Chapter one
The bass at Neon Pulse hit differently on Friday nights.
It wasn’t just sound. The bass got into my chest, into the floor, into the part of my brain where last weekend’s wedding was still trying to argue with me about centerpieces. Pink strobes, electric blue, the fog machine working overtime to convince us we were having a moment. Somebody’s glitter on somebody’s collarbone two feet from me. The bartender who always wore the same Black Sabbath shirt was on tonight, and then I forgot him.
I was in my element. Or doing a passable job of pretending.
I’d dressed for it. Tight black jeans. The burgundy shirt my mother had bought me three Christmases ago and that I still wore, even though the color was fading. Sleeves shoved up because the air in here was already wet. Glitter gel on my arms because I love the way it glows under the lights. Silver hoops. The expensive cologne, the amber-and-vanilla one I only wore on nights I wanted to leave a trail.
“Jett!” Calliope had my arm. Half her drink ended up on my forearm. “This song! We need to dance to this song!”
I never argued with Calliope about dancing. Sierra and Raven were already gone in it. I went where the song wanted me. Hips, shoulders, hands up, the whole thing.
Freedom, the version I’d built for myself. Exactly where I was supposed to be on a Friday at eleven.
Sierra spun past me, laughing, and I caught her hand to twirl her.
“Show off!” Raven called out, grinning into it. Crushed velvet pants and a sheer top over a mesh bra, dark lipstick that should not have survived this much sweat and somehow had.
“You love it!” I dropped into a move that might be illegal in several states.
Calliope wolf-whistled. “Work it, darling. Give them the show.”
I gave them the show. Why not. Life was short. The music was loud. I had not always been allowed to take up this much space in a room. Eight years of gym time over the scrawny kid who’d gotten shoved into lockers in tenth grade by a guy named Brad. Brad became an accountant. I’d heard. Two hundred and five pounds of muscle, earned. Twenty-four now. A build that nobody messed with.
The song picked up. I closed my eyes. The week kept trying to follow me onto the floor: four hundred guests in Williamsburg last weekend, the caterer who tried to swap brisket for short rib at 4 P.M. on the day of, the mother-of-the-bride meltdown over the seating chart that had taken every ounce of charm I owned to defuse. I shut all of it off. Stopped managing. Stopped performing the version of me that managed.
For a minute, just movement.
When I opened my eyes, someone was watching.
Edge of the dance floor, drink in hand, not even pretending. Blonde hair done in that careful way that took twenty minutes to look like he’d just rolled out of bed. Built. The arms were the first thing you registered, then the shoulders, then the tattoo sleeve. White guy, mid-twenties maybe, on the shorter side, with the look of someone who already knew the math worked in his favor.
Our eyes met. He smiled, the smile of a person who didn’t have to wonder how it landed.
Good.
I didn’t approach him. Kept dancing. Made sure he had something to watch. Eye contact long enough to mean something.
By the time I went for water, he was already at the bar.
“I’ve been watching you dance.” He leaned in close enough that I caught his cologne. Sharp citrus, the kind that came in a square bottle and cost more than it should. “You move like you own the place.”
I took a sip and made him wait. “Maybe I do.”
He laughed. It was a genuinely good laugh. “I’m Alex.”
“Jett.” He said it slowly, like he were tasting the shape of it. “That’s a great name.”
“It does the job.” My eyes went over him, no rush. The tattoo was a whole landscape of mountains, pine, and what might have been a wolf in the lower half. Whoever had done it knew what they were doing. Gray t-shirt, jeans, Nikes that hadn’t been worn enough yet. “You new here? I haven’t seen you.”
“First time. Friend told me about it.” He stepped closer. I didn’t step back. “Said it was the best place in Brooklyn for… dancing.”
He left a beat betweenforanddancingthat did all the work for him.
“Your friend wasn’t wrong.” I set my water down. “Want to test the theory?”
His smile grew wider in increments, like he were deciding how much to give away. “Absolutely.”
