Diary of a Danceaholic

Entry #12: My Crazy Cool Aunt

“Welcome to Los Angeles International Airport. The weather is a sunny eighty-six degrees. The captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign. You may now use all approved electronic devices.” The flight attendant said.

I eagerly turned my phone off of Airplane Mode and it started to ding like crazy. Notification after notification, one after the other. I ignored the social media notifications and checked my text messages first.

I smiled at my phone.

[Will]: Safe flight, dancing partner.

There were a couple from Asher, too.

[Asher]: Did you see this?

It was a screenshot of someone’s i********: feed showing me and Will mid-dance at Miss Betsy’s cafe.

[Me]: Is that a video? Who is that?

[Asher]: OH GOOD! YOU LANDED! OMG!

[Me]: What?

[Asher]: Your little duet with Will has gone viral!

[Me]: Whaaaaat?! I sent her the shocked face emoji. Already?

[Asher]: Yeah, girl! Literally, EVERYONE has seen it by now. THAT WAS HOTTTTT

She sent me a bunch of flame pics.

[Asher]: You two have some major chemistry.

She added a bunch of kissy face emojis.

I laughed out loud as we taxied to our gate.

[Me]: Tell me about it. Hold on, let me find the video. I want to watch it. #WORTHIT

I found the girl’s i********: page and looked for the video of Will and I and clicked on it. It was a piece of our dance; the part with the lift. My head was thrown back and the joy was plain on both of our faces. When Will launched me out, I watched what he did before he came to help me up. He was patting his chest in a “that was heart-stopping” gesture. He was obviously impressed and I blushed all over again at the unabashed admiration he had on his face as he watched me dance.

The video ended after the part where Will was doing his turns. That same look was reflected on my own face. Asher was right, there really was some major chemistry going on between us.

[Me]: Holy crap!

[Asher]: Do you think Will’s seen it yet? ASK HIM!

I scrolled down to Will’s number and texted him

[Me]: Our freedom dance has gone viral. Have you seen it?

He sent back a winking face.

[Will]: What can I say, I’ve got a good partner.

I sent the winking face back.

[Asher]: what did he say?

[Me]: He’s teasing me.

[Asher]: I’m totally reading all the comments.

I wanted to, too. There were already over a thousand views and a ton of comments on just this one post, and she wasn’t the only one to post it. A lot of the comments were fire emojis or hearts. Some of them said, “hot,” but there were a couple that caught my eye.

[DanceAddict323]: “get a room” and the puking emoji

[NoOne4040]: Don’t get your hopes up, @Skyler_Thomas. He’s gay.

[ProudDancer112]: Bad boy’s at it again.

[DancingQueen]: You’re not the first, hon and you won’t be the last.

I texted Asher a screenshot of those comments.

[Me]: What does that mean?

[Asher]: Don’t listen to them. They’re jealous haters who wish they could have danced with a hottie like Will.

[Me]: I just don’t know him at all yet. What if he really is a major player.

[Asher]: Find out for yourself. Give in to the gossip and you’ll never know what is actually true or not.

[Me]: You’re right. Of course.

There was a new message from Will. It was a screenshot of a different person’s profile with our video on it from a different angle.

[Will]: Jesse got a video of us. Check it out.

He got the very end of the dance and our bow. It was actually kind of adorable.

[Me]: We’re cute. Did you see this one?

I forwarded him the one from Asher.

[Me]: There’s some hate in the comments already, though.

I baited the hook. I’d just have to wait and see what he responded.

We were done taxiing and had finally reached our gate. The other passengers were standing up, grabbing their luggage from the overhead bins. I stood to stretch my legs and caught sight of a girl of about five years old, staring at me. I smiled and waved and she quickly disappeared behind her seat. She was cute.

“Here,” my mom said, handing me my backpack. “Carry this too, will you?” she also handed me a shopping bag full of warm-up samples from the dance retail reps who were at the competition.

“Ewe,” I said peaking inside and definitely not liking what I saw.

We finally got off the plane and made our way to baggage claim.

“How are we getting home?” I asked my mom. We got a ride from one of dad’s employees in a company car on the way to the airport, but my mom never mentioned how we were going to get back home.

“You’ll see,” she said cryptically.

We walked down the ramp and turned the corner. Standing at the bottom of the ramp was my Aunt Linda. She was waving like a madwoman and I ran to her and launched myself into her arms.

My Aunt Linda is a crazy, loud, dark-haired, and totally Italian Aunt. One of my favorite people in the whole world. She prides herself on being a “starving artist,” even though she’s got paintings hanging up in galleries all over the country. Her latest painting sold for almost half a million dollars. She’s definitely not starving.

“You are never gonna guess what I saw on that i********: thing!”

I groaned and released her from the hug.

“What?” I grumbled.

“A video of you and a certain fine-looking young man dancing very close together, wearing next to nothing?”

I hid my face in my hands. It’s true I was only wearing my bikini and a thin over-dress and Will was only in a pair of board shorts, but we were at the beach, and we really weren’t dancing that close together for very long at all.

“Have you seen it yet, Linds?” Linda leaned over, arching her eyebrows at my mom.

“Yes, I have, and I think they make a very cute duo,”

“Yeah,” said Linda sarcastically. “Cute duo is one way to put it.”

“Aunt Linda!” I chastised her, smacking her lightly on the thigh.

She just widened her eyes at me and shrugged.

“You’re gonna dish on the way home. You know that.”

I chuckled. “I expect nothing less from you.”

When I was in the safety of my aunt’s SUV, I finally pulled my phone back out and there was a new message from Asher, but still nothing from Will. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all. We had a perfect day and I didn’t want that to be the only memory we ever got to have together, but now I was afraid that it was already ruined.

I told Asher as much, but she reassured me that I needed to just be cool and wait for his reply. It would come. I hoped.

I told my aunt all about the competition and my day with Will, leaving out the part where we kissed because my mom was in the passenger seat and I wasn’t ready for her to know about that just yet. Then I launched into a tirade about the haters on i********:. She said the same thing Asher said: To make up my own mind about Will. That helped a lot, hearing it again and from an adult that I trusted.

I knew Will had a tough past so I was not surprised that there was a whole mountain of things that I didn’t know about him. And the same was true in the reverse. But I wanted to be able to have the time to find those things out. I wanted to be given the chance to learn more about him. From him.

I told Linda what I texted to Will, and let her know how worried I was that he hadn’t responded yet. But she also told me to just give it time.

“Did you talk to Asher? Because she literally told me the exact same thing,” I said.

“That Asher is a smart one.”

“Yeah, you too.”

I went back to i********: and started looking at other people’s posts and reposts of Will and I at Miss Betsy’s cafe, and also of the competition awards ceremony. There was a lot more hate on the awards posts than with Will and I, but I had learned to ignore most of that. I knew I did my best, I knew I didn’t cheat, and I knew I worked my a*s off to deserve every award I’ve ever earned. But jealousy and hate were everywhere. There were still a ton of people that were backing Reece’s claim that I, somehow, managed to fix the competition and were demanding another showdown between us. But I was so done with that. No more Reece for a while. I already told my mom that I was only doing West Coast regionals for the near future.

I’d most likely be forced to see her again at Nationals, but that wasn’t for another few months. I just wanted to put some distance between us for a while.

“What’s next in the adventures of Skyler Thomas?” my aunt asked me, pulling me from my i********: trolling.

My mom answered for me, though. “We’re registered for a local competition with the Mountain Vista team. It’s good for her to be seen with her hometown studio.”

“Sweet!” I said enthusiastically. This was news to me, but good news. Jodi is a riot during awards ceremonies. She comes on stage with us, decorum be damned. She dances like a fool and we all love her for it. She cares about the dancers as people, not just trophies, and hates the schmoozing. She absolutely refuses to hang out with the mommies and she’s our hero because of it.

“Mackenna and her horrible mother will be there, though,” my mom said pinching the bridge of her nose.

“She always tries to act so sweet to my face, hoping sponsors will rub off on her, or that Mackenna will magically start winning at competitions.”

“Mom!” I was shocked those words came out of her mouth. Linda and I laughed with her.

“Oh, you know it’s true,” my mom said in her testy voice. “Stacy is dying to get Mackenna noticed, but she’s so two-faced and obsessive that she’s driven away any potential sponsors. They can smell her controlling vibes from a mile away.”

“Mackenna’s been taught very well, too,” I said.

“Are they really that bad?” Linda asked.

“Yes!” my mom and I said in unison and started laughing.

“Stacy lives through Mackenna,” my mom continued. “So much so, that she has her phone connected to all of Mackenna’s apps and sees every single one of her texts. I’ve seen some helicopter parents, but she takes the cake.”

“And Mackenna,” I sighed. “Don’t even get me started on Mackenna. She’s so full of herself but doesn’t quite have the skills to match. Ask Mommy Dearest and she’ll tell you how amazing she is and that it’s the rest of the team that is holding her back. The teachers are playing favorites with other kids, and her teammates are so mean to her.” I rolled my eyes and my mom and aunt laughed darkly, nodding their heads.

“We had a few of those in high school,” Linda said, hitting my mom on the arm. “Remember Heron? The cheerleader. She thought she was all that and let everyone know it. She claimed the only reason she wasn’t captain was because the coaches and the rest of the squad didn’t want her to overshadow them.”

“What a load of crap!”

“Oh!” my mom said, “Remember Trisha?”

“Was she that volleyball player?” Linda asked.

I tuned them out while they reminisced about their old high school bullies, and went back to trolling i********:.

My phone dinged and finally, it was a message from Will.

“Did you see this one?” It was a screenshot of our dance on @these-dancers-have-talent. A very popular page that has over two million followers. It had almost ten thousand views already and over six hundred likes. He sent me another screenshot of a section of the comments. “Smokin,” and “major chemistry,” and “amazing,” and “magical,” all dominated the screen.

I sent him the hugging emoji and he sent the same back to me. I guessed he was choosing to ignore the hate, and I realized that I should too. Either way, I was just relieved that we were still good. I didn’t need to know about that other side of him if it was even a real side. I wanted to figure him out for myself.

“I get to compete with my home studio next weekend,” I told him, changing the subject before I could put my foot back into my mouth.

“Rad!” he texted back.

My phone dinged again and it was a selfie of him at the cafe holding up the hang-loose sign on his hand, wearing that cute lopsided grin.

I checked my face and hair in the rear-view mirror. My hair was a mess, but I could play it off as “post-flight” hair. I had no makeup on, but I literally never wore it unless I was about to go on stage. I don’t even know if I know how to wear “natural” looking makeup anyway.

My freckles were very prominent from our day in the sun and I hoped he would think they were cute. I snapped a selfie and checked it to make sure it was okay. I tried another one, but the first one was better so I sent that one.

He sent the fire emoji back immediately.

“What’s that grin for back there?” my aunt said, startling me.

“Nothing!” I said, quickly stowing my phone behind my back.

“Skyler’s talking to that boy again,” my mom teased.

“So!” I said defensively.

“We already know he can dance extremely well. What else do we know about him?” my aunt asked.

“He’s nice?”

“And he’s absolutely gorgeous,” my aunt teased with a throaty laugh.