It’s almost sexier than if he were all dressed up, though I know what that looks like, too.
Shiny lips. Perfect contacts. Hair. Designer clothes.
Like, damn. This guy on a normal day is otherworldly, but put him in all his stuff, and it’s almost hard to look at him. He’s so pretty and masculine.
His hair’s getting longer, already touching the nape of his neck.
Is it weird that I want to pull it?
Focus.
Focus!
“So, what’s wrong with the lyrics?” I clear my throat.
“They don’t feel as passionate as the dancing.” He stands. “So, like this move goes like this.” He does this crazy hip roll spin thing that has me nearly hypnotized. “But the words don’t feel like they match.” He sighs and tosses his hat onto the couch. “Then the music slows, and it just feels…” He kicks the couch. “Wrong.”
I think about it and stand. “Maybe it’s not the words but the choreography. Jisoo and Haneul aren’t working on this one today, so maybe we fix that first.”
He stills and then looks over at me, his brown eyes locking on me, making it hard to breathe. “That’s a good idea.”
“Okay, then.” I swallow, my throat dry at the way he looks at me now. I can’t explain it, so I just go with it.
This is work, right?
“We don’t have a ton of space in here.” I look around at the furniture.
“C’mon,” he says. “We’ll go to one of the spare bedrooms. There’s really nothing in there since the other guys moved out.”
His jaw clenches.
“Is that what happened?” I pry.
He laughs, but it sounds bitter. We walk toward a random room. “Yeah, well, we hit it pretty big and could have been bigger, but things went downhill when they decided they wanted to do their military service sooner rather than later without telling us. So, yeah, that’s what happened. Then…boom, disbandment that nobody really knows about yet. I’m sure people assume, but…it sucks. It was our first group, Haneul and me. After solo projects, it just felt right, and then the guys made choices without us. One of them had a few acting projects already and wanted to stop touring.”
I touch his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“I was, too. And now I’m thinking maybe it was for the best.” He’s looking right at me. My stomach does somersaults as he opens the door to the empty room.
There’s a bed, a desk, and that’s it. The room is pretty sparse, giving us enough space to dance, though it’s still intimate.
He grabs his phone, turns on the song, and sets it on the desk. “So, let’s figure this out.”
It feels too intimate, but I listen to the song.
When it gets slower, we need to make it more…personal.
I walk up to Ryan and wrap my arms around him. “Maybe we make it more like a ballet.”
“A ballet?” he asks.
I nod. “What if you lift me, put me down, and dance with me like it’s a dream? Like we’re in an actual dream during this sequence. Haneul can do the same with Jisoo. And then we’ll come together with the last part of the song and look up since it mentions clouds, and then fall together on the ground staring at them. We can use our arms to do some choreography that matches, and then we just…fall asleep.”
He says nothing for a while.
The song plays on repeat.
Suddenly, I’m taken on a journey as Ryan lightly pushes me back with his fingers. They run down my face, my neck. He turns me around and then lifts me up and over his shoulders, dropping me, spinning me.
We dance around each other, and it feels so emotional that I start to cry as I think about the lyrics, being in the clouds, in love, wanting something so badly.
He pulls me against him as the lonely lyrics sound.
I dance around him.
It’s as if we were born to dance together.
I spin again, and he lifts me and turns us both as I slide down his body. And then we’re apart, and I don’t want to be.
I want him.
I run at him as he lifts me.
I fall against him, and we crumple to the floor as if we’re looking up at the stars. He points up. I smile and point, as well. We turn toward each other and smile, and then I’m pulled into him.
And that’s where I stay.
His lips lower.
So close.
The door opens and closes.
We don’t move.
The door to the room opens.
“Ummmm?” Jisoo says. “Should I leave you two?”
“We fixed it,” Ryan says. “The choreography.”
“It’s perfection.” I nod.
“Thanks to you,” he says. “Get Haneul. We have work to do.”
We work on the choreography for the next two hours. Both Haneul and Jisoo are obsessed with it, and we soon all have it down.
“I think this is our first song,” Ryan says after we order food. “It hits differently. I feel it.”