand out since I’m the tallest person here. That’s not on them or me, their age range is from eleven to thirteen. I got stuck chaperoning my daughter’s dance. And if I didn’t feel old before I certainly do now.

I’ve found myself at the punch table, grabbing a water as she steps into my view. She’s fussing with a large bottle of lemon lime soda to bother to notice my presence. She pours the bottle into the punch bowl. This is my only moment to walk away, avoid the awkward yelling conversation we will be forced to have with each other. It’s not a surprise to see her, our daughter asked us both to be here. I came alone, our daughter with her. It’s the first time I’m seeing her tonight. I saw my daughter earlier before she deserted me for her friends, her hair in light curls and a silver sparkly dress. I managed to get a father daughter picture before she disappeared into darkness. Now here her mother stands, in a black dress that I think was meant to blend into the background. But from where I’m standing, she outshines everyone here.

She sets the now empty bottle on the table and I realize I’ve been standing here staring at her. My moment to walk away is now over as she turns towards me. She stops and does a double take as she sees me. A small smile comes to her face as I smile back in almost relief. We are so up and down lately I never know how either of us will feel when we see each other. A small memory of how we first met on the dance floor comes to me. We weren’t much older than our daughter.

She steps closer to me, her hand resting on my arm as she stands on her toes to lean into my ear. I can smell her perfume; she told me once what all was in it. All I can remember is pear, rose petals…Turkish rose petals actually, and vanilla. It’s almost like I smell each of them on her skin. There are times at drop-offs when I get a hint of her perfume when she passes me our daughter’s bag or shuts the car door and a whiff of air hits me mixed with her perfume and her own personal scent. It’s something I’ve never been able to get over.

She’s so close to me now I’m not sure where my hands should fall. Do I touch her waist? Not touch her at all? I find myself not being able to keep my distance as I place my hand over hers.

“Good to see you here.” She says through the music. “You’ve spotted her?”

“The one with the sparkle among all the other sparkles.”

“She really wanted you to come, so thank you.” And then she pulls away, her hand pulling from underneath my own and dropping to her side.

Disappointment fills my body. Am I this lovesick over her? We separated for a reason. We are better off apart. We told ourselves that. We went through a divorce that was painful and bitter for a reason. And yet…here I am looking at her like she’s the only woman in the room. I’d like to blame the room. Pretend that she’s the only other adult here so I have no choice but to gravitate towards her. But there are plenty of other parents, single parents even, and teachers here to occupy my time with.

The DJ breaks the dance crowd into the first slow song of the night as the kids awkwardly go off into their groups of two. My heart sinks when I see some boy with my daughter on the dance floor. My heart literally breaking and rage hitting my entire body at the same time. She’s still too young for this. Having a boyfriend in grade school was fine. She didn’t have the same set of hormones she had now. It didn’t mean the same thing. When she hits high school having a boyfriend will mean something different from now, God help me when that happens. Neither of them even look my direction as they sway around the dance floor. She knows we are both here but maybe that’s why she wanted her mother here, to reign me in.

I feel her hand on my back now as my body slightly relaxes. She pushes my bottle of water up towards my mouth, telling me to relax. I unscrew the cap and take a large gulp of it. It does little to help.

The only thing to pull me away from this is turn my attention to her mother. “Dance with me.” I say to her.

“What?” I know she’s hesitant. We are already causing quite a stir among the parents that know about our divorce. But hey, we are at a middle school dance after all, the perfect place for gossip and whispers.

“Distract me.” I hold out my hand waiting for her to take it.

She takes it as I set my water down and guide her on the dance floor. We dance in silence for a while as I guide her in the middle of the floor so I can actually hear her. There are so many things I want to say to her. So many things I need to make up for. Our daughter has caught me looking at her social media, she always seems to make a comment about how miserable her mother actually is.

It doesn’t help me try to get over her. Wondering if there is a bit of hope for us after all. I wrap my one hand around her waist and interlock my other hand in hers. I have to find out. I look down at her as her eyes connect with mine. The warm vibrant brown they’ve always been, I’m glad to see they haven’t dulled from all the pain I’ve caused her. I’ve been the blame behind her wet eyes more times then I can count. To where I couldn’t even face her. That’s where all her pain sits, in her eyes, and it cuts through me like a knife.

“There are things I need to say to you.” I find myself blurting out.

She stares at me in silence for a while, trying to read me. But it doesn’t take her long before she finally speaks, understanding. “Here?”

I shrug. “We met on a dance floor, why not?”

She shakes her head, “You don’t want to do this here.”

I won’t ever get the chance again, she’ll find some reason to always be in a rush after drop off. Stand a person in between me as we watch dance classes. This is the moment. I realize how lame the location and time is being surrounded by tweens but my options are limited. “I need to say it…so we are both clear.”

“You made it clear when I saw you with someone else. That was closure. So don’t you dare tell me now that you need me. You don’t get to walk away and expect to come back to what we were. That’s not how any of this works.” The woman who was happy to see me is now the woman I left nearly two years ago. The pain still there.

Maybe if I finally say the things we both need to hear that anger will disappear and I can make up for everything else. “I’m not, but maybe if I had said the right things to you then…it never would have gone down this way. I still feel like it was up to me in the end.”

“It wouldn’t have made me stay.” She says to me softly. “We are better off how we are now.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because you weren’t there during and after it all happened. You weren’t the one waking up in a violent sweat and could barely breathe every night. It literally cut me so deep I felt like I was barely surviving as it is. So you don’t get to stand here and remind me of what we were. We said forever and you broke that promise, I know what you’re doing, you don’t get to suck me back in.”

“I know we outgrew us—"

“No you outgrew it. I was fine with how everything was but now…I couldn’t trust you not to walk away again. And I can’t go through what I already went through. Because I thought me struggling every night was love. Where it scarred me so deeply and I thought it should. But that isn’t love.”

“I’m trying to get over you, but it’s not some switch that I can turn on and off.”

“You think it’s easy for me? Seeing how you still look at me, how you still live in the memories of what we were and what we still could be. Seeing our daughter grow up and know that we could be a family again for her.”

“Then what’s stopping you? We don’t have to get over anything if we both want to be together.” The solution seems obvious to me.

“Because the ending will always stay the same. We are living in the what if’s, not what is. We can’t keep pretending we could ever exist again. I’m not your friend, I’m not your lover and I won’t be the reason we hold each other back from moving on.”

“You’re happy without me.” It’s not a question, just a realization. She lost me but she found herself. It may not have been her choice but she is the one coming out on top.

“Don’t make it harder than it already is.” She says. “I feel all the same things that you feel when I’m with you. Even in this moment. I feel them like some magnetic pull that we’ve always had. But that doesn’t last and we will end up right back here.”

Of course I feel them most strongest when she is near but even when she’s gone I still feel them. She was mine for years, made me a father, took care of me when I didn’t deserve once ounce of it. Then I walked away. I wanted the best for us and then turned right around and destroyed everything. I’ve been living in this twisted dream, pretending that all I had to do was say the right thing. I have to make the smoke and mirrors disappear. She’s been living in the truth of us while I’ve been living in what we once were. “Well at least you said it.” I say to her. “And we got our one last dance.”

I wish I could say that it was like an immediate wave that washed over me and it was closed and done with. But my love for her doesn’t just disappear like that. Nothing is the way that is was and now I’m back in that empty apartment with nothing but a mattress.

We will tell ourselves this is how it’s supposed to be. Pain being the price we all pay for loving someone. Eventually that will become fact if we pretend long enough. We will be the parents that only see each other for our daughter only, maybe remarrying and giving her bonus parents. Separate holidays will be permanent. When she graduates school, I’ll probably see less of her mother except on the really big events. And the frustrating part is that I could have stopped it.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt me.” She says. “But I won’t spend another night crying so hard that I was practically suicidal. I’m finally healing from all this…I think you need to too.”

“Despite how it all ended—”

“I’d do it all again.” She says.

And something in me right there heals. Like she doesn’t regret it, despite how painful it was for her. The song ends as a hip-hop song beats across the speakers. The kids coming in packs around us. I’m still holding onto her. My greatest fear was to lose her, even if it was my doing. But I suppose I still get to a piece of us, even if they are broken. Her hand slowly falls from mine as she pulls away from my body and walks off the dance floor, leaving me alone but somehow slightly more healed then where I started.