I give myself over to the tonic of his approval, the warmth of his nearness, the many layers of the music that I can both hear and feel coming up from the floor. But halfway through the song, I lose my nerve and stop. I open my eyes. He smiles at me.

“This is making me really nervous,” I confess.

He nods. “You don’t feel good about your body.” His voice is completely neutral, his statement a diagnosis.

I blush furiously. I don’t want this to be true; it feels tired. I want to defend myself, tell him it wasn’t always this way. My body used to be my job and I respected it. Now it feels like the extra layers of flesh carry everything that’s happened to me.

“No,” I say at last, “not especially.”

“This is my biggest challenge, when I’m teaching people to dance. Before you can connect with a partner, you need to be able to be in your own skin. Watching you right now, I see you let go for a second and it’s beautiful, but then you catch yourself. You’re fighting it.”

I’m flushed and fear I might start crying. As the next song begins, G pulls me in to lead me. “Relax, relax,” he says into my ear. “Open, open.” I’m relieved to be back as the follow, and I feel myself dancing more smoothly. It’s what a good coach does: pinpoints the little fix that will open you to the next level of yourself. But this feels like something else too. It’s addicting to be near someone who sees potential in you and can cultivate it. Even if I end up paying for it.

Penny Knows All about Love

LUKE AND I didn’t sleep together right away. He would be my first, and I knew I would not be his. It was palpable how much we both wanted it, but he was careful not to push. After we’d made it official, I felt relieved that Luke was still Luke. I’d feared that being together would change everything between us, that Luke would somehow no longer see me as his equal. And when I was stupid enough to ask him how many girls had come before me, he was stupid enough to answer honestly: five.