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The Soundgarden T-shirt was glued to his body like a sinful second skin, his biceps bulging and straining against the short sleeves. He clearly worked out to stay fit for his job, and I imagined him on his back, hauling a giant barbell overhead, every cord and vein dilated as he sweated through the movements.

I was in trouble.

Padding over to where he was standing, I watched as his fingers grazed over a collection of album spines.

“Tell me why you’re here,” he said. “At this party.”

My cheeks heated as my father’s twisted, snarling face flashed through my mind. “If you want to be a filthy whore, I’ll treat you like one. You’ll sleep in the shed tonight.”

I may have been filthy, but I wasn’t a whore. I was dirty because my home life was a steaming pile of shit I couldn’t scrub off my skin. I’d only been with a few guys, mostly as a way to try and siphon the poison out of my blood, but it never worked, only serving as a small comfort at the time. A short-lived purge. But my father had caught me making out with some guy in the driveway and banished me to the backyard for the night.

“You look like you went to a dark place,” Reed noted off my delayed response.

I didn’t go there.

I lived there.

“I was just bored.” Shrugging away the gray cloud, I forced a smile. “It’s Saturday night.”

“You were sitting all alone in here.”

“Maybe I was waiting for someone.”

“Hmm.” Eyes on the shelves, he made a humming sound. “Did you find him?”

“Verdict is still out, but I’m optimistic. Did you find your daughter?”

“Yeah. She’s sleeping over at a friend’s house.”

I reached for a CD and plucked it out, glancing at the face. Garth Brooks. “Do you like country music like she does?”

Reed shook his head. “No.”

“The optimism rises.” A playful cadence stole my tone as I inched a step closer to him and pulled out another CD. “Collective Soul.”

“They’re good. I saw them in concert last year.”

We continued to peruse the CD collection, both of us wiggling out handfuls and carrying them over to the queen-size bed. I took a seat beside him on the edge of the mattress as we sorted through our haul, commenting on the different bands and genres. Jay had everything from Mariah Carey to Metallica, and even some do-wop from the fifties and sixties.

I fingered an album by The Drifters and sing-songed in a floaty voice, “Save the last dance for me…”

Reed looked up, his eyes following the climb of my smile. “There’s a really good cover of that song by Harry Nilsson.”

“Oh, yeah?” My smile brightened even more. “Do you dance?”

“Aside from those cutesy daddy-daughter dances from a decade ago, no.”

My mind spun with images of Reed and a little girl dancing in a gymnasium filled with balloon arches and a crooning Bette Midler, while his daughter danced on the toes of his big boots. “I love to dance. Movement is art. Motion is freeing.” He stared at me, and I wondered if he was imagining our bodies in motion, swaying and bending in infinite ways. Clearing my throat, I tried to tamp down the tension hissing temptation into my ear. “Do you think Jay would notice if we borrowed one of his CDs?”

He glanced down at our pile and gave his head a slight shake. “He has enough.”

I sifted through them, making a separate reject pile as our knees angled and touched.

“Which one?” Reed held up CD after CD, the covers glinting off the ceiling light. “Green Day?”

I made a face.

“That’s a no.” He chuckled, discarding it.

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