She was looking at him with a wry smirk on her face, standing still among the swaying and jumping around her.
“What?” he asked, stepping forward to hear her response.
Someone bumped him in the back, pushing him into her. He tried to step back again, but she pulled herself up on her toes by his shirt to speak in his ear.
“That was really nice of you,” she said, settling back on her feet and nodding toward Callie, who was still laughing and doing some wiggly motion with her arms.
He looked at the people dancing around him, feeling like a fish out of water. Jenna reached for his hands, taking them in hers and leading him into some form of swing.
He laughed as she twirled herself with his hand. All he had to do was stand in the middle of the crowd, giving her free reign over his arm movements, and she danced around him in motions far too old-fashioned to match the modern music blaring from the speakers.
When a slightly less boisterous song came on, she moved his hesitant palm to her waist and placed hers on his shoulder, concentrating hard on their feet as she tried to remember the steps of a waltz.
He looked around them at all of the bumping, grinding bodies, laughing at the absurdity of their proper dance form in the midst of it all. The energy was high, and the music pumped through his veins. Time slowed down, zeroed-in on that moment, in which everything was as it should be and he couldn’t help but smile.
Jenna’s expression was focused as she looked down at their feet, testing out a few steps until the movement felt right. Her deep, maroon lips were pursed as she concentrated, counting steps in her head, and the dim light of the fire reflected off of the white sparkles just above her cheeks.
Someone brushed past them again, pushing Jenna forward. Jacob’s right hand clenched more tightly around her waist to steady her, squeezing the rough sequins of her dress. He looked down at her attire, realizing she was wearing the same dress and jacket she was wearing the night she fell asleep in his room. Looking back to her face, he decided he preferred her this way: bright, alert, color in her cheeks from laughing at her dancing mishaps each time she got the steps wrong.
“You look nice,” he muttered without thought.
She looked up at him. “What?” she said loudly, barely audible over the sound of the music.
“Oh. I, uh…,” he paused, unsure of himself now that he was conscious of what he was saying. “I said you look nice,” he finished, raising his voice enough for her to hear. “I like the sparkles.” He tapped her cheek with the index finger of the hand that was resting in hers, and it went red under his brief touch.
Her smile turned coy. “Thanks,” she said, looking down at his chest to avoid his gaze. “I like this,” she said, tugging on the collar of his flannel shirt.
“I know. That’s why I wore it,” he said, remembering getting dressed that morning and thinking of her compliment last time he had worn that shirt. It brings out your eyes, she’d said.
She smiled again.
A new, much more rowdy song rang out from the speakers, and they dropped their hands.
“Come on, baby, like this!” Angela shouted over the music to Callie, backing up against Brandon and shaking her backside against his front.
Callie laughed nervously with a fierce blush and yelled back, “I am so not doing that!”
Jenna laughed at the exchange.
“I don’t even think my butt can move that fast,” Callie replied, testing it out with a couple shakes in Angela’s direction.
She was right, but Angela “woo-ed” loudly anyway, cheering her on.
The song must have been a popular one, because more people had decided to join the mob. Sweaty bodies were pressed in on every side, and Jacob’s already racing heart began to pound harder in his chest now that dancing with Jenna was no longer distracting him from the crowd. He could feel the beginnings of an anxiety attack brewing, and he froze, trying to get his breathing under full control before the panic took over.
In for four, hold for four –
“Hey,” Jenna grabbed his arm, interrupting his thoughts.
He broke out of his haze and looked at her concerned expression.
She appraised his tense stance for a moment and said. “You wanna go somewhere else?”
He nodded eagerly, and she took his hand, dragging him through the crowd.
HE TOOK IN THE fresh air, not bothering to count his breaths anymore.
Jenna let go of his hand and plopped down on the grass, lying on her back and kicking off her boots in one fluid motion.
“I come out here sometimes when I can’t sleep,” she said. “To look at the stars.”
Jacob followed her gaze to the sky.
“It’s one of the reasons I love this place so much,” she said.
He took a seat beside her, leaning back against the soft pillow of dewy grass.
“What are the other reasons?”
“Hm…,” she thought for a moment. “Well, for one, Uncle Al.”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” she smiled. After a few minutes, she said, “The air. It feels cleaner here.”
Jacob instinctively took a breath. “The weather’s not half-bad either, if you don’t mind the cold.”
“Mmm, true. And it’s got that small-town feel, but it’s still big enough to have, like, actual stores.”
“And restaurants,” he added.
“And a movie theater.”
They went on like that for a while, listing the things they loved about the town until they ran out of things to say. After that, they lay on the grass in comfortable silence, examining the stars as the party started to wind down.
Jacob sat up, taking off his outer shirt and stuffing it under his head as a make-shift pillow.
“Do you own more than two shirts?” Jenna teased, appraising his attire.
He snorted. “Barely.”
“Hey, what’s that?” she asked, rolling onto her side and reaching out to touch the chain around his neck that had fallen out from under his shirt.
“A chicken?” she raised an eyebrow. “Is there a story there?”
He chuckled, his cheeks flooding with heat at how close she was, her sweet perfume flavoring the air as she held the charm between her fingers and leaned over him to inspect it. From that close, he could see that the same sparkles that highlighted her cheekbones also dotted her inner eyes, and beneath the thin layer of makeup on her face, he detected a faint hint of freckles.
“It was a gift from a friend,” he said. “Kind of an inside joke, I guess.”
“Hm,” she muttered, examining his expression for a moment with her hazel eyes – eyes that held dark flecks of brown he had never noticed before. She rolled onto her back again before he was finished admiring them.
One by one, the rest of the students embarked on their trek back to the dorms, leaving behind one small group who stayed to watch the fire burn out.
They were secluded from the rest of the group, hidden by the tall brush, and there were long moments in which nothing else could be heard over the sound of the crickets. All he could see of the party now was the smoke of the dying embers rising up to the sky.
Jenna was close enough by his side that whenever she moved, her leather jacket grazed his arm. But he found that, to his surprise, he wasn’t uncomfortable with her proximity this time.