Beach read

17

The Dance

TUX TONIGHT? GUS wrote at noon on Saturday.

Anxiety crept up every time I thought about being alone in the car with him, but I’d also had tonight pla

SERIOUSLY? Gus asked.

NO, I wrote. DO YOU HAVE COWBOY BOOTS?

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Gus said. FROM EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT ME, TAKE A WILD GUESS WHETHER I OWN COWBOY BOOTS.

I stared at the blank page then went for it: YOU’RE A MAN OF MANY SECRETS. YOU COULD HAVE A WHOLE CLOSET FULL OF TEN-GALLON HATS. AND IF YOU DO, WEAR ONE. 6 PM.

When Gus appeared at my door that night, he was wearing his usual uniform, plus a wrinkly black button-up. His hair was swept up his forehead in a way that suggested it had been forced there via him anxiously ru

“No hat.” He pulled his other hand from behind his back. He was holding two flasks, the thin, foldable kind you could tuck under your clothes. “But I brought these in case you’re taking me to a Texan church service.”

I crouched by the front door, tugging my embroidered ankle boots on. “And once again, you reveal that you know much more about romance than you’ve previously let on.”

Even as I said it, my stomach clenched.

Gus has been married.

Gus is divorced.

That was why he was so sure love could never last, and he’d told me none of these key details, because he hadn’t really let me in.

If my comment reminded him of any of that, he didn’t let on. “Just so you know,” he said, “if I actually have to wear a cowboy hat at some point tonight, I will probably die.”

“Cowboy hat allergy.” I grabbed my keys from the table. “Got it. Let’s go.”

This date would’ve been perfect, if it had been a date.

The parking lot of the Black Cat Saloon was jammed and the rough-hewn interior was just as packed. “A lot of fla

“What do you expect on line-dancing night, Gus?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Gus said, freezing. I shook my head. “This has been an exact recurring nightmare I’m only just realizing was actually a premonition.”

On the low stage at the front of the barnlike room, the band picked up again, and a crush of bodies moved past on our left, knocking me into him. He caught me around the rib cage and righted me as the group pushed toward the dance floor. “You good?” he shouted over the music, his hands still on my ribs.

My face was hot, my stomach flipping traitorously. “Fine.”

He leaned in so I could hear him. “This seems like a dangerous environment for someone your size. Maybe we should leave and go … literally anywhere else.”

As he eased back to look me in the face, I gri

His hands slid off me, leaving pulsing points behind on my skin. “I guess I survived Meg Ryan.”

“Barely,” I teased, then blushed as flashes of memory seared across my mind. Gus’s mouth tipping mine open. Gus’s teeth on my clavicle. Gus’s hands tightening against my hips, his thumb scraping over the jut of bone.

The moment stretched out between us. Or rather, it seemed to tighten between us, and since we didn’t move any closer, the air grew taut. The song was winding down now and a lanky man with a horsey face bounded onto the stage with a microphone, summoning begi

I grabbed Gus’s wrist and cut a path through the crowd to the dance floor. For once, his cheeks were flushed, his forehead dented with worried wrinkles. “You honestly have to write me into your will for this,” he said.

“You might not want to talk through the instructions,” I replied, tipping my head toward the horse-faced caller, who was using a volunteer from the crowd to demonstrate a few key moves, all while talking with the speed of an auctioneer. “I have a feeling this guy won’t be repeating much.”

“Your last will and testament, January,” Gus whispered fiercely.

“And to Gus Everett,” I whispered back, “a closet full of ten-gallon hats!”

His laugh crackled like popping oil. I thought of its sound against my ear that night at the party. We hadn’t said anything as we danced in that slick basement, not a single word, but he’d laughed against my ear and I’d known, or at least suspected, that it was because he was dimly aware that we should have been embarrassed to be all over each other like that. We should have been but there were more pressing feelings to be felt that night. Just like at the drive-in.

Heat filled my abdomen and I suppressed the thought.

Onstage, the fiddle started up, and soon the whole band was bouncing through the notes. The experts swarmed the floor, filling in the gaps between the anxiously waiting begi

At his first command, the crowd jostled to the right, carrying Gus and me with it. He snatched my hand as the mass of boots and heels reversed direction. I squealed as Gus jerked me out of the path of a man on a mission to grapevine whether it meant stomping on my foot or not.

There were no sung lyrics, just the caller’s instructions with their strange, auctioneer rhythm and the sound of shoes scuffing along the floor. I erupted into laughter as Gus went forward instead of back, eliciting a nasty glare from the hair-sprayed blonde he collided with. “Sorry,” he shouted over the music, holding up his hands in surrender, only to get bumped into her pink lace–covered chest as the crowd shifted once more.

“Oh, God,” he said, stumbling back. “Sorry, I—”

“God has nothing to do with it!” the woman snapped, digging her hands into her hips.

“Sorry,” I interceded, grabbing Gus by the hand. “Can’t take him anywhere.”

“Me?” he cried, half laughing. “You knocked me into—”

I pulled him through the crowd to the far side of the dance floor. When I looked over my shoulder, the woman had resumed her boot-scoot-boogying, face as stony as a sarcophagus’s.

“Should I give her my number?” Gus teased, mouth close to my ear.

“I think she’d rather have your insurance card.”

“Or a good police sketch.”

“Or a crowbar,” I shot back.

“Okay.” Gus’s smile spread enough for a laugh to slip out. “That’s enough from you. You’re just looking for an excuse not to dance.”

“I’m just looking for an excuse?” I said. “You grabbed that woman’s boobs to try to get kicked out of here.”

“No way.” He shook his head, caught my arm, and tugged me along as he clumsily fell back into the steps. “I’m in this for the long haul now. You’d better clear your Saturday schedules from here until eternity.”

I laughed, tripping along with him, but my stomach was fighting a series of concurrent rises and dips. I didn’t want to feel these things. It wasn’t fun anymore, now that I was thinking it all through, where it would end up—with me attached and jealous and him having shared about as much about his life with me as you might with a hairdresser.

But then he would say things like that, Clear your Saturday schedules from here until eternity. He would grab me around the waist to keep me from smashing into a support beam I hadn’t noticed in my dancing fugue state. Laughing, he would twirl me into him, and spin me around while the rest of the crowd was walking their feet into their bodies and back out, far wider than their hips, thumbs hooked into real and imagined belt loops.

This was a different Gus than I’d seen (The one who’d played soccer? The Gus who answered one third of his aunt’s phone calls? The Gus who’d been married and divorced?), and I wasn’t sure what to make of it or its sudden appearance.

Something had changed in him, again, and he was (whether intentionally or not) letting it show. He seemed somehow lighter than he had, less tired. He was being winsome and flirty, which only made me more frustrated after the past week.

“We need a shot,” he said.

“Okay,” I agreed. Maybe a shot would take the strange edge I was feeling off. We swam back to the bar and he nudged aside a pool of peanuts still in their shells to order two doubles of whiskey. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his.

“To what?” I asked.

He smirked. “To your happy endings.”

I’d thought we were friends, that he respected me, and now I felt like he was calling me a fairy princess all over again, laughing to himself about how naive and silly my worldview was, holding his failed marriage like a secret trump card that proved, once again, he knew more than me. A fierce, angry fuse lit in my stomach, and I threw back the whiskey without meeting his lifted shot. Gus seemed to think it was an oversight. He was still downing his whiskey as I headed back out to the dance floor.

I had to admit there was something singularly hilarious about line dancing angrily, but that didn’t stop me from doing it. We finished two more songs, took two more shots.

When we went back out for the fourth song—a more complex dance for the proficient to enjoy while the caller used the toilet and rested his vocal cords—we had no hope of keeping up with the choreography, even if we hadn’t been tipsy by then. During a double turn to the right, my shoe caught on an uneven floorboard and Gus grabbed me by the waist to keep me from going down. His laughter faded when he saw my face, and he leaned (of course) against the support beam, my nemesis from earlier, drawing me in toward him by my hips. His hand burned through my jeans into my skin and I fought to keep a clear head as he held me like that. “Hey,” he murmured, dropping his mouth toward my ear so I could hear him over the music. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong was his thumbs twirling circles on my hips, his whiskey breath against the corner of my mouth, and how stupid I felt for its effect on me. I was naive.

I’d always trusted my parents, never sensed the missing pieces between Jacques and me, and now I’d started getting emotionally attached to someone who’d done everything he could to convince me not to.

I stepped back from him. I meant to say, I think I need to go home, or maybe I’m not feeling well.

But I’d never been good at hiding how I was feeling, especially this past year.

I didn’t say anything. I just ran for the door.