American Bollywood — Episode 10: The Final Dance

0:07 A narrow staircase above a quiet bookshop. The smell of old paper drifts up like a promise. Izzy and Selena climb the stairs and step into the flat. Small but perfect. A window overlooking the street. A wall that is exactly the right size for a bookshelf. Jake hovers close behind them with his camera.

0:31 Oh no. What? You've already emotionally moved in. I can see it happening in real time. Look at that wall.

0:40 I could see myself doing yoga here.

0:43 Yeah, I think my boyfriend Miles would have a problem with that.

0:48 Right.

0:48 Like he'd be in the picture when you have a man with guns like this.

0:53 Jake flexes his extremely unimpressive arms. Izzy can't help but laugh. Sometimes you say the funniest things.

1:02 There's always a bookshelf wall. There isn't always rent.

1:06 Gerald, 60s, retired unhurried, watches from the doorway with the neutral expression of a man who has rented this flat seven times and learned not to get attached to outcomes.

1:19 Take your time.

1:22 Izzy moves through the space slowly, touches the wall, the window. This isn't a plan anymore. This feels like something else entirely. Footsteps from the stairs. Jeff enters. Forty. Sharp suit. The energy of a man who buys things to own them rather than to live in them. He barely looks around.

1:46 I'll offer above asking. Cash today.

1:50 He walked in thirty seconds ago. He hasn't even looked at the bathroom.

1:54 I prefer to let the viewing run its course. Come back in an hour.

1:59 Jeff nods and leaves with the confidence of someone who has never not gotten the thing he wanted. Gerald looks at Izzy.

2:08 You actually want to live here, don't you?

2:11 More than anything I've wanted in the last two weeks that doesn't involve a person. That's new.

2:18 I have a rule. I don't rent to people who are doing it for someone else. It always ends badly. Third tenant, 1987. Never again.

2:30 That sounds like it has a whole story behind it.

2:33 It does. Nobody wants to hear it. Are you doing this for you? Izzy hesitates just long enough.

2:43 Come back in an hour with a better answer.

2:56 Izzy and Selena again. Less excitement, more clarity. Jake filming once more. Same question. I'm doing it for me. But there's someone who's part of why I'm doing it now instead of later. I think those two things can both be true.

3:16 Is there someone staying?

3:19 I don't know.

3:21 So you might get this flat and he might still leave.

3:25 Yes.

3:27 And you still want it?

3:30 Izzy thinks about this for real this time. The flat without the plan. The window and the bookshelf wall, and the smell from the shop below. And no miles in the picture at all. Yeah. I think I would. Selena looks at her with the quiet pride of someone watching a person arrive at something true.

3:58 Of course he did. Jeff smells happiness and raises the price. I can't imagine that.

4:05 I know.

4:06 Come back.

4:18 Jeff is already there when they arrive. Relaxed. Winning. Jake films.

4:28 You're not buying a parking space, Jeff. Someone is trying to live here.

4:32 Wanting something isn't an offer.

4:35 I know I can't compete with what he's putting on the table. I just want the flat. Footsteps on the stairs. Everyone looks. Michael appears in the doorway, slightly out of breath, holding Izzy's bag.

4:50 You left us at home. Am I interrupting up war?

4:54 Gerald stares at him, then stares harder, recognition crossing his face slowly, like a tide coming in.

5:03 Michael Hayes. Lower's Campbell, but yes. I've read everything you've written.

5:10 Gerald steps forward. Something in the room changes.

5:14 My father gave me your books when he was dying. I didn't want to read them. He just said, try one chapter. A pause. They've helped more than anything else at the time. Well, I'm really glad.

5:30 He means it. It is quiet. In the way rooms go quiet when something real has just been said. Jeff shifts his weight. This is not his world. And he knows it. Gerald turns back to Izzy.

5:46 Is he the reason?

5:48 He is part of my life, but this She looks at the window, the wall, the smell of books coming up through the floor. This is for me. Selena smiles. That's it. That's the answer. Gerald nods once. Decision made.

6:10 I rent to people who stay.

6:13 He looks at Jeff. Jeff exhales, picks up his folder, and leaves without another word. Gerald hands Izzy the keys.

6:21 Try not to make me regret this.

6:25 I won't. Selena pulls her into a hug that means considerably more than either of them says out loud. Jake joins the hug, uninvited. You're suffocating me, Jake.

6:38 And make you madly fall in love with me. I knew it, I just knew it. Izzy laughs despite herself.

6:45 She looks around the flat. The window, the wall, the life that is entirely and only hers. Two down. One to go. She looks at her phone. Miles' name sits there, unanswered.

7:03 She puts it in her pocket and looks at the wall where the bookshelf is going to go. Dinner service.

7:18 Full, lively, controlled chaos. Izzy moves through it not perfectly but presently, which turns out to be the more important of the two. She greets a table naturally, listens, smiles when it's real rather than when it's required. Across the room, Raphael watches without hovering, which is his version of a compliment.

7:40 Two customers finish their meal and hand her a tip. She takes it with a genuine thank you and moves on. She passes Lucy, late 20s, pregnant, clearing a table slowly with the careful movements of someone who has been on their feet for six hours and is not complaining about it. Izzy stops, hands her the tip without explanation.

8:01 Jake films it. I know. You don't have to. Lucy blinks, takes it. Izzy is already back in the rhythm before Lucy can say thank you. Raphael sees this from across the room. He stands still for a moment. Then he makes a decision and walks over.

8:21 You're not the most polished server I've ever seen.

8:25 That's fair.

8:27 You overthink, you spill things. You once held the table emotionally hostage with a tiramisu description. I will follow you here for some time.

8:36 I know.

8:37 But you see people. And you don't make it about you, which is harder to teach than carrying plates and worth considerably more than 45-second dessert speech.

8:50 Is this the part where you tell me I didn't get it?

8:54 This is the part where I tell you the job is yours if you still want it.

8:58 I want it.

8:59 Tomorrow, six o'clock. Don't arrive early, stresses the kitchen up. And Izzy.

9:06 Yeah?

9:07 Table six still needs clearing. The technique remains questionable.

9:11 Izzy laughs, small and relieved and real. She heads back into service lighter than when she came in. She keeps moving.

9:21 Jake films.

9:33 The studio. Late afternoon light coming through the window. The room has the particular stillness of a place that knows something is about to happen in it. Gloria and Selena stand in the center of the floor side by side, with the coordinated energy of two people who have rehearsed this conversation on the way over.

9:51 Izzy walks in with her backpack and immediately reads the room. Why do you both look like that? You look like you're about to tell me my goldfish died. I don't have a goldfish. Why are you looking like that?

10:06 We need to talk.

10:07 I have a full run-through to do before tonight.

10:10 Can we talk while I stretch? Honey, I don't think Miles cares about you. Not in the way you need him to. Of course he does. Has he actually shown you that? With actions. Measurable ones. He will tonight. That's the whole point of tonight.

10:28 Selina told me he came to your restaurant today with another girl.

10:32 He came to wish me luck. He came to wish you luck and brought Dina with him, which is either very confident or completely oblivious, and neither of those is particularly romantic. Okay, I see what this is.

10:46 I am three hours away from completing a plan I have been building for two weeks. I have a driver's license, a job, an apartment, and a full Bollywood number ready to perform in front of our entire school. I am so close, I can see the finish line from here. And you are both standing in the middle of my studio telling me to stop.

11:08 You're supposed to be my people. My corner, my team.

11:13 We are your people, which is exactly why we're telling you.

11:17 If Miles was the right person for you right now, he would have.

11:20 The studio door swings open. Jake enters, wearing a camera around his neck and the expression of someone who knows he is walking into a situation, but has been paid already, so here he is.

11:33 Am I late? I tried to find parking. Chicago has strong opinions about parking.

11:39 Why do you keep following me around with that camera? You do know it's against the law to film someone without their permission, right?

11:48 He has permission from your dad. Jake, your dad, Gloria, and I thought it would be meaningful to record you today. A kind of last dance memory. Something you can look back on when you're older and have children who also refuse to listen to good advice.

12:01 That is really thoughtful, but I'm fine, so thank you.

12:06 Your dad already paid me, so I'm here professionally now. This is work. I can't leave work.

12:11 Fine. Fine. Everyone is here and nobody is leaving, and apparently, this is just what's happening now.

12:18 We start with the warm-up and move to the final piece. Jake, stay by the door and don't narrate. I wasn't going to narrate. You were about to narrate.

12:31 I had one comment prepared, but I'll hold it.

12:34 He raises the camera. Izzy looks at him. He lowers it slightly.

12:40 You look genuinely beautiful, by the way. I say that as a professional and also as someone who's been in love with you since seventh grade, which everyone in this room knows, so it's not a secret.

12:50 Thank you. I have a boyfriend.

12:52 How's that going? A pause.

12:56 He has never once said anything like what you just said to me.

13:03unknown Ha!

13:03 Miles sounds like a douchebag.

13:06 Pete genuinely does a little bit.

13:09 He's not a can we please just Gloria! Music, please. Now. From the top. She crosses to the CD player with the unhurried certainty of someone who knows exactly what is about to happen on this floor, and has made her peace with the fact that the girl standing in the middle of it has not yet made hers. She presses play.

13:33 The music fills the room. Izzy takes her position, takes her breath, and begins. Jake raises the camera. Selina watches from the side with her arms folded and her heart somewhere in her throat. Gloria stands by the player with her hands clasped and her eyes on Izzy with the full weight of everything she has poured into this room over 40 years.

13:58 And Izzy dances.

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15:44 The gym has been transformed into something that almost justifies the six months of planning committee meetings that Selena complained about constantly while attending every single one. Fairy lights strung from the ceiling, round tables with actual tablecloths, a DJ who has, for once, made good decisions.

16:04 The evening is winding towards its final hour. The particular magic of prom night that everyone secretly hoped for, and nobody will fully admit they felt. Izzy stands near the back of the room in her dress. The dress she bought three weeks ago with her first restaurant paycheck. She looks like herself, but elevated.

16:25 The best version of a person who has spent six weeks becoming someone she didn't know she could be. Selena appears at her shoulder. You ready? Ask me in five minutes. I'm asking now. Then yes, probably. Almost certainly, yes. Mason appears on her other side.

16:46 You look incredible. And I say that as someone who's been objectively neutral about your appearance since the uh groin incident.

16:55 Thank you. Mason, that's almost a compliment.

17:00 It was entirely a compliment. I've grown.

17:04 Jake materializes behind them with his camera. At this point, nobody acknowledges it. He has simply become part of the scenery. The DJ lowers the music. The announcer, a teacher who has been waiting all evening for this moment, steps to the microphone with the energy of someone who prepared remarks.

17:23 Before we announce this year's prom King and Queen, we have one final performance of the evening. Please welcome to the stage Isabelle Lopez.

17:33 Applause from the room. Izzy takes a breath, looks at the stage, looks at the floor she is about to cross. Then she looks across the room to find Miles. She finds him. He is standing near the far wall with Dinah. They are arguing. Not the polite, contained disagreement of two people trying to keep things civil in public, something real, something with history behind it.

18:02 Dina's arms are crossed and her jaw is set. Miles' hand goes to his hair the way it does when he's frustrated and trying not to show it. They are two people who know each other well enough to hurt each other and are currently doing exactly that. Izzy stands very still. She watches the way Miles leans in when he makes a point.

18:22 The way Dina turns her head away and then turns back. The particular rhythm of two people in the middle of something that has been building for a while. This is not how Miles talks to strangers. This is not how Miles talks to friends. This is how Miles talks to someone he is with, someone he has history with, someone whose opinion of him cost him something.

18:45 And something that has been living quietly in the back of Izzy's mind for six weeks. Something that she has been keeping carefully in the dark because looking at it directly would have stopped everything. Steps into the light. He was never hers. Not really. Not in the way she built it in her notebooks and her voiceovers and her carefully written lists.

19:06 The bus stop was real. The scarf was real. The dinner was real. The moments were real. But she had taken real moments and built a relationship out of them. The way you build a story out of true facts, selecting, arranging, choosing what to include and what to leave out until the thing you're holding looks like what you need it to be.

19:29 And everyone told her. Derek told her. Raphael told her. Gerald told her. Gloria told her in forty different ways from the first day she walked into that studio. Selina told her in parking lots and Starbucks and on every phone call for two months. Jason answered a quiz question and told her without knowing he was telling her, even Jake.

19:52 Jake who filmed everything. Jake who showed up everywhere. Jake who said you can do so much better. Jake told her. Everyone told her. She just had a plan. And the plan was louder.

20:09 Isabel Lopez, everyone, come on up.

20:12 More applause. People coming to look for her. The stage waiting. Izzy does not move. Her feet are on the gym floor, and her dress is the one she bought with her own money, and her hair is done, and Gloria spent 40 years building something so that this moment could exist and she cannot move. The applause starts to thin.

20:33 People begin to look around. The announcer glancing toward the back of the room. Then three things happen at once. Selena steps in front of her. Not dramatically, just present. A body between Izzy and the thing she is looking at. Mason steps to her left, hand at her elbow, steady and warm and asking nothing.

20:56 Jake lowers the camera. For the first time all evening, he lowers it and steps to her right and says nothing. Because for once nothing is the right thing. The three of them form a quiet wall between Izzy and the far corner of the room, where Miles and Dinah are still arguing about something that has nothing to do with her.

21:16 We're gonna step outside for a minute. The dance the dance can wait 60 seconds.

21:22 Come on, let's go.

21:25 They move her. Not forcefully, the way you move someone who needs to be somewhere else without making it a thing. Through the side door, out into the corridor, away from the music and the lights and the announcer and all of it. The door closes behind them. The corridor is quiet, just the four of them and the muffled sound of the prom carrying on without them.

21:49 Izzy stands against the wall. She is not crying. She is doing the thing she does where she goes very still and very quiet and processes. Things behind her eyes where nobody can see.

22:03 You okay?

22:05 I think I've been writing a love story that only existed in one draft. Nobody says anything. And everyone read it except the other person. Izzy. You all told me. You all told me from the beginning, and I had a plan, and the plan was easier than listening.

22:27 You weren't wrong to want it. You were just working with incomplete information.

22:33 That's a very kind way to describe the last six weeks.

22:38 I broke in the allock and read your diary once. I'm not in a position to judge anyone's decision making, really.

22:45 Izzy looks at him, then at Selena, then at Jake, who is holding his camera at his side and looking at her with the expression of someone who has been patient for a very long time and intends to remain so for as long as it takes. She looks at the door. Gloria's in that room. She is. She came to watch this.

23:07 Front row. This is her last one. It is. Izzy pushes off the wall, straightens her dress, rolls her shoulders once the way Miles does when he's shaking something off he won't name, and she must have absorbed it somewhere along the way without noticing. I didn't learn to dance for Miles. No. I learned to dance for me.

23:32 And for Mira and for Gloria. Yeah. You did. Okay. She looks at Jake. You better be filming this. Jake raises the camera. Never stopped. Izzy opens the door. The music and the lights come back. The room full of people and the stage and the DJ, and somewhere in the front row, Gloria sitting with her hands folded in her lap, waiting.

24:01 Izzy walks back in. The announcer sees her and raises the microphone.

24:06 And here she is, Isabel Lopez.

24:10 The applause starts again. Izzy walks through it towards the stage with the particular walk of someone who's arrived somewhere they were always going to end up. Not the walk of a girl trying to make a boy stay. The walk of a person who learned something real and is about to give it to the room. She finds Gloria's face in the front row.

24:32 Gloria looks at her and nods once. Izzy steps onto the stage. The music starts. And she dances. Not for miles. Not for the plan. Not for any list in any notebook. Just for this. For the girl who sat at a bus stop and talked about the number 12 and hadn't yet given herself a single reason to be seen. The room watches.

25:00 Jake films. Selena holds Mason's hand without acknowledging that she is holding Mason's hand. And in the front row, Gloria Okafor watches her last student dance. And looks, for the first time in weeks, exactly like herself.

25:28 And that's a wrap on this episode of American Bollywood. Izzy officially has a plan. Is it a good plan? Absolutely debatable. But she has 56 days, one enormous crush, almost no dancing ability, and enough determination to make terrible decisions look strangely inspirational. If this episode made you laugh, blush, cringe, or desperately want Izzy to simply tell Miles how she feels, make sure you follow that love podcast wherever you're listening.

26:02 You won't want to miss the next lesson, disaster, confession, or unexpected step in this very complicated love story. And please, share American Bollywood with your friends, family, or that one person who would absolutely learn an entire dance routine instead of admitting they have a crush. Every share helps our independent podcast grow and brings more listeners into these stories.

26:26 Today's episode featured the voices of Alsie Carver, Emerson Peary, and Lisa Miller. American Bollywood was written, produced, and directed by Joe Alan Ceda. If you enjoyed today's episode, leave us a five-star review wherever you're listening. Reviews genuinely help more hopeless romantics discover that love podcast and allow us to keep creating original audio rom coms, dramas, and love stories for you.

26:52 Until next time, stay kind, stay beautiful, protect your heart. And remember that sometimes the most terrifying thing you can do for love is simply take the first step. You are deeply loved.