I spun around for him slowly, careful not to fall off my heels. “I clean up well,” I joked.
“Yeah. You do.” He was staring at me. Eyes sweeping up and down, looking at me as if he’d never seen me before. As if this was the first time he was looking at me. I froze and I let him look. I liked the way it felt. My body responded, the places where his hands had been earlier seemed to wake up and twitch and tingle. I exhaled slowly and then started walking up to him.
“Shall we?” I stopped in front of him and looked straight in his eyes. I could almost see myself reflected in them they were so silvery. He didn’t say a word. He just nodded and we walked out together.
Half an hour later we were seated at a bar at the nightclub. The club was an assault on all my senses. Strobing lights, the loud repetitive sounds of bassy house music, the throngs of hot, sweating scantily clothed people who all looked at least five to ten years younger than us. And to make matters worse, things between Alex and me felt strange. We hadn’t spoken in the taxi here, and we were hardly speaking now. No one had mentioned what had happened in the room and I was starting to wonder if maybe I’d imagined it.
“So . . .” I finally had to break this enduring silence. “Now what?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been off the market longer than you have, I’m hoping to take your lead on this.”
“My lead?” I sipped my drink (more like slurped it). “God, if you’re thinking of following me on this one, we’ll be here all night,” I said after another long slurp.
Alex shrugged. “I’ve never gone out to a place looking for sex before.”
“Me neither,” I confessed. “I mean, there have been times where I’ve gone out hoping that that could potentially be where the evening went, but I’ve also never done this.”
Alex nodded, and I could see him faltering. If he backed out of this, I would too, and I would be relieved.
“NO! No!” he suddenly said. “We made a promise to get through this whole list.” He held his hand up and wiggled his ring finger, green ribbon firmly in place.
I nodded slowly, disappointed that he’d suddenly pulled himself together. “We did,” I said softly. We sat in silence for a while longer, and although we sat right next to each other on the barstools, I could sense a massive elephant sitting between us.
I looked at Alex. He was sipping his drink and looking down at his shoes. For someone who’d come looking for sex, I didn’t think he would find it down there. He looked up slowly and our eyes met again. I tried to think of something to say, but the elephant seemed to be holding my tongue.
“Okay.” Alex sat up a little more confidentially this time. “Okay!” he repeated.
“Okay?” I asked.
“We can do this,” he said. “We can do this.” He said it again, a little slower this time, as if trying to convince himself.
I nodded. “Okay. Shall we do it then?”
“Yes. Cool.” He put his drink down on the counter and turned his attention back to the people in front of us. “What about her?” he asked, pointing at someone across the floor.
“Eeeww, no!” I shook my head. “I don’t want you to catch a dreaded disease.”
“Not her then.” Alex scanned the dance floor some more. I did the same thing. But this was so bizarre. We were sitting here choosing people to potentially sleep with, and honestly, I had no desire whatsoever to sleep with any one of them.And I didn’t want Alex to either . . .But I played along. I had to.
“What about him, for me?” I asked, pointing at a man at the other end of the bar.
“What?” Alex almost shouted. “For you?” He shook his head. “Not good enough.”
“Really? I think he’s quite hot, though?”
“No. Definitely not.” Alex turned my face away from him and forced me to look somewhere else. “Over my dead body.” He sounded rather firm.
“Fine,” I conceded and continued to scan the room. “Him?” I pointed at another guy sitting alone at a table.
Alex tilted his head to the side. “He looks like a serial killer.”
I threw my hands in the air. “If you’re going to disapprove of every one, how am I going to do this?”
Alex looked around the club. “But they’re all so . . . so . . .”
“So what?” I asked, tapping my fingers on the bar counter.
“Not good enough for you.” Alex’s eyes met mine and something shot through me.
