“Okay,” Josh wasn’t sure why she was telling him that.
She held out her hand. “Give me your phone to call his number.”
He handed his phone to her even though he wasn’t sure why she needed his phone to call him.
She looked down at it and back up at him. “Where is it? Where is his number?”
“I don’t have Pastor Harrison’s number.” Josh could get it from Caleb, but he didn’t have it in his phone.
“What are you talking about?!” Her voice rose as her hands flew up in the air. “He’s your best friend.”
“Oh, do you mean Caleb?”
“That’s what I said, Pastor Harrison.”
Oh, for the love... This was ridiculous. “Nonna, you’ve known him his whole life. You caught us smoking behind the bleachers at the football game when we were twelve. You can call him Caleb.”
She wagged her finger in Josh’s face. “No, no. He’s a pastor. Pastor Harrison. You show respect.”
Josh still couldn’t get used to people calling him that. Pastor Harrison was Caleb’s dad and forever would be.
He took his phone back and scrolled through until he found his friend’s contact then pressed the call icon and handed it to her.
“Hello, Pastor, this is Nonna. I have a favor I need for you. You need to go to the community center tonight to dance with Audrey. My Vivi hurt her back, povera bambina, and now Audrey needs you to dance with her.”
Audrey?
Dance with her?
“Okay, you call me back.”
Nonna handed the phone back to Josh. He opened his mouth to say something but was stunned speechless. Why hadn’t Nonna asked him to go to the community center? Why had she asked Caleb?
An image of Caleb and Audrey dancing together flashed in his head and an emotion dangerously close to jealousy filled him. In the back of his mind, he’d always been a little scared that the two of them would end up together. And if Josh was being honest, they deserved each other. Most of the time that phrase was being used it had a negative connotation. But not this time. Caleb was the best man that Josh knew. He was kind, funny, caring. He spent his free time volunteering and serving the community. Just like Audrey did.
The two of them would actually be perfect together. Which was probably why the thought of Caleb showing up at the community center tonight made Josh want to puke.
“Why did you ask Caleb to go and not me?” Josh blurted out.
“I already ask you too much.” Nonna waved her hand dismissively. “You eat with no lights on and have to go and do the yoyo.”
“Yoga,” Josh corrected her as his mind raced to figure out how he could fix this. “Caleb’s busier than me. I’ll go.”
She looked over her shoulder and looked at him like he’d just escaped a mental institution. “You want to go to the dance? You don’t do the dancing.”
It was true. He didn’t “do the dancing.” The only time he’d been on a dance floor was with Nonna when she’d guilt tripped him into dancing with her by saying things like, “I’m not going to live forever?” and, “When I die, won’t you be so sad you didn’t want to dance with me?” and, “I wish I had a grandson who wanted to dance with his Nonna, but I guess he’s too embarrassed because she is too old.” Or some other guilt trip. But those occasions had been few and far between, and ninety-nine percent of them had been at family members’ weddings.
Josh looked down at his phone and sent his friend a quick text.
Josh: Don’t worry about the message Nonna just left. You don’t need to go to the community center. I’m going.
As he typed the message he noticed that his hands had grease stains on them and he probably smelled like a grease trap as well.
“What are you doing?” Nonna asked as he hit the button to lower the bay door.
“Closing up.”
“Why? You’re not finished working.” Nonna motioned to the parts that were laid out on a rag on the cement floor.
“I’ll finish later.”
“Why? Why you don’t finish now? Where are you going?”
He didn’t know if she was being intentionally clueless to prove some point or if she really didn’t know what was going on. If he had to guess, he’d go with being intentionally clueless to prove a point.
“First, I’m going home to take a shower. Then I’m going to the community center.”
“First you get a scowl and make bulldog face when I ask you for help, now you go when I don’t ask you. This is what is wrong with young people. You are all crazy people.” She threw her hands up in the air.
There was a very good chance he was crazy for what he was doing. In his sane mind he would never volunteer to go take a dance class. But that’s what Audrey did to him. She drove him crazy.
Audrey pushed open the door to the community center excited for her evening. Out of all the events that Viv was considering for the singles week this was the only one Audrey had actually volunteered to attend.
Tonight, she was meeting with the dance instructors of a program called Show Her Off that taught basic dance moves, no dance experience necessary, for couples. The spin for singles week was that they were going to teach these basic steps at the beginning of the night and then each of the singles would switch partners with every new song that came on.
She wasn’t sure who her dance partner would be this evening, but she didn’t even care. She was basically like Sarah Jessica Parker in Girls Just Want to Have Fun when she’s standing up in front of the class at her new school and her teacher asks her to tell them all a little about herself and she says, in a very dreamy way, “I love to dance.”
That was Audrey. She’d always loved to dance; she’d just never had a partner to dance with. Since she was a kid, she’d romanticized dancing with her significant other. Whenever she was a little girl imagining what her life would be like when she got older, she had never seen herself having babies or kids but she had envisioned herself being married and madly in love. There was one scene that was a recurring daydream.
The setting was the kitchen, she was standing in front of the stove cooking with music playing in the background. Her husband would walk in, see her, wrap his arms around her and they would start slow dancing. She’d tell him she was going to burn the chicken or the rice or whatever was on the stove, and he would just spin her out and then in again and tell her it could burn, the only thing he wanted to taste was her, or some other equally cheesy-slash-sexy retort.
She knew dancing was a silly thing to fantasize about, and she had no clue why that was where her brain always went. But for better or worse, that was her reality.
When she walked into the rec room, where she was meeting the instructors, she had to admit that she was a little disappointed that Josh wasn’t there. In the back of her mind, she’d thought that for sure Viv would take this opportunity to try and set them up again, like she was sure her sister had done with the Dining in the Dark and the AcroYoga.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t there, and neither were the instructors. She walked over to the bleachers and sat down to wait and her mind drifted back to a few nights ago at the shelter. She honestly didn’t think that she could love Josh any more than she already did but seeing him with Thor had caused her to fall even deeper.