For twenty years Faris said he could not dance. At weddings he held Azra's bag, brought water, and waited for the music to stop. Eventually she stopped suggesting lessons. At their cousin's wedding, however, a guest offered him her hand and he rose before she finished her first word. He turned her smoothly without looking at his feet. Azra remained seated with the bag she was holding herself this time.
It did not hurt that he danced. What hurt was the ease, the way the woman knew where he would step and adjusted his collar afterward. Faris returned to their table sweating and said the music had carried him away. Azra asked how he knew the guest. He replied that she was a friend of the organizer. He did not say her name, although she had just called him a nickname he never used around their friends.
At home Azra asked when he had learned to dance. He said he had taken a few classes for exercise. Then, after a long conversation, he admitted an affair that had begun there. There was no need to inspect his phone. He described enough for her to understand how long Thursdays had carried two meanings. For her they were his billiards evenings; for him, evenings when he was not the man presented as someone who disliked music.
He tried saying the other woman made him feel younger. Azra replied that she too had aged during the same years, only without a secret schedule. She requested neither the course's name nor photographs. She asked him to leave the bedroom and give her peace until morning. The next day they agreed on a temporary separation. They did not offer the family a wedding story to repeat. Azra told one friend enough not to face everything alone, and told the others only that they were currently living apart.
Two months later she enrolled in beginner dance lessons. Her first partner was a nervous man who stepped on her shoe three times and sincerely apologized each time. She saw neither a new romance nor Faris's replacement in him. She simply wanted to learn a step she had postponed. When the music began again, she raised her head. She did not know the chorus by heart, but it did not matter. She no longer waited for someone else's wishes to approve movement belonging to her body and her evening.