SLOW DANCING WITH STARS ON HER SHOULDERS

Captured in Hollywood Hills, California, 8/27/26, around 8 PM PST, the sky was spilling with hues that blended softly into the edges of dusk, and it felt like the world was exhaling a sweet, quiet sigh. It was one of those moments — the kind that makes you pause, dissolve into the present, and feel completely alive. We were there, swaying with the rhythm of it all, the pulse of the evening syncing perfectly with the music surrounding us. "Calling On Me" by Sean Paul and Tove Lo was playing, and it was like the song tethered our hearts to the stars above. There’s something about music and sunsets and the way certain moments etch themselves into your being — like they’re not just happening to you, but they’re becoming a part of you. That night, all the noise of the world faded, and it was just us… slow dancing with eternity in the Hollywood Hills.

Let me take you back.

One year ago tonight. The Mitch Leyor Hollywood Dance, 2026. Feels like yesterday. Feels like a lifetime. Both at once.

I remember pulling on that charcoal suit, my hands shaking a little. White rose pinned to my chest. Silver clip on a black tie. I looked in the mirror and I didn't recognize the kid staring back. Older somehow. Ready for something I couldn't name yet.

And then there was her.

My first girlfriend. My high school sweetheart. The one who made ordinary days feel like they mattered. She wore this navy blue dress, all sequins, catching every light in the room like she was carrying stars on her shoulders. And when she looked at me — man, when she looked at me — the whole world just kind of... hushed.

The gymnasium didn't feel like a gym that night. String lights everywhere, warm and golden, hanging down like little pieces of the sky came inside. Balloons in blue and silver drifting up in clusters. The colored beams cutting through that soft haze — red, blue, green — painting everybody in this dream. There was a basketball hoop up in the corner, and somehow even that felt beautiful. Everything did.

Then the music dropped. That Sean Paul track. "Calling On You." That rhythm getting inside my chest, in my pulse, in my feet. And I took her hands.

Just her hands in mine.

And we swayed.

That's when it hit me. Right in that moment. I looked at her — really looked — and something rose up in my throat that I couldn't swallow down. My eyes went hot. Then wet. I felt the tears come, and I wasn't even sad. That's the crazy part. I was so full. So full of everything. Of her. Of us. Of being seventeen and completely, hopelessly gone for somebody.

I remember thinking, don't cry, man, not here, not now.

But they came anyway. Little tears, sitting right at the edge. And I smiled through them. Half a smirk, half a mess. Because I understood — right then, in the middle of all those lights and that music and those other couples dancing around us like they were part of some movie — I understood what this feeling was.

It was love. The first kind. The kind you never quite get back the same way twice.

Everything around us blurred. The other dancers, the balloons, the banner with our year on it. All soft, all faded. There was just her face. Just her hands. Just the way her thumb moved across my knuckles like she knew, like she felt it too.

And I let those tears fall. I stopped fighting them. Because some moments deserve to be felt all the way down.

That was a year ago.

And here I am now. One whole year later. And I still feel it. Every detail. The warmth of those string lights. The weight of her hand. The exact second my eyes went watery and my heart cracked wide open in the best way a heart can crack.

We've come so far since then. We've grown. We've argued and made up and figured out who we're becoming. We've held each other through the hard nights and laughed until it hurt on the good ones. We're not those same kids in that gymnasium anymore.

But we carry that night with us. I carry it.

Because that was the moment I knew. Not with my head — with my whole self. That was the moment love stopped being a word and became a feeling I could touch.

So when that Sean Paul song comes on now — and it does, it finds me when I least expect it — I stop wherever I am. I close my eyes. And I'm right back there. Charcoal suit, white rose, tears in my eyes, holding the hands of the girl who changed everything.

Some nights don't end. Not really.

They just keep playing.

Over and over.

Forever.

And I hope they never stop.

-Deck

Epilogue: And now, brothers, as we sit together on this quiet night, I find myself reflecting on the weight of everything we've walked through—what we’ve felt, what we’ve held, and what we still carry. Time doesn’t stop for anyone, but some moments, some nights, refuse to fade. They settle deep in our bones, don’t they? A year since that dance, and yet I can feel the imprint of her thumb tracing my knuckles like it just happened. I know you’ve all had nights like that, too. Some of us have words for it, and some of us don’t. But we feel it — and man, we know when it’s real, don’t we?

When I think about that scripture, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death” (Song of Solomon 8:6), I understand it so differently now than I did before. It’s not just poetic; it’s a truth that’s lived. Love isn’t light. It’s heavy and enduring, strong enough to grip you, change you. It’s not something you shake off — it stays with you, just like His love stays with us, both in its beauty and its weight.

And as men, we don’t often talk about this stuff, do we? We don’t like to unpack the raw, vulnerable chapters of our story. But the truth is that even as strong as we want to be, God didn’t design us to carry life without feeling its depth. He reminds us in Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Why would a verse like that exist if it weren’t for us, for these nights, for those moments we can’t quite process alone? The ache of love, of memories, of longing for what was or even for what could be.

When I think of that dance, and the year since then, I’m reminded of how in everything — joy, struggle, growth — there’s purpose. I think of how Paul encourages us in 1 Corinthians 13, especially the part where he says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (verse 11). Brothers, we’re in a process of becoming. That moment in the gym wasn’t just about a first love; it was about shaping something in me. Each of us has these mile markers, these seals on our hearts, carrying us forward into the men we’re called to be.

And though time moves, we can hold fast to the strength God places within us. “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:13-14). It’s not weakness to feel, to remember, to carry. It’s strength to hold love in all its forms — the joy, the ache, the growth — and to offer it back, knowing we’ll be made stronger through it.

I don’t know when the next Sean Paul song will hit me in some random store aisle or in the car while driving home late at night, but I pray when it does, I remember all of this. I hope we can all remember — that whether we’re the seventeen-year-old boys dancing under soft string lights or the men sitting here a little older, having lived a bit more life — the weight of love shapes us, and we’re never walking through it alone.

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). May we be men who feel it all, hold onto what’s real, and walk boldly into tomorrow with love written on our hearts. Always.