Page 74 of Chasing the Other Woman

My boots stick slightly to the floor as I cross the room. Brooks turns before I reach him, like he’s been counting my steps.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

His eyes move over my face. “Playing a song.”

"You plannin' on dancing with one of the linemen?"

A corner of his mouth lifts, then falls.

That’s when I see his wrist.

Brown leather. Small silver clasp. Worn near the edge where his thumb used to rub it while he studied radar or talked business or pretended not to be nervous before interviews.

The bracelet I gave him when we were broke and stupid in love.

Something to keep me with you, I'd told him when I gave it to him.

For two years, his bare wrist told me things he never said aloud. That he’d put away the life we had before the accident. That he couldn’t stand carrying a piece of me anymore. That maybe, when he looked at it, he remembered the baby we lost and wished he’d never let me in that truck.

Now it sits against his skin like it never left.

My throat closes.

Brooks follows my gaze but doesn’t explain. He doesn’t launch into a speech. Doesn’t try to make the bracelet proof of anything.

He only holds out his hand.

“Dance with me.”

I look around the bar. Storm chasers, linemen, recovery volunteers, locals, half the remaining crew. No dance floor. No space cleared. Just tables, scuffed boards, and every nosy person in the Texas Panhandle suddenly developing excellent peripheral vision.

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Probably.”

"People will stare."

"When have you ever worried about that?"

“There isn’t a dance floor.”

"There's a floor," he says, nodding toward the floor beneath us. "If we dance on it, it's a dance floor."

“We’re going to look like idiots.”

"I'll look like an idiot. You'll look like the woman dancing with an idiot."

I hate him a little for making my mouth twitch.

His hand remains there between us. Open. Waiting.

I roll my eyes because if I don’t, I might cry in front of everyone in this bar.

“Fine,” I say. “Once.”

He takes my hand carefully and draws me close.

His palm settles at my waist, warm through my shirt. My hand finds his shoulder by memory, the same place it always went, just like it did in that reception hall.