Page 31 of The Snuggle Is Real

The surprise from Sweet Thang turned out to be a four-tier naked cake layered with, in alternating layers, apple butter and pumpkin cream cheese.

Which sounds mostly disgusting, possibly ingenious.

"Miss Bettie refused to take a side,” my mother says. “She said she has to live in this town. Besides, the voting hasn’t closed yet."

That sounds about right. Wanted works in mysterious ways.

I brought Emily her old fashioned after the toasts, exactly as promised. Orange peel. No cherry. She’s halfway through it and she looks warm, looser.

Without warning, the band switches from dinner music to something with a fiddle solo that makes my father stand up and whoop.

Dylan drags Lauren to the dance floor. MacKay spins Faith out and back so hard her hair flies. Ian and Winnie do something that I think is supposed to be a two-step but mostly involves Winnie stepping on Ian's feet and both of them laughing too hard to stop.

I stand and hold out my hand.

Emily stares at it. "You don't dance."

"I dance."

"You don't. You stand next to the bar and hold my purse and give people disapproving looks."

"Those are looks of quiet observation."

"Malcolm."

"You don’t dance either. But this is a special occasion and we're a couple. Couples dance."

Emily stands up and takes my hand, but she wrinkles her nose at me.

The first song is fast and ridiculous.

I have danced exactly once at a wedding in Birmingham under extreme duress, but it turns out I’m marginally capable of a basic two-step when motivated. Emily, a woman who has watched three hundred and twelve first dances, has somehow never learned one step of it.

Yet she’s bossing me around.

"Other left," she says.

"That's your left."

"It's the same left. There's only one left."

"There are two lefts in this situation, Em. Yours and mine."

I spin her without warning. She shrieks and crashes into my chest. I catch her easily.

"Where did you learn that?"

"YouTube."

"You did not."

"Nope. It was just instinct."

“Spin me again,” she demands.

Obediently, I spin her again and I add a dip, just to keep it interesting.

Emily looks a little alarmed but she hangs on and once she’s up and in my arms, she’s laughing breathlessly. I brush her hair back off of her cheek, grazing her skin with the back of my knuckles. Her eyes widen.