Page 38 of Watch Me

When he looks at me, everything has changed again. The wildness is erased from his eyes, the intensity gone. He looks distant again, a million miles away.

My lips twitch in a confused, involuntary smile. It feels like he’s hiding the man I know. Where’s Nick?

“I’m sorry, Zoë,” he finally says.

I stare back at him, not comprehending. We were just so close. How can he have pulled away again so quickly? What is he sorry for?

“We have to stop.”

My heart squeezes tight, one singular palpitation.

We have to stop?

Did he actually just say this to me only seconds after having what was probably the most intimate sex of my life with me? After coming inside me? After I told him that I loved him?

“Your cum is running down my leg.” I say it like an accusation. I can’t think of anything else to say. It is an accusation.

He sighs, drops back into his seat and leans his forehead into his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, staring at the table. “I’m sorry.” As if that makes up for anything.

ZOË

USUALLY, DANCING IS an escape for me. The messier my real life is, the more I lose myself on stage. But nothing can pull me out of my head tonight.

Big Rob points at me when I walk onto the floor after finishing a number. “No more sad songs,” he barks out.

He turns to the DJ and repeats himself, slicing his fingers across his neck to indicate that the DJ shouldn’t take any more requests from me.

The DJ shrugs nonchalantly, and I ignore Big Rob as I walk past him, my eyes on the ground. The drabness of the carpet feels overwhelmingly depressing, the childish pattern of ringed planets and soaring rockets tamped down and overlaid with a dark patina of dirty shoes and spills.

Everything new turns rotten in the end, I guess.

* * *

By midnight, I’m circulating on the floor, ignoring Big Rob’s strong suggestion that I go home but not really hustling, either. A table of men waves at me, and I wave back and keep walking, as if we were all just here to say hello to each other. Rachel, AKA Jazmyn, takes me aside and orders me a shot of tequila.

“How can I go home when he’s there?” I say to her.

She screws up her face in pity. She doesn’t need to say it. You fucked up is written all over her features.

* * *

A little while later, she catches up to me on the floor and points to a table.

“He’s asking for you,” she says in a serious, searching way.

I follow her hand, for one stupid, delusional moment thinking it’s Nick, that he’s come here to make amends—but it’s not Nick.

It’s Tate.

Sitting at a table with two of his douchebag friends and watching us expectantly.

“You okay?” asks Rachel.

“It’s fine,” I tell her, hiking up a bra strap and swallowing.

It’s not fine, but whatever it is, I’ll have to deal with it.

---