The Time of My Life by Patrick Swayze, Lisa Niemi Read Free Book Online Page A

were growing, but I was still scared to admit it outright—either to her or to myself. I was hoping against hope that she’d get a ballet scholarship, too, and come up to New York City. But at the same time, I hedged my bets by continuing to see other women, most notably a fellow Harkness dancer named Deleah.
    Just a month after sending the letter above, I sent Lisa another one, dated October 16, 1973, in which I told her about Deleah.

Lisa, I think I have found someone I care for, a lot. Her name is Deleah Shafer. We started out incredible friends, and have steadily grown closer. She is on tour with the company now, so it gets kind of lonely sometimes. Lisa, I really hope this isn’t just a passing fancy, because I feel so much love in me now, that I need someone to give it to. I guess the only thing to do is wait and see.
    I did like Deleah very much, but deep down I think I was hoping to make Lisa jealous. The rest of the letter is all about how I was dropping Lisa’s name at Harkness, trying to help her secure a scholarship—and I even offered to have her stay at my apartment whenever she did make it up to New York. “It will save quite a bit of money, if it would be cool on the ‘home front,’ ” I wrote, presumably with a straight face. I knew Lisa’s parents wouldn’t approve of her living with me in New York, but I wanted to plant that seed anyway.
    After sending that letter, I even called Lisa for advice on dating Deleah, though it was probably really an attempt to find out how she felt about it. Despite the intensity of the feelings Lisa and I obviously had for each other, we both were trying very hard to protect ourselves. We both came to the relationship feeling like, “I don’t want this person to get to me”—we were afraid of being too vulnerable, afraid of getting hurt. So both Lisa and I made a big show of just wanting to be friends, at least until the other person made the first move.
    If I hoped to make Lisa jealous, though, I obviously didn’t know her very well. In fact, she had a completely different response—but one that was ultimately far better than jealousy. As she later told me, she came to a turning point of sorts after I called her for advice about Deleah. She realized that morethan anything, she wanted me to be happy. The way she saw it, her feelings for me ran deeper than simply wanting to lay claim to me or own my attentions. She began to see me in a different light—as someone she cared really deeply for, rather than someone she just liked messing around and talking with.
    Of course, I didn’t know any of this—I just knew that Lisa had reacted coolly to the notion that I had a new girlfriend. We kept writing back and forth and talking on the phone, though, so our relationship continued to grow even if we didn’t quite know where it was going. And it probably would have continued that way, except that in 1974, Lisa finally got her scholarship to Harkness. She was coming to New York City, and despite her mother’s hope that she’d move into the Barbizon Hotel for Women, she’d decided to take me up on my offer to live with me at my new place on West Seventy-fourth Street.
    Lisa moved to New York in the summer of 1974, and I threw out a few people who’d been staying at my place, so it would just be the two of us. I wasn’t exactly sure what the situation between us would be, but I wanted to make sure we had the space to explore it without six other roommates getting in the way.
    As I soon discovered, Lisa had very distinct ideas about what we’d be doing together—and not doing. Despite the fact that we’d had plenty of makeout sessions in Houston over the years, she made it clear we’d be living together as roommates, not as lovers. Lisa, who was now eighteen, had been dancing seriously for three years and she was absolutely driven to do one thing: make it as a dancer. Now that she’dmade it to New York, she didn’t want any distractions getting in her way.
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