Teaser Tuesday

On the Playlist: All I Need - Matt Kearny

It's time for another teaser from Building Forts! In this one, Chase is giving Callie her first dance lesson. It's also the first time he's ever taught in a wheelchair. Hope you like it!

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The studio is so much smaller than I expected. Way too small to grow in.

But it takes Chase forever to get from one side to the other.

I should ask him if he’s ok, if he wants to go home, if he’s scared. I won’t, though. Don’t really want to know the answers.

“Should we get started?” I ask.

“Not much else to do,” Chase says. He sounds so…not happy. Unhappy. Whatever. It’s just not good. “You need to warm up.”’

Then he waits, like I know what I’m supposed to do. I zip up my hoodie.

I think he might laugh, but instead, like a true teacher, he says, “Are you taking this seriously? Because I really don’t want to put myself through this if it’s all a joke to you.”

He shouldn’t have to ask that. And being with me, even in the worst of circumstances, shouldn’t be something he has to go through. “Of course I’m serious about it. But we can have fun too, right?

He looks at the floor and shakes his head. Don’t know why he’s communicating with the floor and not with me. “Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s just harder than I thought it would be to be back here.”

Look at me. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Here, let me guide you through some stretches."

The warm-up starts easily enough. Head up, head left, head down, head right. Roll shoulders forward, roll them back.

Touch your toes.

I almost touch my ankles.

“What are you doing?” Chase asks when I finish. “You didn’t touch your toes.”

“I can’t.”

“You barely tried. Fight for it.”

“With what, a gun?”

He smiles this time, thankfully. “No. Look, once you realize that you’re the only one putting limits on your body, you’ll realize you’re the only one putting limits on yourself. Make sense?”

Yeah, in a perfect world. But, I’m pretty sure biology put some limits on my body, and people put a lot of limits on me. “Yeah.”

I touch my ankles.

We do some more stretches, and by the end of the warm-up my body hates me almost as much as I hate it. “Are dancers masochists?”

Chase grins. It’s such a nice sight. “Kind of. It hurts, I know, but the stretching makes the dancing easier.”

“Even if I’m in so much pain I feel like I can’t move?”

Wrong words. Worst words in the world. "I'm so sor--"

"You'll never know what that feels like." Chase is talking to the floor again.