Lead and Follow

I never figured I'd end up holding my ex-wife's hand again. Especially not in her own dance studio, above a dead shoe repair shop, smelling like floor wax and old sweat. But there I was. Forty-two years old, holding a mop in one hand and Cassidy Leeds' hand in the other.

Let me back up.

I clean for a living. Have for twenty years. Started at the college in Durbin when Cassidy was still teaching dance classes out of a rented hall. Small town. Main street starts at the university library and ends at The Well, the bar where Kim and I spend most of our Friday nights. Everything in between is buildings I've cleaned and buildings Cassidy and I used to share. My whole route is basically a tour of my failed marriage.

That's fine, most days. It's been six years. I don't think about her much. I think about the order I mop things in, and which trash bags will rip, and whether the vending machine on the second floor is eating quarters again.

Then Kim showed me her phone.

We were at The Well. Tuesday, actually, not Friday. Kim was forty-three that month and she'd decided we should celebrate on a random Tuesday because "the weekend is for amateurs," whatever that means. She slid her phone across the table, all excited.

"Look. Look at this. You know Cassidy, right? Your Cassidy?"

"She's not my Cassidy. She hasn't been my anything since the divorce."

"Well, your ex-Cassidy, then." She turned the phone around. "Tell me that's not wild."

It was a wedding invitation. Somebody had forwarded it to her, probably, because Cassidy and Kim knew each other from some community thing. Cassidy Leeds and Rashid Peterson. September the fourteenth. And a little line underneath saying the couple requested the pleasure.

"What's wild about it?" I said. "She's forty-one. People get married."

"Read the guy's name. Rashid Peterson. Grad student, Lloyd. He's in geology at the college. He's thirty-six. He's, what, five years younger than her?"

I did the math. Thirty-six. She's forty-one. So five years. But somehow that didn't matter. What mattered was my stomach had dropped through the floor and into the basement of The Well, and I was staring at a font choice on a phone screen like it had personally insulted me.

"OK," I said. "So she's getting married."

"You're fine with that?"

"Of course I'm fine with that."

"Lloyd." Kim leaned back and crossed her arms. "You just went gray. You look like that floor buffer you love so much."

"That's not a real comparison."

"You're fine with it?"

"I'm fine with it." I finished my beer and signaled for another one, which was not the behavior of a man who was fine with it.

Here's the thing. Cassidy and I didn't end badly. No screaming, no lawyers, no thrown dishes. We just wore out. She wanted more and I wanted less, and we figured that out around year nine and shook hands like it was a business deal. She kept the savings for the studio. I kept the truck. And then she opened the studio above the old shoe repair place and got popular, and I kept cleaning, and that was the end of it. Six years of that.

But a wedding invitation changes things. A wedding invitation means she moved on so completely she's throwing a party about it. And I hadn't moved on to anything. My big news that year was a new floor buffer.

I didn't sleep great that night. Or the next. And on the third day I walked past her studio on my route, because of course I did, and there was a sign in the window. Salsa classes, Thursday nights, beginners welcome.

I stood there on the sidewalk like an idiot for a solid five minutes.

"Get out more," I said to myself. That was the excuse I was building. I need to get out more. Kim's always saying it. It's basically doctor's orders at this point. So I'll take a dance class. Nothing weird about it. Completely normal behavior from a totally fine man.

I went up the stairs that evening. The door was propped open and Cassidy was inside, stacking chairs. She heard me on the steps and turned around, and I watched her face do three things at once. Surprise, then a smile, then something guarded over the top of the smile.

"Lloyd Fulton." She set down a chair. "Well, I'll be. What brings you up here?"

"Saw your sign." I held up the flyer I'd taken off the window, which was damp because I'd been holding it in my sweaty fist the whole way up. "Thought I'd sign up for the salsa thing."

She blinked at me. "You want to take salsa classes."

"Yeah. I need to get out more."

"You clean my friend Miriam's office twice a week. I know exactly how much you get out."

"Then this is me getting out."

She studied me for a second. She's still a good-looking woman, Cassidy. Tall, dark hair going silver at the temples, and she stands straight like a metronome. She never slouched once in nine years of marriage.

"OK," she said slowly. "The thing is, Thursday classes start in two weeks, but the beginners' group filled up two weeks ago. I've got a waitlist."

"Oh!" I felt relief and disappointment land on me at the same time, which was confusing. "Right. Well. Thanks anyway."

"Wait." She held up a hand. "Let me think. I've got one slot left for private lessons. Usually that goes to couples. Wedding couples, mostly. First dance stuff." She chewed her lip, deciding something. "But a private is a private. If you want it, it's yours. Thursday nights, seven o'clock. It costs more."

"Fine. How much more?"

I paid. She wrote my name on a card in her little file box, and she paused over the box before she slid the card in.

"You're sure about this?" she said. "It's just... you. Here. Weekly."

"I'm sure. Why wouldn't I be sure?"

"No reason!" She closed the box. "See you Thursday, Lloyd."

I walked home the long way, past the library and past The Well, and I texted Kim from the corner.

Me: signed up for salsa lessons Kim: at Cassidy's studio????? Me: where else Kim: Lloyd. Lloyd. That is the most insane thing you have ever done Me: it's a private lesson actually. Group was full Kim: A PRIVATE LESSON. With your ex wife. Alone. In a room Me: it's a dance studio, there's nothing alone about it, she's teaching me Kim: I'm getting popcorn for Thursday

I put the phone away and didn't answer the next three texts.

Thursday came. I got there early, which meant I stood outside the shoe repair place for ten minutes looking at the faded sign, DURBIN SHOE & LEATHER, letters peeling off. Someone had put a "closed" card in the window years ago and the tape had yellowed. I don't know why I kept looking at it. Maybe because it felt honest. Everything down there had stopped and nobody bothered to pretend otherwise.

Upstairs, Cassidy had the music going. Something with horns. She'd changed into practice clothes, some flowy top and soft shoes, and she'd pushed the chairs against the wall so the floor was clear. It's a big room, her studio. Mirrors on one wall, a barre, a scuffed wood floor that she clearly maintained better than I maintain anything, and I include myself.

"You're early," she said.

"Habit." I hung my jacket on a chair. "Cleaners are always early. Nobody pays you to be late."

"Good. We'll use the time." She crossed the floor to me and held out her hand. "Basic hold first. Give me your right hand."

And that's how it happened. That's how I ended up holding her hand. Her palm was warm and her grip was sure, and I remembered every single thing about that grip from nine years of holding it, and I stood there like a stump while she arranged my arm.

"Relax the shoulder," she said, pushing it down. "You're carrying the whole building up there."

"Occupational tension."

"Left hand on my shoulder blade. No, flat. You're not grabbing, you're asking." She stepped back and looked at me in the mirror. "You lead, Lloyd. I follow. That's everything. You decide everything and I'll know what you want."

"That sounds like a lot of pressure."

"It's the same pressure you've had your whole life." She smiled a little. "I just get to be the one following this time."

The music started and my feet did not know what to do. But her hand was in mine, and the room smelled like wax and sweat, and I thought, well. Here we are.

The first thing I did wrong was step on her foot.

The first thing I did wrong after that was apologize for it. Then I did it again. Then I apologized again. Somewhere in the first ten minutes I stepped on her foot three times and said sorry about six.

"Lloyd." She stopped the music. "Stop!"

"Sorry."

"That. Stop that!"

"Sorry for..." I caught myself. She was rubbing her toes through her soft shoe and looking at me with this expression she used to have when I left the cupboard doors open. Not angry. More like she was filing something away.

"You've apologized more in ten minutes than most students do in a month," she said. "And half of those were for things that hadn't happened yet."

"I didn't want to squish your feet."

"You already squished my feet. Apologizing doesn't unsquish them. It just makes you stiff, and stiff is why you're squishing them in the first place." She let go of my hand and walked over to the speaker. "You're thinking. I can hear you thinking. There's a little accountant in your head going left, right, left, and he's behind on his counts, so you panic, and then your foot goes wherever it wants."

"He's doing his best," I said.

She laughed. Short, surprised, like it got out before she could stop it. "OK, new plan. Forget the steps. Forget the count. I'm going to play this track and you're just going to walk. Regular walking. Find the beat with your feet, that's all. One two three, one two three. Like walking down a hallway."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

So we walked. Around the room, in a big lazy circle, her hand in mine, horns going, and I won't lie, at first I felt like an idiot. A forty-two year old man walking in circles in his ex-wife's studio on a Thursday night. But after a couple laps the beat got into my feet somehow. My shoulders dropped. I stopped counting because the count was just happening.

"There," she said. "Feel that? You stopped apologizing."

"I stopped thinking."

"Same thing, in your case." She squeezed my hand. "Now we add the step. Same feeling. If you squash my toe again, I'll survive. I teach teenagers. My feet have been through worse."

And I stepped on her foot two more times that night. But the second time I laughed instead of apologizing, and she laughed too, this real laugh, head tipped back, and I remembered I used to be able to get that laugh out of her pretty reliably. Then I got sad about remembering that, and then I stepped on her other foot, which is how the third one happened.

"OK, that one was my fault," she said, hopping a little. "I was distracted."

"By what?"

"By you almost dancing." She checked the mirror and straightened my elbow without really looking. "Same time Thursday. Don't practice, it'll just make you think more."

I walked home past The Well. It was cheap night, half the university out front smoking. Kim texted me.

Kim: well??? Details Me: I stepped on her foot 5 times Kim: and?? Me: she said don't practice Kim: that's not details, Lloyd Me: it went fine. We laughed I typed that and then stared at it for a while before hitting send, because "we laughed" is a weird thing to report about your ex-wife. Kim sent back eleven party emojis, which did not help.

The second Thursday it rained and my truck wouldn't start in the morning, so I did my whole route with the radio on and my mood weirdly good, which Kim noticed at lunch.

"You're humming," she said.

"I'm not."

"You're literally humming. Hip work and everything." She pointed her fork at me. "The lessons are going well."

"It's exercise," I said. "It's like a gym membership with a floor."

"Sure it is."

I got to the studio at seven with my hair wet. Cassidy had two mops leaning against the barre.

I stopped in the doorway. "Those are mine."

"I know. I found the brand on an old receipt from when we were still married. I ordered two." She picked one up and tossed it at me. I caught it, barely. "You said something last week. When you apologized for the fifth time. You said your feet were like mops that wouldn't stay flat."

"I said that?"

"You did. So tonight you're going to show me. How does a professional clean a floor? Because I've been mopping this thing in straight lines for six years and I have a feeling you're about to tell me I've been doing it wrong."

"You have been doing it wrong," I said.

"Show me."

So I did. This is the part Kim refuses to believe. I stood in my ex-wife's dance studio in my work jeans and showed her how to mop. Figure eights. You push the mop in a figure eight, overlapping, so each