Dance

By:  Julie

 

[“Lookin’ back on the memory of the dance we shared beneath the stars above…”]

 

“Are you sure that you want to do this?” I asked.

 

He nodded. It was time that everyone knew.

 

[“for a moment, all the world was right…”]

 

“No one even cares Justin,” I told him, my arms around his waist, his eyes looking down into my own.

 

“Are you sure?” He asked. I nodded. “JC… people are really staring.”

 

“So?”

 

What would I ever care?

 

[“How could I have known that you’d ever say goodbye?”]

 

“That’s it?” I asked him.

 

“I’m not like this JC,” Justin replied.

 

“Yes you ARE,” I replied, almost in tears. “You’re like this. You’re like me. You’re not going to just walk away from everything?”

 

“I am JC,” Justin said.

 

[“And now, I’m glad I didn’t know the way it all would end, the way it all would go.”]

 

Do I miss him?

 

Simply in answer, yes. But I wouldn’t trade the time that I spent with him for anything.

 

[“Our lives are better left to chance…”]

 

I’ll always think of it as part of my fate, to have loved someone that didn’t love me back.

 

I’d like to think that maybe her really did love me. There was so much pressure on him, as well as myself to let it all go, to give it all up. Maybe he just caved into that, and then he became what everyone thought he should be.

 

[“I could’ve missed the pain, but I’d’ve had to miss the dance”]

 

“I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything,” he said.

 

“Not even for a girl?” I asked him.

 

“Never for a girl.”

 

[“Holding you, I held everything…”]

 

“If it ended right now…” Justin said. “If we woke up tomorrow and our fifteen minutes were up, what would you do?”

 

“I’d still love you,” I replied. “And I have everything I need right here.”

 

[“For a moment, wasn’t I a king?”]

 

I held my arms out and tilted my face up to the rain.

 

“I LOVE YOU!” I shouted into the sky.

 

Justin laughed. “I love you,” he replied, then picked me up and fireman carried me to our room. Very romantic.

 

[“But If I’d only known how the king would fall, then who’s to say, you know I might have changed it all.”]

 

“So you’re no even going to try anymore?” I asked.

 

“I just want to be a normal person JC,” Justin replied. “I never have been.”

 

“I know.” I replied. And I wanted to go back and change everything, right then. I wanted to pull him away from the group, just so that I could keep him for myself.

 

{“And I, I’m glad I didn’t know the way it all would end, the way it all would go.”]

 

“I don’t want you to leave,” I said, pouting just a little. It didn’t seem to have the same effect on him as his pouts did on me.

 

“I can’t stay,” he replied. “I’m tired.”

 

It wasn’t the whole truth, and I knew it. A sense of normalcy wasn’t what he wanted.

 

He was afraid of something.

 

[“Our lives are better left to chance…”]

 

It was his chance walking out there, walking down the sidewalk.

 

It was his fate to be there in that moment.

 

[“I could have missed the pain, but I’d’ve had to miss the dance.”]

 

It was a case of wrong place, wrong time. I knew this while I was standing at the gravesite, the rose in my hand.

 

They’d missed a thorn on this one, and it dug into my palm, hurting me and drawing blood.

 

But the pain in my hand was nothing compared to the pain in my heart.

 

[“Yes my life, it’s better left to chance.”]

 

He didn’t have a chance. They were waiting for him, and then he was gone. He was scared, when he left, and he knew it was going to happen.

 

He never told me, and I never knew.

 

And he showed me that he loved me more by leaving me in the dark, and by protecting me from what he was going through.

 

[“I could’ve missed the pain…”]

 

“JC?”

 

“It’s okay man…”

 

“He doesn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

 

They hadn’t known either. He’d left them more in the dark than I had been.

 

“I know,” I told them, looking up, noting the pain on their faces.

 

[“But I’d’ve had to miss the dance.”]

 

That was when I fell in love with him.

 

It was just a dance.

 

~+~

 

The End

 

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