She’s radiant.
She lets out some unintelligible exclamation, and then she’s moving, bouncing along to the beat and circling her hips in that mesmerizing way of hers, the one that instantly gets the attention of everyone around us.
“Dance, Zach!”
She screams it loud enough for me to hear, and then she takes my hands in hers and lifts our arms into the sky. She leads us in a weird routine that resembles an interpretive dance about tree branches in the wind, and I’m sure the entire room is wondering where the hell these idiots came from, but I don’t care. I smile down at her and let her switch things up until we’re moving our joined arms in some kind of choo-choo train motion, followed by a wax-on-wax-off pattern, and then a good old fashioned ‘raise the roof.’
It’s stupid and freeing and fun. Like a cheesy movie scene, the rest of the crowd fades away. The music gets slower. The spotlights flash over her skin as she unlaces her fingers from mine and lets her hands drop to my shoulders.
She’s close. She’s so fucking close I can see the faint spray of freckles that runs over the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Her face is framed by pink flowers. Her lips are the same deep burgundy as a glass of red wine. She parts them just slightly, just a fraction of an inch—and this is it.
I don’t know how or why, but I’m not going to stop to question anything, because this is it. This is the magic moment I seize instead of backing down and turning away.
This is it. This is it. This is it.
“Oh my god, is this Pony?”
The shout comes from a very drunk girl right beside us. It’s more of a scream, loud and shrill enough to make me cringe and glance toward her.
I only make sense of what she’s continuing to shriek when the rest of the room comes back into focus, the unmistakable opening of Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ blasting through the sound system. It continues for a few beats before Paige starts doing the remixing thing she’s so good at, making the crowd go crazy all over again.
I turn back to DeeDee, searching for that moment, clinging to it like it’s a lifeline, but the rope slips out of my hands. She lets go of my shoulders, an expression I can’t place lifting the corner of her mouth as her eyes bore into mine like they’re searching for something.
Then she shrugs before throwing her head back to laugh long and loud, that infectious DeeDee energy sliding into place like a shield to block out whatever’s underneath.
“Come on.” She pats my arm and starts clearing a path through the dance floor again, leaving me to follow in her wake.
You’re a fool. You are a damn fool, Zachary Hastings.
I say it to myself over and over again as she steers us to the least crowded edge of the three-sided bar, my head hazy with panic and regret. The faces around us are just a blur.
I was going to kiss her. I was practically leaning in. I was delusional enough to think she wanted it too.
She can’t want it. She has a boyfriend. She said it herself tonight: she barely even thinks of me as a guy—as in a guy guy, a guy she could date.
She looks at me and sees a friend, and I’ve told myself over and over again that that’s enough. Being DeeDee’s friend is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me, and if this is the role she wants me to have in her life, I’ll respect that. She doesn’t owe me more.
I’ll just have to find a way to never look at her mouth again.
No big deal. Completely practical.
“Do you want a drink? X should be here soon, so I’m gonna get a beer while I wait.”
It’s almost last call, and he’s getting here ‘soon.’ I know for a fact he was supposed to arrive hours ago. She spent the whole week talking about how excited she was to have him here.
DeeDee isn’t even looking at me as she tries to flag one of our coworkers behind the bar down. My head starts swimming with the fear that she realized what I was about to do on the dance floor. I grip the edge of the bar.
“Actually, I better head out.”
“So early?”
She still isn’t looking at me. Half past one really isn’t ‘so early,’ but I guess I am talking to a bartender.
“Yeah, I’ve got a lot of business stuff to take care of tomorrow,” I call out above the noise.
“Oh. Okay.” She finally turns around, bobbing her head a few times as she opens and closes her mouth like she’s working out what to say. “You know you don’t—I mean, um, I didn’t—When we...”
She trails off, staring down at the floor as she plays with that old-fashioned ring she’s always wearing. The racket of the bar fills the silence between us.
She jerks her head up after a moment and flashes a smile that appears way too fast to be real. “Tabarnak. English is hard. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Have a good night, okay? I’ll see you later.”
“You’re okay to get home tonight?”
I know how much that matters to her. She’s never told me why it matters, but ever since the time I found her having what looked like a mental breakdown in the storage closet after her ride fell through one night last year, I never leave a shift without letting her know I’m around if she needs it. One stupid move on my part isn’t going to change that.
“You’re sweet, mon ami. X has got me for tonight.”
I nod and start heading through the crowd without saying anything else, fighting my way into the back to get my jacket. I should have said a better goodbye, but I couldn’t find the words.
He’s got her.
It’s pathetic. I should get a grip, but it’s all I can think.
He’s got her, and you don’t.
Four
DeeDee
DOUBLE: twice the amount of liquor regularly included in a single drink
Câlice de criss.
I almost kissed Zach.
I was so close to moving my hands behind his head and pulling his mouth down to mine. I wanted to rub little circles into the back of his neck with my thumbs. I wanted to sigh against his lips. I wanted to lean into him and bend my knee the way girls do when they kiss boys in cheesy movies.
I didn’t just want to make out with him on a dance floor; I wanted it to be romantic.
“Tequila. A double. And a beer.”
Renee raises her eyebrows at me from behind the bar. “Ready to party?”
“Always.”
That is what I need: to party. I need to dance. I need to clink glasses with friends. I need to pull my boyfriend onto the dance floor and throw myself into his arms like a girl in a movie. I do not need to do that with Zach.
Only my boyfriend isn’t here.
The last time he texted was to say his shift at the club got switched and he’d be late. That was hours ago. He didn’t answer my text when I told him I finished early. He hasn’t answered any of them since.
I feel like the crazy stalker girlfriend, but I send him another one while I wait for my drink to arrive.
I cheers Renee when she finally brings my drinks and down the shot. Then I sip my beer and wander through the crowd. I know a few people in the room—I know a few people everywhere in Montreal; it’s what happens when you’re a bartender—but I’m so bad with names I just smile when they call out mine. I finish my beer way too fast and end up dancing with a big group of people who keep trying to steal my flower crown.