“Don’t want to leave?”
Shake my head.
“Ruby, I don’t like this.”
Never heard her say that about anything but studying.
“Ambrosia, I
“Really?”
“Completely.”
She rolls her lips tightly inside her mouth, thinking. “Okay, you go get your man, chica, but don’t get so focused on Gray that you forget to look out for your crazy Blue friend too. This Roderick guy’s sketchy.”
“You got it, girl.”
Walk toward the door.
I ask, “Hey, how did you get that blonde girl to go for Lyle?”
“Well, I told her he’s a trust fund kid, and…”
“And what?”
“Let’s just say we owe her free drinks for…well, forever.”
The walk back to the dance floor is nothing but a meaningless maze of people and objects. The only person to make me feel like my skin pulses with electricity is on the dance floor, and anything between here and there is a cruel torture that could never measure up to the Gray one whose name I don’t even know.
I don’t see that Roderick guy, but I don’t see Gray either. Hope they haven’t already left—my feelings hurt just at the thought of it. Don’t even know him. Just know how I feel around him. Those arms. Those eyes…so different for me.
Lyle’s head is buried in the blonde’s neck. Same sights on the dance floor. Ambrosia starts to dance. My knees move with the beat, but with little energy and no enthusiasm.
Song ends and “Right Round” starts playing. It’s hard to imagine feeling dead on the dance floor with this song playing, but I don’t feel very alive right now—definitely nothing like how I felt dancing with him.
I feel movement close behind me. Step forward to get out of the passerby’s way. The movement follows me. Step forward again. Still feel someone there. Anger races through me—no Gray and some jackass trying to rub up against me.
“What’s wrong, Bright Eyes?” whispers the voice over my shoulder.
Like a leaf in the breeze, he spins around me. Facing me, Gray doesn’t smile—his face rigid and serious, but his eyes welcome.
My heart awakens at the sight of him, so quickly shifting from deflated and angry to elated. Completely elated.
“What was bothering you?” he asks, his breath tickling my ear.
“Kinda thought you were gone.”
“Well, I’m right here right now. What else do you need?”
Struggling to say something that doesn’t make me sound so pathetic, “Little Red Corvette.”
“You wanna hear it?”
“Sure.”
“Let me borrow your phone.”
“What?”
“Just for a moment.”
Take it out my tiny purse and hand it to him.
“Hang on,” he says.
After pressing send, he looks to the DJ booth on the balcony that runs along the length of dance floor. We can see something light up, but the DJ takes no notice, talking to a girl who sits on the table next to his equipment and is dressed as Borderline-era Madonna—stockings, short skirt, and hairstyle.
Gray sends the message again. Lights up. Still no notice.
Taking a few quick steps toward the balcony, Gray flings my phone at the DJ, which smacks him in the back and lands on his mixer. The DJ picks up the phone and looks down at the dance floor furiously. He spots Gray looking up at him. DJ smiles, reads message, nods head, and tosses phone back down to Gray.
Before he can get all the way back to me, the song stops abruptly, and the crowd roars in disapproval. Apparently they like “Right Round” as much as I do. I hope no one notices the guilty look on my face.
Cheers rise as the lights dim and “Little Red Corvette” begins—the natives weren’t restless for long, and I think I’m safe from their pitchforks and torches for the moment.
Gray moves perfectly, starting slow with the intro, speeding up a little when the snare kicks in, and building to a peak at the chorus.
His hand reaches out a little closer and closer with his movements. I swear I can feel the heat coming off his hand into the space between us. Closer. Warmer.
His fingers reach my waist with a smooth slide. Don’t know if my skin has ever felt so much, even through the shirt.
He keeps it there, swaying me in our rhythm, slowly working his body a little closer. Feel sweat break at my brow. Crowded and sweaty—been that way all night, but it feels so much warmer now. Didn’t even notice the heat earlier. Maybe I only notice it now because the hot air matches my sizzling emotion, when before it had no connection to me.
Or, the heat’s really intensified with the heavenly body holding my waist and filling my senses with visions of lovely things that I thought would never be for me.
Never believed in auras. Always nonsense to me. But I swear the air around him is like nothing I’ve ever known. I can feel it my chest—it tingles over my skin, almost tastes in my mouth.
Song ends and the first piercing note of “How Soon Is Now” cuts through the air. Even a song of painful loneliness seems to be about the beautiful feeling of him dancing so close to me—everything tinted in his electric energy. Still just his hand on my side.
He raises one corner of his mouth in the sexiest sneer, inviting me to experience more of him. My smile isn’t a thought or a choice, but an inevitability. He sees it, and I know he likes it—his eyes profess it.
Hand slides to the small of my back and waits. I’m not about to pull away. Watching my reaction, it’s his turn to smile, showing me those shiny, white teeth.
Pulls me to him. His torso touches me. Slide my arms up the delicious contours of his arms and to his neck. Strange territory for me, but it feels as natural as if I’ve lived here my entire life.
Song ends and gives birth to “Dancing with Myself.” The faster tempo gets the crowd bouncing. Sadly, we pull apart a few inches—the quicker beat makes dancing so closely difficult.
His hand still at my side, the air charged, my emotion redlined. Never been better…Ever.
I catch smiles cracking through the tight, pale marble of his face. A vista of male beauty. Blue eyes shining.
We start stepping back away from each other and then forward into the close, blazing warmth of the last few inches between us.
Long, red fingernails dive up Gray’s short sleeve and squeeze his bicep. Beginning to dislike everything red.
“Hey, gorgeous,” says the girl from the bar earlier, tickling his upper arm with those striking nails and rolling the “r” in gorgeous, purring so smoothly that she makes me feel like I’m missing something feminine that she has an abundance of. “Wanna split this thing one more way?” she asks while stretching her neck, placing her face close to his.
“Sorry, Maxine, I’ve never been good with fractions.”
“Well, what about sharing resources? You’re an athletic boy.”
“Not tonight.”
Her face flashes into something still enviously pretty but enraged like a screeching feline. A tall one, she looks down at me, wrinkle-nosed, and says, “A week ago you bit me so hard you made my neck bleed, and now you’re blowing me off for freakin’ Little Miss Mainstream?”
Okay. So she wants to play cute, little word games and mock me—mean, hateful words as angry red as her
