tailcoats singing about how smart they were and taking their shot—at life or just in a drinking game, she wasn’t sure. Either way, it was all beyond her until she found herself at a party, watching one sister chatting up the lead character, Alexander Hamilton. But it wasn’t that sister singing, and as Taylor watched, that sister, Angelica, took Hamilton to meet her sister, Eliza.
Despite her earlier reservations about the show, Taylor smiled. She, too, had been helpless before, lost in the eyes of someone who would never see her the way she saw him. It didn’t go unnoticed that she was the one who had introduced him to her sister either, and they had fallen in love practically on-sight though it took another two years to make the actual connection.
Before she had processed all of that, Hamilton and Eliza were married, and Angelica was giving the speech as the maid of honor at their wedding. That was when the world on screen became surreal as everything began to rewind. Dancers moved backward as Angelica stood dead center stage, her glass in the air. It went back, back, back, all the way back to those first few moments when she was talking to Alexander before she introduced him to Eliza. Somewhere in the middle of it, Taylor realized what was happening—Angelica was in love with Hamilton but she had introduced him to her sister instead. Oh, boy.
Taylor tried to keep up with it all, even as she thought this wasn’t a story just about Alexander Hamilton. It was the story about life and how incredibly tangled it could become.
By the time the movie was over, Taylor had been through so many emotions, it was hard to keep track of them all. Although the movie was well over two and a half hours long, almost every seat in the theater was still filled when the final credits began to roll. Most remarkably, Greg was still wide awake.
Neither of them spoke as the lights went up, and they gathered their things. At the steps, Taylor noticed he took a step back from her, shadowing her movement up them. She wanted to talk to him about the whole movie, but where she would start was anybody’s guess.
“Taylor,” the voice said when they’d gotten to the outside lobby, and Taylor turned to find LaChelle.
Taylor blinked because a big part of her was still processing what she had just seen. Before she had the chance to know what was happening, LaChelle hugged her.
“Man,” LaChelle said, “that was some kind of movie, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” Taylor said, “it really was.”
“Oh, and Greg,” LaChelle said, putting her hand out to him and it landed on his arm rather than in his hand. “Of course.”
Greg nodded but half-frowned, obviously as confused as Taylor was.
“I was just telling Taylor the other day about the Valentine’s Dance next weekend. You have to come,” LaChelle said, her enthusiasm spilling over. “Everybody was so blown away by you two last time.”
When Taylor looked back at Greg, she could see he had no idea how to respond to that. He glanced at her but never truly made the connection.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked with confusion sliding around the edges of the words.
“Yeah. In fact, we were just talking about it at Alpha Chi last night. Didn’t you say you were taking lessons or something like that?” LaChelle asked, her words going almost as fast as the raps in the movie had.
“Oh, uh. Yeah,” Greg said. “Thursday nights. In the mirror room at the activity center.” He glanced at Taylor again. “It’s at seven. I think any students that want to come are welcome.”
“Awesome,” LaChelle said.
“LaChelle,” someone called through the thinning crowd.
She turned back and laid her hand on Taylor’s wrist. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow night at that dance thing.”
Taylor lifted her eyebrows. “O… kay.”
And with that, LaChelle disappeared to the other side of the lobby.
Chapter 26
As they exited to the outside, Greg couldn’t help but glance at Taylor. She was preternaturally quiet, and he would give anything in the world to hear the thoughts in her head. His car wasn’t more than a block away, and they were almost to it when she finally cracked open her thoughts.
“Do you ever feel like that?” she finally asked, and he wondered what that meant.
“Like?”
“Like you’re running out of time,” she said, referencing one of the songs in the movie during which Hamilton was writing and writing and writing, trying to get