AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He leaned in, pressing his hand against my lower back as he whispered in my ear. "I'll get us a drink."
"Mint—"
"—Julep." He grinned as he finished my sentence of my favorite drink. He shook his head. "Man, you haven't changed."
Standing on the dance floor, I watched him weave through the crowd. He was taller than everyone and definitely the only one in a suit. The song was a good one, and as the crowd enveloped me, I twirled around, twisting my hands into the air and moving my hands.
Fuck. How long had it been since I last danced? As my eyes closed, the moves spilled out of me, and everything outside of this space dissolved, falling away. Music always had this effect on me, but I didn't listen to it enough.
On the very rare occasion when I found a babysitter for Claire, I didn't do things like this. I usually went to an R-rated movie and sat in silence. I didn't have friends to go dancing with, and doing this alone would have felt weird.
But as I rocked to the music, I suddenly questioned that. Who was stopping me from doing this but myself?
I opened my eyes just as Lucas appeared in the crowd. His shoulders were tense and his body stiff as he slid sideways through the crowd. Handing me my drink, he smiled, but even his grin look forced. "You look like a natural!" he called over the music.
"And you look uncomfortable!"
He sipped his whiskey and shook his head. "No, this is great." The sarcasm was thick, and I couldn't help but laugh.
"Close your eyes."
His brow furrowed. "What?"
I smiled and stood on my tip toes. "Do you trust me?" The question slipped out of me before I could stop myself. It was the first thing Lucas had ever said to me. I was a frightened eighteen-year-old on my first day of college when this tall man stopped me in the Promenade and asked me that very question.
Across from me on the dance floor, Lucas grinned. "I don't even know you!"
That had been my response on the first day I'd met him. And twenty-one-year old him had told me to look at my feet. I'd had toilet paper on my shoes. He'd saved me from embarrassment on my first day of college, and that was how our friendship had started.
When we dated, it became our inside joke, something we always said to each other.
"Close your eyes," I repeated.
This time, he didn't hesitate. As his eyes shut, I put his hands on my shoulder and lightly touched his waist. I wasn't even sure what I was doing, but something about it just felt so...natural.
"Just listen to the beat."
There were a few inches of space between us, but the touch was enough. As I swayed left, he moved with me. When I turned, he followed. Five steps across the floor and I saw the moment he felt the music. The wrinkles in his forehead softened, his mouth relaxed, and his shoulders slumped.
He tossed his head back, and the laugh that escaped him was easy. Just as I remembered it. But he caught himself, his voice choking, like the sound surprised him.
He didn't laugh often, did he?
Still, he kept his eyes closed, and as the beat shifted, his hands started to slide across my shoulders, moving toward my back. I tensed, his touch somehow familiar and foreign at the same time. But as his arms carved around my back, the swing of the music filled me, and I relaxed as he gathered me against his chest. The space between us disappeared, and my hands slid past his waist, linking behind his back.
My heartbeat reverberated in my throat. The music started to slow, and with it, so did our pace. I looked up at him at the same time he opened his eyes and met my gaze. Our faces were only inches apart.
Did his lips feel the same as they had back then? His kiss as tender?
The song finished with a tremble of drums, and the air between us shifted. The lights flicked on, flooding the space and erasing the magic of anonymity the music brought.
It was barely noon, and I was dancing in a bar with my ex-boyfriend...not just dancing...thinking about kissing him. I had floated away from the grounded goal of manipulating him to help me on a job.
What was I doing?
As the crowd around us started clapping for the band, I removed my hands from his hips, and Lucas mirrored my movements, the tension like pulling two magnets apart.
We joined in on the clapping, but as the crowd began to dissipate, an awkwardness that hadn't existed before lingered between us.
