Page 72 of Rules for Rule Breaking
“You can’t be serious.”
“I think you’ve known me long enough to know that I’m always serious.” He extended his hand to her, and everyone in the room held up their cups and egged them on.
Winter shrugged.When in Boston,she supposed.
Her hand felt good in Bobby’s as he pulled her through the house into the yard. There were about a dozen partially dressed people out there, throwing their hands in the air every time another body slid and spun on the bright blue tarps. It was her turn next. She put her phone aside, noticing for the first time she had a million missed calls. Bobby probably forgot to drop the pin. She’d deal with it later.
Winter looked down the barrel of the gun, which was a plasticdeath trap covered in duct tape and dish soap. Omari was spraying everyone with a garden hose, doing his best impression of Tony Montana. There was dancing and mingling and flirting. The lights were low, and she had her entire universe above her.
She held her breath and prepared for her running start when Bobby grabbed her arm.
“Together?” he asked. He had stars dancing in his eyes.
“Together.”
They clasped hands, ran, and jumped. Winter screamed the entire time as water droplets pelted her in the face and the smell of wet grass entered her nose and all the blood in her body rushed around in one big assault on her senses.
When they got to the end, the crowd erupted into indistinct screams, and hands reached out seemingly out of nowhere to help them up.
“What the hell am I doing?” Winter asked the universe, hoping it’d answer, and it did, using Bobby’s voice, which simply said, “Making your own rules.”
“Take me somewhere else. I want to move around,” she replied.
Omari threw his arms over their shoulders. “I’ve got just the place.”
He invited them downstairs. Winter hadn’t even realized there was a downstairs. Bobby took her arm and pulled her along. She could feel every atom and molecule in and on their skin bouncing against one another as they descended the stairs to the basement. She could hear the muffled music from below, but she could barely see a thing. She followed Bobby in the darkness, and they found a second door. She turned around and leaned against it, wanting one moment where it was only them.
The bass rattled against her back as she looked up at Bobby, nothating his stupidly long bangs for once. She could hardly breathe as her mind raced, wondering how on earth they’d ended up there. She got her moment, and everything was still. She breathed in deep, ready to find out what was on the other side of the door. Bobby leaned in and pushed it open. Sight and sound immediately filled her up.
The sensory overload was almost unbearable. She was white-knuckling her phone in one hand and Bobby’s arm in the other. The entire basement was black except for the strobe lights that wound their way through the crowd. There were sweaty bodies squished together like sardines, moving and swaying as the music swelled and gave reprieve. It was like they were choreographed to move like the waves of the ocean. Bobby motioned for her to join the sea of undulating bodies. They cut through the crowd, found a spot near the middle, and danced. It was like ocean waves crashed against her. She was wet from either sweat or gross hose water, and her skin was hot. She felt amazing.
Bobby shook out his wet hair, and Winter hummed with laughter as the droplets hit her. She could barely see his face to gauge his reaction, only his silhouette against the vape smoke and stray strobe lights.
“This is weird, right?” Bobby yelled over the music.
“It’s a little weird,” she shouted back.
“Can I make it weirder?”
“You might as well.”
“I may be off base here, but it seemed like you wanted to kiss me earlier. Now you look like you definitely do.”
“Ilook like I want to kissyou?” she said with a smile that she felt in her whole body.
Bobby grinned. “You do.”
She pushed his face away. “You’re projecting.”
“You’re right. I am,” he said, stepping closer.
Typically, Bobby had something, a microexpression, a twitch, something small that betrayed him when he wasn’t being entirely genuine. She couldn’t find it. His face was steely, and he was as serious as ever. He really wanted to kiss her. She surprised herself when she said, “Then do it.”
“It would violate every single one of our rules.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?”
Bobby held her face in his hands and tilted her head up, his thumb dragging her lips open to a part. Every time the red strobe light hit him, he was a little bit closer, like he was moving in stop-motion.
