Seth just shakes his head as he puts on his blinker, then turns off the main road and into a driveway.
Next to it there’s a big wooden sign that says FROG HOLLER in colorful letters, and suddenly, everything falls into place.
“We’re going square dancing?” I ask, turning to face him.
Seth just grins.
“You nerd,” I laugh.
“What’s nerdy about square dancing?” he teases.
“Besides everything?”
“You’ve never even been before,” he says, gravel crunching under his tires. “Square dancing is cool.”
“We had to learn it in middle school gym, and it is not cool,” I laugh. “I can’t believe you’re taking me on a date activity that I did in a gymnasium while the boys spent the week in health class learning about their dicks.”
“I assure you none of the boys learned a single thing that week that they didn’t already know,” Seth says.
I lean my elbow on the window ledge, looking over at him. He’s even hot when he drives, with one hand on the steering wheel and the other touching the gear shift with two fingers, relaxed and confident and in control.
“What?” he laughs, when he sees me looking.
“I don’t have a response that falls within the bounds of our agreement,” I tell him as he pulls up next to a pickup truck and shifts into park.
“Which part?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at me. “The clean slate part?”
He shuts the car off, cuts the lights, pulls the keys from the ignition and suddenly it’s near-dark.
“The no sex part,” I tell the dark as I unbuckle my seatbelt.
“We agreed not to do it, not to keep from talking about it,” he says, and his voice is a lazy drawl, his features starting to come into view. “Unless you’re telling me you were about to say something about middle school sex ed so intensely erotic that I was going to throw the whole agreement out the window.”
“Ew,” I say, laughing.
“Good,” Seth answers, and I can hear the smile in his voice, nearly see it in the dark. “Come on, let’s go square dancing.”
Outside the car he takes my hand, and we walk toward the converted barn together.
“Unless,” I say. “You brought me here to do corporate espionage.”
Frog Holler is a cidery, so they make hard apple cider. Seth Loveless half-owns a brewery. Surely there must be some competition.
“Would that make it nerdier or less nerdy?” he asks.
“Depends on the espionage.”
“Which is it if you flirt with the owner while I break into the backroom to discover their brewing secrets?” he teases, and I laugh.
“I think you’re more Marcy’s type,” I say.
I wish I hadn’t the moment it’s out of my mouth. All I meant is that Marcy’s straight and Seth is male, but the moment I say it and he doesn’t respond that bright, ugly flower blooms in my chest.
“I doubt either would work,” he says, after a moment. “How do you know Marcy?”
“We took a — uh, a dance class together,” I tell him.
Did he fuck her? He can’t have. She’s married. He wouldn’t.
Right?
I take a deep breath and try not to show it.
Starting over, let it go. Clean slate.
“We hit it off and she ended up hiring me to paint the mural on the other side of the barn,” I go on.
Seth stops in surprise, looking over at me.
“The big one?” he asks, pointing off into the dark. “With the frog and the apples?”
“Is there another mural?”
“I didn’t know you did that.”
We’re almost to the barn, and from inside a voice calls: “All right, everyone, if you ain’t got a place yet, find one!”
I study Seth’s face for a moment.
“Is this a clean slate thing, or…”
“No,” he says, and smiles, looking a little sheepish. “I’ve been it a hundred times and didn’t know.”
“I made the front page of the paper,” I tell him as we walk through the door. “You didn’t see that?”
I guess it was a slow news day. Seth just shrugs.
“No,” he says. “Hand to God, I had no idea I’d been looking at your mural all this time.”
“You two!” a man’s voice calls, from the stage. “You here to dance? Get your coats off and get up front!”
“Nerd,” I whisper to Seth, shrugging out of layers.
He just winks at me.
“You like it,” he whispers back.
Fine, I like it.
Turns out square dancing is totally fun, which isn’t something I ever though I’d say.
As soon as we get our outer layers off, the man directing us from the stage informs us that we’ll be joining the square nearest him.
His name is Bill, he’s wearing a Texas tuxedo, and he informs us that we’ll be joining the square near the front of the dance floor so he can keep an eye on us.
After he says that, he winks. If he had a mustache, I think he’d be a dead ringer for Sam Elliott.
“You better watch out,” I murmur to Seth as we walk onto the dance floor. “I bet Bill’s got moves.”
That gets a hand pressed to my lower back and a tingle up my spine.
“I didn’t bring you here so you could do-si-do with someone else,” Seth teases me.
“Did you bring me so you could steal cider secrets?” I ask, innocently.
“I brought you here because I’ve never tried square dancing and, to be excruciatingly honest, it sounds fun,” he says. “There you have it. You’re here for a fun date. That’s all.”
“Sorry,” I say, laughing.
Turns out the square in square dancing is four couples who stand facing each other in — you guessed it — a square. Our square is us, one other first-time couple, and then two middle-aged couples who might the most pleasant and patient people I’ve met in my entire life.
“All right,” Bill’s voice announces, a few minutes later. “Welcome to beginner square dancin’ night! Now I know most of y’all haven’t done this before, so we’re gonna start you off real easy with a square through — curlicue — fan the top to a half tag — trade — scoot back — relay the deucey!”
Stunned silence reigns for a few seconds before about half the people there start laughing.
“I’m just pullin’ yer leg,” Bill says, and this time he waves to the still-chuckling musicians behind him, and they start playing a fiddle and a banjo.
Seth and I exchange an I guess this is square dancing humor look.
“Now,” says Bill. “The person you brought is your partner, and the person to your other side is your corner. To start things off, you’re gonna bow to your partner, bow to your corner, and then join hands and walk in a circle.”
Right away, I step on Seth’s foot.
The square dancing lasts for two hours. Bill gives us a thirty-minute break in the middle, so we get hard cider from the bar at the end of the barn and then sit on hay bales, drinking and laughing and talking with the other couples there.