The Cheat Sheet

“I can’t. I have a toddler creative movement class at 11:00 today.”

I frown. “You never teach on Tuesday mornings.”

She shrugs. “Yeah, well, I had to add another class in the mornings twice a week to cover the studio’s rent. My landlord contacted me last month and said property taxes went up again so he had to raise my rent by a couple hundred bucks.”

Bree tries to stand, but I hook the T-back strap of her tank top and tug her back down beside me. It was borderline overly flirtatious, and I instantly know it was a bad move when she looks at me with wide eyes. I quickly continue the conversation to cover my tracks. “You’re already teaching too many classes a week.”

Bree employs one other instructor at her studio who teaches tap and jazz, but really, she needs to add another to help with the load. Her studio runs in more of a non-profit capacity, but her overhead doesn’t reflect it because every studio space in LA is enormously expensive. It’s unfair because there’s a large population of people in this city who are low income and under-resourced whose needs are overlooked. Bree’s desire has always been to provide a place for kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to receive dance instruction, allowing them to attend her studio at minimal cost to their family.

Problem is, the tuition is too low for her current business model. She knows this but feels stuck, and I hate that her chosen solution to the problem is to teach more classes and trade more of herself to cover the deficit instead of accepting my money.

“I teach the normal amount of classes for the average instructor,” she says with a clipped warning tone. Bree’s warning tone, however, sounds as threatening as a cartoon baby bunny. Her eyes are big and sparkly and make me love her more.

I soften my own voice, preparing to go to a place I know is touchy. “I know you can handle it, and I know you’re absolutely tough as nails, but as your friend, I hate having to watch you work through so much pain in your knee. And yes, I know your pain is flaring up because I saw you favoring your right leg during our jog today.” Reflexively, I hold up my hands. “Don’t pinch me, please. I’m only trying to make sure you take care of yourself while you’re out there taking care of everyone else.”

Her eyes dart away. “I’m fine.”

“Are you? You’d tell me if you weren’t fine?”

She narrows her eyes. “You’re being overly dramatic about this, Nathan.”

She says my name in a way that’s meant to cause me pain but instead just makes me want to smile. Bree is one of the strongest human beings I know, but she’s also somehow the softest. She can never fully bring herself to snap at me or anyone else in her life.

“My knee is not going to fall off if I use it too much, and I can push through a little pain. You know I don’t control my rent, so if I want to be able to keep my tuition low for the kids, I have to add an extra class until I can find a different solution. End of story. And—AH!” She holds up her finger to press against my lips when she sees me about to argue. “I won’t take money from you. We’ve been over this a thousand times, and I need to do this on my own.”

My shoulders sink. The only consolation for continuously losing this argument is the fact that her skin is pressed against my mouth right now. I’ll stay silent forever if she will promise to never move. And with her finger pinned over my lips like this, I don’t have to feel guilty about not telling her I’ve been secretly paying part of her studio’s rent for years. (Not true—I still feel guilty about going behind her back.)

Bree’s landlord raised the rent on her once before when she first took over the studio from the old owner. She cried on my couch that night because she wouldn’t be able to afford it anymore (much like what’s happening again) and thought she was going to have to find a cheaper location outside of the city, which would completely negate her purpose of providing a dance studio for the kids in the city.

Let’s just say her landlord had a magical change of heart and called her the next day to say he’d moved things around and didn’t need to raise the rent after all. We can also safely say that if Bree ever finds out I’ve been paying a few hundred dollars toward her rent each month, I will be relieved of my favorite dangly parts. I probably shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t bear to watch her lose her dream like that. Not again.

Bree was accepted to the dance program at The Juilliard School just before high school graduation, and I’ve still never seen a person more excited about anything in their life. I was the first person she told. I picked h

er up and spun her around as we both laughed—internally a little scared about what our separating lives would mean for our friendship. She would be moving to New York, and I would be off to UT on a football scholarship. I wasn’t about to leave town without telling Bree how I felt about her, though, and hopefully making things official between us. We’d only ever been friends, but I was over it and ready to be more.

And then it happened.

She got T-boned by a guy running a stoplight one day after school. Thankfully, the crash did not take her life, but it did take away Bree’s future as a professional ballerina. Her knee was shattered, and I’ll never forget her words over the phone when she called from the hospital sobbing. “It’s all over for me, Nathan. I won’t be able to come back from this.”

The reconstructive surgery was hard on her, but the physical therapy that summer was the most brutal. Her spark was gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring it back for her. I didn’t want to leave her once fall rolled around—it didn’t feel right to go on with my dreams when she was stuck at home without hers. Even more than that, I just wanted to be with her. Football didn’t matter as much to me as she did.

But then, she pulled away. Or more like cut me off. She left me with no choice but to go to UT as planned—and then after I got there, she wouldn’t return any of my calls or texts. It felt like the most painful breakup even though we’d never dated. We went four years without talking, and still to this day I have no idea why she did that. She’s thriving in her new life now, so we don’t revisit the past. I’m too scared to hear the answer to why she cut me out back then.

When I graduated, got signed by the Sharks, and moved to LA, Bree was here too. I believe it was cheesy, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness fate that brought us back together. I walked into a local coffee shop, the bell chimed over my head, and she looked up from a book, eyes locking with mine from across the room. She was a defibrillator to my chest. Bam. My heart hasn’t beat the same since.

That day, I found my old friend again. The friend I knew before the accident who was so full of life and energy, except even better. She was healthier, she had these incredible, soft, feminine curves that had not been there before, and her knee had healed up enough that she was able to work as an instructor at the studio she now owns. Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend then. Don’t even remember his name, but he was the reason I didn’t ask her out on the spot.

We picked back up with our Tuesday tradition, and I’ve been barrel-rolling into the vast, never-ending hell hole known as the friend zone ever since. I’m afraid I’ll die in this friend zone because she’s constantly reminding me that she’s not interested in anything romantic. Almost every day she says a terrible phrase like:

“Just friends.”

“Practically my brother.”

“Incompatible.”

“Two amigos.”

Anyway, that’s why I did it. I couldn’t bear to stand back and watch her lose something important to her when I could easily fix it this time. So I’ve secretly been paying her rent, and she will be furious if she ever finds out.