Besides, she wasn’t in a gentlemen’s club. She was in the workout room of a building populated mainly by elderly, wealthy types.
No one here would have any interest in what she was doing.
She slid her fingers along the sensor and started the music.
The stretch and pull felt incredible, the slight pain from not dancing recently giving way almost instantly to an adrenaline rush that had her feeling effervescent.
Soon, she was fully caught up, dancing a piece of choreography she had been putting together in her head for months. For a few beautiful moments, nothing else in the world existed - just the music and her body.
As the last few beats of the song faded away, she was surprised by a smattering of applause.
For an instant her heart felt like it had been wrapped in a cold, iron fist.
Then she saw that this time, her inadvertent audience was made up of smiling neighbors.
“Wasn’t that lovely?” one of the Bergalian ladies from the third-floor knitting club asked. “I didn’t know they offered dance classes here. Do you have a schedule?”
“Your demonstration was amazing,” another lady said. “Do you have openings for private lessons? My husband and I are going to my granddaughter’s wedding soon—”
She was cut off by a man who insisted he had been an excellent dancer in his youth. And he was interrupted by a winged woman who wanted to know if she taught other styles.
“I’m just here to work out, like the rest of you,” she said, before another person tapped her shoulder.
“If you’d like, I’d be happy to show you all a few things,” she offered uncertainly.
Before she knew it, the music was back on, and she was teaching a simplified version of her choreography to four more people.
And though the day had been shaping up to be disappointing for a lot of reasons, April was starting to feel like herself among her new friends. She had almost forgotten how good that felt.