I hadn’t wanted to go to a wedding. It had been five weeks since my own engagement had fallen apart: long enough for me to have my shit together, but too soon for any sincere celebration of some couple’s love. But there are expectations where family friends are concerned, so I packed a suit and flew back to Minneapolis for the first time since I moved away in the middle of fourth grade - seventeen years ago.

As the reception was winding down all the single people maneuvered to see who they could spend the night with, but I didn’t have the will to participate in those games. Instead, I ended up hanging out in a hotel suite with a handful of married couples, led by my best friend from fourth grade, Ezra. I didn’t plan to stay long; in our brief talks during the reception we had taken stabs at remembering what we’d seen on each other’s social media feeds, but really, we were strangers. Honestly, the only reason I went was that I quite enjoyed looking at his wife.

And yet, little by little, glimpses of the past came back to me and I started to remember why he had been my friend. Actual memories were just a trickle, but the sense of who he was, how he laughed, and how he treated people, came back strongly.

Ezra and I had just finished one of the few stories we could remember well enough to tell: goofing around on a not-so-frozen lake, falling through the ice, hypothermia, and the emergency room. Out of the corner, a feminine voice added to our story: “Boys will be boys”.

The voice belonged to someone I hadn’t really given any notice to. Nearly everyone in the room was still wearing their suits and dresses from the reception, but this person was wearing an oversized baggy sweater and baggy jeans. With an androgynous haircut and a face hidden behind thick-rimmed glasses, I had assumed they were a teenage boy. Now, the voice told me differently. After I took a good look at the round freckled face behind the glasses, I realized that she was Amy, Ezra’s little sister. She must have noticed the recognition on my face because she looked away, laughing to herself.

More memories returned as the after-party went on and eventually, a game of Truth or Dare broke out. I didn’t plan on staying long, but when it was my turn and I called on Amy, she chose dare.

“Show us your wiggle dance,” I challenged.

At first, she was perplexed; then surprised.

“What’s a wiggle dance?” Ezra’s wife Maryanne asked to fill the silence.

Ezra explained. “It’s this thing she made up when we were kids and she used to follow Tony and me around. She always wanted to show us and I guess we got a kick out of indulging her.”

Amy’s look was serious. “You’re really making me do this?”

I grinned and shrugged. “I’m not making do anything. I’m daring you.”

“Okay...,” she said, slightly ominously.

Amy set her glasses on the counter and lay down face-up on the floor. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply with her arms at her sides. Her legs were close together, and soon she began a small hip oscillation, rubbing her thighs together.

Her clothes no longer concealed the shape of her body. Her sweater settled across her chest and belly, highlighting pleasingly large breasts and a tight middle. The motion of her legs made the tops of her baggy jeans fall across lean thighs and calves. In that position, it was impossible to see her as anything other than a woman.

Conversations resumed. Amy responded without opening her eyes or breaking the cadence of her hips. “Quiet, please. This takes some focus.”

The room became silent again and we all watched as her breathing grew heavier. Her head rolled slightly, and her tongue darted out to lick her upper lip before her mouth fell open with a soft gasp.

Her shoulder twitched, and then her foot. She let out a sigh - almost a moan. Sometimes her hips seemed to go haywire, moving in random jerks before returning to their regular thigh-rubbing motion. A smile sometimes drifted across her face accompanied by a disruption in her breath.

I was beginning to remember her dance now - it all looked so familiar. Especially that wide-cheeked smile. I remembered how eager she had always been to show Ezra and me, and I remembered being intrigued.

Twitches struck randomly all over her body, seemingly without end. More and more her breath carried her voice - moans. Her legs stopped moving. Her hands, still at her sides, closed into fists. Her eyes tightened and she panted. For a moment it seemed like her body rose off the ground, but that was just her back arching. “Heuh! Heuh! Heuh!” She moaned.

“Did she just...?” One woman asked in a whisper.

“Yeah,” her guy answered, nodding deeply. I don’t know why she bothered to ask - we all knew that we had witnessed an orgasm.

Amy relaxed, her back flat on the floor again and her hands open. But she kept her eyes closed and her body resumed twitching. She was just beginning to breathe normally again when her hands clenched another climax overtook her.

“Okay, which one of y’all has got the remote? There has got to be a hidden vibrator behind this!” One of the women asked. We all looked around at each other but we all seemed equally bewildered.

“No vibe,” Amy answered on a wisp of a breath. A short while later she was taken over by climax again, this time moaning with more ferocity.

She let herself properly relax after that; she was putting an end to the show. When she finally opened her eyes, they found me instantly. She was wearing the same smile that she always had as a kid: the characteristic finish to the wiggle dance. I had never realized it before, but it always ended with a wide, flushed-face smile directed at me. I looked away.

Maryanne was the first to speak. “You’ve been doing that since you were nine?” She asked, astonished.

“Probably seven, I think?” Amy answered, sitting up and fumbling for her glasses.

Maryanne turned to her husband. “Did you know?”

Ezra put his hands up defensively. “Not until this very moment!” He swore.

Maryanne looked my way, I guess to repeat the question, but I couldn’t meet her gaze either. She let me off the hook.

“Well you’ve certainly made me feel like an underachiever,” Maryanne told Amy.

“I was lucky to figure it out early,” Amy said humbly.

I still couldn’t look at Amy. I couldn’t unpack my jumble of feelings. I think some of it was shame: had I known what I was asking her to do? I felt like a fraud among all these people who could competently maintain adult relationships. I missed Cara, my ex, and I was disgusted with myself for that, too.

When Truth or Dare resumed, thankfully, Amy didn’t call on me. Instead, she asked some guy named Steve to show off a bullet scar he’d suffered as a drive-by bystander when he was a teen. From there the conversation plunged into politics and I knew it was time for me to leave.

I walked into my hotel room, trying to decide whether I wanted to watch TV, masturbate, or go straight to bed. I had given the door enough swing behind me that it should have shut, but I didn’t hear it latch. I turned around to find that Amy had followed me.

“So that’s it?” She asked accusingly. “You get a girl to come for you and then you leave without saying a word?”

“I, ah, didn’t know what to say.” Her clothes and glasses once again disguised her feminine features, and the way she looked at me reminded me of a disappointed grade school teacher.

“Do I have to do everything?” She stepped close, grabbed my tie, and pulled me into a kiss. Of course, some animal voice in my head said to go with it - this was a chance to get laid. But the thought of a hookup with a stranger was exhausting: all that effort pretending to be the person they want to be with? I didn’t have it in me. I guess she realized that.

“Oh,” she said with a half-step back. She frowned. “I’m sorry. I thought you would want this.” She looked away and chastised herself: “God ... I’m that girl.” She pushed her glasses back up high on her nose and turned to leave.

“Wait! Please don’t go.” I didn’t really know what I wanted just then, but I did want her company if I could keep from screwing it up. “I’m not handling a lot of things well lately. It’s not about you.”

She came back in and sat on one of the room’s two double beds. I grabbed two water bottles from the mini-fridge and handed her one as I sat opposite her.

“So ... girlfriend?” She fished.

I shook my head. “Fiance, up until a month ago.”

“Tell me about her.”

Her. I had already mentally prepared to decline talking about the breakup, but Amy didn’t ask about it - she asked about her. All of a sudden I found myself spewing every little thought about Cara, about our relationship, and yes, about our breakup. Of course, I had talked to my family and friends since the breakup, but explaining it to someone on the outside - someone who had never met her or seen us together - made me examine things I had taken for granted before. Amy didn’t judge me, but she didn’t make excuses for me either. Talking to her gave me a sort of relief that I hadn’t felt before.

We caught up on general life stuff, too. I told her about being an accountant in Los Angeles. She was doing her physical therapy residency in Minneapolis. We talked about old times, too: the weird sounds her house had made in the winter; Fourth of July at the beach; Halloween costumes over the years; the music room at our elementary school where, years after I was gone, she had her first kiss. Before, I had remembered Amy as my best friend’s kid sister - if I thought of her at all - but now I was realizing that she had been my friend too.