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Astonishment floods her face. “They’re all local?”
“Will just moved back.”
“Are you two together?” A restrained glee infuses her words, as if she wants to be happy for me if the answer is yes, but isn’t sure if asking the question at all is acceptable.
“No,” I answer truthfully just as a deep, slightly out-of-breath male voice says from behind me:
“Yes.”
One corner of Sanni’s mouth goes up in an intrigued smile while Raye blushes hard, looking over my shoulder as I turn to find–surprise!–Will standing there, eyes soulful, hands on his hips, the yes hanging in the air like a golden snitch I just have to reach up and pluck.
“Hi, Rayelyn,” he says to her.
“Will,” she smiles, not correcting him with her preferred name, eyes bouncing from me to him over and over as if she’s decoding a secret message that has an answer she thinks she knows.
I, on the other hand, have no idea what is going on.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Mallory and I have some very important unfinished business,” he says to Raye and Sanni, pulling me away with gentle firmness that is as impossible to resist as it is paradoxical.
“May I have this dance?” He starts to lead us toward the dance floor.
“What? But I want to talk to Raye and–”
“Dance. Dance with me, Mallory.”
“Why would I dance with you?”
“Because you’re my date and because I took dance lessons for my sister’s wedding and don’t want them to go to waste.”
“So now I’m a pity dance?”
“You’re not a pity anything.” Carrying beyond the two of us, his voice has an insistent finality to it. As if he knows exactly what’s happening and is trying to help, the DJ is playing Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect.” Will’s right hand goes to the small of my back and his left hand takes my right one in his, our bodies making the awkward transition from two people with differing agendas to one couple moving in concert.
Except I’m not melting into him the way a true dance partner would.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmurs as we turn in a circle, the DJ’s lights blurring and forming a strangely distant rainbow between patches of darkness.
“What? No. I’m fine.”
“What Osgood said is not fine. What Alisha said is not fine. Nothing about this night is fine.” The words skim over my heart, the touch light and protective.
“No. It’s not. But I am fine.”
His hold on me tightens. That hand flat against my lower back is awfully possessive as he pulls me closer. The thin fabric of my skirt is loose against my thighs, and boy, can I feel the coiled power in his legs.
I’m feeling something else between us, too, and it’s turning me on.
I can’t. I can’t. Will was sweet to invite me to this reunion, but what just happened is proof that nothing really changes. I mean, I’ve changed. I’ve grown. I’ve analyzed and reflected, but while I’m an adult now, I’m really not all that different than I was ten years ago.
If anything has changed, it’s my attitude.
I don’t care.
Clarity has a funny way of showing up when you need it most.
Seeing Rayelyn didn’t cause a sudden, life-altering realization, but it confirmed what I already know: I get to decide who I am. Not this crowd. Not my parents. Not Will Lotham or Perky or Fiona. Me.
I always have.
